25 Facts about American Civil War | Amazing Facts 4U
- American Civil War, also called War Between the States was a four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) that seceded from the Union in 1861 forming the Confederate States of America.
- An estimated 1.5 million troops joined the war on the side of the Union and approximately 1.2 million went into Confederate service. Over 620,000 Americans died in the war, with disease killing twice as many as those lost in battle. 50,000 survivors returned home as amputees.
- In fact, neither side expected a war of long duration. Volunteers were asked to serve for 90 days but the war lingered on for 4 long years. Southerners thought Northerners too weak and cowardly to fight. Northerners thought a dependence upon slave labor had rendered Southerners too weak to present a serious battlefield threat. Both sides were due for a rude awakening.
- The primary reason for the conflict was that southern states were invested heavily in slaves. Abraham Lincoln’s election as President in 1860 on a platform of anti-slavery was a catalyst for southern states’ secession. Confederate States of America of 11 states, when formed, had a population of 9 million, including nearly 4 million slaves.
- The Confederate surprise attack on Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s unprepared troops at Shiloh on the Tennessee River resulted in a heavy fight with 13,000 Union killed and wounded and 10,000 Confederates, more men than in all previous American wars combined.
- September 17, 1862, was in fact the bloodiest day in U.S. military history as Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Armies were stopped at Antietam in Maryland by McClellan and numerically superior Union forces. By nightfall 26,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing. Lee then withdrew to Virginia.
- The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, finally abolishing slavery.
- Before the war ended by the final surrender of the Southern states army, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln with a single bullet in the back of the head. He died the next day on April 15, 1865.
- The last living American Civil War veteran, Albert Woolson, was in fact alive to see the beginning of the civil rights movement. He died in 1956.
- The last surviving Civil War widow amazingly didn’t pass away until 2008. She married an 86-year-old veteran when she was only 19.
- Nearly the entire student body and faculty of the University of Mississippi joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War and suffered a 100% casualty rate.
- The amazing Fact is that in 1861, a slave took over on a confederate ship and delivered it to the Union. He later was given the ship to command during the American Civil War. After the war, he bought the house he was a slave in and became a US congressman.
- In the 1930s the Smithsonian recorded Confederate Civil War veterans reenacting the rebel yell battle cry. This is the only recording of actual veterans doing the yell.
- The first Memorial Day was a funeral held by freed slaves for Union soldiers who liberated them after the American Civil War in 1865.
- In the American Civil War, soldiers were required to have at least four opposing front teeth, so that they could open a gunpowder pouch. Amazingly some men had their front teeth removed to avoid service.
- Diarrhea was the leading cause of death among soldiers in the American Civil War and soldiers had a code of honor against shooting at someone who was pooping.
- During the Civil War, JP Morgan’s founder in fact bought five thousand rifles for $3.50 each from an army arsenal and sold them to a general in the field for $22 each. The rifles were defective and would shoot off the thumbs of the soldiers using them.
- During the civil war, the Union counterfeited Confederate currency and deliberately gave it away in the South to cause massive inflation
- Some Civil War soldiers had wounds that glowed in the dark because of bioluminescent bacteria that were puked up by nematodes. These bacteria actually killed off other pathogens and made the survival rate of those soldiers higher.
- A 9-year-old boy ran away from home to fight in the American Civil War. The army adopted him as their drummer boy, being too young to be a soldier. At age 11, he became the youngest noncommissioned officer in Army history, and decades later he retired as the last veteran of the civil war on active duty.
- The first battle of the Civil War took place on the farm of a man named Wilmer McLean. He moved to get away from the violence, but 4 years later Lee would surrender to Grant in Wilmer’s new house. He quoted, “The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.”
- Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, the civil war general involved in the early Ku Klux Klan, had a total of 29 horses shot out from under him during the war. He himself was shot four times, and he defeated over 30 Union soldiers in hand-to-hand combat.
- The first African American to receive the Medal of Honor in the American Civil War was Sgt. William Harvey Carney who, despite being shot in the face, shoulders, arms, and legs, refused to let the American flag touch the ground.
- There were 8 African-American men from Southern states elected to Congress in 1870, just five years after the Civil War. Amazingly another black man wouldn’t be elected from a Southern state for the next 72 years.
- W.V Meadows was shot in the eye at the battle of Vicksburg during the American Civil War. He survived, and amazingly 58 years later coughed the bullet out of his mouth.
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