***Please Note*** A couple of characters, both Black and White use brief racial language. It is unfortunate, but people did use those terms.
***Civil War Odds and Ends***
The Civil War had many other names. They include:
The War Between the States
The War for Southern Independence
The War Against Northern Aggression
The War for States Rights
The War for the Union
The War for Separation
The War for Abolition
The Second American War for Independence
The Great Rebellion
Mr. Lincoln’s War
***Civil War Numbers*** Some numbers from the war.
*At the start of the war there were 22 million people in the North and 9 million in the South. (1/3 were slaves.)
*Less than 10% of Southern white men owned slaves.
*Between 1619 and 1865, it is estimated that some 500,000 Africans were sold into slavery in the U. S.
*At the end of 1860, there were only about 16,400 men in the U. S. army.
*The American Bible Society supplied some 80,000 bibles to the troops.
*67% of Civil War generals wore beards.
*During the last year of the war, there were 1,000,000 men in arms for the Union, and 200,000 for the Confederacy.
*Northern factories were producing 5,000 rifles per day, and Southern factories were producing 300 rifles per day.
***Civil War Dollars & Cents***
* National Debt: 1860 $64,800,000 1865 $2,700,000,000
* In 1863, the war was costing the Union $2.5 million per day.
* By 1865, it was costing the Union $4 million per day.
* The Confederacy spent $2.1 billion to finance the war.
* By 1861 standards, the value put on the slave population in the South was $2 billion.
* The Union spent $124 million on horses.
***Civil War Medicine***
* The Union army lost more men to disease than to bullets.
* 400,000 men and women died of sickness and disease—57,000 to dysentery and diarrhea in the North alone.
* During the conflict, 1.7 million soldiers had dysentery, and 1.2 million soldiers had malaria.
* Most fractures and virtually all wounds in a joint meant amputation.
* The chances of surviving a wound were only 1 out of 7.
***Civil War Firsts***
* The first man killed in the Civil War was Union Private Daniel Hough after the surrender of Fort Sumter when, during the evacuation, a cannon discharged prematurely during the salute.
* First shot at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, at 4:30 a.m. was said to be fired by Edmund Ruffin. He committed suicide four years later when he learned of General Lee’s surrender.
* First “modern” war to use new technologies; telegraphs, photography, balloon observation, trenches, wire entanglements, repeating rifles, and breech rifles.
* First time a railroad was used to transport troops: Joseph E. Johnson to the First Battle of Bull Run— July 18, 1861.
* First major battle in which black troops actively fought: Port Hudson, Louisiana—May 27, 1863.
***Civil War – Did You Know?***
* Soldiers would often pin their names and addresses (on paper or handkerchiefs) to their uniforms so they could be identified if killed.
* The first plantation mansion seized by Federal forces belonged to Mrs. Robert E. Lee at Arlington, Virginia. The property later became Arlington National Cemetery.
* Three of Mary Todd Lincoln’s brothers died in service for the Confederacy.
* Abner Doubleday, said to be the founder of baseball in the 1840s, was among the Union soldiers who surrendered at Fort Sumter.
* The last reunion of Confederate Civil War veterans took place in 1951. There were 3 attendees.
* The last veteran who fought in the war, Walter Williams, died on December 19, 1959, at age 117.
***Civil War – Did You Know?***
* Confederate General Robert E. Lee wore size 4½ shoes.
* The town of Winchester, Virginia changed hands 76 times during the war.
*Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest, the future founder of the Ku Klux Klan, had 30 horses shot out from under him during the war.
* Besides Ulysses S. Grant, six other future presidents served in the Civil War. They were: Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, Andrew Johnson, and William McKinley.
*Future president Grover Cleveland paid a substitute to take his place in the army when he was drafted in 1864.
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
By the President of the United States of America:
On Jan. 1, 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared free all slaves residing in territory in rebellion against the federal government. This Emancipation Proclamation actually freed few people. It did not apply to slaves in Border States fighting on the Union side; nor did it affect slaves in southern areas already under Union control. Naturally, the states in rebellion did not act on Lincoln's order. But the proclamation did show Americans--and the world--that the civil war was now being fought to end slavery. Lincoln had been reluctant to come to this position. Originally, Lincoln probably viewed the war only in terms of preserving the Union. As pressure for abolition mounted in Congress and the country, however, Lincoln became more sympathetic to the idea. On Sept. 22, 1862, he issued a preliminary proclamation announcing that emancipation would become effective on Jan. 1, 1863, in those states still in rebellion. Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in America--this was achieved by the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on Dec. 18, 1865--it did make that accomplishment a basic war goal and a virtual certainty.
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal". Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here. It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Closing Paragraph of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address March 4, 1865
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
***Within just six weeks of this speech, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.