The American Civil War remains the bloodiest conflict in America’s history. Fought from 1861-65, the war is still widely studied today, and many of the battles, leaders and stories have passed into American folklore. However, here are eleven facts which you may not have heard before. All of them are taken from The Blue & Gray Almanac: The Civil War in Facts & Figures, Recipes and Slang by Albert Nofi.
John Wayles Jefferson
- Arguably the highest-ranking officer of African descent in the war was John Wayles Jefferson (1835 – 92), the grandson of Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826) and his slave mistress Sally Wayles Hemings (c. 1773 – 1835), who was passing as white, and rose to colonel of the 8th Wisconsin, being twice wounded in action during the war.
- In 1861, 16-year-old Frank Rockefeller, who had an older brother just beginning to build a fortune, enlisted in the 7th Ohio after putting a note in his shoe with “18” written on it, so that when asked his age he could reply, “I’m over 18, sir,” an attempt to avoid an outright lie apparently used by many underage volunteers.
- The sixty or so vessels that comprised the Union naval squadron during the attack on Fort Fisher, off Wilmington, on January 13, 1865, was the largest concentration of American warships for a combat operation until the eve of the invasion of North Africa on November 8, 1942.
- M. Johnson’s Elementary Arithmetic: Designed for Beginners, published in South Carolina in 1864, included such problems as, “If one Confederate soldier can whip 7 Yankees, how many Confederate Soldiers can whip 49 Yankees?” and, “A Confederate Soldier captured 8 Yankees each day for 9 days; how many did he capture in all?”
- Mary Lincoln’s family, the Todds of Kentucky, were wealthy slave-owners, and all of her brothers served the Confederacy during the war, three of them being killed in action, as was her sister’s husband.
- 129 (30.6 percent) of the 425 Confederate generals, and 126 (21.6 percent) of the 583 Union generals, had been lawyers before the war.
The Battle of Fort Sumter triggered the Civil War
- In late 1863, 18-year-old Capt. James R. Hagood of the 1st South Carolina was promoted to colonel over several more senior officers, becoming the youngest regimental commander in the Confederacy, for “distinguished skill and valor,” according to the officer who promoted him, Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood, his brother.
- Fully 41 percent of Northern white men born between 1822 and 1845 served in the war, and an impressive 81 percent of those born in 1843, though these figures were exceeded by some Southern states.
- No one knows whether it was a Yank or a Reb who made one of the most monumental discoveries of the war, but the troops of both sides quickly learned that with a little ingenuity, the barrel of a musket could hold nearly a pint of whiskey.
- When the Union reoccupied Fort Sumter, on April 15, 1865, Brig. Gen. and brevet Maj. Gen. Robert Anderson raised the same flag that been lowered in surrender 4 years earlier to the day, accompanied by his wife and the faithful Sgt. Peter Hart.
- An unknown number of soldiers became addicted to opiates as a result of the lavish use of drugs by surgeons during the war; Union surgeons distributed over 2.8 million ounces of opiates in tincture or powdered form, and almost 10 million opium pills, while their Confederate counterparts used them less generously, as the blockade greatly affected their supply.
If you want to learn more facts about the Civil War, check out The Blue & Gray Almanac by Albert Nofi
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