American Civil War Facts
President Abraham Lincoln The American Civil War was probably the one single thing that has caused the most devastation to this country. It is considered the first modern war, but unfortunately for the participants, they were still using older methods of fighting, such as charging positions against cannon fire and marching in rank into early machine gun type devices which both sides had. The carnage was awesome. The number of dead is estimated to be somewhere around 630,000 to 700,000. The sad fact is that disease and infections killed over twice as many men as bullets. It is estimated that the Northern Army was composed of about 2,600,000 men and the Southern Army somewhere around 1,000,000 to 1,250,000. When we check to see how many were wounded, it turns out that for every 1,000 Northern troops, 112 were wounded and for every 1,000 Southern troops, 150 were wounded.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis Record keeping was very bad, but here is what I could find out. The five costliest battles of the Civil War were: The figures that I have cited are controversial and it seems that everyone has different figures, but I tried to be as accurate as I could. The figures come from Thomas L. Livermore, who by many is considered the leading authority on the American Civil War.
Soldiers Attending Mass You can see by looking at the the figures for the amount of men under arms by both sides, that the south would have to had inflicted more than 2 to 1 in casualties and deaths to have had a chance at winning due to their smaller numbers, Even some of the battles that they won cost them far too dearly in manpower. It was clear that the only way that they could win would have been to launch an attack that overwhelmed the north and taken over the government. Lee had tried this but failed, his strategy was defeated at Gettysburg. Dixie was a very famous song of the era and was written by Dan Emmell. He performed it in New York City in 1859. The exact title of it was, "I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land." He was a member of a minstrel group and was shocked when he found out that his song had become sort of an unofficial anthem of the Confederacy. The song had become one of Lincoln's favorite songs. So you see, Dixie was really a Northern song that was annexed by the South. One day after the South surrendered Lincoln said, "I have always thought 'Dixie' was one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it." He then ordered the band to play it.
Fife And Drum Corps What many people don't realize is that hundred of women impersonated men and fought on both sides. There are quite a few stories about this. A woman named Frances Clayton served for many months in the Missouri artillery and cavalry. Women were banned from both armies, but by impersonating men many of them actually got in. It is estimated that the Confederate Army contained about 250 women masquerading as men. Another woman, this one in the Northern Army was discovered after she was wounded. Her name was Mary Owens and she had served for over 18 months as John Evans. When it was discovered that she was a woman, she was sent back to her Pennsylvania home and was featured in the press of the time. Since the Northern Army was at least twice the size of the Southern one, one has to assume it contained about twice as many women impersonating men. I mentioned Missouri, let me expand on that. Missouri was a state that was on both sides of the Civil War. It had its star on both flags and had two state governments, each one representing each side in the war. It endured neighbor against neighbor fighting. The civil war saw a lot of new weapons used. While different types of grenades had been used for centuries, the grenade, such as the Ketchum Hand Grenade looked like the forerunner of the of the hand grenade that the Germans used in World War II called the potato masher. It had a wooden handle. On top of the handle was a cast iron ball or skinny dart with fins. The nose of the grenade had a percussion cap, so it had to land head first. Both sides used these grenades, but they had problems and the main one was the percussion cap. In one battle the Confederate soldiers caught the Northern grenades thrown at them in blankets and then threw them back. The grenades came in 1, 3 and 5 pound models. So many Medals of Honor were given out in the American Civil War that the total amounts to almost half of all the medals ever awarded. It is estimated that over 10,000 Union solders were under the age of 18 years. About 130,000 freed slaves became Union soldiers. To illustrate the difference in man power between the Union and Confederacy, here is the 1860 census results: Treating of wounds has gotten progressively better. If you were wounded in the Civil War, you had a 15% chance of dying. If you were wounded in World War I your chance of dying was 8%, in World War II it was 4% and in the Korean War it was about 2%. There was so much disease in the Northern Army that the figures were 6,000,000 cases. This means that many soldiers were sick two and three times. The Vicksburg campaign saw the use of the first hospital ship, it was named the Red Rover. It is said that at the battle of Morfreesboro, the Union Army fired 20,307 artillery shells and the infantry fired over 2,000,000 rounds. When surgeons operated on a solder they didn't routinely wash their bloody hands. When Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, he had a mild form of smallpox. On the train back to Washington he joked that now he had something that he could give everybody. |
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