The American Civil War

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One of the worst years of American history took place from 1861 – 1865. The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire at Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina and ended four years later, on April 9, 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, shown in this photo. However, the very last Confederates didn’t surrender until May 26. They didn’t know the war had officially ended. It was a war in which a nation slaughtered its own finest men. Most of the battles of the Civil War took place right here in Virginia. But, one of the worst battles was at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. General Lee lost 28,000 men and General Meade lost 23,000 men. Some entire regiments were killed. There is a cemetery there now that covers 17 acres, which President Lincoln dedicated with his famous Gettysburg Address. There are some ODD facts about the Civil War, though, that I recently learned and I thought you might be interested in knowing them. Who put his own bones in a museum? Major General Daniel Sickles, a Union general was struck by a cannonball at Gettysburg and had to have his leg amputated. He ordered that his bones be sent to the Army Medical Museum, where he visited them for many years, following the war. What were “worm castles?” The biscuits called “hardtack” were the staple diet of many Civil War soldiers. These biscuits became infested with maggots and weevils in storage. One soldier said : “All the fresh meat we had, came in the hard bread.” These biscuits were so hard they had to be soaked in coffee or broken with a rifle butt, before they could be eaten. Did you know that land mines, called “land torpedoes” were used in the Civil War? The South passed America’s first “draft law” in April, 1862, requiring all white males between the ages of 18 and 35 to serve for three years. Did you know that Robert E. Lee’s father was “Light Horse Harry” Lee who was George Washington’s favorite cavalry commander? Robert E. Lee also had ancestors who had fought with William the Conqueror and also ancestors who had fought in the Crusades. Did you know that the song “Dixie” which became a favorite song about the South, was actually written in the North by the son of an abolitionist? Did you know that John D. Rockefeller supposedly hired 30 different substitutes to take his place in the war? Grover Cleveland, who later became U.S. President, also hired a substitute. The Photo of Appomattox Courthouse is by Pixabay