The American Civil War was far more complex than the famous battles and political speeches most people learn about. These facts uncover remarkable stories of courage, strange coincidences, forgotten innovations, battlefield oddities, and the lasting impact the war had on American society long after the fighting ended.
South’s Wormy Aftermath
1. After the Civil War, hookworms infected as much as 40% of the Southern population, symptoms hindered progress for decades, and they helped foster stereotypes of lazy, moronic Southerners.
2. A $20 gold coin stopped a bullet and saved Lt. George Dixon of the Confederate Army during the Civil War. It then became his lucky coin forever. 137 years later, the coin was discovered in the sunken wreckage of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley.
3. During the American Civil War, writer Walt Whitman volunteered by composing countless letters home for soldiers, including some who were illiterate or dying.
4. Albert Woolson, the last living American Civil War veteran, was still alive when the civil rights movement began. He died in 1956.
5. Wilmer McLean’s house was part of the 1st Battle of Bull Run, where the Civil War started. He then relocated 120 miles away to Appomattox Courthouse to escape more fighting, and two years later the war ended in his parlor when General Lee surrendered to General Grant.
6. The US Postal Service started home delivery during the Civil War after a postal worker was so upset by seeing women waiting in the cold to find out whether a letter had arrived from a son or husband at the front lines that he began delivering mail to houses.
7. During the Civil War, the Union set off 8,000 lbs of gunpowder, wrecking a mine beneath the Confederate camp, then charged into the blast crater, became trapped in that crater, and were brutally killed because of the Confederate high ground.
8. During the Civil War, after being told that General Grant was a drunk who liked whiskey, President Lincoln said, “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”
9. The last Civil War widow to survive, Maudie Hopkins, did not die until 2008. She married an 86-year-old veteran when she was just 19.
10. President Grover Cleveland sidestepped the draft by paying a Polish immigrant to serve in his place during the Civil War.
Alive After His Obituary
11. Benjamin Runkle, an officer in the American Civil War, was wrongly assumed dead on the battlefield. An obituary was published for him while he was still living, but Runkle outlived the man who wrote it and then wrote an obituary for that obituary writer in return.
12. Elmira, a Civil War prison camp, had two watchtowers built for spectators. Visitors paid 15 cents to view the prisoners. Snack stands near the towers sold peanuts, cakes, and lemonade while the men inside were starving.
13. Sgt. William Harvey Carney was the first African American to be awarded the Medal of Honor in the Civil War and, even after being shot in the face, shoulders, arms, and legs, he would not allow the American flag to fall to the ground.
14. John Clem, a Union Army drummer boy during the Civil War, shot a Confederate colonel at age 11 after the colonel demanded his surrender. Later promoted to sergeant, he became the youngest noncommissioned officer in Army history. He retired in 1915 as a general and the last Civil War veteran still on active service.
15. Diarrhea caused more deaths than anything else among soldiers in the American Civil War, and the soldiers followed a code of honor that forbade shooting at anyone who was defecating.
16. The last Civil War veteran to survive lived long enough to watch television.
17. The first American Civil War reenactors were, in fact, veterans of that war.
18. Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, the Civil War general tied to the early Ku Klux Klan, had 29 horses shot out from beneath him during the war. He was shot four times himself, and he beat more than 30 Union soldiers in hand-to-hand fighting.
19. The word “coffee” appeared in Civil War diaries more often than war, bullet, cannon, mother, and Lincoln. Coffee mattered so much to the Union war effort that the Sharps Rifle Company made a carbine with a coffee grinder built into the gun’s butt stock.
20. During the Civil War, the Union forged Confederate money and intentionally distributed it in the South to trigger severe inflation.
Faulty Rifles, Huge Profit
21. In the Civil War, JP Morgan’s founder purchased five thousand rifles from an army arsenal for $3.50 apiece and later sold them to a general in the field for $22 each. The rifles were flawed and could blow off the thumbs of the soldiers who used them.
22. After a Confederate victory in the Civil War, the Confederacy intended to take over Latin America.
23. During the American Civil War, armies sometimes held snowball fights involving as many as 10,000 people.
24. Today, there are still living children of Civil War veterans, 150 years after the war, and they can still remember their fathers’ war stories.
25. Almost all of the students and faculty at the University of Mississippi enlisted in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and the casualty rate was 100%.
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