99 Civil War Facts That Reveal How Strange the Era Really Was

Ruffin Refuses Yankee Rule

76. Pro slavery activist Edmund Ruffin, the man who fired the first shot of the Civil War, was so devastated by Confederate surrender that he wrote in his diary that he would never accept “Yankee rule” and killed himself by shooting himself in the head.

77. Shortly after the American Civil War began, former President Franklin Pierce attempted to gather all the other living former US presidents so they could use their influence to bring the war to an end.

78. In the American Civil War, more soldiers died from accidents or disease than from actual fighting.

79. In 1870, just five years after the Civil War, eight African American men from Southern states were elected to Congress. No other black man would be elected from a Southern state for the next 72 years.

80. Newton Knight was a Southern Unionist who created the Knight Company, a group of Confederate Army deserters in Jones County, Mississippi that fought a guerrilla war against the CSA. After the Civil War, he married a former slave and fought the KKK while leading an otherwise all black regiment.

81. During the Civil War, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker remained on the Union front lines for almost two years, including after the bloody Battle of Chickamauga. She is the only woman to have received the Medal of Honor.

82. Major General Peter Hains, who was a Union officer in the Civil War, reenlisted 15 years after retiring and became the only soldier to serve on active duty in both the American Civil War and World War 1.

83. During the American Civil War, a wealthy person who was drafted could pay someone else to serve in war in their place.

84. During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus. This made it possible to arrest people who showed sympathy for the Confederate cause. It also kept military officials from being found guilty of false arrest, false imprisonment, or search and seizure violations.

85. Before the Civil War, some psychiatrists labeled slaves with drapetomania, which they described as a mental illness in which the slave had an irrational wish for freedom and a tendency to attempt escape.

Flour Auction Raises Aid

86. In the Civil War, a man became widely known by auctioning a plain sack of flour again and again. This brought in $250,000 that helped wounded soldiers.

87. Russia may have kept France and England from joining the American Civil War.

88. An estimated 400 women hid their identities by dressing as men to fight in the US Civil War, including one whose disguise failed when she absentmindedly tried to pull her pants on over her head, thinking they were her dress.

89. The last Union veteran of the American Civil War lived long enough to see an army that used both muskets and nuclear weapons.

90. A colony in Brazil is home to descendants of 2,000 to 4,000 Confederate refugees who left the United States after losing the American Civil War.

91. W.V Meadows was struck in the eye at the battle of Vicksburg during the American Civil War. He lived through it, and 58 years later coughed the bullet out of his mouth.

92. At the time of surrender during the American Civil war, Robert E Lee wore a spotless custom made uniform, while Ulysses S Grant was dressed in a mud splattered general issue uniform.

93. Lincoln made Thanksgiving a National Holiday in 1863 during the Civil War in order to hold the country together.

94. In the 1930s, the Smithsonian captured Confederate Civil War veterans performing the rebel yell battle cry. It is the sole recording of actual veterans making the yell.

95. A man called Cooter Brown remained drunk for the whole American Civil War so he would not be drafted.

Buried With His Soldiers

96. After Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the all-black 54th Regiment in the American Civil War, died at Fort Wagner, he was stripped and buried alongside his men as an insult. His father, though, said he was proud to know that he lies with his brave and devoted soldiers.

97. Sam Houston, the general who secured Texas independence from Mexico, was taken out of his role as Governor of Texas after he refused to back the Confederacy during the Civil War

98. The idea that African Americans love fried chicken goes back to the Civil War, when chickens were generally the only animals slaves could raise themselves.

99. The Department of Veterans Affairs still gives a pension to one surviving daughter of a Civil War veteran.