100 Interesting Facts About the American Civil War

Last surviving veteran of the American Revolutionary War was Lemuel Cook, who died in 1866 at 106 years. He lived long enough to see the end of the Civil War.

52. The first use of anti-aircraft fire was not during World War 1 but during the American Civil War. The Confederates used artillery and small arms to attack the Union Balloon Corps. The first specialized anti-aircraft weapon was used by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War

53. During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus. This allowed for the arrest of those who expressed sympathy for the Confederate cause. Furthermore, it also prevented military officials from being convicted of false arrest, false imprisonment or search and seizure violations.

54. During American Civil War some soldier's wounds glowed blue; soldier's whose wounds glowed had better chance of surviving, and so the glow was called "Angel's Glow". Now it is known that the luminescence is due to bacteria that produce antibiotics and that live in nematodes

55. Sam Houston, the general who won Texas independence from Mexico, was removed from his post as Governor of Texas after refusing to support the Confederacy during the Civil War

The word "coffee" was mentioned in Civil War diaries more than war, bullet, cannon, mother, and Lincoln. Coffee was so important to the Union war effort the Sharps Rifle Company manufactured a carbine with a coffee grinder built in the butt stock of the gun.

57. Writer Walt Whitman volunteered during the American Civil War by writing countless letters on behalf of soldiers, some of whom were illiterate or were dying, back home to their loved ones

58. A large brawl in the US House of Representatives shortly before the Civil War ended only when a stray punch knocked the wig off of Rep. William Barksdale. The embarrassed congressman (Galusha Aaron Grow) accidentally replaced it backward, causing both sides to erupt in spontaneous laughter.

59. Newton Knight, a Southern Unionist who formed the Knight Company, a band of Confederate Army deserters in Jones County, Mississippi which fought a guerrilla war against the CSA. After the Civil War, he married a former slave and fought the KKK leading an otherwise all black regiment.

60. The largest uprising in U.S. history since the Civil War, when over 10,000 armed coal miners attempted to take down lawmakers in an attempt to unionize West Virginian mine workers. The U.S. Army intervened, and the workers lost.

After the American Civil War, South States made literacy tests to prevent former black slaves from voting. When whites failed them too, an exception was given to anyone whose Grandfather was eligible to vote. All whites had eligible grandfathers and few blacks did.

62. Mary Bowser, a freed slave with a Quaker education and a photographic memory, posed as a slow-witted slave to spy for the Union in Confederate president Jefferson Davis' household through much of the Civil War.

63. Dr. Mary Edwards Walker who, during the Civil War, stood on the Union front lines for nearly two years, including the wake of the bloody Battle of Chickamauga. She is the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor.

64. Anderson Cooper is related to Cornelius Vanderbilt and a Civil War general, was a Calvin Klein model, interned at the CIA, studied Vietnamese, lived in Africa and caught malaria...

65. In 1866, the State of Mississippi spent more than half its yearly budget providing Civil War veterans with prosthetics

Hookworms infested up to 40% of the population in the South after the civil war symptoms stymied development for decades and bred stereotypes of lazy, moronic Southerners.

67. There is a huge abandoned fortress (Fort Jefferson) 70 nautical miles off the coast of Key West in Florida. Fort Jefferson remains the largest all-masonry fort in the United States and was briefly used as a prison for Union deserters in the Civil War.

68. Pro-slavery activist Edmund Ruffin the man who fired the first shot of the Civil War was so distraught by Confederate surrender that he wrote in his diary he would never submit to "Yankee rule" and committed suicide by gunshot to the head

69. An estimated 400 women disguised themselves as men to fight in the US Civil War, including one whose cover was blown when she absentmindedly tried to put her pants on over her head, thinking they were her dress

70. More soldiers died of accident/disease in the American civil war, rather than actual combat.

After the Civil War many wealthy Confederate families fled to Brazil, today many Southern cultures and traditions can still be seen in the descendants of these "Confederados"

72. Contrary to popular belief, almost all surgery during the American Civil War was performed under general anesthesia and "pain bullets" are a myth. They were actually chewed by pigs.

73. There are currently living children of Civil War Veterans 150 years after the war, who can still recall their fathers' war stories.

74. In the Civil War, Generals were 50% more likely to die in combat than Privates

75. Civil War Veteran Jacob Miller, who was shot in the forehead on Sept.19th, 1863 at Brock Field at Chickamauga and left for dead. He lived with an open bullet wound for many years, with the last pieces of lead dropping out 31 years after he was first shot.