Oddities of the War - Page 9

thea_447 · #81 01-08-2005, 09:55 PM

Confederate Brig. Gen. William Smith was -- barring the great Stonewall --perhaps the most eccentric general in the war.

In at least one battle he fought wearing an old beaver "stove pipe" hat and, since the weather was threatening, toting an umbrella.

thea_447 · #82 01-08-2005, 09:57 PM

Among the many technical innovations on the famed U.S.S. Monitor, is the often overlooked fact that she was the first warship to have flush toilets.

gary · #83 01-08-2005, 11:27 PM

I think the HMS Warrior was the first ship to have a flush toilet. However, it was in the Captain's Cabin. The rest of the swabbies used the head. The first ship to exclusively have flush toilets is the Monitor.

thea_447 · #84 01-11-2005, 11:32 PM

During the attack on the Confederate forts guarding Hatteras Inlet on 28 August 1862, a Union warship, believing it was bombarding enemy cavalry, decimated a herd of beef cattle.

thea_447 · #85 01-11-2005, 11:34 PM

Curtis King, was was 80 when he joined the 37th Iowa in November of 1862, was probably the oldest enlisted man in the war, and was further distinguished by having several sons, 20 grandsons and four or five great-grandsons all in blue.

thea_447 · #86 01-11-2005, 11:36 PM

When, in late 1862 the Union commander at New Orleans, Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler --nicknamed "Beast" by Southerners for his lack of noble qualities -- learned that Caroline Beauregard was seriously ill, he offered her husband, Confederate Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard, a pass through Federal lines so that he might visit her, an offer which the latter declined: when Mrs. Beauregard died early the following year, the Union provided a steamboat to carry her remains to her native parish.

thea_447 · #87 01-11-2005, 11:37 PM

The youngest officer in the war was undoubtedly E.G. Baxter (born 10 September 1849), who enlisted in the Confederate 7th Kentucky in June of 1862 and was made a second lieutenant when not quite 14.

thea_447 · #88 01-26-2005, 08:12 AM

A mathematics book published in the South during the war included the problem, "If one Confederate soldier can whip 7 Yankees, how many Confederate soldiers can whip 49 Yankees?"

thea_447 · #89 01-26-2005, 08:15 AM

Harvard lost 202 alumni during the War, of whom 138 died for the Union and 64 for the Confederacy.

thea_447 · #90 01-26-2005, 08:19 AM

When Abraham Lincoln's body was returned to Springfield, Illinois, in 1865, it was accompanied by Maj. Gen. David Hunter, who as a major in 1861 had accompanied Lincoln on his journey from Springfield to Washington.