Oddities of the War

[thea_447]

One of the war's most striking victories was won by an Irishman in Confederate service, Captain Richard W. Dowling, nineteen, of the Davis Guards. With 43 men armed with rifles and six small cannon he defended Sabine Pass, Texas, in September, 1863, driving off a Federal fleet which tried to land about 15,000 men.

Dowling sank one gunboat, disabled and captured two others, and turned away the rest of the fleet. He took 400 prisoners - all without the loss of man.

This was the only command of record in the war to get its whole muster into official reports. All the men got silver medals from Jefferson Davis, the only such given by the Confederacy.

[thea_447]

Firing on both sides was so inaccurate that soldiers estimated it took a man's weight in lead to kill a single enemy in battle.

A Federal expert said that each Confederate who was shot required 240 pounds of powder and 900 pounds of lead.


Federal ordnance men turned down the Spencer repeating breech-loading rifle in 1860, and did not get it into the hands of troops in quantity until near the end of the war. The theory for their refusal: Soldiers would fire too fast, and waste ammunition.

[thea_447]

Paul A. Fusz, who enlisted as a Confederate private in 1861 at the age of fifteen, was caught with two other soldiers smuggling quinine through the Federal lines. The smuggles chewed up their papers, but their captors shot the older two. The tradition is that the pardoning of Fusz was Lincoln's last official act.


Major Robert Anderson, the Union commander at Fort Sumter as the war opened, was a former slave-owner. He at first found himself at old Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor - a spot where his father had served before him, in the Revolution.

[thea_447]

Early in the war, when Confederate invasion of Washington was threatened, field guns were placed in hallways of the Capitol and Treasury Building.

The iron plates cast for the dome of the Capitol were raised on heavy timbers between columns of the building as breastworks. Statuary and pictures were shielded with heavy planking, and an army kitchen was set up in the basement.


The Union Army had one company made up entirely of pugilists. There were others composed of musicians, farmers, or butchers. One Temperance Company went into battle stone sober, tradition has it. The 126th New York was the YMCA Regiment. Nicholas Busch, later Lieutenant Governor of Iowa, formed a woodchopper's corps of German immigrants who were unable to fight, and had them cut and haul wood for Mississippi River army steamers - pausing now and then to beat off guerillas.

[jenna]

A Georgian weapons designer got an idea that waiting to fire canister shots out of a cannon was dangerous. A cantister was a tin can filled with mini balls. When the cannon was fired , the tin can fling the balls in a wide arc, cutting down enemy infantry rushing a posistion. It was very deadly and effective, but only at close range, and the fear was that those who escaped the charge would then rush and take the gun. The Confederacy could not take such a loss. So this Georgian came up with the idea that if one cannon barrel was effective, two were fantastic! So he set out to design a double barreled cannon, the only one of it's kind.

The concept was simple, two barrels firing at once with double the effectivness. Attached to both cannon balls, and hanging outside the barrels, would be a conecting chain. The designer envisioned that when the barrels were fired at the same time, the chain would hold the two cannon balls together and the chain would act like a giant sickle, cutting down hundreds of men at least a hundred yards away.

So he cast his cannon, loaded it with the chained balls, and fired a test round. His weapon didn't work quite like he had planned. The twin barrels didn't fire at the same time, as had hoped, which made the early ball's release pulling the late ball in an entirely different direction from where it had been aimed. Whether any observers were killed or injured during the test fire is unknown, but one thing is known, that the cannon was only fired once! Thank goodness!!

[scone]

Not Really a oddity, but Just returned from as trip to Chickamuga.

the 22nd Alabama went into battle with 371 men by days end 205 of those were causualties. One of them being Lt. Renefro.


Lt. Renefro of 22nd Alabama Regiment returned to his regiment after a leave of absence to visit his home at Jacksonville, Alabama (his father kept the hotel there at that time) his father had brought him back to the army in a buggy arriving sept 19 1863.

On Sept. 20 1863 Lt.. Renefro joined his command and went into the fight and was killed on the first charge. The Lt was carried off the field by his father in the very buggy that brought him there just hours before.

Great thread....For odd I beg you peruse The Unusual Bunker Brothers thread. They were oddity personified.


YMOS
tommy

[bill_torrens]

Hugh McVey served in Co.D, 4th Kentucky Inf., C.S.A. He was killed at Shiloh. What makes him an oddity is that he was 70 years old and a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo.

[thea_447]

Tommy said: "For odd I beg you peruse The Unusual Bunker Brothers thread. They were oddity personified."

I have, Tommy, and they were an odd lot!

And frankly, that quote that I gave about how much lead and powder it took to kill a man, as noted by a Federal expert just doesn't sound right to me. What do any of you think? Even if they were all lousy shots, that just sounds a bit much to me.

[thea_447]

Two brothers, Jack and Jasper Walker, of Charlotte, North Carolina, fought at Gettysburg with the 13th North Carolina. Jasper, the younger, was wounded on July 1, as the fifth color-bearer of his regiment to be shot. A surgeon amputated his leg. Jasper was captured and sent to a Northern prison.

On the retreat from Gettysburg, Jack Walker was also shot and lost his left leg by amputation. He went to another Federal prison.

The brothers returned hom after the war to become prosperous citizens, familiar in the town as they stumped about on cork legs. On Jasper's wedding day, when he accidentally fell and broke his articifial limb, he borrowed the leg of his gallant brother - a perfect fit.

This, as Confederate veterans were fond of telling youngsters, was the only case on record in which one man was married while standing on the leg of another.