What Civil War myth would you like to correct most?

kepi

First Sergeant
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In my short time as a member here, I have looked over quite a few past posts and found several conversations and exchanges relating to myths about the Civil War or facts people just have wrong. This got me to thinking about which myth or incorrect bit of information people here may find the most troublesome, so here is my question for the group:

What Civil War myth, legend, or generally incorrect information would you like to dispel most in American popular culture? (YOU MAY ONLY PICK ONE)

Let us PLEASE be nice to each other, as I have seen this topic can get out of hand.
Thank You.
 
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I'm not sure whether this is a Myth or a Fact, but 'Stonewall' Jackson, at Fredericksburg, came up with a plan so bizarre that even Burnside would have thought twice about it ! Jackson suggested a night attack, in which Lee's entire Army would strip naked- to help distinguish themselves from the Union troops in the darkness- before swimming the river and rushing at Burnside's shattered Army ! It was either Lee's prudishness, or his common sense, which prevented such mad antics in the middle of a snowy, freezing December night !
 
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The second Confederate Balloon, The Gazelle, was NOT made from silk dresses! It was made from bolts of material that could have been used to make silk dresses. NO Southern Belles were harmed, NOR did they donate the dresses off their backs to make the balloon!

Confederate Silk Dress Balloon - slide.png
 
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Sorry, but I have two, though they are both related to money. The five cent coin of the Civil War was NOT a nickel. We are so used to the five cent nickel that we think that has always been the five cent coin. In the Civil War that five cent coin was the silver half dime. I have read any number of books where the author refers to a transaction being made with a five cent nickel, especially where Tad Lincoln charges visitors to the White House a nickel to see his father. If he did do this, he was charging them a half dime.

The price of gold. When readers see that gold was selling for 150 in the spring of 1863 or 220 in the summer of 1864 they think that that meant gold was selling at $150 or $220 an ounce. That is not what those numbers meant. They meant that it took $150 in paper (Greenbacks) or $220 in paper to but $100 gold dollars. Those numbers represented a ratio of paper dollars to gold dollars, not the price per ounce, fixed every day by a consortium of NYC bankers meeting in the "gold room" to establish the Greenback's value value relative to gold dollars. If gold were selling at 150 its price in Greenbacks would have been $30 per ounce. This error has been repeated by some very reputable Civil War authors who ought to know their Civil War finances better.
 
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I'm not sure whether this is a Myth or a Fact, but 'Stonewall' Jackson, at Fredericksburg, came up with a plan so bizarre that even Burnside would have thought twice about it ! Jackson suggested a night attack, in which Lee's entire Army would strip naked- to help distinguish themselves from the Union troops in the darkness- before swimming the river and rushing at Burnside's shattered Army ! It was either Lee's prudishness, or his common sense, which prevented such mad antics in the middle of a snowy, freezing December night !
Not a myth just not reported exactly right. The Yanks were still on the same side of the river when Jackson suggested this, or that's how I remember
The myth I'd most like to dispel is the easiest one.
" Grant stole a march" on Lee when he crossed the James and took a harebrained attempt at Petersburg.
 
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How about the myth that General Forrest snatched up a Federal soldier to cover his back while trying to get back to his side at the end of the battle of Shiloh.
I don't think that's a myth and I don't think it was at Shiloh but feel free to correct me as I'm running on memory here and it is getting more and more untrustworthy.
 
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Yes indeed. Everyone knows it was a shad-bake.
All seriousness aside, if it wasn't a siege ( or a shad-bake), then what what is?

A campaign.

Those who argue against it being a siege point out that Petersburg was never surrounded, that there was constant movement into and out of the city, and that supplies could be delivered.

Also, there were never approach trenches dug as you would find in a classic siege.
 
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I don't think that's a myth and I don't think it was at Shiloh but feel free to correct me as I'm running on memory here and it is getting more and more untrustworthy.
It was Shiloh. General T.S. Sherman wrote about the encounter in his memoirs. Forrest had charged what he thought was a picket line and ran in to a brigade size force. Sherman was up front with said brigade and said it caused himself to run *** over tea kettle in the mud, and that if Forrest's pistols weren't empty, it would have ended his career right then. Forrest then got shot in the hip, at nearly point blank range, yet still managed to escape.
 
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