What Is Your Best Obscure Civil War Fact?

JackHistory

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Joined
Dec 14, 2018
Just a question I would like to pose to all of the Civil War history buffs on this forum.

What is the best fact that you have regarding the US Civil War that is quite obscure?

This is also one of my first posts so I would also just like to say hello to everyone!
 
Others will come around with better ones I'm sure, but a fact I stumbled across recently that astounded me was that almost 75% of the male population of Philadelphia served at some point in the federal army or navy. I do not know what percentage of male Philadelphians served in the U.S. military during the First or Second World Wars, but I'd wager it was lower.

Statistics like that one fly in the face of the notion of that the Union fought the war with one hand tied behind it's back.

Also, welcome to CivilWarTalk!
 
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Welcome from East Tennessee. That is a tough question @JackHistory because an obscure fact to me is normally known already by many others. Moments of intense enlightenment occur daily in my studies; things I had no inkling of to begin with. Comprehension has a lot to do with it. How could they dig the Dutch Gap? How could they string telegraph wires all across the country. How did they know trajectories of weapons without a full knowledge of Trigonometry? But they knew and did mighty acts, and recorded at least 3 written copies of almost everything done.
Lubliner.
 
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Welcome to the board from North Mississippi!

There is a Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery that marks the graves of 482 Rebel Soldiers. The monument was designed by Moses Ezekiel a member of the VMI Corps of Cadets that fought at the Battle of New Market. It is a beautiful marker that come from the efforts of the UDC. Inscribed upon the monument are the words of Randolph Harrison McKim a Confederate:
Not for fame or reward
Not for place or for rank
Not lured by ambition
Or goaded by necessity
But in simple
Obedience to duty
As they understood it
These men suffered all
Sacrificed all
Dared all-and died

Regards
David
https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Monuments-and-Memorials/Confederate-Memorial
 
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My obscure fact: Two leaders of the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, a failed Irish Nationalist uprising, who afterward were sent as convicts to Australia (Van Diemens Land, or Tasmania), escaped to America, then became leaders on opposite sides of the Civil War.

John Mitchel supported the Confederacy, and Thomas Francis Meagher supported the Union.

John Mitchel lost two sons during the war and eventually moved back to Europe. Thomas Francis Meagher became Acting Governor of Montana post war and died in suspicious circumstances.

Welcome to the forums :smile:
 
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The American Civil War was the first railroad war. The Union's industrial capacity far exceeded that of the South and made much better use of the transportation system. The extant Southern lines were of different gauges and designed primarily to transport cotton to markets. The Confederacy failed to us the railroads effectively till it was too late whereas the Union perfected the infrastructure for a logistics pipeline to the troops at the front.
Regards
David
 
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Well, I'd say the most obscure factoids I have documentation for are regarding the war in the Pacific Northwest. Some would argue that there was no war in the PNW - it being involved, instead, in Indian wars - but that's a bit of a semantic debate. The Oregon volunteers were certainly veterans of the CW era, entitled to federal pensions, and most were later members of the G.A.R.

So, I've got the actual vote tallies, by county, for the 1860 election in Oregon and the list of Oregon newspapers shut down by the military due to being editorially supportive of the Confederacy. Those are published but aren't easy to find (thanks again to all the reference librarians in this great land of ours). I also know a few things about the various state militia (vs the 1st Oregon volunteer regiments) that are also hard to locate (requires reading through old newspapers; often these were mentioned in obituaries or stories told by oldtimers long after the war).

Nothing I know about the war of the rebellion in the east could be honestly called "obscure."
 
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The American Civil War was the first railroad war.
By 1861 the military use of RRs was nothing new.
Railroads was used by Prussia in 1846 to help suppress a polish rebellion o Russian Poland.
It was sued by a number of Government armies during the wars/rebellions in Europe in 1848-50.
The Prussians build their first military railroad in 1850.
The French used the RR for their mobilization against Austria in 1859...

So that is not "a obscure fact".. just a myth..

this book cover it rather well:
https://books.google.dk/books?id=b34yDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=da#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
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Though the Confederacy did not have an official medal, in February 1865 Gen. Lee received a package from an unidentified woman in Texas containing nine gold stars with the request that they be awarded to the best soldiers in the Texas Brigade. Lee left it to the men of the brigade to vote on the nine members.

The men chosen were:
Pvt. William L. Durham (Co. D, First Texas)
Pvt. Josephus A. Knight (Co. H, First Texas)
Cpl. James Burke (Co. B, Fourth Texas)
Sgt. James Patterson (Co. D, Fourth Texas)
Cpl. W.C. May (Co. H, Fourth Texas)
Sgt. Cadmus Wilborn (Co. F, Fifth Texas)
Sgt. Jacob Hemphill (Co. H, Fifth Texas)
Pvt. John Daniel Staples (Co. E, Third Arkansas)
Pvt. Joseph W. "Joe" Cook (Co. H, Third Arkansas)

Medals were also awarded to the Davis Guards - the Texas artillery company consisting mainly of Irishmen from Houston, led by Maj. Richard W. Dowling - for their actions in the 2nd battle of Sabine Pass, fending off a Union flotilla. Commissioned by citizens of Houston, they were fashioned from silver Mexican pesos, with the name of the battle on one side and "DG" and a Maltese Cross on the other. One was also presented to the company's namesake, President Davis, but it was stolen off him by a Union soldier during his capture at war's end and, despite numerous efforts to find it, was never recovered.
 
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I suspect that my Missouri friends and I know a lot of facts that would strike many forum members as obscure, simply because most fans of Civil War history don't delve too deeply into things that happened west of the Mississippi. However, that is not enough to make things TRULY obscure. When I come up with something truly obscure, I will post it.
 
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Not very obscure but I don't see much coverage on them, the 100 days regiments. A total of about ~80,000 men mostly from Ohio and the Midwestern States volunteered into Federal service after the Governor of Ohio proposed the idea of raising regiments to serve for 100 days primarily to relieve veteran regiments from guard and provost duty during the summer campaigns of 1864. There were at least 70-80 regiments raised at full strength, and when you factor in the fact that most veteran regiments were depleted in numbers you come to realize that these ~70-80 regiments could free up to 140-160 veteran regiments and likely more for crucial campaigns like Atlanta, the Valley Campaigns of 1864, Petersburg and etc.

Most of the regiments didn't see combat though some did in battles like Cynthia Kentucky, Monocacy Maryland, Petersburg Virginia, Memphis Tennessee, various expeditions and etc. The regiments are:
Ohio 130-172
Illinois 132-145
Indiana 132-138
Iowa 44-48
Wisconsin 39-41
New Jersey 37th
Possibly more that I am not aware of.
 
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A lot of folks don't realize how much financial trouble General Longstreet suffered after the Civil War ended. He was unable to pay his son Garland's tuition at the Virginia Military Institute. Letters and the financial ledgers of the Virginia Military Institute that pertained to the Longstreet account and overdue balance are in the archives of the New Orleans Public Library. General Longstreet wrote to Francis Smith, the head of the institute, in December of 1868 saying, “I regret to say…that I am entirely out of resources and offer no assurances that I should have any soon.” This certainly illustrated the severity of his post-war debt.

In October 1870 the ledger of the Virginia Military Institute showed Longstreet’s balance at $1407.90. On July 24, 1871 Francis Smith wrote to General Longstreet, “The pressure upon us at this time, since instances involving legal process, compels my appeal to you to close the balance for your son’s education.” Sadly, the General could not afford to close the balance and eventually legal proceedings were brought in State of Virginia v. Longstreet with a court date set for May 23, 1872. Fortunately after suffering seven years of hardship General Longstreet's finances finally began to improve around this same time and he was able to pay off the debt for Garland's education before the trial date.

Welcome aboard @JackHistory! I'm enjoying reading the responses to your OP. No one will be surprised that my obscure fact (more like obscure anecdote) is about General Longstreet. I'm sort of a fan of this General. :giggle:
 
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I think it would be that one ship, The Star of the West, was involved in three separate historical events during the war. First it was fired at by the Cadets at Charleston when it attempted to relieve Ft. Sumter. Second it was captured from the Yankees in a daring move by Colonel Earl Van Dorn and the Confederates in Texas. Third it was sunk by the Confederates to obsruct the Tallahatchie river in Mississippi in the Vicksburg campaign.
 
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