It is estimated that around 400 women disguised themselves as men to serve as soldiers in the Civil War. One of the most famous was born Sarah Edmonds in Canada. The youngest of five daughters of a disciplinarian father who preferred sons, she worked on the farm doing men’s Read more…
This is the third anniversary of this site. In honor of that, I am posting one of my favorite anecdotes. It’s a Civil War story and makes light of the fact that many underage boys enlisted. It is estimated that between 260,000 – 420,000 under age teenagers enlisted in the Read more…
Mary Ann Bickerdyke was born in Ohio in 1817. She was one of the first women to attend Oberlin College. She became a botanical doctor, using alternative medicines like herbs and plants. After the Civil War broke out, a friend who was a regimental surgeon wrote her a letter Read more…
We tend to teach the Civil War as a series of battles, when in fact a typical Civil War soldier would have seen combat for at most a total of two weeks a year. That’s a lot of time to kill. Some of it was spent marching in anticipation Read more…
Horace Lawson Hunley was born in Tennessee but his family settled in New Orleans. He grew up to be a lawyer and a member of the state legislature. He was also a marine engineer interested in building a submarine. His first attempt had to be scuttled before Union forces Read more…
Henry Wirz was one of the villains of the Civil War and one of only two men who were executed for war crimes after the war. Wirz was a Swiss immigrant at age 26. He settled in the South and when the war broke out he enlisted in the Read more…
If you think the South was racist and the North was not, think again. There was plenty of racism in the North during the Civil War. From July 13-16, 1863, rioting in New York City resulted in hundreds of deaths. The rioters were mainly Irish immigrants, who ironically were Read more…
The bugle sounded, followed by the Rebel Yell. What followed was the most infamous massacre of the Civil War. In March, 1864 Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest launched a cavalry raid into western Kentucky and Tennessee. One of his targets was Fort Pillow, located on the Mississippi River near Read more…
Johnny Clem ran away from home to join the Union Army in the Civil War. He hooked up with the 22nd Michigan Infantry which adopted him as a mascot and drummer boy. Drummer boys were common in the war. They used their drums to relay orders to the men. Read more…
You could argue the South lost the Civil War on Sept. 13, 1862. That was the day Corporal Barton Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers found a paper wrapped around three cigars at a campsite near Frederick, Maryland. The camp had been used by the Army of Northern Virginia a Read more…