War Between The States Facts Which People Don't Know

1. One-third of the soldiers who fought for the Union Army were immigrants, and nearly one in 10 was African American. The Union Army was a multicultural force-even a multinational one particular. We generally hear about Irish soldiers (7.5 percent of the army), however the Union’s ranks included even more Germans (ten percent), who marched off in regiments including the Steuben Volunteers. Other immigrant soldiers had been French, Italian, Polish, English and Scottish. In truth, 1 in 4 regiments contained a majority of foreigners. Blacks have been permitted to join the Union Army in 1863, and some scholars think crazy weapons this infusion of soldiers may have turned the tide in the war.

2. Lincoln tried to deport all blacks from the country. This policy was designed in 1817 when the American Colonization Society set up Liberia in West Africa to take care of the concern of absolutely free blacks in America. By 1822, the first African-Americans have been resettled there with mixed reactions from the black community. Lincoln thought it was an excellent thought, nevertheless. In August 1862, he invited a number of black ministers for the White House to pitch the concept to them. He even provided to set up a equivalent colony in Latin America with Congressional funding, however the ministers unanimously rejected the president’s present.

3. Robert E. Lee’s Virginia property was confiscated by the Union and changed into a cemetery during the war. As war descended on Virginia, Lee and his wife Mary fled their 1,100-acre Virginia estate, recognized as Arlington, which overlooked Washington, D.C. In 1863 the U.S. government confiscated it for nonpayment of $92.07 in taxes. Meanwhile, Lincoln gave permission for a cemetery to be constructed around the house, including a burial vault around the estate’s former rose garden. The concept was that, must Lee ever return, he would “have to look at these graves and see the carnage that he had designed,” based on his biographer Elizabeth Brown Pryor. Soon after the war, the Lees quietly looked into reclaiming Arlington but took no action just before they died. In 1877 their oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, sued the federal government for confiscating Arlington illegally; the Supreme Court agreed and gave it back to him. But what could the Lee household do with an estate littered with corpses? George Lee sold it back to the government for $150,000. As time passes, 250,000 soldiers could be buried in what exactly is now Arlington National Cemetery.

4. Privates were not cannon fodder during the Civil War-generals were. Robert E. Lee’s impulse to personally lead a counterattack through the Battle with the Wilderness in May perhaps 1864 (his troops held him back) wouldn't have shocked his males if he had been a bit lower in rank. That is for the reason that lots of top rated officers, including generals, actually led their troops into battle, a uncommon occurrence in modern wars. Because of this, generals have been 50 percent additional most likely to die in combat than privates. At the Battle of Antietam alone, three generals have been killed and six wounded-on every single side. In the Battle from the Wilderness, Confederate General James Longstreet took a bullet to his shoulder and throat, even though he would be one of many fortunate handful of: He returned to command and outlived quite a few generals and privates, dying in 1904, just quick of his 83rd birthday.

5. The Civil War was a War for the Young. Truth and fiction blends nowhere extra so in war than in propaganda. With the minimum age of enlistment for both the Union and Confederacy set at 18, stories have been told about children who lied about their age to take up the fight. It can be a truth that, such was the contact to arms, that youngsters below 18 tried to join up, often succeeding when abetted by the blind eye of an officer. Fictions have been soon spun although, puffing out the particulars to make inspiring war stories. 1 such story is that of John Clem: supposedly aged nine when he attempted to enlist, Clem went on to develop into a drummer boy for the Union and is mentioned to possess shot a Confederate colonel dead. How much of Clem’s extraordinary Civil War practical experience is correct is inseparable in the fictions civil war weapons of the time, however the truth remains that the war greatly affected the young, each at property and on the battlefield.