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Civil War Facts
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More than three million men fought in the Civil War about 900,000 for the
Confederacy and 2.1 million for the Union.
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An estimated 300 women disguised themselves as men and fought in the ranks.
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More than 620,000 people, or two percent of the population, died in the Civil
War.
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Approximately 6,000 battles, skirmishes, and engagements were fought during
the Civil War.
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There were over 2,000 boys who were 14 years-old or younger in the Union
ranks. Three hundred were 13 years or less, while there were 200,000 no older
than 16 years.
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At the Battle of Shiloh, on the banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans
fell than in all previous American wars combined. There were 23,700 casualties.

At Fredericksburg in 1862, the Confederate trenches stretched for a distance of
seven miles. The troop density was 11,000 per mile, or six men to the yard.
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3,530 Native Americans fought for the Union, of which, 1,018 were killed.
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The greatest cavalry battle ever fought in the Western hemisphere was at
Brandy Station, Virginia, on June 9, 1863. Nearly 20,000 cavalrymen were
engaged on a relatively confined terrain for more than 12 hours.

An Iowa regiment had a rule that any man who uttered an oath should read a
chapter in the Bible. Several of them got nearly through the Old Testament.

There were more Northern-born Confederate generals than Southern-born
Union generals.
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The famous Confederate blockade-runner, the C.S.S. Alabama, never entered a
Confederate port during the length of her service.

During the Battle of Antietam, Clara Barton tended the wounded so close to the
fighting that a bullet went through her sleeve and killed a man she was treating.

In March 1862, "new” ironclad war ships, the Monitor and Merrimack battled off
Hampton Roads, Virginia. From then on, every other wooden navy ship on earth
was obsolete.
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There were 100 men in a Company and 10 Companies in a Regiment.

Not fond of ceremonies or military music, Ulysses S. Grant said he could only
recognize two tunes. "One was Yankee Doodle, the other one wasn’t."

President Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated.
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Caring for the wounded at Antietam, 1862.
This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!
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Confederate Private Henry Stanley fought for the Sixth Arkansas, and was captured at Shiloh, but survived to go to Africa to find Dr.
Livingston.
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On July 4, 1863, after 48 days of siege, Confederate General John C. Pemberton surrendered the city of Vicksburg to the Union’s
General, Ulysses S. Grant. For the next 81 years, the city Vicksburg did not celebrate the Fourth of July.

Disease killed twice as many men during the war than did battle wounds.

The 12th Connecticut Regiment entered the war with a compliment of 1,000 men. Before it entered its first engagement, sickness had
reduced its strength to 600 able bodied soldiers.

On both sides of the conflict, potential recruits were offered monetary rewards, or "bounties," for enlisting, as much as $677 in New Yor
"Bounty jumping” soon became so popular, that hundreds of men signed up, and then deserted, to enlist again elsewhere.

For those who were drafted, the law allowed them to pay a substitute to go in their place. Another type of "bounty jumper” was born wh
men would hire out to more than one draftee and then make a hasty exit once they were paid. The record for bounty jumping was held
John O’Connor, who admitted to hiring himself out 32 times before being caught. He received a 4 year prison term.

Though African Americans constituted less than one percent of the northern population, by the war’s end made up ten
percent of the Union Army. A total of 180,000 black men, more than 85% of those eligible, enlisted. By the time of the
Confederate surrender in 1865, there were more African Americans in the Union army than there were soldiers in the
Confederate army.
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In November 1863, President Lincoln was invited to offer a "few appropriate remarks" at the opening of a new Union
cemetery at Gettysburg. Though Lincoln spoke just 269 words in his Gettysburg address, the main speaker, an orator
from Massachusetts, spoke for nearly two hours.
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Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest had 30 horses shot from under him and personally killed 31 men in
hand-to-hand combat. "I was a horse ahead at the end," he said.

In 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to
Lieutenant General and led the 533,000 men of the
Union Army, the largest in the world. Three years
later, he was made President of the United States.
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Andersonville Prison in southwest Georgia held
33,000 prisoners in 1864. It was the fifth largest city
in the Confederacy.

Alfred Thomas Archmedes Torbert held
commissions in both USA and CSA armies
simultaneously

General Stonewall Jackson walked around with his
right hand in the air to balance the blood flow in his
body. He thought that because he was right-handed
his left hand didn’t get as much blood as his right.
So, by raising his right hand, it would allow the
excess blood to run into his left.
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The words "In God We Trust" first appeared on a
U.S. coin in 1864.

By the end of the war, Unionists from every state
except South Carolina had sent regiments to fight for
the North.
Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to a Lieutenant
General in the Civil War
This image available for photographic prints HERE!

On November 9, 1863, President Lincoln attended a theater in Washington,
D.C., to see The Marble Heart. In the play was an accomplished actor named
John Wilkes Booth.
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On May 13, 1865, a month after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Private John J.
Williams of the 34th Indiana became the last man killed in the Civil War, in a
battle at Palmito Ranch, Texas. The final skirmish was a Confederate victory.
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Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first black man ever elected to the U.S.
Senate. He filled the seat last held by Jefferson Davis.

The results of the 1860 census show a total population of a little more than 31
million, of which 13% are slaves. Slaves equal 2% of the population in the
Northern Aligned States and 39% in Southern Aligned States.

One New York regiment included thirty schoolmasters

At one time or another, the Northern armies numbered 2,100,000 soldiers. The
Southern armies were considerably smaller.

The chance of surviving a wound in Civil War days was 7 to 1.
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About 15 percent of the wounded died in the Civil War.

George Pickett’s doomed infantry charge at Gettysburg was the first time he
took his division into combat.
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The diseases most prevalent during the Civil War were dysentery, typhoid fever,
malaria, pneumonia, arthritis, and the acute diseases of childhood, such as
measles, mumps, and malnutrition.
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The principal weapon of the war and the one by which 80 percent of all wounds
were produced was a single-shot, muzzle-loading rifle in the hands of foot
soldiers.
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Besides the rifle and cannon, weapons consisted of revolvers, swords,
cutlasses, hand grenades, Greek fire and land mines.

Fully armed, a soldier carried about seven pounds of ammunition, including a
cartridge box with 40 rounds. If an extensive battle was anticipated, he might
carry an additional 60 rounds.
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The muzzle-loading rifle could be loaded at the rate of about three times a
minute. Its maximum range was about 1,000 yards.

During the Battle of Antietam, 12,401 Union men were killed, missing or
wounded; it was the bloodiest single day of the Civil War.
Howitzer at Peninsula, Virginia.
This image available for photographic prints
and downloads HERE!

Though artillery was used extensively, only
about 10 percent of the wounded were the
victims of artillery fire.

Many doctors who saw service in the Civil War
had never been to medical school, but had
served an apprenticeship in the office of an
established practitioner.

In the battle of Gettysburg, 1,100 ambulances
were in use. The medical director of the Union
army boasted that all the wounded were picked
up from the field within 12 hours after the battle
was over. This was a far cry from the second
battle of Bull Run, when many of the wounded
were left on the field in the rain, heat, and sun
for three or four days.

Eighty percent of all wounds during the Civil
War were in the extremities.

The first U. S. Naval hospital ship, the Red
Rover, was used on the inland waters during
the Vicksburg campaign.

During the Battle of Murfreesboro, the Union
artillery fired 20,307 rounds and the infantry
exhausted over 2,000,000 rounds. The total
weight of the projectiles fired was in excess of
375,000 pounds.
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At the Battle of First Bull Run or Manassas,
between 8,000 and 10,000 bullets were fired
for every man killed or wounded.
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term. Yards away in the crowd was John Wilkes Booth
with a pistol in his pocket. His vantage point on the balcony, he said later, offered him "an excellent chance to kill
the President, if I had wished."
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General Stonewall Jackson never ate food that tasted good, because he assumed that anything that tasted good
was completely unhealthy.
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In eleven months the C.S.S. Alabama captured 69 Northern vessels valued at $6,500,000.
At Cold Harbor, Virginia, 7,000 Americans fell in 20
minutes.

Senator John J. Crittendon of Kentucky had two sons who
became major generals during the Civil War: one for the
North, one for the South.
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During the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862,
"Stonewall" Jackson marched his force of 16,000 men over
600 miles in 39 days, fighting five major battles and
defeating four separate armies totaling 63,000 men.