61. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was blind in his left eye.

62. At the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864, six Confederate generals lost their lives. Patrick R. Cleburne, John Adams, States Rights Gist, Otho F. Strahl, and Hiram B. Granbury were killed in action. A sixth general, John C. Carter, was mortally wounded.

63. General Patrick R. Cleburne, the "Stonewall of the West," was a professional pharmacist and half-owner of a drug-store in Helena, Arkansas before the outbreak of the Civil War.

64. Confederate General Raleigh E. Colston, a division commander under Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville, later served in the Egyptian army as a colonel, where he was paralyzed when he fell off a camel.

65. General Joseph K. Barnes, surgeon general of the United States at war's end, was present at Lincoln's deathbed and later attended President Garfield after he was shot by an assassin....thus, he helped treat two assassinated U.S. Presidents.

66. Robert E. Lee's famous gray horse was first called Jeff Davis, and then Greenbrier. However, by the time Lee had become famous as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, it had been named Traveller.

67. Before going into battle, ashes were routinely spread onto the decks of Federal warships, to prevent sailors from slipping on blood during battle.

68. Approximately 20,000 black sailors served in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War.

69. The Union ship Fanny holds quite a distinction in naval history. On August 3, 1861, balloonist John La Mountain observed Confederate batteries on Sewell's Point, Virginia, from a hot-air balloon launched from the Fanny--the U.S. Navy's first aircraft carrier.

70. The oldest officer to leave the prewar U.S. Army was General David E. Twiggs, who was 71 in 1862. His age, however, prevented him from receiving a field command.

71. At war's end, the U.S. War Department's reward for the capture of Jefferson Davis was $100,000 in gold.

72. Thirteen of the sixteen officers in the 2nd Massachusetts who were killed in the war were Harvard alumni.

73. Not breaking any records for speediness, the U.S. Government normally took sixteen months to forward the pay of slain soldiers to their next-of-kin.

74. Colonel Paul Ambrose Oliver of the 5th New York Volunteers went on to invent dynamite after the war.

75. On October 21, 1861, Colonel Edward D. Baker, a U.S. Senator from Oregon, was killed at Ball's Bluff when he led his troops into a Confederate ambush, causing the inept commander to become a national hero.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page