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Nov 12, 2013 · Fact #1: The Civil War was fought between the Northern and the Southern states from 1861-1865. The American Civil War was fought between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, a collection of eleven southern states that left the Union in 1860 and 1861.
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Jan 6, 2017 · Explore how the Civil War powerfully changed the American landscape, the mechanics of warfare, politics, & much more with our interesting Civil War facts.
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Aug 2, 2023 · The American Civil War was a major conflict during the 19th century between the United States of America and the Confederate States that seceded from the Union shortly before the outbreak of war. In this article, you can find out 25 interesting facts about the Civil War that you may not have known. 1.
- Overview
- 1. One-third of the soldiers who fought for the Union Army were immigrants, and nearly one in 10 was African American.
- 2. Black Union soldiers refused their salaries for 18 months to protest being paid lower wages than white soldiers.
- 3. Harriet Tubman led a raid to free enslaved people during the Civil War.
- 4. Lincoln was shot at—and almost killed— nearly two years before he was assassinated.
- 5. Before William Tecumseh Sherman became a great Union general, he was demoted for apparent insanity.
- 6. General Ulysses S. Grant wasn’t the bloodiest general of the war—Robert E. Lee was.
- 7. Both before and during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln pushed to send freed Blacks abroad.
- 8. Robert E. Lee’s Virginia estate was confiscated by the Union and turned into a cemetery during the war.
- 9. Privates weren’t cannon fodder during the Civil War—generals were.
Explore 10 surprising Civil War facts, brought to you by the authors of "The Seven-Day Scholar: The Civil War."
The Union Army was a multicultural force—even a multinational one. We often hear about Irish soldiers (7.5 percent of the army), but the Union’s ranks included even more Germans (10 percent), who marched off in regiments such as the Steuben Volunteers. Other immigrant soldiers were French, Italian, Polish, English and Scottish. In fact, one in four...
When Black soldiers began signing up with the Union Army in early 1863, they were paid $10 a month. White soldiers were paid at least $13, with officers earning more. Blacks were further insulted when only they were charged a $3 monthly fee for clothing, lowering their pay to $7. As a result, the highest-paid Black soldier earned about half the low...
Harriet Tubman, the escaped enslaved woman who led others to freedom on the Underground Railroad before the war, arrived at the Union camp at Port Royal, South Carolina, in the spring of 1862 to support the Union cause. She began teaching freed women skills that could earn them wages with the Union Army. But soon she was gathering intelligence abou...
Late one August evening in 1863, after an exhausting day at the White House, Lincoln rode alone by horse to the Soldiers’ Home, his family’s summer residence. A private at the gate heard a shot ring out and, moments later, the horse galloped into the compound, with a bareheaded Lincoln clinging to his steed. Lincoln explained that a gunshot had gon...
In October 1861, William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of Union forces in Kentucky, told U.S. Secretary of War Simon Cameron he needed 60,000 men to defend his territory and 200,000 to go on the offensive. Cameron called Sherman’s request “insane” and removed the general from command. In a letter to his brother, a devastated Sherman wrote, “I do thin...
Mary Lincoln called Grant a “butcher” for the horrific losses sustained by his troops during the Overland Campaign in the spring of 1864—twice the number of casualties as Lee’s army. But if casualties are counted proportionally, Lee’s army suffered the most throughout the war. This is because Lee relished the attack, a trait that won him key battle...
The policy, called colonization, had been supported by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay—a hero of Lincoln’s—and even Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose protagonists in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” ultimately emigrated from the United States to Africa. In August 1862, Lincoln brought five Black ministers to the White House and told them ...
As war descended on Virginia, Lee and his wife Mary fled their 1,100-acre Virginia estate, known 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 built on the property, including a burial vault on the estate’s former ...
Robert E. Lee’s impulse to personally lead a counterattack during the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864 (his troops held him back) would not have surprised his men if he were a bit lower in rank. That’s because many top officers, including generals, literally led their troops into battle, a rare occurrence in modern wars. For this reason, genera...
- Causes of the Civil War. In the mid-19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country’s northern and southern regions.
- Outbreak of the Civil War (1861) Even as Lincoln took office in March 1861, Confederate forces threatened the federal-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.
- The Civil War in Virginia (1862) George B. McClellan—who replaced the aging General Winfield Scott as supreme commander of the Union Army after the first months of the war—was beloved by his troops, but his reluctance to advance frustrated Lincoln.
- After the Emancipation Proclamation (1863-4) Lincoln had used the occasion of the Union victory at Antietam to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all enslaved people in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863.
Browse key Civil War facts on this page including casualties, leadership, economy and power, battle and troop movements and more.
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List of some of the important facts of the American Civil War, four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The conflict is also known as the War Between the States.
