189 Fun Facts About American Civil War

Which president issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863?

Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring slaves in Confederate states to be free.

What was the flour-and-water cracker issued to Union soldiers as a staple ration called?

Hardtack was so tough that soldiers crumbled it into their coffee, where the weevils floated up to be skimmed off; one veteran called his army memoir 'Hard Tack and Coffee'.

Who served as president of the Confederate States of America?

Jefferson Davis, a former US secretary of war, was captured in 1865 and held for two years at Fort Monroe on a treason charge, then released without ever standing trial.

Which legal safeguard did Lincoln suspend early in the Civil War, letting the army jail suspects without charge?

Habeas corpus was suspended in April 1861 after rioters attacked troops heading for Washington; when Chief Justice Taney ruled that only Congress had that power, Lincoln simply ignored the ruling.

What name did white Southerners give Northerners who moved South to take part in Reconstruction?

'Carpetbaggers' mocked Northerners who came South after 1865, supposedly with all they owned in a cheap carpet-cloth bag; white Southern Republicans were derided as 'scalawags'.

Which side did the state of Virginia primarily fight for during the Civil War?

Virginia voted to secede and join the Confederacy on April 17, 1861, two days after Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers; more major battles were fought on its soil than in any other state.

What was the bloodiest single-day battle of the Civil War?

Antietam cost about 23,000 casualties in twelve hours and ended the first Confederate invasion of the North, giving Lincoln the victory he wanted before announcing the Emancipation Proclamation.

The 15th Amendment of 1870 barred states from denying which right on account of race?

The right to vote was promised to Black men by the 15th Amendment, but literacy tests and grandfather clauses gutted it across the South until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Which city was the Confederate capital from February to late May 1861?

Montgomery, Alabama, hosted the new government for only three and a half months before its Congress voted to move to a larger city with far more industry.

The Civil War lasted approximately how many years?

Four years, from April 1861 to the spring of 1865, though Lincoln's first call for troops had asked 75,000 militiamen to serve for just three months.

Which Union officer, remembered for 'Damn the torpedoes', became the US Navy's first admiral?

David Farragut was a Tennessee-born Southerner living in Norfolk who moved north rather than follow Virginia out of the Union; Congress created the rank of rear admiral for him in 1862.

Which Union general led the destructive 'March to the Sea' through Georgia in 1864?

William T. Sherman cut loose from his supply line, fed some 62,000 men off Georgia's farms, and telegraphed Lincoln offering the captured port of Savannah as a Christmas gift.

What was the first state to secede from the Union before the Civil War?

South Carolina's convention voted 169 to 0 to leave on December 20, 1860, six weeks after Lincoln's election and more than two months before he took office.

The Battle of Gettysburg took place in which state?

Pennsylvania was invaded by Lee's army in June 1863; three days of fighting at Gettysburg cost more than 50,000 casualties and forced the Confederates to retreat to Virginia.

What was the Union plan to blockade Southern ports and control the Mississippi called?

The Anaconda Plan got its name as a jeer: newspapers wanting a quick victory mocked Winfield Scott's slow squeeze as a snake's coils, yet in hindsight his strategy proved broadly right.

Where was President Abraham Lincoln assassinated?

Ford's Theatre was staging the comedy 'Our American Cousin'; the assassin timed his shot for the play's biggest laugh line so that the audience's roar would cover it.

During the Civil War, what killed more soldiers than combat?

Disease caused about two-thirds of the war's soldier deaths: dysentery, typhoid and measles swept crowded, filthy camps at a time when doctors did not yet understand germs.

Which motto did Booth reportedly shout after shooting Lincoln?

Sic semper tyrannis, 'thus always to tyrants', is the cry tradition gives to Brutus as he killed Caesar; Booth also stabbed Major Henry Rathbone, who sat in the president's box, before fleeing.

What was the significance of the Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862?

The first clash of ironclad warships saw USS Monitor and CSS Virginia pound each other for about three hours without either breaking through; the leading navies then stopped building wooden warships.

Which slave state bordering Washington, D.C., stayed in the Union, keeping the capital from being cut off?

Maryland's loyalty was not left to chance: in 1861 federal troops occupied Baltimore, and that September about a third of the state legislature was arrested as it gathered to meet.

Which Black Union regiment won fame for its 1863 assault on Fort Wagner, later dramatized in the film Glory?

The 54th Massachusetts Infantry lost about 40 percent of its men at Fort Wagner; Confederates buried Colonel Robert Gould Shaw in a mass grave with them as an insult, and his father wrote that he could imagine no holier place.

Which Mississippi River fortress city surrendered to the Union on July 4, 1863, after a 47-day siege?

Vicksburg's civilians sheltered from the shelling in caves dug into the hillsides; its fall cut the Confederacy in two, and Lincoln rejoiced that the river 'again goes unvexed to the sea'.

Which state joined the Union in June 1863, in the middle of the Civil War?

West Virginia was born when unionist delegates meeting at Wheeling declared themselves Virginia's lawful government, then gave the consent the Constitution demands before a state can be divided.

Which Confederate general was accidentally shot by his own troops at the Battle of Chancellorsville?

Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own North Carolina pickets in the dark on May 2, 1863, after his flank attack at Chancellorsville, and died eight days later.

What term described Northerners who opposed the Civil War and wanted peace with the Confederacy?

Copperheads got the name from Republican newspapers, which likened antiwar Northern Democrats to the venomous snake that strikes without warning.

Which abolitionist's 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry pushed the nation closer to civil war?

John Brown hoped to arm a slave uprising, but US Marines stormed his stronghold within two days; his hanging made him a martyr to many in the North and enraged the South.

Which former Union general became the 18th President of the United States?

Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Union Army, was elected the 18th President in 1868 and served two terms until 1877.

What term did General Benjamin Butler use in 1861 for escaped slaves he kept as seized enemy property?

Contraband was Butler's lawyerly answer to a Confederate officer demanding three runaways back under the Fugitive Slave Act; word spread, and a steady stream of escapees made for his 'Freedom's Fortress'.

What was the notorious Confederate POW camp in Georgia where thousands of Union soldiers died?

Andersonville held up to 33,000 men in a stockade built for 10,000; nearly 13,000 of its 45,000 prisoners died, and its commandant, Henry Wirz, was tried and hanged after the war.

Which 1857 Supreme Court ruling held that Black Americans, enslaved or free, could not be US citizens?

Dred Scott v. Sandford also struck down the Missouri Compromise; Scott himself was freed by private arrangement weeks later, only to die of tuberculosis the following year.

Which cavalry commander was nicknamed 'the Gray Ghost' for striking and vanishing in northern Virginia?

John S. Mosby slipped inside Union lines at Fairfax in March 1863 and captured a general asleep in his bed, waking him with a slap.

The July 1863 New York City draft riots turned into mob violence against which group?

African Americans became the mob's target because white laborers feared them as rivals for work; order returned only when troops were rushed back from Gettysburg.

What name is given to the doomed Confederate assault by about 12,500 men on the Union center on Gettysburg's third day?

Roughly half the men who stepped off became casualties: Pickett's Charge on July 3, 1863 crossed open ground toward Cemetery Ridge and was shredded by Union rifle and artillery fire.

Which formerly enslaved Union scout is credited as the first woman to lead an armed raid in the Civil War?

Harriet Tubman guided Union gunboats up the Combahee River in June 1863, in a raid that freed more than 700 enslaved people, many of whom then enlisted.

Which organization, founded by six Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, used terror to suppress Black political participation?

The Ku Klux Klan began as a social club for bored young veterans and grew into a terror network that attacked Black voters and Republican officials until the federal Enforcement Acts of 1870-71 were turned against it.

Which Confederate commerce raider took more than 60 Union merchant ships before being sunk off France in 1864?

CSS Alabama was built in England as the anonymous 'Hull 290' and slipped to sea under a false name; she burned or captured 65 Union ships before USS Kearsarge sank her off Cherbourg.

Whose parlor hosted the Appomattox surrender, years after shells hit his farm in the Civil War's first big battle?

Wilmer McLean moved south after a cannonball crashed into his kitchen in 1861, only for the war to end in his new parlor; Union officers then carried off his furniture as souvenirs.

How did Union private Daniel Hough become the first soldier to die in the Civil War?

A cannon misfired during a salute to the flag as Fort Sumter's garrison prepared to leave; no one on either side had been killed in the 34-hour bombardment that came before.

What 1862 law gave settlers 160 acres of western land if they farmed it for five years?

The Homestead Act had been blocked for years by Southern opposition and a presidential veto in 1860; once the seceding states' members left Congress, it became law.

How did some Black Union regiments protest being paid less than white soldiers?

Refused their wages: offered $10 a month with $3 withheld for clothing, well below a white private's pay, some regiments served over a year for nothing until Congress granted equal pay in June 1864.

What informal bargain that made Rutherford B. Hayes president is regarded as the end of Reconstruction?

The Compromise of 1877 is the name for an unwritten deal said to have handed Rutherford B. Hayes the disputed 1876 election in return for pulling the last federal troops out of the South.

Which technology did the Union army use to scout Confederate positions from the air?

Thaddeus Lowe's Union Army Balloon Corps flew hydrogen-filled observation balloons from 1861, spotting Confederate positions and relaying reports to the ground by telegraph.

The worst maritime disaster in U.S. history came in April 1865 when which steamboat exploded on the Mississippi?

The Sultana, licensed for 376 passengers, was carrying more than 2,000, mostly freed Union prisoners of war, when her boilers burst near Memphis on April 27, 1865, killing well over a thousand.

Which Confederate general's 'Lost Order', found wrapped around cigars, revealed his plan before Antietam?

Robert E. Lee's Special Order No. 191, detailing his plan to divide the Army of Northern Virginia, was found by Union soldiers wrapped around three cigars and delivered to General McClellan before Antietam.

Which body, set up in 1865, helped formerly enslaved people with jobs, education and land?

The Freedmen's Bureau was meant to last one year after the war; Congress renewed it over a presidential veto, and it went on to help found schools and colleges such as Howard University.

Which sitting president told Congress in 1860 that states could not secede but the government could not stop them?

James Buchanan blamed the crisis on Northern 'intemperate interference' with slavery, then looked on as a lame duck while one Deep South state after another left the Union before Lincoln took office.

Who served as the only vice president of the Confederate States?

Alexander H. Stephens had argued against secession only weeks before taking the job, then grew so critical of his own government that he spent less and less time in its capital.

Which Union general, famed for his whiskers, led the failed assault at Fredericksburg?

Ambrose Burnside twice turned down command of the army out of loyalty to the friend he would replace, then took it reluctantly; his whiskers, with his name's syllables swapped, gave English 'sideburns'.

In which Texas city did General Gordon Granger announce emancipation on June 19, 1865?

Galveston heard General Order No. 3 two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which had gone unenforced in Texas; the day is now the Juneteenth holiday.

What city served as the capital of the Confederate States of America for most of the Civil War?

Richmond, Virginia, became the Confederate capital in late May 1861 and held that role until Union troops entered the city on April 3, 1865.

Which Georgia battle, a Confederate victory in September 1863, was the Civil War's costliest after Gettysburg?

Chickamauga turned on a blunder: a mistaken order pulled a Union division out of line just as Confederates attacked the gap, and the beaten army fell back to Chattanooga.

Which holiday did Lincoln proclaim as a national observance in October 1863?

Lincoln's proclamation of October 3, 1863, set the last Thursday of November as a national day of Thanksgiving, a cause pressed for years by editor Sarah Josepha Hale.

On the Underground Railroad, what were the guides who led escapees from one safe house to the next called?

Conductors led 'passengers' between safe-house 'stations'; the most famous of them boasted that she never ran her train off the track and never lost a passenger.

The Trent Affair of 1861 threatened to bring which European power into the war against the Union?

Britain demanded an apology and ordered troops to Canada after a US warship seized two Confederate envoys from the mail ship Trent; Lincoln's government defused the crisis by freeing them.

The Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia was built on the salvaged hull of which burned Union frigate?

USS Merrimack was set ablaze when the Union abandoned its shipyard at Norfolk in 1861 but burned only to the waterline, leaving the Confederates a sound hull and engines to armor.

Union soldiers were often referred to by what nickname?

'Billy Yank' was the generic name for the Union soldier, from 'Yankee'; with his Confederate counterpart he became a stock figure in postwar cartoons and memorials.

Which addition to the U.S. Constitution officially abolished slavery?

The 13th Amendment was needed because the Emancipation Proclamation, a war measure, had not touched slavery in the loyal border states; ratification in December 1865 ended it everywhere.

Where was John Wilkes Booth hiding when Union cavalry cornered him twelve days after the assassination?

A barn on a Virginia farm: troopers set it alight to drive him out, and Sergeant Boston Corbett claimed the fatal shot, fired through a gap in the boards against orders to take Booth alive.

Which antislavery novel of 1852 sold 300,000 American copies in its first year?

Uncle Tom's Cabin drew a wave of replies: defenders of slavery published more than twenty 'anti-Tom' novels before the war, painting plantation life as kindly.

Which April 1862 Tennessee battle took its name from a small church near Pittsburg Landing?

Shiloh, a Hebrew name usually translated as 'place of peace', cost nearly 24,000 casualties in two days, the bloodiest battle of the war up to that point.

Who was the nurse known as the 'Angel of the Battlefield' for her work during the Civil War?

Clara Barton hauled her own wagonload of supplies to the front, where a bullet once passed through her sleeve and killed the man she was tending; she later founded the American Red Cross.

Which June-July 1862 fighting drove McClellan's army back from Richmond to the James River?

The Seven Days cost Lee, newly in command, about 20,000 men to McClellan's 16,000, yet it was the Union army that retreated, ending its drive on the Confederate capital.

Where did Joseph E. Johnston sign the largest troop surrender of the Civil War in April 1865?

At Bennett Place, a farmhouse near Durham, North Carolina, the first terms strayed into politics and Washington rejected them; a purely military surrender followed on April 26, covering nearly 90,000 troops.

What color were the uniforms of most Confederate soldiers?

Confederate regulations prescribed gray uniforms, though shortages meant many soldiers wore homespun 'butternut' brown; Union troops wore dark blue.

Washington sightseers with picnic baskets watched the Union army routed at which July 1861 battle?

Bull Run was expected to be an easy Union win, so congressmen and their families drove out to watch; they were swept up in the panic when Irvin McDowell's raw recruits broke and ran.

Who was Lincoln's wife, a woman whose half-brothers fought for the Confederacy?

Mary Todd married Lincoln in 1842; several of her half-brothers served in the Confederate army and some were killed, which fed wartime gossip about her own loyalty.

Which co-designer of New York's Central Park left in 1861 to run the US Sanitary Commission's relief work for Union soldiers?

Frederick Law Olmsted spent the 1862 fighting directing care for thousands of sick and wounded in person, and drove himself so hard that exhaustion forced him to resign in 1863.

Which of these Border States remained loyal to the Union despite allowing slavery?

Kentucky declared itself neutral until a Confederate army marched in and drove its legislature to the Union side; Lincoln wrote that to lose it was 'nearly the same as to lose the whole game'.

Under the Union's 1863 draft law, a drafted man could buy his way out of service for what fee?

$300 bought exemption under the Enrollment Act of 1863, the first national draft; because only the well-off could pay, critics called it a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.

Which silver-rich territory was rushed into the Union as a state eight days before the 1864 presidential election?

Nevada's constitution was telegraphed to Washington in October 1864 for $4,303.27, then the costliest telegram on record, so that statehood could be proclaimed before the election.

What was the aim of the Crittenden Compromise of late 1860?

Permanently protect slavery in the Constitution: John Crittenden's December 1860 amendments would have extended the old Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific to head off secession, but Republicans refused to let slavery spread.

Who was the only woman awarded the Medal of Honor for Civil War service?

Mary Edwards Walker, a surgeon with the Union army, was captured in April 1864 after crossing Confederate lines to treat civilians, held four months as a spy, and received the Medal of Honor in November 1865.

At Fredericksburg, Union assaults broke against a stone wall at the foot of which Confederate-held position?

Marye's Heights: Confederates in a sunken road behind the stone wall shot down wave after wave of attackers on December 13, 1862; Lee, watching, reportedly said it is well war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

Which Illinois senator wrote the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, letting territories vote on slavery?

Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois drafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which let settlers in each territory decide on slavery and repealed the Missouri Compromise's 36°30' line.

Which battle do some historians describe as Lee's 'perfect battle'?

Chancellorsville, May 1863: badly outnumbered, Lee broke the rules by dividing his army in front of a larger enemy, then routed the Union right with a surprise flank march; many call it his greatest victory.

What did Stonewall Jackson die of, eight days after being wounded in May 1863?

Pneumonia set in after surgeons amputated Jackson's left arm; his doctors had expected a full recovery, but he died on May 10, 1863, at Guinea Station, Virginia.

Which May 1864 battle opened Grant's Overland Campaign against Lee?

The Wilderness, May 5-7, 1864, was fought in woods so thick that brush fires burned wounded men where they lay; unlike earlier Union commanders beaten by Lee, Grant did not retreat afterward but pushed on south.

Which June 1864 frontal assault did Grant later write that he had always regretted ordering?

Cold Harbor: on June 3, 1864, Grant sent his army against Lee's entrenchments and lost thousands of men in under an hour for no gain; days later he slipped away south and crossed the James River.

Colonel Henry Pleasants, who proposed the mine at the Crater, was what in civilian life?

Colonel Henry Pleasants, a mining engineer, proposed tunneling under Elliott's Salient at Petersburg.

Which 1862 victory earned Grant the nickname 'Unconditional Surrender' Grant?

The fort's fall opened an invasion route into the South and turned an obscure brigadier into a major general: Fort Donelson gave Grant both a promotion and his nickname.

Which November 1864 Tennessee battle saw six Confederate generals killed in a single frontal assault?

Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864: the Confederate charge across two miles of open ground cost about 6,000 men, among them division commander Patrick Cleburne, and crippled the Army of Tennessee.

Which Union general routed the Confederate Army of Tennessee at Nashville in December 1864?

George H. Thomas waited out an ice storm while an impatient Grant prepared to replace him, then attacked on December 15-16, 1864, and drove the shattered Confederate army out of Tennessee.

At Mobile Bay in 1864, what were the 'torpedoes' in the order 'Damn the torpedoes'?

The 'torpedoes' were naval mines, anchored contact explosives Confederates had sown across the Mobile Bay channel; on August 5, 1864, one sank the monitor USS Tecumseh just before the admiral's order.

Which 1862 battle ended the Confederacy's attempt to conquer the New Mexico Territory?

Glorieta Pass, fought near Santa Fe on March 26-28, 1862: the Confederates won the ground, but a Union flanking column slipped behind them and burned their supply wagons, forcing them to retreat.

The 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, which kept Missouri in Union hands, was fought just across the border in which state?

Arkansas: at Pea Ridge, also called Elkhorn Tavern, three miles south of the Missouri line, Earl Van Dorn's Confederates had marched light to surprise Samuel Curtis, then ran short of ammunition and abandoned the field.

Which Tennessee battle, fought over New Year 1863, had the highest casualty rate on both sides of any major Civil War battle?

Stones River cost each side nearly a third of its men between December 31, 1862, and January 2, 1863; the narrow Union win gave the North a badly needed lift after the disaster at Fredericksburg.

What was the Union supply route into besieged Chattanooga nicknamed?

The Cracker Line opened after Union troops floated down the Tennessee River by night in October 1863 and seized Brown's Ferry, ending weeks in which the Confederate siege had left the army in Chattanooga close to starving.

Which Union general won the Battle of Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga in 1863?

Joseph Hooker, sent west after resigning command of the Army of the Potomac that summer, led the attack up fog-wrapped Lookout Mountain on November 24, 1863, a fight soon nicknamed the 'Battle Above the Clouds'.

Which Union general ran against Lincoln as the Democratic candidate in 1864?

George B. McClellan was the general Lincoln had removed in 1862; his party's platform called for peace talks, yet more than three in four soldiers' votes went to Lincoln, and McClellan carried only three states.

What was McClellan's spring 1862 campaign to take Richmond from the east called?

The Peninsula Campaign began in March 1862 with an amphibious landing at Fort Monroe from Chesapeake Bay and advanced up the Virginia Peninsula toward Richmond before stalling east of the city.

Which Confederate general did Lee call his 'Old War Horse'?

James Longstreet, Lee's senior corps commander, argued against Lee's attack plans at Gettysburg; after the war he joined the Republican Party, and many Southerners blamed him for the defeat.

At which 1864 battle was Confederate cavalry general Jeb Stuart mortally wounded?

Yellow Tavern, north of Richmond, on May 11, 1864: Stuart was shot during Sheridan's cavalry raid and died the next day, costing Lee the 'eyes and ears' of his army.

Which Confederate cavalry general later became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan?

Nathan Bedford Forrest, a prewar slave trader who rose from private to lieutenant general, was reputedly elected the Klan's first Grand Wizard at its Nashville convention in 1867.

Sheridan's 1864 destruction of the Shenandoah Valley's economy was known locally as what?

The Burning: in late September and October 1864, Sheridan's troops destroyed barns, mills and crops across the Shenandoah Valley, Lee's breadbasket, so Jubal Early's army could no longer live off it.

Which October 1864 battle inspired the poem 'Sheridan's Ride'?

Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864: Sheridan rode from Winchester to rally his routed army and turn Jubal Early's dawn surprise attack into a decisive Union victory, inspiring Thomas Buchanan Read's poem.

Lincoln's 1862 letter saying his 'paramount object' was to save the Union answered which editor?

Horace Greeley's New York Tribune editorial 'The Prayer of Twenty Millions' demanded emancipation; Lincoln's reply of August 22, 1862, gave nothing away, though a draft Emancipation Proclamation already lay in his desk.

Which general commanded the Confederate forces that fired on Fort Sumter?

P. G. T. Beauregard ordered the bombardment that began at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, against a fort whose commander had been his own artillery instructor at West Point.

Which quarrelsome Confederate general led the Army of Tennessee until his defeat at Chattanooga in late 1863?

Braxton Bragg, a former sugar planter, feuded bitterly with his own generals; after the defeat at Chattanooga he gave up the army and went to Richmond as the Confederate president's military adviser.

Which Confederate general kept fighting after losing the use of an arm at Gettysburg and a leg later that year?

John Bell Hood's left arm was crippled by a shell at Gettysburg and his right leg was amputated after his next battle; in 1864, aged 33, he was handed command of the Army of Tennessee.

Who was the first Jewish person to hold a Cabinet position in North America?

Judah P. Benjamin served the Confederacy as attorney general, secretary of war and secretary of state, then fled to England in 1865 and built a second career as a leading barrister.

Which Ohio antiwar Democrat, banished to Confederate lines in 1863, ran for governor from Canada?

Clement Vallandigham was arrested by the army in May 1863 and sentenced to prison by a military court; Lincoln changed the sentence to banishment, and Ohio's Democrats nominated him for governor anyway.

Who served as Lincoln's secretary of war for most of the Civil War?

Edwin Stanton replaced Simon Cameron as secretary of war in January 1862 and ran the War Department with ferocious energy until 1868, also directing the manhunt for Lincoln's assassin.

Civil War photographer Mathew Brady is said to have learned his craft from which inventor?

Samuel Morse, better known for the telegraph, met Louis Daguerre in France and brought the daguerreotype process home to New York, where he taught it; Brady was reportedly among his first pupils.

Which Richmond woman ran an extensive spy ring for the Union throughout the war?

Elizabeth Van Lew, a Richmond abolitionist, ran a Union spy ring that fed Grant intelligence and helped Union prisoners escape; she was made Richmond's postmaster in 1869.

Which Union warship did the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley sink in February 1864?

USS Housatonic, a sloop-of-war on blockade off Charleston, sank on February 17, 1864, after Hunley's spar torpedo exploded against her hull; the submarine was lost with all eight crew.

Which two rifled muskets, the Civil War's most common infantry weapons, fired the Minié ball?

Springfield and Enfield: the US Model 1861 and the British Pattern 1853 fired the Minié ball, whose hollow base expanded to grip the rifling, so an average shot could hit at 250 yards where a smoothbore was unreliable past 75.

What nickname stuck to the paper money the Union began printing in 1861 to pay for the Civil War?

Greenbacks were printed in green on the back; in 1870 the Treasury secretary who had issued them, by then chief justice, declared the legal-tender notes unconstitutional.

To pay for the war, Congress in 1861 passed the first federal tax of which kind in US history?

Income tax: the 1861 act set a flat 3 percent on incomes above $800, but it was replaced by a graduated tax before any was collected, and Congress let the income tax lapse in 1872.

More than 178,000 Black soldiers served the Union in regiments known collectively by what name?

US Colored Troops, about a tenth of the Union army by 1865, were led mostly by white officers and ran an extra risk: the Confederacy threatened to treat captured Black soldiers as rebel slaves, not prisoners of war.

Which Louisiana stronghold, the last Confederate bastion on the Mississippi, surrendered on July 9, 1863?

Port Hudson, Louisiana, surrendered on July 9, 1863, after a 48-day siege in which the Black regiments of the Louisiana Native Guards made one of the war's first assaults by Black troops.

Who was the last Confederate general to surrender?

Stand Watie, a Cherokee leader and the Confederacy's only Native American general, surrendered his Indian Territory troops at Doaksville on June 23, 1865, more than two months after Appomattox.

The commerce raider CSS Shenandoah mostly attacked which kind of Union vessel?

Whaling ships: CSS Shenandoah hunted the Yankee whaling fleet across the Pacific into the Bering Sea and was still burning whalers in late June 1865, more than two months after Appomattox.

Which Union anthem did Julia Ward Howe write in 1861 to a tune she had heard soldiers sing?

Battle Hymn of the Republic: Howe woke before dawn in Washington and, by her own account, scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper; The Atlantic Monthly printed them in February 1862.

Which famous bugle call is Union general Daniel Butterfield credited with arranging at Harrison's Landing in July 1862?

Taps: Butterfield disliked the army's formal lights-out call, borrowed from the French, so he reworked an older tune with his brigade bugler, Oliver Norton; within months it was being sounded at soldiers' funerals too.

Who was the last Civil War veteran to serve as President of the United States?

William McKinley, who enlisted as a private in the 23rd Ohio in 1861 and left the army a brevet major, was the last Civil War veteran elected president, serving from 1897 to 1901.

Which Seneca officer on Grant's staff wrote out the final copy of the Appomattox surrender terms?

Ely S. Parker penned the terms in his own hand; Lee is said to have greeted him as 'one real American', and Parker to have answered, 'We are all Americans.' Grant later made him Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Where did Forrest's troops massacre surrendering Union soldiers in April 1864?

At Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864, Forrest's men killed some 300 of the garrison, most of them Black soldiers, many after they had surrendered; Congress investigated it as a massacre.

Who was the first woman executed by the US federal government?

Mary Surratt, whose Washington boarding house hosted the assassination conspirators, was hanged with three others on July 7, 1865, the first woman executed by the federal government.

Which enslaved pilot commandeered the Confederate ship Planter and fled to Union lines?

Robert Smalls slipped the Planter out of Charleston before dawn on May 13, 1862, wearing the captain's hat to fool the harbor forts, and handed the ship to the Union blockade; he later sat in Congress.

Whose Confederate guerrillas burned Lawrence, Kansas, in August 1863, killing about 150 men and boys?

William Quantrill led about 450 riders into Lawrence at dawn on August 21, 1863, in revenge for Jayhawker raids into Missouri; they looted and burned the town and shot the men and boys they found.

An 1872 tribunal in which city awarded the US $15.5 million for damage done by foreign-built Confederate raiders?

Geneva: the arbitrators found that a neutral power had let warships be built for the Confederacy in its shipyards; the award became a landmark for settling disputes between nations by arbitration instead of war.

Roughly how many words long is the Gettysburg Address?

About 270 words, ten sentences that took roughly two minutes, after the day's main orator had spoken for two hours; the speech itself predicts the world will 'little note, nor long remember' what was said.

Who gave the two-hour main oration at Gettysburg before Lincoln's brief remarks?

Edward Everett, a former Massachusetts senator and celebrated orator, spoke for about two hours at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863; he later told Lincoln the president had said more in two minutes.

For which branch of the US military was the Medal of Honor first created, in 1861?

The Navy got there first: its Medal of Honor was created in December 1861 for enlisted sailors and Marines only, and naval officers could not receive it until 1915; the Army's version followed in July 1862.

Cadets from which military college fired on the supply ship Star of the West in Charleston harbor in January 1861?

The Citadel's cadets, manning a battery on Morris Island, drove off the unarmed steamer and its 200 soldiers on January 9, 1861; some count these as the war's first shots, three months before Sumter fell.

Which Union major commanded the garrison at Fort Sumter when it was bombarded?

Robert Anderson surrendered the battered fort and carried its flag north; on April 14, 1865, four years to the day after marching out, he returned to raise the same flag over Sumter.

Which Union general accepted the formal Confederate stacking of arms at Appomattox?

Joshua Chamberlain, a Maine professor turned general, received the Confederate infantry's surrender of arms on April 12, 1865, and by his own account ordered his men to salute the defeated soldiers as they passed.

Which veterans' group called the first nationwide Decoration Day, later Memorial Day, in 1868?

The Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veterans' society led by John A. Logan, set May 30, 1868, for decorating soldiers' graves; local tributes had begun earlier, but his order made it a national observance.

Which Confederate anthem is credited to an Ohio-born songwriter, who wrote it for a New York minstrel show in 1859?

Dixie: Dan Emmett of Mount Vernon, Ohio, wrote it as a 'walk-around', the closing number of a Bryant's Minstrels show; within two years the South had taken a Northerner's stage tune as its anthem.

In 2011 a historian's census study raised which Civil War figure from 620,000 to about 750,000?

Soldiers who died: J. David Hacker compared census counts from before and after the war instead of army records and put the toll near 750,000, a fifth above the long-accepted 620,000.

At which May 1862 battle was Joseph E. Johnston wounded, giving Lee command of the army?

Seven Pines, also called Fair Oaks: Johnston was badly wounded on May 31, 1862; Lee took over the next day and within a month had driven the Union army back from the edge of Richmond.

Which fort guarding Savannah fell in April 1862 after rifled cannon breached its brick walls?

Fort Pulaski, on Cockspur Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, surrendered on April 11, 1862, after Union rifled guns on Tybee Island breached its walls in about 30 hours, making masonry forts obsolete.

Near which Texas city on the Rio Grande was Palmito Ranch, often called the Civil War's final battle, fought in May 1865?

Brownsville: Palmito Ranch was fought just downriver on May 12-13, 1865, more than a month after Appomattox, and ended as a Confederate victory under John S. 'Rip' Ford.

Which Union general lost at Monocacy in 1864, delaying a raid on Washington, and later wrote Ben-Hur?

Lew Wallace's outnumbered force lost at Monocacy on July 9, 1864, but the day it cost Jubal Early let reinforcements reach Washington's forts first; Wallace published Ben-Hur in 1880.

At which Washington fort did Lincoln stand under Confederate fire during Jubal Early's raid in July 1864?

Fort Stevens: on July 12, 1864, Lincoln climbed the parapet to watch and drew Confederate sharpshooter fire; many later claimed to have told him to get down, among them future justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The 1862 Morrill Act, passed during the war, funded colleges focused on agriculture and what else?

Mechanical studies, the act's 'mechanic arts', meant engineering and applied science; a presidential veto killed an earlier version in 1859, but with Southern members gone it passed in 1862 with military training added.

Who served as Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy for the entire war?

Gideon Welles, a former Connecticut newspaper editor, at first opposed blockading Southern ports, then made the blockade work by building the fleet up to 671 ships by the war's end.

The February 1864 Battle of Olustee was the largest Civil War battle in which state?

Olustee, fought February 20, 1864, near Lake City, was Florida's largest battle: Truman Seymour's column, advancing west from Jacksonville against orders, was repulsed with about 1,860 casualties.

After the war, Confederate raider John S. Mosby became a Republican and served as US consul where?

John S. Mosby, shunned by fellow Virginians for campaigning for the Republicans in 1872, was appointed U.S. consul at Hong Kong in 1878 and served there until 1885.

Which American author's firm published General Grant's bestselling memoirs just after his death in 1885?

Mark Twain sent ten thousand agents door to door across the North with a sales script he wrote himself, and Grant's widow received about $450,000.

The 1861 battle known in the North as First Bull Run took which Virginia town's name in the South?

Manassas, a rail junction, drew a crowd of spectators: Washington's elite, congressmen included, came out to picnic and watch, then blocked the roads as the Union army fled.

What did an 1860 letter from 11-year-old Grace Bedell persuade presidential candidate Lincoln to do?

Grow a beard, she urged, to improve his appearance; within a month he had one, and he met her in Westfield, New York, on his way to the inauguration.

Irene Triplett, who died in 2020, was the last American to collect what from the Civil War?

A veteran's pension of $73.13 a month reached her 155 years after the war ended: her father, who fought for both sides, was 83 when she was born in 1930.

Which motto first appeared on United States coins during the Civil War, on the 1864 two-cent piece?

In God We Trust was added partly to declare that God was on the Union side, and Congress made it the official national motto in 1956.

Which national cemetery was laid out in 1864 on the confiscated Virginia estate of General Lee's family?

Arlington was picked partly because it had been Lee's home, and the first soldier was buried there in May 1864, a month before burials were formally authorized.

Despite the 'bite the bullet' myth, Civil War surgeons sedated most patients with which fast-acting anesthetic?

Chloroform was preferred because a smaller quantity worked more quickly than ether, and anesthesia of some kind was used in about 95% of Civil War surgeries.

Which farcical comedy was President Lincoln watching in April 1865 when an assassin fired during a laugh line?

Our American Cousin follows a boorish Yankee who sails to England to claim a family estate, and the gunman timed his shot to the laughter at one of its best-known lines.

Emperor Pedro II's offer of cheap land lured thousands of defeated Confederates to settle in which country?

Brazil took in up to 20,000 Southerners, who became known as Confederados; so many settled in one corner of São Paulo state that its town came to be called Americana.

Which flamboyant Union cavalryman finished last in his military academy class yet was a general by 23?

George Custer took over a Michigan cavalry brigade only days before fighting at Gettysburg, and he was killed with his men at the Little Bighorn in 1876.

Which former tailor, who never attended school, became president on Lincoln's death in April 1865?

Andrew Johnson was the Tennessee senator who stayed loyal when his state seceded, and his clashes with Congress ended in his impeachment in 1868.

Which poet volunteered in Washington's army hospitals and mourned Lincoln in 'O Captain! My Captain!'?

Walt Whitman came south in 1862 after a newspaper list of the wounded seemed to name his brother, then stayed in Washington to tend soldiers in the wards.

Which New England novelist nursed Union soldiers until typhoid ended her service, then wrote Hospital Sketches?

Louisa May Alcott had waited to turn 30, then volunteered and lasted only six weeks; Little Women followed five years later.

Which orator, who had escaped enslavement, issued the call 'Men of Color, to Arms!' and saw two sons enlist?

Frederick Douglass also met Lincoln in 1863 to press him on the treatment of Black troops, while a third son of his worked as a recruiter.

Which Scottish-born private detective guarded president-elect Lincoln in 1861, then ran Union intelligence gathering?

Allan Pinkerton slipped Lincoln through Baltimore to foil an alleged assassination plot, and his wartime agents often worked undercover as Confederate soldiers and sympathizers.

Which military academy on the Hudson River produced the leading generals of both the Union and Confederate armies?

West Point had even been run by Lee himself, who served as the academy's superintendent from 1852 to 1855.

Lee, Grant and many other Civil War generals had fought as junior officers in which earlier conflict?

The Mexican War left Grant bitter: he later called it one of the most unjust wars ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker one.

Which port, the South's largest city, fell to a Union fleet in April 1862 after it ran past two river forts?

New Orleans was occupied on May 1 by 5,000 Union troops who met no resistance, although a crowd had torn down a US flag raised over the mint.

Which Georgia rail hub fell to Union troops in September 1864, lifting Northern morale before Lincoln's re-election?

Atlanta's capture filled Northern newspapers, along with reports of the retreating Confederates setting fire to their own military facilities as they left.

On which rocky Gettysburg height did the 20th Maine, out of ammunition, launch a downhill bayonet charge?

Little Round Top held the extreme left of the Union army on the battle's second day, and the regiment had been ordered to hold that position at all costs.

Secessionists expected European mills' need for which crop, nicknamed 'King', to force foreign powers to back them?

Cotton failed as a weapon because the mills bought from India and Egypt instead, and no foreign power ever recognized the Confederacy.

General Grant was given which first name at birth, lost when a congressman botched his military academy paperwork?

Hiram vanished when the congressman who nominated him enrolled him as 'U. S. Grant'; classmates read the initials as Uncle Sam and called him 'Sam'.

The first Confederate national flag, flown from 1861 to 1863 and very similar to the US flag, carried which nickname?

Stars and Bars was the name of that first national flag, while the far better-known battle flag was a rejected design that never served as a national flag.

Which operation, the Civil War's most common, could a practiced army surgeon complete in as little as ten minutes?

Amputation was the usual answer to a badly wounded arm or leg because, with no antibiotics, it kept infection from setting in, and about three in four patients survived.

Which funeral practice did Dr. Thomas Holmes perform on Union officers, helping to make it common in America?

Embalming let families bring home men who had died far away, and the long journey of Lincoln's preserved body to its burial won the practice wide public attention.

What was the name of the warhorse that General Lee bought in 1862 and rode through most of the Civil War?

Traveller was a prize-winning colt at Virginia fairs before the war, and he was put down with untreatable tetanus only months after Lee died.

Union troops in Georgia heated which iron objects over fires and twisted them around trees into so-called 'neckties'?

Railroad rails bent this way were very hard to replace, because the South had limited supplies of iron and few foundries able to roll new ones.

At Appomattox, Grant let surrendering Confederate soldiers take what home with them to help with the spring planting?

Their horses and mules went home with them, a concession Lee said would have a happy effect on his army, and Grant also sent 25,000 rations to the hungry Confederates.

Old Abe, the live mascot that the 8th Wisconsin Infantry took into Civil War battles, was what kind of animal?

A bald eagle, he rode into battle on a special perch and screamed over the fighting, and his image became the screaming eagle on the 101st Airborne's insignia.

Which aged general, nicknamed 'Old Fuss and Feathers', commanded the United States Army when the Civil War began?

Winfield Scott had fought in the War of 1812 and led the army since 1841; he retired late in 1861 as Lincoln came to rely on a younger general.

Which Union officer fired the first shot defending Fort Sumter and was later wrongly credited with inventing baseball?

Abner Doubleday never made the claim himself: a baseball commission named him the game's inventor some fifteen years after his death, and historians have debunked it.

Which Union general was killed by a sharpshooter in 1864 moments after scoffing that they 'couldn't hit an elephant'?

John Sedgwick was chiding his men for ducking shots fired from about 1,000 yards away at Spotsylvania; he was one of the highest-ranking Union officers killed in the war.

Which Confederate general, the highest-ranking officer killed in the Civil War, died of a bullet behind the knee?

Albert S. Johnston was hit while leading a charge, and the bullet clipped an artery so that his boot filled with blood; he had been the South's second-highest-ranking general.

Which reformer of mental asylums became the Union's Superintendent of Army Nurses and demanded plain-looking recruits?

Dorothea Dix made her nurses wear plain uniforms with no jewelry or cosmetics, and over her career she founded thirty-two hospitals.

Which Washington socialite turned Confederate spy drowned in 1864, weighed down by gold sewn into her clothes?

Rose Greenhow was carrying about $2,000 in gold, earned from a book she had written, when her lifeboat flipped off the Carolina coast on her return from Europe.

Which secretary of state was knifed in his bedroom by Lewis Powell on the night of Lincoln's assassination?

William Seward survived his wounds, stayed in office, and two years later negotiated the purchase of Alaska.

Which country doctor set the assassin's broken leg hours after Lincoln was shot and was jailed as a conspirator?

Samuel Mudd escaped execution by a single vote and was sent to an island fort in the Dry Tortugas for life, but he was pardoned and released in 1869.

Which Maine senator was Lincoln's first vice president, only to be dropped from the ticket for the 1864 election?

Hannibal Hamlin, the first Republican vice president, was replaced by a Southern Democrat chosen for his appeal to Unionists in the South.

Which US vice president lost the 1860 election to Lincoln, then became a Confederate general?

John Breckinridge was expelled from the Senate after fleeing behind Confederate lines, and in February 1865 he became the South's secretary of war.

Which author, born years after the Civil War ended, wrote its best-known combat novel, The Red Badge of Courage?

Stephen Crane had not seen a battle when he wrote it, yet his story of a young soldier who runs from the fighting has never been out of print.

Which Civil War novel won Margaret Mitchell the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and was the only book she published in her lifetime?

Gone with the Wind follows Scarlett O'Hara, a Georgia planter's spoiled daughter, as she claws her way out of poverty through the war and Reconstruction.

Which filmmaker's 1990 documentary series The Civil War drew over 39 million viewers on PBS?

Ken Burns told the story largely through slow pans across old photographs, a technique that came to be called the Ken Burns effect.

Which 1989 film stars Matthew Broderick as the young colonel of a Black Union regiment that storms Fort Wagner?

Glory won three of its five Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Denzel Washington.

In which speech, given just over a month before his death, did Lincoln urge 'malice toward none' and 'charity for all'?

The Second Inaugural Address asked the country to bind up its wounds, and the speech is inscribed inside the Lincoln Memorial.

Which Virginia rail town endured nine months of trench warfare before the Confederate capital fell in April 1865?

Petersburg mattered because Lee's supplies ran through it, and the Union trench lines around it eventually stretched for over 30 miles.

Confederate raiders crossed from Canada in 1864 to rob banks in St. Albans, a town in which Northern state?

Vermont saw the northernmost land action of the war: the raiders robbed three banks, fatally shot a building contractor, tried to burn the town and escaped back over the border.

Jennie Wade, the only civilian killed in the fighting at Gettysburg, was doing what when a stray bullet hit her?

Kneading bread dough in her sister's kitchen, she was hit by a bullet that had passed through two doors; her mother baked 15 loaves from that dough the next day.

What were the Civil War regiments called that copied the North African-style uniforms of French light infantry?

Zouaves took their name from French troops first raised in Algeria in 1830, and one Union regiment was known as the New York 'Fire Zouaves'.

Which American painter, best known for marine scenes, sketched Civil War camp life at the front for Harper's Weekly?

Winslow Homer drew the quiet moments as well as the battles; his mother had tried to raise money to send him to study in Europe instead.

Which folk figure did cartoonist Thomas Nast draw in 1863 dangling a puppet of the Confederate president?

Santa Claus as Nast drew him that year, firmly on the Union side, is generally recognized as the first depiction of the modern figure.