Military Power

On April 14, 1861, a member of the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter, Private Daniel Hough of the 1st U. S. Artillery, was accidentally killed by an exploding cannon during the evacuation of Fort Sumter, making Hough the first combat soldier killed in the Civil War.

General Stonewall Jackson had a fondness for lemons and habitually sucked them even in combat.

Baldy, General George G. Meade's favorite mount, survived wounds at First Manassas, Antietam, and Gettysburg; carried Meade in action at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, and trailed Meade's hearse at his funeral in 1872.

General David E. Twiggs, who was 71 in 1862, was the oldest army officer to join the Confederacy, although he was not given a field command due to his age.

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, who surrendered his army, to Union General William T. Sherman, died on March 21, 1891, from pneumonia, which he contracted while marching in the rain as a pallbearer at Sherman's funeral.

The chance of surviving a wound in Civil War days was 7 to 1; in the Korean War, 50 to 1.

About 15 percent of the wounded died in the Civil War; about 8 percent in World War I; about 4 percent in World War II; about 2 percent in the Korean War.

There were 6,000,000 cases of disease in the Federal armies, which meant that, on an average, every man was sick at least twice.

Fully armed, a soldier carried about seven pounds of ammunition. His cartridge box contained 40 rounds, and an additional 60 rounds might be conveyed in the pocket if an extensive battle was anticipated.

The muzzle-loading rifle could be loaded at the rate of about three times a minute. Its maximum range was about 1000 yards.

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.

The first U. S. Naval hospital ship, the Red Rover, was used on the inland waters during the Vicksburg campaign.

The first organized ambulance corps were used in the Peninsular campaign and at Antietam.

Alfred Thomas Archmedes Torbert held commissions in both USA and CSA armies simultaneously

Surgeons never washed their hands after an operation, because all blood was assumed to be the same, nor did he wash his instruments

On May 13, 1865, a month after Lee's surrender, 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.

By July 1862 the supply of raw cotton to Britain had dwindled to one third of its pre-war level. Three quarters of the cotton mill workers were unemployed or on short time, and charity and the dole could not ward off hardship and restiveness in many Lancashire working class districts. The Chancellor of the Exchequor, Willian E Gladstone, feared there would be an outbreak of rioting unless something was done to relieve the distress. Gladstone favoured a British intevention to stop the war, thus improving the flow of cotton across the Atlantic.

Despite the hardships however, rather surprisingly, the attitute of British textile workers was not in general opposed to the conflict. An American Minister, Charles Adams, writing in December 1862, commented that whilst "the great body of the aristocracy and commercial classes are anxious to see the United States go to pieces", there was still a lot of sympathy among the middle and lower classes towards the struggle against slavery. There were, it must be admitted, a few demonstrations by the working classes but these seem to be aimed more at the British Government for the poverty and unemployment being suffered rather then against the Americans themselves. Support for the Union came also from leading radicals like Karl Marx and John Bright who saw the conflict as a Class struggle, and from Liberal interlectuals who saw the Southern states as a "power of evil" and an "enemy of progress".

Nor did the loss of cotton imports have a deferential effect on the British ecomomy. Workers in wool, flax, armaments, shipping and other industries actually benefited from the increased wartime trade.

The Confederacy rather shot itself in the foot at the beginning of the war by placing an embargo on the sale of raw cotton to England and France. Unfortunately the South had over-exported in 1860 resulting in English warehouses still being heavily stocked with cotton awaiting processing. By the time they changed their mind in 1862 and recommenced exports, the British had already obtained alternative supplies from Egypt and India. From then on the Union blockade would make it increasingly difficult for vessels to make the voyage.

Also, successive crop failures in Europe, at that time, made the importing of Grain more important for a while than the importation of cotton-The supply of American grain coming mainly from the Northern States of the Union.

Napoleon III of France toyed briefly the notion of recognising the Confederate States but would not commit to such an action unless the British did so also. This, of course, by the Confederates' idiotic attempt at Economic blackmail, had been made an impossible and unpopular concept to the English.

KnightTemplar wrote: The chance of surviving a wound in Civil War days was 7 to 1; in the Korean War, 50 to 1.

About 15 percent of the wounded died in the Civil War; about 8 percent in World War I; about 4 percent in World War II; about 2 percent in the Korean War.

To clarify this… About 86% of wounded soldiers who reached the field hospitals survived during the Civil War (e.g. excluding those who succumbed on the field through exposure, loss of blood, or murdered by looters), although often with a loss of a limb (amputation of wounded limbs being often the only way to ensure that the wounded soldier would survive).

71% of all wounds recorded were to limbs and 11% to faces, head or neck (the latter often proving fatal).

See Paddy Griffiths' 'Battle in the Civil War'

KnightTemplar wrote:
There were 6,000,000 cases of disease in the Federal armies, which meant that, on an average, every man was sick at least twice.

Dysentery was the biggest threat to the civil war soldier. It killed some 45,000 men out of the 2 million soldiers who took part in the war.

The Union lost, in total, some 183,287 from assorted diseases (compared to the 96,000 killed from wounds).

The Confederates suffered even worse with 150,000 dieing from disease (compared to the 50,000 killed through wounds) out of the 600,000 active southern states soldiers involved

Source :’Medic’ by John Laffin (Article in War Monthly magazine)

James M. McPherson in ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’ has the following to say about the effect of disease on Civil War armies (pp 472)

‘The western farmboys and outdoorsmen regarded themselves as tougher soldiers than the effete “paper-collar” soldiers from the Northeast. But in fact the “pasty-faced” clerks and mechanics proved to be more immune to the diseases of camp life and more capable in combat of absorbing and inflicting punishment than western Union soldiers. For the war as a whole the death rate from disease was 43 percent higher among Union soldiers from west of the Appalachians than among the effete easterners, while the latter experienced combat mortality rates 23 percent higher than the westerners. The number of combat deaths in the Army of the Potomac was greater than in all the other Union armies combined. Fifty-one of the fifty Union regiments with the highest percentage of combat casualties fought in this army. In the South, forty of the fifty highest casualty regiments served in the Army of Northern Virginia. Of all the army commanders of both sides, Lee had the highest casualty rate.’