Grand Registry of American Civil War trivia

Saphroneth

Banned
edgeworthy said:
Which means that re-equipping the entire Union Army which such a repeating firearm would require increasing production by several orders of magnitude.
Click to expand...
You think that's bad, the deliveries were all made in 1863 from an 1861 order of 10,000 (they had to ask the order to be reduced as they could not fulfil it). So yes, the Union was struggling to produce any repeaters at all.
(Heck, I'm not sure the Union had enough domestic rifles being produced to arm everyone until late 1863 or early 1864...)
wcv215 said:
What's more, as that source notes a large number of "volunteers" volunteered simply to AVOID being labeled conscripts, meaning that conscription was still responsible for them joining the army, it just didn't get counted. Given what we know about the south it really isn't unreasonable to assume that the VAST majority of those who were in the army past-1862 were there because of conscription.
Click to expand...
This isn't surprising as a lot of the final round of pre-conscription volunteers in the North were also obtained with the threat of conscription hanging over them - and some states, IIRC, did in fact conscript before it became a national thing, in the North.

wcv215 said:
Otherwise, why would they have instituted it so early in 1862?
Click to expand...
Well, it did let them briefly outnumber the Union militarily. But we know that in late 1861 the CSA was able to muster approaching 200,000 PFD.


Here's a trivia point I like - McClellan was a three-star general.
I don't mean Lt. General, I mean three-star - the Commanding General was permitted to put up three stars.
 
Last edited:

Byzantion

Redolegna said:
Marx was a big fan of Lincoln and Charles Francis Adams sent him a response. So Honest Abe might have been of the opinion: 'Better Red than Reb!'

WI Brigades Internationales had formed nearly seventy years before the Spanish Civil War?
Click to expand...
Redolegna said:
And yet 'Ich fight mit Siegel' was a byword among recent migrants from Germany. There were Irish units on both sides, although in much stronger numbers for the Union. French princes cames to serve on both side with the count of Paris on the side of the Union and the prince de Polignac fighting for the Confederacy. I'm not proposing a flooding of the Union with BI, just that it would be interesting to see a dedicated group of youngsters enthused by the founding of the First International rushing to the US and asking to enlist, just in time to take part in the last months of the siege of Petersburg and the Appomatox Campaign. Or to appoint themselves as the protectors of Lincoln just as Ward Hill Lamon did. Wouldn't it be fun for young communists to stop Booth dead in his tracks? I don't even advocate for their scheme to succeed. Just the fallout of such a mobilization would be fun to speculate about.
Click to expand...

There had been people from all over the world, fighting on either side of the Civil War. Not only recent immigrants, but also volunteers, observers and 'adventurers'. Also in the naval combat. Confederate and Union alingned ships chased and fought each other all over the world, even at the Belgian coast.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Byzantion said:
Also in the naval combat. Confederate and Union alingned ships chased and fought each other all over the world, even at the Belgian coast.
Click to expand...
Globalization of naval combat is one of the relatively "easy" things to have happen - functionally you had a few Confederate commerce raiders and a rather silly Union strategy that had them sent wherever the raiders were last reported.
In accounts of the voyages of e.g. the Alabama, the CS captains noted that Welles should have just overcome his aversion to stationing ships in the vulnerable spots. With Union ships ordered from Washington to wherever the Alabama had been sighted, Semmes knew all he had to do was move on after a couple of weeks because the communication loop was too long for them to reach him before then.
 

Locke01

G.Washington_Fuckyeah said:
Are you aware of any gay men fighting for one of the sides during the ACW? I mean we have Buchanan as a famous example during this era, but he wasn't involved in the actual war.
Click to expand...

Only individuals I can think of off the top of my head are James Harrison Wilson, a Union Army general, and one of Grant's aides, Adam Badeau (if I recall correctly, Badeau was only a general by brevet).
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I'm pretty sure Grant was 'only' a general by brevet as well, it's not any kind of honorary rank. It's just rank outside the sequence of promotion in the regiment.
 

Fabius Maximus

Redolegna said:
And yet 'Ich fight mit Siegel' was a byword among recent migrants from Germany. There were Irish units on both sides, although in much stronger numbers for the Union. French princes cames to serve on both side with the count of Paris on the side of the Union and the prince de Polignac fighting for the Confederacy. I'm not proposing a flooding of the Union with BI, just that it would be interesting to see a dedicated group of youngsters enthused by the founding of the First International rushing to the US and asking to enlist, just in time to take part in the last months of the siege of Petersburg and the Appomatox Campaign. Or to appoint themselves as the protectors of Lincoln just as Ward Hill Lamon did. Wouldn't it be fun for young communists to stop Booth dead in his tracks? I don't even advocate for their scheme to succeed. Just the fallout of such a mobilization would be fun to speculate about.
Click to expand...

There's a difference between having foreign individuals in your army and having foreign regiments; the former's fine, the latter can easily backfire. (Cf. the unpopularity of the Crown's Hessian mercenaries during the AWI.) Although if Lincoln wouldn't welcome the prospect of foreign regiments turning up to fight, I guess he might welcome an organisation helping individual young men get to America so they can enlist.
 

Locke01

Saphroneth said:
I'm pretty sure Grant was 'only' a general by brevet as well, it's not any kind of honorary rank. It's just rank outside the sequence of promotion in the regiment.
Click to expand...

No, Grant was not a general by brevet. He was nominated by President Lincoln as a lieutenant general, no brevet mentioned or specified. Had be been , his nomination as lieutenant general (not to mention his confirmation) would have had to explicitly specify his appointment was by brevet as in the case of Winfield Scott. Officers appointed by brevet were not entitled to the pay or command prerogatives of officers who held appointments on the authorized establishment except under certain rather narrowly defined exceptions. To put it another way, Grant got paid as a lieutenant general whether or not he was employed commanding the armies of the United States, but Badeau had to suffer along on his pay as a lowly captain (and whatever staff pay he may have been entitled to).
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Locke01 said:
Officers appointed by brevet were not entitled to the pay or command prerogatives of officers who held appointments on the authorized establishment except under certain rather narrowly defined exceptions.
Click to expand...
My understanding was that those exceptions consisted of "whenever one was not with one's regiment" (i.e. whenever one's regiment was brigaded with others or the like). Brevet rank became honorary in 1869 when the 61st Article of War was repealed, but until then brevet rank was the true rank and officers acted down to their regimental rank (rather than acting up to their army rank) - this being caused by total general overload as the permanent establishment even post Civil War had only seventeen general slots (one general, one LtG, five MG and 10 BG) but there were 26 in the cavalry alone (14 MG and 12 BG).



On investigation however it seems Grant was indeed the sole establishment LtG.
 
highwayhoss

highwayhoss

Some trivia on the CSS Albermarle:
  • Her chief contracter, Gilbert Elliot, was only 19 years old.
  • The ship was built in a cornfield.
  • During the Battle of Albermarle Sound on May 5, 1864, the Albermarle's smokestack was badly damaged, preventing the engines from generating power. The chief engineer threw a load of ham, bacon and lard into the boilers, getting steam up and enabling the ship to steam away. (can you imagine the smell in the ship after the battle?)
  • During the same battle only one crewman on the ship was killed; he stuck his head out of a gunport and it got hit by a pistol shot.
  • The Albermarle was the only Confederate ironclad sunk by enemy action.
 

Wendell

The only foreign national executed as a result of his service in the civil war moved from living in the Confederation to serving the Confederacy. His name as Henry Wirz.
 

Byzantion

Kome said:
Amazingly they let Joseph Wheeler back into the army at age 61 and he served in Cuba and the Philippines.
Click to expand...
There had been many former generals of the ACW who also served during Spanish War. Also many veterans as volunteers.
 

Locke01

G.Washington_Fuckyeah said:
What sources do you have for that?
Click to expand...

Adam Badeau's personal correspondence. I don't know if his letters are available online. My understanding is that there is nothing absolutely explicit stated, but the implied nature of the relationship he had with Wilson seems fairly clear.
 
Last edited:

Byzantion

Strategos' Risk said:
One of the more "popular" AH factoids is that Garibaldi offered to fight for the Union in the American Civil War, but was politely rebuffed by Lincoln. Another pop fact is that Russia (article may be editorialized) was diplomatically involved in the war. What other wacky facts are there for AH potential?

* The king of Siam offered to send elephants to President Lincoln as presents in 1860, who politely declined. What if he offered to send war elephants later on, and Lincoln approves?

* U.S. Camel Corps- also predate ACW, but if they kept up the program we could have zouaves riding camels fighting it out in Texas.

* Australia was affected by the ACW, mostly because of the C.S.S. Shenandoah hanging out in the area, but also because there were fears of either Union or Imperial Russian attack.

* San Marino is adorable.



* Morocco, despite having been one of the first countries the young U.S. had fought after independence, resolutely affirmed support for the Union over the Confederacy.

* Dutch Suriname could have been a destination for freemen.
Click to expand...
A former British Waterloo veteran enlistened at the age of 70 and died in his first battle. Also a 67 year old former drummer boy from the war of 1812 took up arms against Confederates as a resident civilian in Gettysburg and was wounded-survived and lived another decade.
 

dgharis

* U.S. Camel Corps- also predate ACW, but if they kept up the program we could have zouaves riding camels fighting it out in Texas.
Click to expand...

Concerning those camels, when the Civil War arrived the War Department terminated the program and disbanded the camel corps. The camels were simply turned loose; those in New Mexico and Arizona remained in the wild until they died out, but those in Texas were rounded up by the Confederates and pressed into service as pack animals. Most were used to transport cotton from Texas to buyers in Mexico. At first the route ran through Brownsville, but the camels' offensive odor and habit of spitting on passers-by did not endear them to the locals. The town council passed an ordinance prohibiting anyone from bringing camels down the main street of town; that ordinance is still on the books.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top