Chronological History of the American Civil War

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and patient care. She took her skills to the front lines. Among her more harrowing experiences was an incident in which a bullet tore through the sleeve of her dress without striking her and killed a man to whom she was tending. She is known as the “Angel of the Battlefield.” After the war, while on a trip to Europe and to Geneva, Switzerland, Barton was introduced to their Red Cross. When she returned to the U.S., using the argument that the new American Red Cross could respond to crises other than war such as earthquakes, forest fires, and hurricanes, she finally gains Presidential support and the first local society was founded August 22, 1882 in Dansville, Livingston County, New York, where she maintained a country home. Today, the American Red Cross is a nationwide network of more than 650 chapters and 36 blood services regions dedicated to saving lives and helping people prepare for and respond to medical emergencies. Approximately 500,000 Red Cross volunteers, and 30,000 employees annually mobilize relief to people affected by more than 67,000 disasters, train almost 12 million people in necessary medical skills and exchange more than a million emergency messages for U.S. military service personnel and their family members. In 2006, the organization had over $6 billion in total revenues. A study showed that the American Red Cross was ranked as the 3rd “most popular charity/non-profit in America.” Mortar Fire A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. While cannons were intended to batter down the walls of a fortification during a siege, mortars were designed to fire explosive shells over

the walls of the fortification, killing the men inside, and forcing others to stay in bombproof shelters, or preventing the gunners from serving their guns and repairing damage caused by the bombardment. Mortars could also destroy structures inside the fortification such as barracks and kitchens which would normally stay unharmed from standard guns. Heavier mortar shells could penetrate magazines and many bombproof shelters. Trying everything he had, General Grant had to break the defenses at Petersburg, Virginia. He had the Federal forces successfully mounted a 13-inch seacoast mortar (their biggest) on a railroad flatcar that fired a 197 lb. shell 2 ½ miles.

This mortar was nicknamed the “Dictator.” The car was moved along a section of the Petersburg and City Point Railroad to bring different points along the Confederate lines under fire. When charged with 14 pounds of powder the mortar would recoil less than two feet on the flatcar, but the flatcar would recoil 10 to 12 feet on the tracks. Petersburg suffered 218 rounds fired from this “Dictator.” Sadly today, no records of its destruction has been found, and it probably no longer exists. Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. Who is buried in the largest mausoleum in North America? The right answer is one who is entombed in a mausoleum, not buried. But what I am really getting at is who’s in there, anyway? The answer is Ulysses S. and Julia Dent Grant. While Grant was a failure as a president and later as a businessman, no one could deny his success in bringing the Civil War to an end. Nor could they deny the superb writing skills that allowed him to finish his memoirs (published with very little re-editing) the day before his death, thereby rescuing his wife and family from certain poverty. At the time, Grant was as popular as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the hearts of most Americans, at least in the North anyway.