Chronological History of the American Civil War

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So, who’s buried in Grant’s tomb? That is, entombed— in Grant’s tomb? It used to be nobody. A huge fundraising effort collected the money required to build the monument at 122nd Street in New York City, but it wasn’t finished for another 12 years. Grant was entombed on the 75th anniversary of his birth, April 27, 1897 as over a million spectators watched Mrs. Grant and President William McKinley lay the General in his final resting-place. Mrs. Grant lived until 1902 and was entombed next to her husband. The site was among the most popular of New York’s tourist attractions until decades of neglect and disrepair took their toll. It wasn’t until the Grant

descendants threatened to move their ancestors elsewhere that the National Park Service devoted funds to restore the site. A re-dedication was held one hundred years after the original, on April 27, 1997.

The Bloodiest War Ever Fought on American Soil A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. If the names of the Civil War dead were organized like the names on the Vietnam Memorial wall, the “Civil War Memorial” would be over 10 times longer. The Civil War was the bloodiest war ever fought on American soil. During an

average day during the war, approximately 600 people were killed. By the end of the war, over 618,000 people had died. This is more Americans than WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. During the Civil War, 2% of the U.S. population died. This is equivalent to 6 million men today. While rifles were the deadliest weapons during the war, disease killed more men. Camps became breeding grounds for measles, chickenpox, and mumps. One million Union soldiers contracted malaria. One of every 65 Federals and 1 of every

45 Confederates were killed in action. Virginia experienced the most fighting during the Civil War— more than 2,100 events, followed by Tennessee (1,400) and Missouri (1,100). Just with any war, it is important for us to remember the ones that fought and gave their all for us and our freedoms. Sexual Misconduct and the Tennessee Experiment A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. Court martial records during the Civil War lists over 100,000 incidents of sexual misconduct. An officer wrote to his wife, “You would think there was not a married man in the regiment.” Among Union white troops, surgeons treated over 73,000 soldiers for syphilis and over 109,00 for gonorrhea. African American soldiers had incidences of less than half than that of the white troops. The cure-all medicine for the Civil War was calomel, a mercury mixture of chalk, honey and sometimes licorice. It was used to treat everything from syphilis to headaches. When one Union army doctor, William Hammond, noted that mercury was poisonous, he was dismissed as a quack and removed from his post. Because of the epidemic of venereal diseases among soldiers, the Union army tried government - sanctioned prostitution in Nashville and Memphis from 1863 to 1865. The incidence of venereal disease declined sharply. Slavery in the U.S. Did Not End with the End of the Civil War A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. The end of the Civil War did not mean the end of slavery! The Emancipation Proclamation declared that “all persons held as slaves” in those states still fighting on behalf of the Confederacy “are, and henceforward shall be free.” It didn’t apply to slave states loyal to the Union – the so-called border states. It didn’t even apply to areas like Tennessee and certain parishes in Louisiana (including New Orleans) where the Union had regained