Chronological History of the American Civil War

P a g e | 315

Recycling Rifles... A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. After the Battle of Gettysburg, the discarded rifles were collected and sent to Washington to be inspected and reissued. Of the 37,574 rifles recovered, approximately 24,000 were still loaded; 6,000 had one round in the barrel; 12,000 had two rounds in the barrel; 6,000 had three to ten rounds in the barrel. One rifle, the most remarkable of all, had been stuffed to the top with twenty-three rounds in the barrel! Nightlight Fighting During the Civil War A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. In 1863, during the operation to retake Charleston Harbor, General Quincy Adams Gillmore (U.S.) laid siege to the Confederate stronghold at Fort Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina. With the help of a strange invention: the calcium light, Gillmore’s Union guns bombarded the fort day and night. These chemical lamps used superheated balls of lime, or calcium oxide, to create an incandescent glow and were better known as “limelights.” The lights had been used in lighthouses and theaters since the 1830s. Gillmore’s engineers were the first to adapt them for combat. Union forces were able to illuminate their artillery target, while simultaneously blinding Confederate gunners and riflemen by shining calcium lights on Fort Wagner. (This is where the expression “in the limelight” comes from.) The lights were also called “Drummond lights.” The calcium floodlights were later used as searchlights to spot Confederate warships and blockade runners. A Union light in early 1865 even helped detect a Confederate ironclad fleet as it tried to move along the James River under cover of night. A Southern officer later noted that a planned sneak attack was made impossible in part because of the Union’s “powerful calcium light.” Town Line, NY Secedes from Union...rejoins 85 years later! A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. A small crossroads community between Alden and Lancaster, New York holds a peculiar footnote in American history.

Town Line, New York is the only community north of the Mason- Dixon Line believed to have voted to secede from the United States during the Civil War. It did not officially rejoin until about 85 years later, at the end of World War II. A historical marker commemorating Town Line’s secession and return was affixed to a large boulder on the grounds of Town Line Lutheran Church, on the Alden side of the hamlet, just east of where the schoolhouse once stood where 125 men voted, 85 to 40, to leave the U.S. Town Line was not an incorporated, municipal entity, so the vote had no legal effect. No documentation exists that the vote occurred; neither side in the war ever acknowledged the outcome.

The inscription reads: “It is believed that the residents of Town Line, NY met at the schoolhouse near this marker following the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 and voted 80-45 to secede from the Union. The story is undocumented, and their reasons are unknown. With encouragement from President Harry S. Truman, Town Line residents gathered again in January of 1946 at the schoolhouse, which had become a blacksmith shop, and voted 90-23 to officially return to the Union.” Town Line became the last stronghold of the Confederacy to rejoin the Union. Ulysses S. Grant's Nicknames A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant earned the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant early in the war at Fort Donelson, Tennessee. Now as he pushed toward Richmond during May 5 and June 30, 1864, the Army of the Potomac suffered more than 61,000 casualties. This number exceeded the total strength of Lee’s Army at any given time. In one “20