Chronological History of the American Civil War

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Cost of War... A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. Everything has a cost and so does war. In 1860, the year before the American Civil War started, the U.S. Government’s debt was $64.8 million. Once the war began, that debt grew quickly. The financial cost, per day of fighting the Civil War, according to Government records released by the U.S. Congress in 1863 was $2.5 Million. By the end of the war it cost the Union $5 billion and the Confederacy $3 billion. By the end of 2015, the total government debt in the United States, including federal, state, and local, is expected to reach $21.845 trillion. Now remember it only takes 1,000 billion to make just 1 trillion.... In human cost, it was much more! When the Civil War casualty totals were released: The Union - 359,000 dead, 100,000 wounded; The Confederacy -280,000 dead, 100,000 wounded. We can never put a price on their sacrifices. A better tasting medicine... A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. During the Civil War, the most prescribed medication on both sides was alcohol! It seemed to cure about everything. It was easier to get and tasted better than quinine. But quinine was one of the most valuable medicines during the war. It was in every doctor’s medicine chest. It was used for everything from malaria to dentifrice. Born in Whiteville, Tennessee, in the 1860 U. S. Census, Edwin Wiley Grove, age 9, was listed in the household of his father, J. H. Grove of Bolivar. When the war broke out his father fought for the South with Company E, 7th Tennessee Cavalry, CSA. At age 19, Edwin was a working as a drugstore clerk in Bolivar, but the family soon moved to Paris, Tennessee. Edwin Grove once said, “I had a little drug business in Paris, Tennessee, just barely making a living,

when I got up a real invention, tasteless quinine. As a poor man and a poor boy, I conceived the idea that whoever could produce a tasteless chill tonic, his fortune was made.” He soon became a self-made multi-millionaire, most famous for his “Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic.” The tasteless chill tonic, which some claimed was not all that tasteless, was an improvement over taking straight quinine for fevers and chills caused by malaria. A sweet syrup and lemon flavor was added to Quinine, cinchonine and cinchonidine, which were the main ingredients in crystal form in the tonic. Some sources claim that by 1890 more bottles of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic were sold than bottles of Coca- Cola. Edwin Grove bought land in Asheville, North Carolina and developed the famous Grove Park Inn (still in business today) and the Grove Arcade. In Atlanta, he developed the streetcar suburb Atkins Park and later Grove Park neighborhoods.

Abolishment of Slavery Could Only Be Legally Accomplished by a Constitutional Amendment A few facts you might not know about the Great American Civil War. Lincoln knew that as President, he had no legal grounds to single-handedly terminate the institution of slavery--but that this had to be done by a constitutional amendment. The Emancipation Proclamation was simply a war powers action by him, the commander-in-chief of the armies, in which he attempted to remove all the slaves from the southern peoples “in rebellion against the United States.” Even in this, Lincoln was very anxious about the legality of his actions. He worded the document very carefully, in legal terms, in his attempt to make it legally binding in future courts of law. He recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed quickly by a constitutional amendment to guarantee the abolishment of slavery. The 13th Amendment to the United States