Sickness accounted for a full one-third of all casualties in the Civil War. The 12th Connecticut Regiment entered the war with a compliment of 1,000 men. Before it entered its first engagement, sickness had reduced its strength to 600 able bodied soldiers.

There were more than 10,000 soldiers serving in the Union Army that were under the age of 18.

General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate forces, traveled with a pet hen that laid one egg under his cot every morning.

The artillery barrage at the battle of Gettysburg during Pickett’s charge was heard over 100 miles away in Pittsburgh.

The famous Confederate blockade - runner, the C.S.S. Alabama, never entered a Confederate port during the length of her service.

During the Civil war a person who had been drafted could hire a substitute. This bounty system was exploited by so called “bounty jumpers”. These men would hire out to more than one draftee and then make a hasty exit once they were paid. The record for bounty –jumping was held by John O’Connor. He admitted to hiring himself out 32 times before being caught. He received a 4 year prison term.

Approximately 2,000 men served in the 26th North Carolina Regiment during the course of the Civil War. With Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox courthouse, there were only 131 men left to receive their paroles.

Did you know that in the Civil War, General Stonewall Jackson walked around with his right hand in the air to balance the blood flow in his body? Because he was right-handed, he thought that his right hand was getting more blood than his left, and so by raising his hand, he’d allow the excess blood to run into his left hand. He also never ate food that tasted good, because he assumed that anything that tasted good was completely unhealthy.

Did you know that during the Civil War, glasses with colored lenses were used to treat disorders and illness? Yellow-tinted glasses were used to treat syphilis, blue for insanity, and pink for depression. Thus we get the term, To see the world through rose-colored glasses. When you looked through them, supposedly, you became happy.

Did you know that in the centuries before and decades after the Civil War, including the war itself, doorways were wide, not because of the width of women’s skirts, but so coffins could be passed through, with a pallbearer on either side?

Did you know that not all battles of the Civil War were fought in the South? The Confederates actually managed to sneak all the way up to Vermont to fight, via Canada.

Did you know that germs were unheard of during the Civil War, and men would drink out of water that thirty yards upstream, a man relieved himself in? Surgeons never washed their hands after an operation, because all blood was assumed to be the same, nor did he wash his instruments.

Did you know that 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, 24,000were 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.

Did you know that during the Civil War, muzelloading rifles were preferred over the faster firing breachloaders? The breachloading rifle was invented in 1803 and had been issued by the army in 1825. They were discontinued and all government research stopped in 1840, however, because it was thought that the soldiers would waste ammunition.