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Flagel, Thomas R.
History buff’s guide to the Civil War : top ten rankings of the best, worst, largest, and most leathal people
and events of the Civil War / by Thomas R. Flagel. —2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—
Miscellanea. I. Title.
E468.F57 2010
973.7—dc22
2010025641
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Mom, Dad, and Theresa
Also by Thomas R. Flagel
The History Buff’s Guide to World War II
The History Buff’s Guide to Gettysburg (with Ken Allers, Jr.)
The History Buff’s Guide to the Presidents
CONTENTS
Introduction to the Second Edition
Prologue
1: Antebellum
Top Ten Causes of the Civil War
Top Ten States with the Highest Percentage of Slaves
Top Ten Abolitionists
Top Ten Fire-Eaters
2: Politics
Top Ten Similarities Between Lincoln and Davis
Top Ten Differences Between the Confederate and U.S. Constitutions
Top Ten Acts of Government
Top Ten Events in Foreign Affairs
3: Military Life
Top Ten Weapons
Top Ten Items in a Soldier’s Diet
Top Ten Military Organizational Units
Top Ten Surgical Tools and Medicines
Top Ten Modes of Communication
Top Ten Causes of Military Deaths
4: The Home Front
Top Ten Hardships
Top Ten Acts of Dissent
Top Ten Newspapers
Top Ten Songs
5: In Retrospect
Top Ten Firsts
Top Ten Most Significant Battles
Top Ten Best Commanding Generals
Top Ten Worst Commanding Generals
Top Ten Bloodiest Battles
Top Ten Deadliest Military Prisons
Top Ten Military Blunders
Top Ten Heroines
6: Pursuing the War
Top Ten Civil War Films
Top Ten Ways to Be an Accurate Reenactor
Top Ten National Battlefield Sites
Top Ten Largest Civil War Cemeteries
Top Ten Ways to Get Involved
7: Epilogue, Time Line, Notes, Bibliography
Epilogue
Time Line
Notes
Bibliography
Image Credits
About the Author
INTRODUCTION TO
THE SECOND EDITION
History never remains silent or still. At times it speaks in soft whispers, and
others it shouts with deafening resonation. Living as we do in an era preoccupied
with the present, we often cannot or will not hear our old companion talking to
us. But it will always be there, in lockstep, attempting to teach.
History echoes still with the cataclysm of the American Civil War, despite its
last battles having ended nearly 150 years ago. In 2004, some 40,000 people
were in attendance to see Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery became the final
resting place for the crew of the recently discovered CSS Hunley. In 2008, the
body of a Union soldier was discovered at Antietam. The following year, his
remains were laid to rest in his regimental home of New York State. In 2009, on
what used to be the open fields of the old battleground at Franklin, a
construction crew building a fast food restaurant unearthed the bones of an
unknown soldier. I recently had the honor and privilege of helping organize the
funeral and re-internment of that young man.
Among these newly found fallen rises a willingness among the living to hear
the words of history. And in terms of the Civil War, our future certainly seems
promising.
In just the last few years, there have been new centers and museums built at
Corinth, Kennesaw Mountain, Nashville, and elsewhere, with more on the way.
The modern Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum at Springfield
has turned a commendable site of historic interest into a world class hub of
tourism and research. The ever-accelerating digital age has made countless pages
of antebellum and wartime documentation, once confined to dusty archives and
private collections, available to the world at the click of a button. From the
privately owned Lotz House Museum in Franklin, to the new $100 million
Visitors Center at Gettysburg, the past is resounding at every octave.
It is through this great expansion of interest and information that it has come
time to offer a new edition to a book written years ago. Through my good
fortune, The History Buff’s Guide to the Civil War has done well. Having
spawned a series with a growing number of volumes, it has enabled me to
continue writing, sharing, and learning. And through this process, there are
updates to be made, subjects to be added (most notably, Songs of the War and
the Largest Cemeteries), and conclusions to be revisited—because history
refuses to remain silent or still.
Thomas R. Flagel
Franklin, Tennessee
February 1, 2010
PROLOGUE
While composing this work, I had the pleasure of visiting numerous museums,
archives, libraries, and battle sites. Amid them all, one stop stands out in my
memory. At a battlefield park, while walking toward a row of cannon, I
happened upon a family taking in the surroundings. Their young son, not more
than ten years of age, scanned the particulars of the engagement from a bronze
plaque. After reading a calculation of dead and wounded, the youth said out loud
to himself, “Well, at least we got as many of them as they got of us.”
Of all unions, one is indissoluble: the bond between present and past. We hold
this truth to be self-evident in the case of the United States and its Civil War.
More has been written about this conflict than any other event in the country’s
history. Debates continue over battlefield preservation and reparations to
descendants of slaves. In the national capital, the Lincoln Memorial receives ten
times the number of visitors than either the Jefferson Memorial or the
Washington Monument. Albeit with malice toward none, a small boy can read of
Americans fighting Americans and mentally picture it as “us versus them.” Like
the CSS Hunley and the turret of the USS Monitor, the war resurfaces and
resides everlasting within the public culture.
Concerning my own connections, my great-great-great grandfather, Andrew
Jackson Cook, served as a private during William Tecumseh Sherman’s
legendary March to the Sea. A distant uncle of mine died at the head of his
regiment at the 1862 battle of Corinth, Mississippi. When my great uncle was a
boy, he knew a handful of aged veterans, one of whom spoke infrequently and
unhappily about his experiences in the infantry, and those stories were passed on
to me.
Personally, I focused my early academic attentions on the history of modern
Europe, primarily diplomatic and ethnic relations. Over the years, however, I
began to delve deeper into the specter of the War Between the States. Along with
my increasing involvement, I was struck by the sincere desire from pupils and
