Portal:American Civil War/Did you know/Archive2007

[edit] Welcome to the American Civil War Portal Did you know... archive

This is the archive for items which have already graced the main portal page in the Did you know... box.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a millionaire (mostly from the slave trade) at the outset of the American Civil War, yet had enlisted as a private in the Confederate States Army?
Ulyses S. Grant actually retreated to Paducah, Kentucky after the Battle of Belmont, having been bombarded by cannon fire from Confederate cannons at Columbus, Kentucky across the river, in his first American Civil War campaign?

The Volunteer Quartemaster by General Roeliff Brinkerhoff was written during the American Civil War and considered the definitive text on military logistics up until the First World War?
In terms of force strength, the Battle of Westport was the largest single land engagement on the North American continent west of the Mississippi River in U.S. History?
That seventeen Secretaries of War eventually were involved in the lengthy process of compiling, editing and publishing the government publication The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies ?

The United States' first aircraft carrier was a converted coal barge named General Washington Parke Custis and operated by the Union Army Balloon Corps?
Samuel P. Carter was the first American officer to be awarded both ranks of Rear Admiral in the Union Navy and Major General in the Union Army?
In 1861, President of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad William Mahone successfully bluffed the Union Navy into abandoning the valuable Gosport Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia by sending a single train whistling loudly back and forth on its track, making it seem to navy commanders a large Confederate ground force was massing nearby.

(below added September 8, 2007)

The Killer Angels, a novel by Michael Shaara adapted for the screen in the 1993 film Gettysburg, won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for its depiction of the days and events leading to Pickett's Charge.

In 1860 New York City Mayor Fernando Wood proposed incorporating the three islands of Manhattan, Staten Island and Long Island into a sovereign city-state known as "The Free City of Tri-Insula" ?
Though the British-built Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama was sunk by the USS Kearsarge in June 1864, claims made by the U.S. against Great Britain for the destruction and loss caused weren't settled until seven years later in the Treaty of Washington.

Julia Ward Howe, author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and champion of emancipation and women's suffrage, was also a founder of the Women's Rest Tour Association of Boston?
The Louisiana Tigers, a Confederate Army brigade were a key part of the Army of Northern Virginia and developed a reputation as fearless, hard fighting shock troops?
An American Civil War-era cannonball fired at Saint Paul's Church in Norfolk, Virginia was later reinserted into its wall?
George P. Kane, Marshall of Police in Baltimore, Maryland, was imprisoned in Fort McHenry along with Mayor George William Brown and pro-South members of the city council by the Northern Army during the war?
The University of North Alabama's Rogers Hall served as the headquarters for Confederate Army general Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1864?
Fort Runyon, built to defend Washington, D.C. during the war was almost the same size, shape, and in almost the same place as the Pentagon, built 80 years later?

George P. Kane, Marshall of Police in Baltimore, Maryland, was imprisoned in Fort McHenry along with Mayor George William Brown and pro-South members of the city council by the Northern Army during the war?
The University of North Alabama's Rogers Hall served as the headquarters for Confederate Army general Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1864?
Fort Runyon, built to defend Washington, D.C. during the war was almost the same size, shape, and in almost the same place as the Pentagon, built 80 years later?