On-line "War Between the States" Adventure thread!

[Prinz Eugen]

ONE HUNDRED and FIFTY years ago TODAY, (8-Feb-1861) seven states seceded from the Union and adopted this flag:



..and adopted a provisional constitution in the evening of that same day.
Interestingly, Article I, Section 9 forbade the further importation of slaves.

The flag is the one correctly referred to by as "the stars and bars."
At this time, the new Confederacy was AT PEACE with the remaining United States.
Hostilities did not begin until April of the year. Sometimes the Confederate battle flag is referred to as the 'Stars and Bars' (possibly mistakenly so - any comments?) and it was also called 'The Southern Cross.'

This thread is for arm-chair historical discussions of the US Civil War, events, people and places,
COSTUMES, ordnance, anecdotes, board gaming, links to web content etc, but mostly to discuss history, swap facts
and questions, and LEARN about a very turbulent time in our nation's history.

[Prinz Eugen]

Jefferson Davis, who is elected provisional President of the
Confederacy, is not at the convention in Montgomery. He is at his
plantation in Mississippi when he hears of the news. Davis, a West
Point graduate, considers himself more of a military man and is
reportedly stunned at learning he is President.

[jaybug]

Both sides worked fairly hard to ensure that they would be at odds. Kind of like what Red and Blue states are doing now. Except this time the Red states are doing well economically.

[Wuntvor]

Wikipedia has a whole page on the Confederate Flags including The Stars and Bars.

I like comparing Japan and America in the 1800's:
July 14, 1853 - Matthew Perry and his Black Ships arrive in Japan for the first time.
March 31, 1854 - Treaty of Peace and Amity
July 29, 1858 - The Harris Treaty
March 4, 1861 - Start of The American Civil War
April 9, 1865 - American Civil War ends.
1868 - The Mejii Restoration of Japan occurs.
May 1, 1893 - The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Columbus Day. Bet you never even heard of it.

[Ticra]

Hey! I'm a civil war re-enactor. I love this stuff! I have to say though, so many people get so much wrong about the civil war, it always frustrates me.

Interesting fact of the day that I love to share about the Civil War and it's people?
The lincolns were somewhat crazy. Most people know that Mary Todd Lincoln, the first lady, was slightly off her rocker, and had a penchant for screaming fits and somewhat bipolar behavior. On the other hand, she did lose three of her four sons to illness and death; and her husband was shot right next to her, but she was more or less crazy the majority of her life. After Lincoln was shot, she locked herself in her bedroom in the white house, and screamed (yes screamed) for days on end. Poor President Johnson didn't really know what to do with her, and more or less left her to her own devices.
Lincoln himself unburied his son Willie's corpse three times just to gaze upon his son again. Granted, this was considered much less creepy during that era, when death was much less taboo, regardless, still a little squidgy. And although he was well known for pardoning almost any criminal who asked for it; he also organized the largest mass hanging in American history (a group of Sioux warriors who raided a pioneer town).
 

[Prinz Eugen]

Confederate officials take charge of the responsibility of military affairs in Charleston. President Davis names a Louisianian, P.G.T. Beauregard, to command the Charleston area.

Most people know that Mary Todd Lincoln, the first lady, ... screamed (yes screamed) for days on end.

She might have had endometriosis - terribly painful, but (mostly male) doctors even into the 1970s & 1980s didn't believe the patient and either told her the pains were imaginary, or to just 'tough it out.' Effective antibiotics would not come along until the 1940s.

Also, one civil war invention - the exploding shell - would rapidly increase incidence of deaths by infection and by transmission of infection from one person to another. When such a shell lands in rich fertile farm soil, the explosion propels metal shards through manure - 30% live bacteria by volume. The fragments which embed themselves into nearby people innoculate the bacteria into their bodies, causing terrible infections and usually death within days.

[RemSaverem]

Wow. I knew none of this (except that Mary Todd was reputed to have had fits). The biggest surprise was the outlawing of importation of new slaves. Thanks for all the research!

My uncle collected Civil War memorabilia. But he lives in Chicago, and a flood mildewed most of his very expensive and extensive collection.

Re-enactments are a huge amount of work and attention to detail. Impressive.

[Prinz Eugen]

I like comparing Japan and America in the 1800's:
July 14, 1853 - Matthew Perry and his Black Ships arrive in Japan for the first time.
March 31, 1854 - Treaty of Peace and Amity
July 29, 1858 - The Harris Treaty
March 4, 1861 - Start of The American Civil War
April 9, 1865 - American Civil War ends.
1868 - The Mejii Restoration of Japan occurs.
[/quote]

Yes - "We were messing with you, then got busy with a 'little internal matter' then got back to messing with you?"

Thanks for the informative timeline!

[Ticra]

Confederate officials take charge of the responsibility of military affairs in Charleston. President Davis names a Louisianian, P.G.T. Beauregard, to command the Charleston area.

Most people know that Mary Todd Lincoln, the first lady, ... screamed (yes screamed) for days on end.

She might have had endometriosis - terribly painful, but (mostly male) doctors even into the 1970s & 1980s didn't believe the patient and either told her the pains were imaginary, or to just 'tough it out.' Effective antibiotics would not come along until the 1940s.

Also, one civil war invention - the exploding shell - would rapidly increase incidence of deaths by infection and by transmission of infection from one person to another. When such a shell lands in rich fertile farm soil, the explosion propels metal shards through manure - 30% live bacteria by volume. The fragments which embed themselves into nearby people innoculate the bacteria into their bodies, causing terrible infections and usually death within days.

Yeah, American Civil war medicine wasn't the best. Although the War did increase medicinal knowledge expodentially. Like, at one point during the war the doctors ran out of medical suture thread, and were forced to resort to using horse hair to stitch up wounds. Because they figured that the horse hair's would be dirty the steralized them much more than they would normal medical thread. Wounds on horse hair actually did better for this reason and they started to understand the importance of steralizing medical equipment.
Although they also had a few mistakes, like, for example (For the squimish look away!)
They used to think that pus was a good thing and would take pus from one soldiers wound and put it in another's. how squicky is that???

[jaybug]

They didn't learn all that much all that quickly. Doctors stuck their dirty fingers in president Lincoln's bullet wound, thereby ensuring his demise.

[Prinz Eugen]

Doctors stuck their dirty fingers in president Lincoln's bullet wound, thereby ensuring his demise.

Yeah, it took till the 1870s for Dr. Louis "Wash your damn dirty hands" Pasteur to get things rolling, even after Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis advocated hand washing in the 1840s in the maternity wards of a Vienna hospital.

Semmelweis had observed the mortality rates in a delivery room staffed by medical students was up to three times higher than in a second delivery room staffed by midwives. Semmelweis observed that the students were coming straight from their lessons in the autopsy room to the delivery room. He postulated that the students might be carrying the infection from their dissections to birthing mothers. (MEBBE SO, YA-THINK!?!)

He ordered doctors and medical students to wash their hands with a chlorinated solution before examining women in labor.
The mortality rate in his maternity wards eventually dropped to less than one percent. (Ding! Ding! Ding!!eleventy-one!!)

Nevertheless hand washing remained shunned, and Semmelweis himself died of infection, with his advice still under ridicule.

In any case, hot clean water would be hard to come by in field surgical practice.

Cool note about the horse hair, Ticra!

SQUICK FACTOR:
Now, there was one medical record set in the Civil War which will probably never be beaten in our lifetimes: amputation. One battlefield medic got the procedure down to 13 seconds - saving hundreds of lives at Gettysburg. Shot o' liquor - bite the bullet (literally) - cut on a diagonal to the bone with a knife and then get in there with a saw. Flop the diagonal flap of remaining flesh over and sew up. "NEXT!"

His name seems to be lost to history, (I remember seeing a documentory on this on PBS years ago) but it was also said that he was a Yank and his assistant was a Rebel.

[RemSaverem]

It was ritual handwashing required in Orthodox Judaism that led to the disproportionate numbers of Jews surviving plagues (particularly those having to wash each hand three times before eating food and before and after entering an area where there has been death). Of course, lack of understanding of that + anti-Semitism led to Jews being accused of having something to do with the origin of the plagues.

[Ticra]

They didn't learn all that much all that quickly. Doctors stuck their dirty fingers in president Lincoln's bullet wound, thereby ensuring his demise.

Granted, he had been shot point blank in the head, it was pretty much already assured. Meh, but they did the same thing to President McKinley who was shot in 1902 (1904? somewhere in there). They didn't figure out good probes for years. They had some medical probes in the 1860's but they were all pretty inefficent. In a modern perspective it doesn't look like medicine advanced all that much, but you'd be shocked how much it really had.

umm...other interesting facts...
Ah, I have a couple good ones about Gettysburg...
- At gettysburg there were two rival generals who faced off, General Barlow (union) and General Gordon (Confederate) faced off. General Barlow was wounded quite severly and reported dead, though he survived. General Gordon had a relative with the same initials who was killed and most thought that it was the general himself who was killed.
Both generals went on assuming that the other was dead. Several years later they were both invited to a dinner and encountered one another. The conversation went thusly:
"General, are you related to the Barlow I killed at Gettysburg?"
"Why sir, I am the man himself! Are you related to the Gordon who killed me?"
"No! It was me!"
They then proceeded to become absolute best friends (daaaaww, adorable)

- At Gettysburg there was a whole union regiment that had just marched up from Kansas and had, instead of water, famous Kansas Whiskey in their canteens. Getting thirsty as they fought, they got progressively more drunk. Things did not end well.
Consiquently, if you actually visit Gettysburg feild, near the eternal flame there are long mounds in the grass. What are those mounds? Your now standing on the drunkest dead men in history XD

[Prinz Eugen]

In these days, 150 years ago, newly inaugurated President Lincoln is hearing advice from from four cabinet members debating the
wisdom of sending supplies to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor:

Sec. Chase, Yes;
Sec. Cameron, No;
Sec. Caleb B. Smith, No;
Atty. Gen. Edward Bates, No.

Outside of the brewing hostilities with the seceded sates, Lincoln also sends a
message to Senate relative to "dispute now existing between the Governments of the United States and Great Britain concerning
the boundary line between Vancouver's Island and the American Continent." Next year's Kumoricon Hilton might have been in CANADA.

[jaybug]

54-40 or Fight! Naw, it still would have been Oregon. Even if we were Canadian, or English.

[Prinz Eugen]

MONTGOMERY, April 10, 1861.

General BEAUREGARD, Charleston:

If you have no doubt of the authorized character of the agent who communicated to you the intention of the Washington Government to supply Fort Sumter by force you will at once demand its evacuation, and if this is refused proceed, in such manner as you may determine, to reduce it. Answer.

L. P. WALKER.
(Secretary of War, Confederate States, follow him on Facebook)


-------------------

(Response:)

CHARLESTON, April 10, 1861.

L. P. WALKER:

The demand will be made to-morrow at 12 o’clock.

G. T. BEAUREGARD,

Brigadier-General.

[Prinz Eugen]

18-Apr-1861: Confederate forces attack Fort Sumter!! (SC)

[jaybug]

There you go again.

[Prinz Eugen]

... and become WEST Virginia. This is more complicated than the Sub/Dub wars ...

http://www.acwsource.com/Calendar/1861/May/Calendar_May_23rd_1861_Page.html

   Virginia Secedes:

The Union sustained a crushing blow on May 23, 1861, when
Virginia seceded to the Confederacy. Virginia held great
significance for the Union, as it had been the home of such
founding fathers as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

It was the scene of more than half of the bloodiest battles of the
Civil War, the state with the highest white population in the
Confederacy, the home of the Confederate capital (Richmond),
and the native state of General Robert E. Lee.

Before the war began, Virginia had originally favored
compromise. When the slavery issue began to seriously
threaten the Union, Virginia’s Governor John Letcher said, “it is
monstrous to see a government like ours destroyed merely
because men cannot agree about a domestic institution.”

Lee had also hoped for a peaceful solution to the conflict
between the states. A Lieutenant Colonel with an outstanding
reputation, Lee was offered the command of the entire Union
Army…but resigned to join the Confederacy as head of the
Virginia armed forces. Saddened that the nation was torn apart
by war, Lee made this decision strictly out of loyalty to his home
state. However, his loyalty was not shared by the state’s
western region, which moved to establish the separate state of
West Virginia.

Despite this division within its boundaries, Virginia was a
significant gain for the Confederacy - and a devastating loss to
the Union in its time of greatest need.