The American Civil War is a somewhat contentious issue in American politics today, with it constantly being brought up as people claim that the second civil war is immanent. This got me thinking, what are some cool facts about the American Civil War?

Fought between the Union in the North and the Confederacy in the South over the issue of slavery (among other things), the Civil War would last between April 1861 and May 1865, resulting in a Union victory…

15. Civil War Propaganda

As with the American Revolution that predated it, both the Union and Confederacy would embark on extensive propaganda campaigns that demonized the other side and won converts.

Interestingly, the propaganda campaigns that would become famous throughout the war would actually begin in the late 1830’s, with repeated exposure to these anti-Union/anti-Confederacy propaganda tools soon stirring up resentment.

Unlike the American and French Revolutions, whose propaganda was mostly leaflet-based, and relied on being read aloud in taverns, advancements in technology had seen newspapers as we know them today pop up left and right.

In these newspapers would be political cartoons, which were drawn specifically attacking either the North or the (future) Confederacy, depending on the cartoonist and the newspaper publisher.

Pro-Union cartoons would usually illustrate the horrendous conditions slaves lived in, and their desire for freedom, usually quoting the Constitution and/or a Founding Father.

Whereas pro-Confederacy cartoons would illustrate that the former was an overreaching government, likening it to Britain and the Thirteen Colonies.

Interestingly, the famed “Join, or Die” poster from the American Revolution would be used by both sides, being subtly redrawn to stir up anti-Union/anti-Confederacy sentiment and promote patriotism to either the Union or Confederacy.

14. Also an Economic War

When we think of the Civil War today, our minds immediately go to the physical battles that were fought, such as Gettysburg and Antietam. However, there was also an economic aspect to the war as well…

Having seceded from the Union, the Confederacy began printing its own money – the Confederate States Dollar. The introduction of the Confederate dollar would see most people in the south phase out the US dollar.

Once the civil war began, both sides would acquire and study the other’s currency, eventually producing impressive counterfeits of the other side’s currency.

Both sides then dumped millions of dollars worth of the other side’s currency on the open market, hoping to cause severe inflation and/or hyperinflation of the other side’s currency.

This was intended to weaken the other side’s war effort, as if their currency was worthless, it would devastate their economy, and thus hamper their war effort.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this would work to great effect.

Due to Northern counterfeiters, year-on-year inflation of Confederate currency would increase to 100% (prices doubling every year) whilst Southern counterfeiters would create 100% inflation over the four years of the civil war.

13. First Military Use of Aviation

Today, when we think of military aviation, we tend to think of fighter jets and attack helicopters. Yet neither of these things existed during the American Civil War…

Indeed, fighter jets wouldn’t exist until the 1940’s, and attack helicopters weren’t invented until the early 1960’s.

Hot air balloons, on the other hand, did exist. During the Civil War, both sides would use them for a variety of tasks, mainly reconnaissance roles, as they were out of range of canons and muskets.

When the war first broke out, the Union flew their balloons around Washington DC and Manassas as a sign of strength. During the Peninsular Campaign in 1862, the Union stepped it up a notch, deploying them in reconnaissance roles.

Seeing this, the Confederates began to move their battles further inland, thus out of the range of the Union’s reconnaissance balloons.

Not willing to be defied, the Union purchased and repurposed a coal barge to act as a float platform to act as an aircraft carrier of sorts (known as a “balloon carrier”) which allowed it to sail down rivers and thus surveil the Confederacy’s troop movements.

Proving to be quite pivotal to the Union’s war effort, the Union Army established the Union Army Balloon Corps.

The Confederacy wouldn’t take this lying down, however, much like their northern counterparts, the Confederacy invested heavily in their own balloon reconnaissance units, all to no avail.

12. Invention of New Weapons

11. Confederate Troops Killed John Wilkes Booth

10. Foreign Enlistment

9. Total Death Toll

As with any war, the Civil War resulted in deaths on both sides, with some families losing all their male relatives (husbands, fathers, sons etc.) to the fighting.

During the four years the Civil War was fought, a total of 360,000 Union soldiers were killed in action, whilst only 258,000 Confederate soldiers were killed in action. All in all, this adds up to 618,000 deaths on both sides.

Beyond the 400,000 missing men, there were also 80,000 civilian causalities, most of whom were Southern slaves who died of disease due to their conditions worsening during the war (as their masters began feeding them less and less).

Interestingly, even disregarding the 400,000 missing men and civilian casualties, the Civil War is the deadliest war in American history, having killed more men than both WWI (117,000) and WWII (418,000) did, which are second and third place respectively.

All in all, the Civil War was responsible for a little less than 700,000 military and civilian deaths, as well as 400,000 disappearances (likely unreported deaths), bringing the total up a staggering 1.1 million – for a country of 29 million at the time!

8. A Maker of Men

Much like WWII was almost a century later, the Civil War was known for being a “maker of men”. In other words, it was a conflict that took a generation of boys, and gave them the skills they needed to become “men”.

All in all, a total of five presidents (Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley) would serve in the Civil War in some capacity, all for the Union, which would help them gain (part of) the veteran vote.

Beyond five presidents, the Civil War would also produce most of the politicians serving in both the Senate and House of Representatives from 1880 until 1901, with some even serving up until the onset of WWI!

Yet it wouldn’t just be politicians and future presidents who’d be forged in the fire of the Civil War. A number of Gilded Age businessmen would forge their keep business intellect fighting in what many came to think of as a pointless war.

Whilst by no means the only one, by far the most famous of these businessmen was Joseph Pulitzer – namesake of the Pulitzer Prize and co-founder of yellow journalism – who moved from Hungary to the US to fight for the Union so he could get citizenship.

7. Post-Civil War Baby Boom

After a major conflict like the Civil War, soldiers return home and the next few years see a sharp increase in the number of births – an increase that often far surpasses the number of people killed in the conflict.

Just think of the baby boomer generation after WWII…

However, at least for the white population, the ground was still shaky after the Civil War, with many anticipating a Confederate comeback during the Reconstruction Era. As such, no major baby boom happened.

Instead, it would be much more gradual, starting in 1865 and ending in 1880. Sadly, this baby boom would be somewhat lost to history due to an influx of immigrants from Europe at the time too.

For the newly freed African-American population, however, the postwar years saw a huge population boom.

You see, when they were slaves, many African-Americans avoided having children to a certain degree, knowing that their children would be born into slavery simply due to their parents also being slaves.

No longer slaves, the African-American community in the North and South would celebrate, resulting in a huge baby boom that’s still one of the largest in African-American history!

6. Post-Civil War Life of Jefferson Davis

When the South voted to secede from the Union in 1861, they modeled their government partly off the one they’d known for years.

Indeed, they’d establish their own House of Representatives, their own Senate, and they’d elect their own president: Jefferson Davis.

Leading them throughout the war, President Davis would be imprisoned in Fort Monroe off the coast of Virginia in May 1865. Kept in shackles in a casement in the fort, the former president’s health would begin to decline.

Eventually moved to better conditions in mid-1866, the former president’s health would improve. He would stay here until being released, and later pardoned in 1869.

Upon being released, the former president’s life was a mess. His elder brother and two sons died only a few years after his release and his wife became quite ill. To add insult to injury, Davis was also broke.

Owing to his former occupation, Davis was unable to secure employment in the US. Seeing no other option, Davis would travel to the UK in search of work that would send him between the UK and US.

Once gain, his former occupation prevented him from taking most of the jobs, as British firms were worried about potential backlash from American customers about hiring the former Confederate president.

The he could get, he struggled to hold down as his past always caught up to him.

Despite this, when he died on November 6 1889, Davis had rebuilt most of his life, having a modest income at a British company in London.

5. Missing Confederate Gold

Beyond establishing their own House of Representatives, Senate and presidency, the Confederacy would establish other government departments, such as their own treasury department.

As with the Union’s Treasury Department, the Confederate Treasury Department had millions of dollars in today’s money in gold bullion (as paper money at the time was backed by physical gold).

To begin with, the Confederate Treasury was based in Richmond, Virginia. When the Union were on the verge of taking New Orleans, the Confederacy chose to move its gold to Columbus, Georgia, which was believed to be “safer” than Richmond.

Stored in the vault of a privately owned bank in the heart of the city, the gold would sit there until the end of the war.

Here, officials from the federal government, spurred by the desire to reclaim as much Confederate hard currency as possible for reconstruction, would open the vault to find a mere $450,000 ($7.4 million in today’s money) worth of gold.

Fearing the worst, the federal government began claiming that as much as $15 million was missing. Over the coming months, the government would search everywhere for this money, but find none of it.

Yet, this hasn’t stopped conspiracy theories claiming that the gold is still out there – with descendants of Confederate leaders, or other groups with Confederate-aligned interests, just waiting to use this gold to finance a second Confederacy.

More likely, however, the South had simply bled itself with the war effort.

The war had been costly, inflation was spiraling, its precious plantations were being seized left and right and the Union blockade had made international trade impossible. As such, the Confederacy was almost broke by the end of the war.

4. Role of Freed Slaves

3. Last Civil War Veteran

As one of, if not the, most important wars in American history, it soon became a point of pride to say that you fought for the Union in the Civil War, particularly in the 1940’s and 1950’s when most Civil War veterans had died.

By the early 1950’s, there were only two surviving Civil War veterans still alive.

The first was James Hard. Having been born in July 1843, James (or “Albert” as he went by in military service) would inflate his age, saying that he was 19 when in reality, he was 17.

Joining up, Albert would serve with the 32nd New York Volunteer Infantry, seeing combat at the battles of First Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg.

2. The South Could’ve Won

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the North had a much larger population than the South, having 20 million people in the North compared to nine million in the South.

Despite having a considerably larger population, the Confederacy had better leaders, not to mention troops that were better equipped, as well as being backed by the combined military might of France and the UK.

When the Civil War first broke out, many in Europe expected the Confederacy to win.

Yet, they didn’t deploy their troops when the Union were disorganized. By not deploying their troops when the Union were weak, this gave the Union time to organize, as well as fortify their southern border.

Had the Confederacy deployed their troops whilst the Union were disorganized, they would’ve ended the Civil War before it actually began, thus ensuring the Confederacy would become a legal country in its own right.

An alternate way the South could’ve won the Civil War would’ve been if Union spies never discovered the famed “Special Order 191” right before the Battle of Antietam, which would essentially give away the Confederacy’s plan.

Assuming that somehow, the Union had never gotten their hands on the plan, the Confederacy would’ve easily won the Battle of Antietam, and the Civil War as a whole.

1. Slavery Would’ve Been Ended in The South

Speaking of a Confederate victory, if they’d won, slavery would’ve almost certainly continued in the South. Just not forever.

You see, the Confederacy made most of its money by exporting cotton to Europe, primarily Britain and France who’d abolished slavery decades prior, denouncing it as an “abhorrent practice” as one British MP called it.

It’s highly likely that Britain and France would’ve begun to place pressure on the Confederacy to abolish slavery if they wanted to continue trading with them.

Not wanting to lose their largest trading partner, the Confederacy would likely abolish slavery some time in the early 1900’s, most likely before the outbreak of WWI in 1914.

Although there are several theories going into what might’ve happened after the Confederacy abolished slavery, the most agreed upon one is the “Two peoples” theory.

Here, Jim Crow-style laws are implemented in the Confederacy For instance, segregation is still commonplace with African-American lynchings being even more common, and they are never repealed.

However, they’re also more severe in many ways. For instance, former slaves and their descendants still work on the plantations they’d worked on before the Civil War, being paid barely enough to survive.

Interracial marriages, which have become more and more prevalent since the 1960’s, are not only unheard of in the Confederacy, but are still illegal, having never been made legal by Loving v. Virginia (1967).

Which are your favorite facts about the American Civil War? Tell me in the comments!