re: Name a little known fact about the Civil War

Dumbing down America. Keep it simple stupid.
Cause of Civil War: evil white Southerners owning black slaves.

If you try to bring real history into discussion your just trying to rewrite above statement.

Was slavery important? Yes. But so were economics (exports, imports, protective tariffs, funding of federal government, sectional power structures, states rights, and legality of secession, etc

The Day New York Tried to Secede
BY RON SOODALTER
10/26/2011 • ACW FEATURE, CIVIL WAR, POLITICS

During the first three months of 1861, New York City boldly flirted with leaving the Union. The reasons were decades in the making, but the sentiment was never more pointed than on January 6, 1861, when New York Mayor Fernando Wood addressed the city council. “It would seem that a dissolution of the Federal Union is inevitable,” he observed, noting the sympathy joining New York to “our aggrieved brethren of the Slave States” and suggesting that the city declare its own independence from the Union. “When Disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master—to a people and a party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her, take away the power of self-government, and de­stroyed the Confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City?”

Then, as now, New York City was the nation’s financial hub, and had made its reputation—and the lion’s share of its revenues—by supplying goods and services to the slave South. Most New Yorkers were decidedly pro-Southern.

Slavery wasn't so much a moral evil as an economic necessity, according to Mayor Fernando Wood, a former shipping merchant who well knew the city's dependence on the South's slave economy. Wood believed black people were racially inferior and regarded slavery as a “divine institution.”

Sadly, many New Yorkers had a similar view of slavery—or at least a high regard for the profits to be made from it. “New York belongs almost as much to the South as to the North,” observed the editor of the New York Evening Post. The city’s businessmen marketed the South’s cotton crop and manufactured everything from cheap clothing for outfitting slaves to fancy carriages for their masters. Wood himself called the South “our best customer. She pays the best prices, and pays promptly.”

Wood’s political base included the city’s gentry and businessmen who made their living from the slave industry as well as the working class whose jobs would be threatened by freedmen surging North. The mayor was not far wrong when he claimed “the profits, luxuries, the necessities––nay, even the physical existence [of New York] depend upon…continuance of slave labor and the prosperity of the slave master!”

Of all the cities in America, New York was the most invested in the transatlantic slave trade.

New York’s ship owners built their vessels to accommodate large slave cargoes; its businessmen financed and invested in the voyages and its seamen made the trips. The profits realized from a single slaving expedition were staggering: A slave purchased for $40 worth of cloth, beads or whiskey would sell for between $400 and $1,200 on the blocks of Charleston, Mobile, Rio de Janeiro or Havana. With the sale of an average cargo of 800 slaves bringing as much as $960,000—a sum equalling tens of millions in today’s currency—many a ship owner, investor and captain grew wealthy from the proceeds of a single successful voyage.

Between 1858 and 1860, New York launched nearly 100 slave ships. And in keeping with the latest maritime technology, many of these vessels were New York–built steamers that could handle much larger “cargoes” than the earlier sailing vessels. It was all about business; the more Africans that could be crammed aboard, the greater the profit.

“Few of our readers are aware…of the extent to which this infernal traffic is carried on, by vessels clearing from New York, and in close allegiance with our legitimate trade,” the New York Journal of Commerce wrote in 1857, “and that down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparative little interruption, for an indefinite number of years.”

Arrests at sea were rare. And on the infrequent occasions when slavers were arrested and brought to trial in federal court, they were almost invariably released or given a token slap on the wrist.

In New York City, where most of the Northern prosecutions took place, hardly any of the few indicted were actually convicted. Although slave trading had been a capital offense since 1820, not a single slave trader had been executed by 1860.

Skilled attorneys were employed anonymously by New York’s established slave traders to defend accused captains and their crews. The pay was considerably better and the verdicts almost certain to run in their favor. Their defense arguments were transparent and absurd; nonetheless, New York’s judicial system regularly allowed slavers to walk out of court scot-free.

In December 1860, with Lincoln elected and the threat of secession fast becoming reality, some 2,000 terrified New York men of commerce gathered in support of the South—and of secession. “If ever a conflict arises between the races,” proclaimed attorney Hiram Ketchum, “the people of the city of New York will stand by their brethren, the white race.” These men—and thousands like them—owed their livings to the cotton trade, and they were willing to do virtually anything to ensure the Southern connection remained intact.

Mayor Wood acted quickly. When he declared national disunion to be a “fixed fact” on January 6, he also proposed that Gotham declare itself an independent commonwealth, to be called the Free City of Tri-insula, Latin for “Three islands”—Long, Staten and Manhattan. As its own sovereign city-state, it would be free to “make common cause with the South” and deny Federal troops the right to march through the city.

Incredibly, the Common Council—a notably corrupt lot of politicians informally dubbed “The Forty Thieves”—actually approved Wood’s proposal and had copies printed and widely distributed. For a brief period, it appeared as if the North’s major commercial port and business center would join the South in rebellion. The council reversed itself only after the attack on Fort Sumter in April; had they stuck by their original decision, the outbreak of war would have made them all traitors and arguably put them in line for the gallows

Once the war began, New York rallied to the cause and supplied invaluable troops and support to the Union effort. In the words of historian Murat Halstead, “The thunder of Sumter’s guns waked the heart of the people to passionate loyalty. The bulk of the Democrats joined with the Republicans to show by word and act their fervent and patriotic devotion to the Union.” The city came alive with mass meetings and patriotic rallies—and, never one to miss an opportunity, one of the most vociferous in his support of the Union and condemnation of the rebellious South was Fernando Wood.

But as the war dragged on, most New Yorkers held fast to their Democratic roots, their rabid hatred of blacks and their opposition to Lincoln. In 1863, when conscription became an issue for working men throughout the North, it was a mob of New York residents that tore up the city’s streets, burned out its buildings and left dozens of dead in its wake. By the war’s end, New York had much to celebrate—and much to forget.

Article greatly edited to fit space limitations. Go read it yourself.

The last flag of the confederacy was taken down in England. A supply ship flying the confederate flag was at sea when the surrender occurred. They did not receive the news till the ship reached England.

Civil war was largely about racism and the south not wanting to industrialize

The north started it

The Civil War prison camp at Elmira had two observation towers constructed for onlookers. Citizens paid 15 to look at the inmates. Stands by the towers sold peanuts and lemonade while inside many starved.

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, approximately 24,000 were 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.

Definition of young inexperienced and panicked soldiers.

Andersonville supposedly had a dead line--prisoners that had had enough could rush one of the boundaries and expect a bullet to put them out of their misery.

Little known fact--some historians now believe that hookworm was partly responsible for the emaciated look of the prisoners. Hookworm was not known during the Civil War.

The Civil War was a world war and the British "Free Trade" Empire was reliant on the trade slaves for cotton industry they had established.

quote:

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The entire Vietnam conflict (roughly 1958-1975) - 58,000 American casualties

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There were 58,000 KIA in the Viet Nam war. WIA was something like 300,000.