The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts

by Burke Davis

Book Overview

Surveys technological inventions, prominent personalities, battles, and clandestine operations in addition to relating bizarre incidents, famous firsts, and unusual facts about the Civil War. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517371510
• ISBN13: 9780517371510
• Release Date: December 1988
• Publisher: Wings
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.3"

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imagine that !

If you thought you knew everything about the civil war than chances are you were wrong. I found out things in this book I never knew, like Robert E. Lee was buried without any shoes, an 8 year boy watched as Jefferson Davis was driven off to prison and that boy was Woodrow Wilson, plus so many other facts covered in this book.If you enjoy fascination facts than this book is for you.

--Civil War Trivia--

After a lifetime of reading, Burke Davis put together a book of amazing and interesting pieces of information that don't usually show up in the historical accounts of the Civil War.Here are a few examples of his research: The Civil War was known by more than twenty-five names. The most unusual: The Brothers War--The War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance--The War for the Union and The War of the Rebellion.Abraham Lincoln had smallpox when he gave the Gettysburg Address and several members of his wife's family were soldiers in the Confederate Army. Also President Lincoln admitted that one of his favorite tunes was "Dixie." General Nathan Bedford Forrest, CSA had twenty-nine horses shot from beneath him during the war years. Belle Boyd started her career as a spy for the South when, at the age of seventeen, she killed a Federal soldier. After the war, about 3,000 former Confederate officers left the South and moved to foreign countries. And there's so much more to learn.

A solid look at many little-known aspects of the Civil War.

This book was a welcome find when I was pulling together source material for my book, Everyday Life During the Civil War. As Burke Davis says, it is a serious book, and contains a wealth of information not easily gleaned from other sources; it is unfortunate that the words "strange" and "fascinating" seem to have given some the wrong impression of this work. I recommend it for anyone interested in the Civil War.

The stories behind The Story

Did you know that the owner of the farm where the first Civil War fighting took place hosted the peace treaty signing in his front parlor in Appomattox? Col Wilmer McClean, seeking to escape the fighting after the First Battle at Bull Run, moved to Southern Virginia and settled in Appomattox. Little did he know the fighting would eventually follow him--and end with the meeting of Grant and Lee in his front parlor. Minutiae and the smaller aspects of the Great War Between the States is all documented in this rather small volume. This is not a stale treatment of those lesser-known facts of the Civil War, but a lively telling of those incidents and thoughts on the Great American Schism. It is hard to put the book down once you start reading it. A must read.