10 Things No One Ever Told You About The [American] Civil War. Enjoy.

10 Things No One Ever Told You About the Civil War

This spring marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, which remains the deadliest war in American history. As such, a number of newspapers, magazines, and blogs are beginning to revisit the war as well as the culture of its era in hopes of gaining new understanding on the conflict that destroyed the nation. But the opportunity to study the war anew brings with it the chance to set the facts straight on a variety of issues, some large, some small. Many of us, if not most of us, have picked up erroneous facts about the war throughout our lives and received them without question. The war, after all, was a long time ago, and it gets hard to separate fact from fiction when so many generations have passed, and the records from the time were often poorly maintained. Here's your chance to sort out the real history.

1. More soldiers died from disease than battle: A stunning 3 percent of the entire population -- about 1,030,000 people -- died as casualties from the war, including 620,000 soldiers. But that figure needs some qualifying. The battles themselves were indeed the bloodiest in American history, but only about a third of those soldiers were killed in battle. The rest died from disease because of poor medical treatment facilities and a generally weaker health care system and life expectancy in the 19th century.

2. It really was about slavery: Yes, the much-mentioned phrase "states' rights" came into play when a group of Southern states seceded to form the Confederate States of America. And yes, many of their viewpoints were influenced by the belief that the U.S.A. was an organization from which any state was free to leave at any time. But the major factor in these growing disputes was slavery, and the election of Lincoln was the spark that made slave-holding states fear for their livelihood and culture. Multiple CSA states mentioned slavery in secession documents; Texas' documents read in part, "We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment." Charming. The CSA was many things, but it was primarily a country devoted to the institutionalized subjugation of African slaves.

3. The first Civil War casualties were accidents: The Civil War began with the Confederate siege of Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April 1861. After a couple of days of bombardment, the Union troops were low on supplies, and U.S. Major Anderson agreed to a truce and cease-fire. No Union or Confederate troops died during the actual shooting. However, Anderson's condition for surrender had been a 100-gun salute to the stars and stripes, and during the salute, a spark from one of the guns landed in a pile of cartridges and caused an explosion that killed a private named Daniel Hugh and mortally wounded another private named Edward Gallway. The first men to die in the Civil War did so not for their countries, but during an empty tribute.

4. The lives of Lincoln and Booth crossed more than once: Unlike the Lincoln-Kennedy theories, this one has merit. Plus it's downright creepy. Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, was the only one of the president's four boys to make it to adulthood, and he owed that life in part to the actions of a helpful stranger. While waiting at a train station in the mid-1860s, Robert fell off the platform but was saved by the quick reflexes of a nearby man he recognized as a famous actor of the day: Edwin Booth. Edwin's brother was John Wilkes Booth, who would kill Robert's father in April 1865 at the end of the Civil War. Weird but true.

5. Robert E. Lee almost commanded the Union troops: Robert E. Lee was a career soldier, the kind of guy who could write his own ticket thanks to his skills as a leader and tactician. He served in the U.S. Army for more than 30 years before the Civil War broke out, at which point President Lincoln offered Lee the command of the Union forces. Lee was a Virginian, though, and while he didn't like seeing his home state secede, he stayed true to his roots and went with them. He became a military advisor to CSA President Jefferson Davis and eventually assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, the primary Confederate fighting force in the war. Just imagine how things would've gone if he'd stayed with the Union.

6. Women got involved in the war through espionage: Women were still second-class citizens during the Civil War era, and they wouldn't even be allowed to vote for 60 years. But they played a pivotal role in the war as spies, using their position as social engineers and hostesses to acquire information about the enemy that could be passed on to their husbands and colleagues. One of the most famous spies for the Confederacy was Belle Boyd, who got her start by charming a Union official who was guarding her after she shot another Union soldier who had torn down her family's Confederate flag. (She was not one to be trifled with.) She passed the information he coughed up to Confederate officers. But the Union got in the game as well. To name just one woman of many, Virginia resident Elizabeth Van Lew worked at a local prison tending to Union soldiers and passing their information about CSA troop levels on to Union commanders. She also organized a spy ring of clerks and workers throughout CSA offices.

7. More than two dozen POW camps were set up during the war: Captured prisoners on both sides were shipped off to prison camps throughout the country, where they faced conditions that were often more daunting than those on the battlefield. Many men died of disease, malnutrition, and starvation while living in cheap tents and small quarters. Union and Confederate soldiers alike treated their prisoners roughly, but the greatest atrocities were carried out at the Andersonville camp in Georgia, a Confederate camp that housed 45,000 Union prisoners throughout the war, of which almost 13,000 died from poor conditions. They were often buried in mass graves. It's just one of the many dark moments in a war that affected the country in ways many people forget.

8. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't free every slave, or make slavery illegal: Signed on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. Kinda. It immediately freed 50,000 and proclaimed free more than 3 million more, though there were about 4 million slaves in the country at the time. The document was primarily a politically motivating tool for the Union, who freed slaves as they fought their way through the Confederacy. Several Union slave-holding states were exempted, including Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. What's more, though the proclamation purported to free all American slaves, it didn't actually forbid the practice of slavery. That came with the passage of the 13th Amendment in December 1865.

9. The war was a turning point for naval battles: Up until the Civil War, the U.S. Army was without the latest armored warships, relying on steam-powered frigates for their heaviest work. As a result, the Union set about bulking up their navy with ironclads, steam-powered ships covered in plates of iron or steel. This was cutting-edge sea armament at the time, and the Civil War was the first time ironclads ever fought each other. The Union and CSA ironclads demolished the wooden warships that came their way, putting an end to the wood-ship era of sailing and changing the world forever. Ironclads also brought about the use of torpedoes and advanced mines. The design lasted until dreadnought-model ships took over in the early 20th century.

10. Canada played a significant role: The Province of Canada was officially neutral during the Civil War, but Canadians showed sympathy for both sides of the American conflict. Many supported the Union, which was buying goods and supplies from Canada at the time, while others who favored independence from British rule felt a kind of compassion for the Confederates who were also waging a war for independence. The CSA also used Canada as a base for multiple operations. In the St. Albans Raid, a group of Confederate soldiers hiding out in Canada crossed the border and robbed a series of banks, and they fled back across the border with Union soldiers on their trail. Canadian courts split the judgment by returning the stolen cash to the banks but also in freeing the CSA raiders, stating that they were acting on behalf of their country's military and therefore not committing a crime. It was a way to play both sides, and to avoid officially supporting one cause over another.

(Special thanks to a reader, Anna Miller, for this informative post).