Things I didn’t know: Civil War edition
Best Defense is in summer reruns. Here is an item that originally ran on May 6, 2015.
Best Defense is in summer reruns. Here is an item that originally ran on May 6, 2015.
Life continues to surprise me, for which I am grateful. Here are some things I learned recently about the Civil War, or at least re-learned:
— “There were eight regiments of North Carolinians — four white and four black — who fought for the Union army.”
— One factor leading to the Civil War that I hadn’t seen before was that there was a major recession in the late 1850s — that is, the Panic of 1857. It hit the industrial North much harder than it did the agrarian South, and so made Southerners overconfident about their financial strength going into the war.
— Before the war, William T. Sherman briefly practiced law in Leavenworth, Kansas.
— Lincoln on Grant’s tenacity: “When Grant once gets possession of a place, he holds on to it as if he had inherited it.” (A quotation I once knew, having underlined it in Harry Williams’ book on Lincoln and his generals, but had forgotten.)
Image credit: Henry Mitchell (1876), The State Arms of the Union/Wikimedia Commons
More from Foreign Policy
At Long Last, the Foreign Service Gets the Netflix Treatment
Keri Russell gets Drexel furniture but no Senate confirmation hearing.
How Macron Is Blocking EU Strategy on Russia and China
As a strategic consensus emerges in Europe, France is in the way.
What the Bush-Obama China Memos Reveal
Newly declassified documents contain important lessons for U.S. China policy.
Russia’s Boom Business Goes Bust
Moscow’s arms exports have fallen to levels not seen since the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Sign up for World Brief
FP’s flagship evening newsletter guiding you through the most important world stories of the day. Delivered weekdays.
By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. You may opt out at any time.
