Civil War Oddities #13

Some Mexican companies of the Confederate armies gained a reputation for unreliability. Private Juan Ivra was not of this stripe. In one Western action he staged a one-man charge into the faces of forty astonished Federals, and forced them to flee.

Civil War Oddities #12

A young Confederate officer, Captain S. Isadore Guillet, was fatally shot on the same horse on which three of his brothers had been previously killed. He willed the animal to a nephew as he died.

Civil War Oddities #11

Sergeant Henderson Virden of the 2^nd Arkansas went to war at the advanced age of twenty-five, and for a year had no word from his wife and children, back in Pea Ridge. In March, he found himself marching through familiar country, and was soon fighting across his own farm in the battle of Pea Ridge, or Elkhorn Tavern.

Virden was wounded and carried into his own house, where his wife tended him until he could return to his regiment. During his convalescence Mrs. Virden conceived a son, Wiley, who became the father of eight children. The youngest of this third generation, Colonel John M. Virden, was in 1960, as the Centennial of the war approached, one of the country’s most devout Confederates, and an editor of military service newspapers in Washington, D.C., after a wartime career with Claire Chenault’s Flying Tigers and a hitch as press-relations man for General Eisenhower at SHAPE headquarters in Paris, France.

Grandpa Virden lived to be ninety-three, with a Yankee Minie Ball under the skin of his back and a huge white scar on his chest.

Civil War Oddities #10

Though more than 27,000 were casualties of the battle of Chickamauga, and 4,000 were killed, only one soldier is known to lie on the field today.

He is Private John Ingraham, of the 1^st Confederate Regiment, Georgia Volunteers, and an orphan who was buried by comrades where he fell and remained there despite removal of all other known bodies in development of the battlefield park.

Civil War Oddities #9

Two brothers, Jack and Jasper Walker, of Charlotte, North Carolina, fought at Gettysburg with the 13^th North Carolina. Jasper, the younger, was wounded on July 1, as the fifth color bearer of his regiment to be shot. A surgeon amputated his leg. Jasper was captured and sent to a Northern prison.

On the retreat from Gettysburg, Jack Walker was also shot and lost his leg by amputation. He went to another Federal prison.

The brothers returned home after the war to become prosperous citizens, familiar in the town as they stumped about on cork legs. On Jasper’s wedding day, when he accidently fell and broke his artificial limb, he borrowed the leg of his gallant brother – a perfect fit.

This, as Confederate veterans were fond of telling youngsters, was the only case on record in which one man married while standing on the leg of another.

Civil War Oddities #8

The 8th Wisconsin regiment had one of the most remarkable mascots in the Union Army: Old Abe, a lively eagle. Abe had been brought to war by a soldier who had traded for the bird with an Indian on the frontier, in exchange for five bushels of corn. In camp, the bird followed his master like a puppy.

In battle Abe invariably soared aloft until the shooting stopped, and then returned to the 8th Wisconsin. He feared artillery fire, and flew so high during engagements that he was almost lost to sight and had only a birds’-eye view of most battles in the Western theater. He sustained at least one wound, but survived to live for fifteen years in the Wisconsin State House, and today, a gem of the taxidermist’s art, is on display in the Wisconsin State Museum.

Civil War Oddities #7

Two of the Civil War’s most famous, and bloody battles may have been fought because of trifles. Gettysburg, because a few soldiers needed shoes, and their column was sent to that Pennsylvania village for them. Sharpsburg, or Antietam, because a Confederate office wrapped three cigars with a vital army order, and carelessly dropped or discarded them. This order, found by a Federal soldier, enabled the usually cautious General McClellan to attack Lee’s divided army.