Civil War Oddities #36

John Ericsson, the genius who produced the Monitor, was forced to build his ship with private capital, some $275,000 in all and was to be reimbursed by the Federal Government only if it were effective against the Confederate ironclad Merrimac, or Virginia.

The Monitor was modeled after Swedish lumber rafts Ericsson had known in his youth; its deck was only two inches above water. An effort to sell the idea of such a ship to Napoleon III failed, but the French did order five ironclad ships, despite the reputation of the inventor as a crank.

Civil War Oddities #35

After the fall of Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia, the Confederate Navy Yard was moved to a spot more than two hundred miles inland at Charlotte, North Carolina. For three years it produced cannon balls, iron masts, and other fleet supplies.

Civil War Oddities #34

Of 546 nuns known to have served as battlefield nurses, 289 were from Ireland, 40 from Germany and 12 from France. 

Absolution under fire: Father Corby blesses the Irish Brigade at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863

Rev. William Corby was born October 2, 1833 in Detroit, Michigan, to Daniel Corby, an Irish native and his wife Elizabeth, a Canadian. He was an American priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and a Union Army chaplain attached to the Irish Brigade. The Irish Brigade perhaps best knows Corby for his giving general absolution on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Fr. Corby also served twice as President of the University of Norte Dame. The school's Corby Hall is named for him, and a statue of him similar to that at Gettysburg stands outside this building on the Notre Dame campus.

Widely remembered among military chaplains and celebrated by Irish-American fraternal organizations, his statue with right hand raised in the gesture of blessing was the first statue of a non-general erected on the Gettysburg Battlefield. He died December 28, 1897.

Civil War Oddities #33

Mrs. Bridget Divers, (“Irish Biddy”) wife of a private of the 1^st Michigan Cavalry, won fame in the war by standing picket duty day and night, riding on raids against the Rebels, and taking the places of officers in emergencies. She once rode twelve miles to reclaim the body of a captain, and brought it into camp on horseback, having been passed by the Confederate because of her sex.

Biddy served as a nurse and surgeon, and was familiar to thousands of troops, a stout, leathery-faced little woman with bleached hair and a cherry disposition. In at least one instance, in the battle of Fair Oaks / Seven Pines, she rallied a retreating Federal regiment and took it back into action.

Civil War Oddities #32

The biggest man-made explosion in history was planned for the demise of the ship Louisiana, set adrift with 215 tons of fused powder in an effort to destroy Fort Fisher, near Wilmington, North Carolina. The scheme, conceived by General Benjamin Butler, failed because of poor fuses, and the H-Bomb of the civil war became a dud.

When Federal forces finally took Fort Fisher, a Confederate prisoner, queried as to the effect of the big blast, said, “It was horrible. Woke up every man in the fort.”

The ship actually went up, piecemeal, on a sand bar at some distance from the fort, casing no damage.

Civil War Oddities #31

Eight Federal generals came from the small town of Galena, Illinois (15,000 population). They probably owed their rank to their friendship with U. S. Grant, the most celebrated wartime citizen of the place.

The list included John Aaron Rawlins, who was Grant’s chief of staff; the Seneca Chief, Ely S. Parker, an engineer who became Grant’s secretary and postwar commissioner of Indian Affairs, Jasper Maltby, a gunsmith said to have been the inventor of a telescopic sight; and Augustus L. Chetlain, a storekeeper who became Consul to Brussels and a leading Chicago banker.