Obscure American history trivia

The Union almost lost three corps commanders at Gettysburg. Reynolds was killed, Sickles and Hancock were seriously wounded.

Both sides lost a ton of generals there: Semmes, Barksdale, Armistead, Garnett, Pender and Pettigrew for the Confederates; the Yankees lost Reynolds, Zook, Weed, Farnsworth and Vincent (promoted posthumously), who was the real hero of Little Round Top, not Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose legacy was greatly burnished by his post-war accomplishments and by the fact that he lived to tell about, and expand upon, his role.

The noise made by the Confederate artillery barrage that preceded Pickett's Charge is supposedly the loudest ever in the history of North America. It supposedly was heard as far away as Philadelphia.

 

There are a whole lot of people whose post-war reputations were made or tarnished by the printing press more than what they actually did.
Custer was a fuckup, but his wife wielded a bunch of influence after Little Big Horn. Longstreet may have been the best commander of the war, but the Jubal Early had to blame the failings of Lee at Gettysburg on a non-Virginian.

 

I'd credit George Thomas with that rank. He was certainly the best army administrator of the war, which showed in the morale of units he commanded. That played out in his armies' defense at Chickamauga, his rout of Bragg's confederates at Lookout Mountain and the destruction of the Confederate Army of Tennessee with a scratch force at Nashville. If he had a weakness, it might have been a persecution complex he seemed to nurse, possibly feeling suspect because he came from Virginia. He could have accepted command of the Army of the Ohio but refused it. The course of history at Chickamauga might have been different if he had accepted.

 

Thomas also did well at Murfreesboro.
I don't know if history would have changed without him. Defeating Bragg at Chickamauga and Hood at Nashville wasn't exactly stiff competition. I always say those two got U.S. Army bases named for them because they did more to defeat the south than many Union generals!

 

I enjoy Civil War geekdom. It's a fascinating topic and the fallout still reverberates today.

 

In my case, it comes naturally. When you are a history geek and grow up literally where it was fought, it makes it easy to be immersed.

 

Yes, I had first cousins in Fairfax County and we would drive down to see them every year, right through Gettysburg (the US 15 bypass wasn't built yet) and that got my interest going. We had CW forage caps, toy guns, etc., the whole 9 yards. Plus at 6 years of age I got to go to the 1961 100-year reenactment of Bull Run. That was mighty cool.

 

I recall the observance of the Civil War centennial in the early 1960s as a very big deal. Of course it happened as the civil rights movement was gaining serious momentum.

 

Serious question: Pennsylvania is a commonwealth. So why is it called Penn State University?

 

Because Penn State is actually a private school.

 

Paul Revere doesn’t like where this thread is going…

 

I thought it was the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) that was private, but Penn State is public. It's the state's land-grant university.