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The following questions and answers were obtained from the book entitled Civil War Quiz and Fact Book. These questions and answers are just a glimpse of the many facts contained in this book.
Q: Who fired the first shot of the Civil War?
A: The first shot of the war came at 4:30 a.m., Friday, April 12, 1861, when Captain George S. James, commander of the Confederate artillery at Fort Johnson overlooking Charleston harbor, ordered Henry S. Farley to fire a 10-inch mortar, beginning the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
Q: Was Fort Sumter ever retaken by U.S. forsec during the war?
A: No. After the fort was occupied by Confederate forces in 1861, it
was not surrendered. However, it was evacuated at war's end by the retreating Confederate
forces in Charleston and was repossessed by Federal troops in February 1865.
Q: Where was the first capital of the Confederacy?
A: Montgomery, Alabama, was the first capital of the Confederacy and held that
distinction from February 1861 until the following May, when the capital was moved to
Richmond (Virginia).
Q: How were battles named during the Civil War?
A: With some exceptions, Federal forces tended to name battles for the nearest
body of water, while Confederates usually named battles after the nearest community -- practices
which gave some Civil WAr battles more than one name, like Bull Run/Manassas and Antietam/Sharpsburg.
Q: What Northern state issued the first call for black troops in the Civil War?
A: Rhode Island.
Q: What was the first regiment of black troops mustered in the Civil War?
A: Union General Bejamin F. Butler organized the first Louisiana National Guard, the Union's
first black regiment, in New Orleans in September 1862. The 1st South Carolina, anothe black unit,
had been authorized near Beaufort a few months earlier, but the 1st Louisiana was mustered first.
Black troops were first used in battle in the Civil war on October 29, 1862, when the 79th U.S.
Colored Infantry engaged Confederate forces at the Battle of Island Mount in Missouri.
Q: Who was the first black officer to hold a field command in the Union Army?
A: Major Marin R. Delany, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, was the Union's first black
field officer.
Q: Who was Union Colonel Robert G. Shaw and why was his death newsworthy?
A: Shaw was the 26-year-old white commander of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. He was
killed leading the unsuccessful bloody assault on Battery Wagner near Charleston on July 18, 1863. When the
Confederates buried him in the same mass grave with his dead black soldiers, he became a hero to abolitionists
in the North.
Q: How many black soldiers served in the Union army during the Civil War and how much were they paid?
A: During the Civil War 166 black regiments were organized in the U.S. Army and, according to official reports
178,975 black troops. For black soldiers the pay for most of the war was $10 a month regardless of rank -- significantly
less than the pay of a white person.
Q: When did the Emancipation Proclamation take effect?
A: The Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on September 22, 1862, became effective
on January 1, 1863, and ordered all slaves to be freed in areas in rebellion against the United States."
Q: What naval operation required the largest fleet of the Civil War and produced the war's largest naval bombardment?
A: The joint army-navy expedition against Fort Fisher, the huge Confederate fort at the entrance of the Cape Fear River
near Wilmington, North Carolina, mounted the largest fleet of the war -- 64 naval warships and numerous troop trnsports. Never before
had the U.S. Navy assembled so many ships for a single engagement. The fleet fired 20, 271 artillery rounds into the fort on December
24-25, 1864 -- and returned January 13-15, 1865, to fire 19,682 additional rounds into the fortification. Fort Fisher surrendered on January
15, 1865.
Q: When did the Civil War officially end?
A: On May 10, 1865, President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation declaring that "armed resistance to the authority
of this Government in the said inserrectionary states may be regarded as virtually at an end."
Q: How much money did the Civil War cost the U.S. government each day?
A: According to a report released by the U.S. Congress in 1863, the financial cost of fighting the war was $2.5 million a day.
Q: Which side suffered more battle deaths in the war, Union or Confederate?
A: Battle deaths were higher for the North, which recorded an estimated 110,000 killed or mortally wounded in battle, compared with
an estimated 94,000 Confederate battle deaths.
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