Small Talk-Trivia

Small Talk — December 2017

By Stephen Davis · Originally published December 2017 · pp. 33–46

All the Fighting They Want The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City’s Surrender July 18–September 2, 1864

The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee River May 5–July 18, 1864 Davis’ narrative history of the Atlanta Campaign is divided into two paperbacks from Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War Series. Volume One, A Long and Bloody Task, carries Sherman’s forces from Dalton in northwest Georgia to the Chattahoochee River. There the Confederate government was forced to relieve its army commander, Joseph E. Johnston, and replace him with Gen. John B. Hood. Paperback, 192 pages. $14.95 + $4.95 shipping

To order a signed copy from author Stephen Davis call 404.735.8447 or email [email protected]

The first Confederate major general to die in the war was not from battle causes—just old age. He was in fact the South’s oldest general, born in 1790 and dying on July 15, 1862. While in the old army he surrendered all U.S. property in Texas to secessionists in February 1861. Can you name him? 2. “General Grant is a great general. I know him well. He stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk; and now, sir, we stand by each other always.” Who is alleged have said this? 3. Jefferson Davis had six secretaries of war; Lincoln had two. Who was Lincoln’s first war secretary?

New Titles from Stephen Davis A Long and Bloody Task

With the Yankee army five miles outside of Atlanta, Hood promised not to give up with city without a fight— which is all President Jefferson Davis asked. Davis’ companion volume, All the Fighting They Want, describes Hood’s efforts to defend Atlanta. Its fall in early September 1864 was a mortal blow to Confederate hopes for independence and a big boost to Lincoln’s hopes for presidential reelection. Paperback, 192 pages. $14.95 + $4.95 shipping

Alexander Stephens, Confederate Vice President, was imprisoned after the war for five months at a U.S. fort in Boston harbor. Which one? 5. Who was the Maryland physician who set John Wilkes Booth’s leg on April 15, 1865, was arrested, convicted for complicity in the assassination plot, and served four years of a life sentence? 6. Youngest Union general KIA/MW died July 3, 1863, after being ordered to lead his cavalry brigade in a charge against Confederate infantry. Who? 7. On May 10, 1864, his infantry attack, a “lightning foray,” as Gordon Rhea terms it, broke Lee’s line at the Mule Shoe salient at Spotsylvania, and led to Grant’s decision for a bigger attack on May 12. Name the officer. 8. What was a “shinplaster”? a) a military jail or brig; b) a soldier’s ration of hard baked bread; c) a monetary note of small denomination; or d) a moist poultice for wound treatment. 9. On Nov. 29, 1863, outside Knoxville, Tenn., Longstreet’s Confederates were repulsed attacking a Union fort, hindered by telegraph wire strung among tree stumps, and blocked by a deep wide moat dug outside the parapet. Name the fort. 10. “Old Missus marry Will de weaber/Willum was a gay deceaber/His face was sharp as a butcher’s cleaber/But dat did not seem to greab er.” These lines are from a lesser known stanza of a song popular in the wartime South. Which song? See page 46 for answers. Steve Davis is the Civil War News Book Review Editor. He can be contacted by email at [email protected]

David E. Twiggs. William T. Sherman. Simon Cameron, serving March 1861–to January 1862. Fort Warren. Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd (1833-1883). Though pardoned by Pres. Andrew Johnson, Mudd and his name were cleared by Pres. Jimmy Carter, who issued a proclamation absolving him of any involvement in the assassination. 6. Elon John Farnsworth, born July 30, 1837, died at age 25. 7. Col. (soon Brig. Gen.) Emory Upton (1839-1881). 8. c. “’Shinplasters’ were signed and circulated by bankers, grocers, milk dealers, and innkeepers, and were usually redeemable in the goods or service of the individual issuing them.” (Richard Cecil Todd, Confederate Finance [1954], p. 116). 9. Fort Sanders, named for Union Brig. Gen. William P. Sanders, who had been mortally wounded nearby just days before. 10. “Dixie,” composed by Daniel Emmett in 1859 in New York City.