Status Updates From Battle Cry of Freedom

The Union states grew more wheat in both 1862 and 1863 than the entire country had grown in the previous record year of 1859.

Black men could vote in only 6 northern states and the possibility of them doing so elsewhere was no more popular among many northern voters.

Recognized today as an illness, alcoholism in General Grant's time was considered a moral weakness.

German revolutionary Karl Marx viewed the American war against the "slave oligarchy" as a "world transforming revolutionary movement".

The Black Union regiments reflected the Jim Crow mores of the society that reluctantly accepted them: they were segregated, given less pay then white soldiers, commanded by white officers who called them "niggers" and intended for use mainly as garrison and labor battalions.

The Civil War marked a milestone in the transformation of nursing from a menial service to a genuine profession.