A young Confederate soldier from sunny Virginia found himself shivering in a Dakota blizzard, while scurvy rotted his teeth. What was he doing there and why? The answer lies in the 300 Virginia soldiers who "galvanized" into the Union army. These were men from Union prisoner of war camps who enlisted in the United State Volunteers and were sent west to fight Indians. Why "galvanized?" An iron bucket coated with zinc is said to be "galvanized," but it is still an iron bucket; thusly a Confederate clad in Union blue is still a Confederate, hence the slang term of the 1860s, a "galvanized...
A young Confederate soldier from sunny Virginia found himself shivering in a Dakota blizzard, while scurvy rotted his teeth. What was he doing there a...
Today, politicians wage vicious war over entitlements and welfare, but there was a time when citizens expected nothing from the Federal government except mail delivery. The Civil War changed all that. Beginning with small payments to seriously wounded soldiers, the system expanded step by step until age alone could bring a pension. In 1890, 37 percent of the entire Federal budget was in direct payments to veterans or their widows. At least a million Union soldiers applied for pensions, and a huge new structure was built just to house the army of clerks and examiners who shuffled papers and...
Today, politicians wage vicious war over entitlements and welfare, but there was a time when citizens expected nothing from the Federal government exc...
