Civil War Anecdotes – Page 5 – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

Balthasar Best and the American Dream

By Mel Maurer
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2005, All Rights Reserved

I was first introduced to Balthasar (also Balthazar) Best by his great grandson, Bill Lasswell, almost two years ago (2003) on the battlefield at Gettysburg. My grandson, Eric, and I had just parked near the Pennsylvania Monument on our auto tour and had walked across the road to the tableau describing the actions of the 1st Minnesota when an older couple approached us. The man said he had noticed that my license plates were from Cuyahoga County. He told us how his great grandfather, Balthasar Best, who had fought with the 1st Minnesota, had survived a shipwreck in 1850 somewhere off the shores of Cuyahoga County when he was just a boy. Mr. Lasswell then asked if I might know anyone named Kleinschmidt – the name of the family that took the young Balthasar in when he managed to reach shore. I told him that I didn’t but that I would do some research when I got home on the shipwreck and the Kleinschmidts.

Andersonville’s “Clerk of the Dead”

By Dick Crews
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved

Civil War prison Andersonville was only in operation for fourteen months, but is considered the most notorious United States prison. During this short period of just over a year of operation, 45,000 Union soldiers would suffer miserably and 13,000 would die.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, General in Chief, U.S. Army?

by E. Chris Evans
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2005, All Rights Reserved

Is the idea of the great Italian revolutionary warrior Giuseppe Garibaldi trading in his famous red shirt for a Union officer’s blue frock coat incredible? Is the idea improbable, even impossible, especially since this man would be filling a position first held by General George Washington?

Family Reminiscences of the Confederacy

By Bishop Beverly Tucker
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2001, 2008, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: The article below is a transcript of a talk given to the Roundtable on October 19,1959 by the Rt. Reverend Beverly Tucker, PhD, Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Northeast Ohio. The talk was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. In 1994, Dr. William Schlesinger, one of our founders, had the recording transferred to cassette tape and submitted it for inclusion in the Roundtable archives. This talk was later transcribed by Robert E. Battisti and published in The Charger in the winter of 2001 and then on the Roundtable’s website in 2008.

Famous Last Words

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2018-2019, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the May 2019 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

Clark W. Griswold Sr. in the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: “I’m retiring.”

Retired NFL quarterback Jay Cutler: “I’m not really looking to do a lot of work right now. I’m looking to do the exact opposite of that.”

From the song “Closing Time” by the group Semisonic: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

The Pemberton Who Succeeded

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2011-2012, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the May 2012 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

Raise a glass of the bubbly to toast the bubbly. However, this toast to the bubbly is not intended to be a toast to champagne, but a toast to a different bubbly, namely America’s beverage, Coca-Cola, which was invented and first sold in 1886. After all, isn’t it always a good time to toast “the real thing”? Another good reason to toast Coca-Cola is because there are some connections between Coca-Cola and the Civil War.

Compassionate Confederate

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2011-2012, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the January 2012 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

“War is all hell.” “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.” These words of William Tecumseh Sherman, which encapsulate the ethos of war, are familiar to Civil War enthusiasts. But sometimes even in the midst of hell, some small speck of heaven is present, an unexpected act of kindness for the enemy that runs counter to the primary objective of the perpetrator. One such incident that occurred at the Battle of Gettysburg was the encounter between John B. Gordon and Francis Barlow. Surprising as it seems, that was not the only one.

All Her Hopes

By David A. Carrino, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2011-2012, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the December 2011 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

The phrase “fratricidal war” has been used to describe the Civil War as a way of conveying how that war figuratively pitted brother against brother. In many cases it wasn’t just figurative, but literal. However, not all brothers fought on opposite sides in the Civil War, and one such example are the Moungers. John and Thomas Mounger were members of the 9th Georgia Volunteer Infantry, which was part of the Army of Northern Virginia. The regiment’s colonel was their father, also named John. On July 18, 1863, in the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, son John sent the following letter to his mother.