********************** THE GOLDEN TOUCH ***********************
California was not the site of the earliest U.S. gold rush. Rather, it took place in regions destined to be included in the Confederacy -- North Carolina and Georgia. So much of the yellow metal came from the hills of North Georgia that a branch of the U.S. Mint was established at Dahlonega. Since gold and silver coins made up the only U.S. legal tender prior to the Civil War, the national supply of metal was a critical issue. Production in California peaked between 1851 and 1857, then fell to an average of about two million ounces annually during the war years.
When the first shell exploded over Fort Sumter, gold pieces were abundant. Eagles, named for the design stamped upon them and first issued in 1795, were worth ten dollars. A double eagle, issued by the U.S. Mint beginning in 1850, was twice as valuable. Half-eagles and quarter-eagles abounded, as did gold three-dollar and one-dollar coins. Anyone who didn't have a few pieces of gold in his pocket was indeed poor.
The outbreak of the war soon led to hoarding, causing more and more gold coins to disappear from circulation. This situation was made worse when the U.S. Treasury began to print greenbacks that were not redeemable in gold. This device, designed to multiply the perception of national wealth, led to depreciation of currency everywhere. In the Confederacy, the crisis reached monumental levels just before the surrender at Appomattox.
In March 1863, citizens residing in the Confederate capital of Richmond were offering $400 in currency for $100 in gold. Thirty days later, a person was lucky to get five double eagles for $500. In Atlanta, a full year before Sherman arrived, a single eagle jumped in value to $121.10 in July 1863.
Clark Wright of the Ninth New York Zouaves wrote: "In September of 1861, $1.10 of Confederate money was equal to $1.00 in United States gold." By January 1865, it took $60 Confederate money to buy one dollar in gold.
********************** FRIENDLY FIRE **************************
Friendly fire, called by any name, is seldom mentioned in the official records. Letters and diaries of soldiers, as well as occasional newspaper accounts reveal that men began shooting their comrades less than a month after Fort Sumter. They didn't stop until after Appomattox.
The largest single-day casualty list of the war occurred on September 17, 1862, part of which stemmed from an epidemic of friendly fire. Of the estimated twelve thousand men in blue who fell that day, about twenty-two hundred went down in a corn field near Antietam during a period of twenty minutes.
Federal officers never liked to admit that some men became so panic-stricken that they ran from their enemies. Survivors never wavered in their insistence that when this happened, Union gunners opened fire on chaotic masses in which many of their own colleagues were intermingled with temporarily victorious Confederates.
On the Joseph Poffenberger farm, about four hundred men were killed or wounded in a matter of minutes. Many of them were casualties of two volleys fired from Federal regiments. While trying to flank a stone wall, men of two units in blue thought they were facing the enemy, so they leveled their fire at each other.
Major General Joseph K. Mansfield, who later received a mortal wound that day, was horrified at witnessing an action he was powerless to stop. Men of the Tenth Maine Infantry halted briefly in a field bordered by Smoketown Road. They spotted a band of soldiers scurrying for cover in the East Woods, so they quickly opened fire. Mansfield tried to order them to cease fire, but confusion was so great that the message never reached them. By the time the men from Maine had emptied their guns, those stragglers in blue who were not lying on the field had made it to safety in the woods.
At another center of chaotic action, men of the Fifty-ninth New York Infantry were told to stop a frontal assault by Confederates. Hastily reloading their guns and without having had a signal, they fired almost in concert -- directly into the backs of the men of the Fifteenth Maine Infantry. Colonel John W. Kimball of the target regiment raced to the side of Major General Edwin V. Sumner. "For God's sake," he reputedly shouted to his commander, "tell the New Yorkers to cease fire; they're killing your men as fast as the enemy!"
On the Mumma farm during the same day's action, men of the Fourteenth Connecticut Infantry halted briefly near the edge of another corn field. A picket spotted men running toward them, so a spontaneous but ragged volley was fired. Only when men in advance of the rest reached the line of soldiers in blue did the Connecticut troops learn that they had cut down comrades under the command of Brigadier General Max Weber.
Even veteran soldiers manning some Union batteries added to casualties caused by friendly fire that day at Antietam. With darkness rapidly approaching, gunners of a Maryland battery decided to get off a few more shots. Seeking to fire over the heads of troops making up a regiment from Maine, they under- estimated the range. As a result, their first round took out four Federals, and their second knocked a lieutenant from his horse.
************ "GODS AND GENERALS" - IT'S A WRAP **************** After 71 days, 158 speaking roles and 20,000 re-enactors on cameras, director-producer-screenwriter Ron Maxwell wrapped Warner Brother's "Gods and Generals" December 13 in Maryland.
Earlier, Ted Turner worked one day (with Robert Duvall and Stephen Lang), had one line, and sang "The Bonnie Blue Flag." His Ted Turner Pictures spent $54 million on the Civil War picture -- but Turner, as an actor, got Screen Actors Guild scale, $636.00. Robert Duvall headed to holiday in his hacienda in Buenos Aires.
************** TOM CRUISE AND THE CIVIL WAR *******************
Actor Tom Cruise will play the lead role in the upcoming American Civil War film "Cold Mountain," reports producer Sydney Pollack.
"I'm doing 'Cold Mountain' with Tom Cruise and (director) Anthony Minghella and we're in deep preparation for that..." Pollack said he hoped to start principal photography in June for "Cold Mountain," the film adaptation of the best-selling American Civil War novel by Charles Frazier, and a crew was scouting locations in North Carolina and Canada.
Minghella directed the Academy Award-winning film "The English Patient."
