Despite the period being a chivalrous time, women became more suspect and prone to search as the war progressed, as noted in the journals written by prominent Southener Mary Chestnut. "Women who come before the public are in a bad box now. False hair is taken off and searched for papers. Pistols are sought for... bustles are 'suspect.' All manner of things, they say, come over the border under the huge hoops now worn. So they are ruthlessly torn off. Not legs, but arms are looked for under hoops."
The oldest general in the Union Army was John Ellis Wool, who retired in August of 1863, at the age of seventy-nine. His Confederate counterpart was David Emanuel Twiggs, who was in his seventies when he died in July of 1862.
Adam R. Johnson led a small group of Confederate cavalry across the Ohio River from Kentucky into Newburgh, Indiana on July 18, 1862, and made the first capture of a Northern town by Confederate forces. Johnson constructed fake cannons out of blackened logs, stove pipes, and wagon parts, and convinced Union officers that they were ready to shoot. Union forces surrendered weapons and other provisions. Johnson's men left just a few hours later - with no blood shed.
In the aftermath of the July 18, 1863, Battle of Fort Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina, Confederates dumped the bodies of 272 black soldiers from the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and their white commander Colonel Robert Gould Shaw unceremoniously into a single mass grave to show contempt and with hopes of dissuading white officers from commanding black troops. But Shaw's parents replied that there could be "no holier place" for their son's final resting spot than surrounded by his "brave devoted soldiers."