A Civil War battle was briefly paused so that soldiers could watch a fistfight.

U.S. History

I n one of the more peculiar moments of the Civil War, an entire battle came to a screeching halt. Everybody — Union and Confederate soldiers alike — stopped fighting to watch an event that was unfolding nearby. In his memoir, a soldier named John H. Worsham recounted the strange incident, which took place on May 5, 1864, on Saunders Field in Virginia.

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By the Numbers

Duration (in days) of the Battle of the Wilderness

Black soldiers enlisted in the Union Army

180,000

Did you know?

Harriet Tubman led a Union raid that freed 750 enslaved people.

Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most famous "conductor" of the Underground Railroad, a network of people who helped enslaved people escape to freedom in the 1850s. But during the Civil War, she worked as a nurse and a spy. On June 1, 1863, after gathering intelligence from enslaved people about Confederate torpedoes along the Combahee River, she led 150 Black soldiers in a military operation against the plantations of wealthy secessionists. Tubman guided three gunboats down the river and destroyed several prominent plantations. Along the way, her boats picked up around 750 enslaved people and brought them to freedom. She was the first woman to lead a major military operation in the United States.