Your War or Mine? Yankees, Rebels, and Manchus Quiz

Answer: White Lotus Rebellion

The massive Taiping Rebellion, which devastated China's richest provinces and killed an estimated 20 million people, lasted from 1850 to 1864. The Nian Rebellion, a large-scale bandit uprising in the North China Plain, lasted from 1853 to 1868. The Panthay Rebellion, a revolt of mainly Muslim minority peoples in the southwestern province of Yunnan, lasted from 1855 to 1873. In addition to these, there was also a Northwestern Muslim Rebellion in Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang from 1862 to 1878. China's Manchu rulers must have envied President Lincoln for the simplicity and straightforwardness of the problem he faced.

The White Lotus Rebellion took place in western China and lasted from 1796 until 1804.

Answer: He was challenged to a duel by Preston Brooks

After Rep. Preston Brooks' assault on Sen. Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber on May 22, 1856, Burlingame denounced Brooks in a speech to the House. Brooks responded by challenging Burlingame to a duel. Burlingame accepted, specifying rifles as the weapon and the Canadian side of Niagara Falls as the venue. Brooks chose not to appear (citing the danger of traveling across a hostile region), and Burlingame was lionized in the North.

There are towns named after him in California and Kansas.

Answer: Yung Wing

Yung Wing (using Mandarin pronunciation and Pinyin spelling, that's Rong Hong) recounts the episode in his memoirs, published in 1909: "Brigadier-General Barnes of Springfield, Mass., happened to be the general in charge of the Volunteer Department. His headquarters were at Willard's Hotel. I called on him and made known to him my object, that I felt as a naturalized citizen of the United States, it was my bounden duty to offer my services as a volunteer courier to carry despatches between Washington and the nearest Federal camp for at least six months, simply to show my loyalty and patriotism to my adopted country, and I would furnish my own equipments." (p. 158) The general, father of one of Yung Wing's Yale classmates, gently declined his offer, and Yung Wing proceeded to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, to order machine tools for a Chinese government arsenal.

Answer: Pennsylvania

This was of course the summer of Gettysburg.

Woo was born in a village near Shanghai in 1834, and came to the United States in 1855 by taking service as a cabin boy with Commodore Matthew C. Perry during his return voyage from the Far East. He settled in Lancaster, Pa., where he was naturalized on September 22, 1860. During the Gettysburg campaign, he responded to Governor Curtin's call for volunteer militia to defend the state and served from late June to mid-August in Company I, 50th Infantry Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Emergency Militia. Woo returned to China in 1864 to preach the gospel and administer a missionary hospital in Shanghai, where he died in 1919.

For more information on Woo and other Chinese who were involved in the American Civil War, see the Web site of the Association to Commemorate the Chinese Serving in the American Civil War (ACCSACW).

Answer: She had been built for the Chinese government

The Dai-Ching ("Great Qing Dynasty") was ordered by the Chinese government from James C. Jewell & Co. of Brooklyn, New York. When the vessel was completed in April 1863, however, she was purchased by the U.S. government for blockade duty.

Answer: Issachar Roberts

Issachar Jacox Roberts (1802-1871), a Baptist missionary from Tennessee who was preaching near Canton, taught Hong about Christianity in 1847.

Roberts later went to serve as an advisor in the Taiping capital of Nanjing in 1860 but, dismayed by Hong's unorthodoxies, he left town in 1862.

Answer: In assisting the stricken HMS Plover before the Dagu Forts (Tianjin), 1859

In the summer of 1859,the British and French envoys approached Tianjin in order to proceed to Beijing and exchange ratifications of the unequal Treaty of Tianjin (concluding the Second Opium War). Qing forces in the Dagu Forts resisted them on June 25, inflicting especially heavy damage to the gunboat HMS Plover. Tattnall, who was standing by as a neutral observer, ordered his ship to come to Plover's assistance.

A native of Georgia, Tattnall resigned his commission in 1861 and served in the Confederate Navy during the Civil War.

Answer: Frederick Townsend Ward

Frederick Townsend Ward led the EVA from 1861 until his death in battle on September 21, 1862. Charles George Gordon, a British artillery officer who would later perish at Khartoum, took command of the EVA in 1863.

Bostonian Robert Gould Shaw died leading the African-American 54th Massachusetts Regiment in the attack on Fort Wagner at Charleston SC, on July 18, 1863.

Caleb Carr, better known as the author of "The Alienist," has written a very readable biography of Ward called "Devil Soldier."

Answer: He was born in New Rochelle, NY

Burgevine (1836-1865) was born in North Carolina, where his father had been a French instructor at UNC Chapel Hill. A great deal of uncertainty surrounded his death, which occurred after he had fallen into the hands of Qing government forces. The Qing authorities told American officials he had drowned, but suspicions remained that he had been executed. According to some accounts, his body showed signs that "death by slicing" had been partially administered (though it is entirely possible this was done after he was dead).

Answer: cotton

The "Cotton Famine" caused by the war drove the prices of this key industrial raw material to unprecedented heights in world markets and threatened to shut down England's textile mills.