George Washington's Ghost in the Civil War
As the Civil War dragged on into the summer of 1863, Americans in the North grew increasingly war-weary. Tired of fighting such a violent and prolonged conflict, men began to dodge the draft and question President Abraham Lincoln's leadership. It was even one of the reasons Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee decided to invade the Union that year. He hoped to exploit the weariness and force a negotiated end to the war.
That negotiated peace would never come. Despite trepidation about President Lincoln, the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania, and the draft riots in New York City, Union forces persevered and overcame them. Some might attribute these victories to the Army's leadership at the time, but there are strange stories that attribute them to the Army's leadership of another time – specifically George Washington.
That's right: the first Commander-In-Chief, George Washington.
Washington, of course, was not alive during the Civil War. He died in 1799 at his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia, at 67 years old. But there were many who believed his spirit was very much alive when the country needed him most, and the two most prominent sightings came in July of 1863. That was the year Congress passed the nation's first-ever draft law to fill the ranks of the Union Army depleted by two years of fighting – and almost no one was happy about it.
For starters, the law allowed wealthy men to avoid service by paying a $300 fee to hire a substitute, nearly $7,500 in today's dollars. Since the working class was earning the 2024 equivalent of around $25 a day, it was a fee that was just out of reach for most Americans. Working-class Irishmen in New York City, frustrated that they could not afford the substitution fee and that Black men could not be drafted, began to protest. On July 13, that protest quickly turned into a three-day race riot.
The police were quickly overpowered. Union troops in the city, especially members of the 1st Battalion of the U.S. Invalid Corps, a reserve component made of wounded and disabled troops, were under assault. The War Department ordered regiments from Gettysburg to quell the uprising, but they would not arrive in the city for another day. The rioters were left unabated and didn't care that the Union Army's wounded troops might not be a good target for their ire.
Legend has it that the soldiers, despite their wounds and disabilities, held the rioters at bay for a long time but were eventually pushed back to the intersection of Duane and Broadway. It's a documented fact that the invalids tried to disperse the oncoming crowd with a volley of fire, but what they did next was bold, and the outcome was nothing short of miraculous.
An order was given to fix bayonets and then to charge into the rioters. After the battle, some of the soldiers of the invalid regiment swore they saw Gen. George Washington himself in his Continental Army uniform. They said they heard his voice and charged on his command. The ballsy bayonet charge didn't stop the riot entirely, but it did prevent any more of the Union troops from getting wounded.
But Washington's intervention apparently didn't end there. Just two weeks before the New York Draft Riots, the Union and Confederate Armies met at the Battle of Gettysburg. It was there, during one of the most famous engagements of the entire Civil War, that some soldiers said they also saw General Washington. The Union held a small rocky mount known as Little Round Top that withstood a handful of brutal Confederate charges. If the rebels had been successful, the entire Federal left flank would have been exposed – and the battle might have been lost.
Little Round Top was 
not a position the Union Army planned to defend, but it turned out they needed to hold it at all costs. After some initial jockeying, the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment, commanded by Col. Joshua Chamberlain, held Little Round Top against two successive enemy charges. After the second charge was repulsed, the Union troops were tired and low on ammunition. Chamberlain soon realized the rebels were getting ready for another charge, one his men might not be able to hold back.
Instead of defending the position, he ordered a bayonet charge down the hill, taking the rebels by surprise and capturing hundreds of them. It was a brilliant move that may have saved the entire battle for the Union. It certainly saved the day.
Their inspiration during the charge, many of the Union soldiers later attested, was a pale figure riding a horse with a sword many said was on fire. Even the Confederates saw this man, decked out in full Continental Army regalia, and tried to shoot him off his horse, but no one could stop him. On both sides, they all believed they saw none other than George Washington leading the way down the hill.