Cats fought in the Civil War. True story. For the South!

In between headlines on Gen. William Starke Rosecrans and cartoons depicting attempts to evade the draft, the Nov. 8, 1862 edition of Harper's Weekly featured a rousing profile in patriotism on an emerging Civil War hero -- Union Jack. Though this soldier was of the "brute creation," he exhibited "far more courage, devotion, trust-worthiness ... than many a shoulder-strapped and gold-bedizened animal now walking upon two legs."

Jack's story makes for quite a war-dog yarn. It seems that before fighting for the North, Jack, a "young dog of the mastiff breed, of medium size and jetty blackness, except a white breast and a dash of white on each of his four paws," belonged to a rebel jailer in Front Royal, VA. As the loquacious reporter for Harper's Weekly tells it, Jack took a liking to the men of the First Maryland regiment while they were there on provost guard duty, and left behind his Confederate beginnings to accompany the Union soldiers to the battlefield. And it was there that he displayed his valor and loyalty.


The puppy, as he's often called in the piece, was not afraid of battle and remained on the front lines with his men through shelling and gun fire. Jack was also known to shepherd the soldiers along through roll calls running "about in the greatest excitement, as if to call his friends together, and then, placing himself alongside of the drummer, would put up his nose and commence a long howl."

A gentle-mannered dog, Jack was still considered a lion by the soldiers who "claimed him as their own." Such the staunch loyalist was he, that Jack never so much as flirted with his rebel roots again. Indeed, his "disgust and hatred" for Confederate soldiers was evident:


This profile of Jack was clearly placed to boost morale in the North during a time when the Civil War -- a war in which two percent of the U.S. population would eventually be lost -- was going full throttle. But there's little doubt that this war-dog was worthy of the commendation he received in this article. When this story was published the men in his regiment were already planning to bring him back to Baltimore where they would honor him with "a splendid collar made expressly for their favorite."

Cat macros have existed since at least the 1870s, when British portrait photographer Harry Pointer created a carte de visite series featuring felines posed in various situations, to which he added amusing text intended to further enhance their appeal.[4]