Remembering the Tallest Man in the American Civil War
One can only imagine what the Union soldiers must have thought at the sight of a giant wearing a confederate uniform running toward them in the heat of battle. Henry Clay Thruston was beyond a doubt the tallest man in the Confederate army. Perhaps at the time he lived he could have been one of the tallest men in the world at 7 feet 7 ½ inches in height. When the civil war broke out, Henry joined the Confederate Army. Thruston survived the war hostilities with only a couple of relatively minor wounds. He became a prisoner of war late in the conflict, but did not spend long in confinement, being paroled in June of 1865. For many years following the Civil War, he spent most of his time traveling with a circus, and was always billed in these side shows as being “The World’s Tallest Man”.