Innovations on and off the battlefield that helped define the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Created by jhsu on Apr 9, 2011
Last updated: 04/12/11 at 12:04 PM
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General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army of Northern Virgina to General Ulysses S. Grant during a meeting at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. Other Confederate forces would continue sporadic fighting until June 1865, but the war had drawn to a close.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/surrender.htm
At dawn of March 25, 1865, Confederate forces under General Gordon made a last-ditch assault to try and break through encircling Union forces that had besieged the city of Petersburg for more than nine months. Union commanders heard of the possible Confederate breakthrough via telegraph and ordered a successful counter-attack that dashed Confederate hopes. That set the stage for a decisive Union assault on April 2 that would finally end the siege.
Union forces laid 15,000 miles of telegraph lines, compared to the Confederates' 500 miles during the war. General Ulysses S. Grant used such communications to coordinate more than half a million Union soldiers spread across 800,000 square miles near the end of the war. General William T. Sherman said: "The value of the telegraph cannot be exaggerated, as illustrated by the perfect accord of action of the armies of Virginia and Georgia."
http://www.civilwarhome.com/telegraph.htm
In 1865 Gatling made improvements to his
gun, and the United States government
held firing trials at the Washington (D.C.)
Naval Yard. The U.S. government officially adopted the gun in 1866. The Gatling gun may have only seen combat during a few skirmishes in the American Civil War, but the machine gun would have a tremendous impact on future battlefields.
http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/collateral/articles/f06.gatling.gun.pdf
A Union naval attack on the port of Mobile Bay, Alabama ran into the threat of underwater mines (called torpedoes at the time). After a mine sank the USS Tecumseh, a monitor-class ironclad, Rear Admiral David G. Farragut ordered his fleet to press on with the attack -- even if he probably never uttered the famous phrase: "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" The Union fleet defeated the local Confederate ships and sealed off the last major Confederate port.
Confederate mines damaged or sank 35 U.S. Navy ships during the war. Such mines never had a huge strategic impact, but their widespread use pointed to the future of naval warfare.
http://www.navalhistory.org/2010/08/05/%E2%80%9Cdamn-the-torpedoes%E2%80%9D-the-battle-of-mobile-bay-5-august-1864/
Stalemate in the trenches around St. Petersburg, Virginia foreshadowed the grim modern warfare still to come. Eager to achieve a breakthrough, Union forces dug a mineshaft under Confederate lines and blew open the defenses with 8,000 pounds of black powder. But rather than pour through the gap, Union troops ended up trapped and slaughtered in the crater. Union losses were about 4,000 versus 1,500 for the Confederates. The scene was depicted in the film "Cold Mountain" (2003).
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hh/13/hh13f.htm
Gatling's letter to President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 reflected a keen interest in getting his gun into action. Gatling wrote: "It is regarded by all who have seen it operate, as the most effective implement of warfare invented during the war, and it is just the thing needed to aid in crushing the present rebellion." Gatling would later write in 1877 about having created the gun so that so many soldiers need not risk their bodies on the battlefield.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/gatlinggun.htm
A Confederate submarine called the H.L. Hunley made a daring late night attack on the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor off the coast of South Carolina. The submarine rammed Housatonic with a spar torpedo packed with explosive powder and attached to a long pole on its bow. The spar torpedo embedded in the sloop's wooden side was detonated by a rope as Hunley backed away. The resulting explosion that sent Housatonic with five crew members to the bottom of Charleston Harbor also sank Hunley with its crew of eight. H.L. Hunley earned a place in the history of undersea warfare as the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime.
http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org12-3.htm
The Confederates built a small, steam-powered torpedo boat called the David. It could attack ships with an explosive mine, called a torpedo, attached to a spar that jutted out in front of it. But unlike the USS Alligator or CSS Hunley, The David was not a submarine -- it simply rode low in the water.
The David made a somewhat successful attack against the gunboat USS New Ironsides, which damaged the target enough to cause her to withdraw and make repairs. That marked the first successful torpedo attack in history. The original David almost made history again with a bold attack on a Federal ironclad on the Stono river; however its torpedo failed to detonate.
http://www.charlestonillustrated.com/hunley/david.htm
Alligator, the U.S. Navy's first submarine, met an inglorious end. She had been intended to attack the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia, but retreating Confederates had already scuttled the ironclad by the time the submarine was fit for duty. A crewless Alligator was eventually sent to Charleston to join a Union naval attack on that Confederate port.The towing ship, USS Sumter, ran into a Nor'easter storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and eventually cut the submarine loose to save itself.
Three months later, the Confederates launched their own submarine of a design similar to Alligator, CSS H.L. Hunley, in Mobile, Ala. It would later become the first submersible to sink an enemy warship.
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/usw/issue_30/alligator.html
The USS Monitor sank during a violent storm off North Carolina's Cape Hatteras on Dec. 31, 1862. But the U.S. Navy would continue building and deploying Monitor-style ironclads for the rest of the war, whereas the Confederate Navy struggled to build more of its Virginia-style ironclads. The Monitor's turreted design would also inspire many future naval warships.
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/iconic-civil-war-ships-salvaged-engine-gets-tlc-0981/
The Gatling gun was the first successful rapid-fire machine gun. Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling, a physician, created his first prototype in 1861 and received the first patents for his machine gun on Nov 4, 1862. The Union Army did not officially endorse the gun, but General Ben Butler and several other commanders bought some guns for their respective units.
http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/collateral/articles/f06.gatling.gun.pdf
During the Battle of Second Manassas (Bull Run), President Lincoln telegraphed a colonel: "What became of our forces which held the bridge till twenty minutes ago…?" Lincoln used the telegraph to become an unprecedented commander-in-chief by keeping up to date on battle reports and cajoling reluctant generals from afar. Historians still treasure the roughly 1,000 telegrams sent by Lincoln for the insights they have provided into the president's mind during the Civil War.
http://hnn.us/articles/30860.html
The first ever battle between ironclad ships took place at Hampton Roads off the southeastern Virginia coast. On March 8, 1862, the Confederate ironclad Virginia had steamed into Hampton Roads where she sank the USS Cumberland and ran the USS Congress aground. The latter was later set afire and eventually exploded. The CSS Virginia returned to continue wreaking havoc on the Union blockade fleet the next day, but found herself facing the USS Monitor ironclad. The ships dueled for more than three hours until the CSS Virginia withdrew.
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/civilwar/n-at-cst/hr-james/9mar62.htm
The Railways and Telegraph Act allowed President Lincoln to take control of the country's railroads when public safety was at risk. Relatively few railroads were seized this way, but Northern railroad operators quickly fell into line with the Union war effort.
Confederate forces may have made first good use of railroads to bring up timely reinforcements during the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) in the summer of 1861, but they had just 9,000 miles of railroad compared to the Union's 20,000 miles. Union forces quickly became adept at protecting, repairing and extending their railroads, and could also bring many more trains to bear for transporting troops. Such an advantage would weigh heavily toward the ultimate victory for the Union.
http://www.gatewaynmra.org/articles/civil-war1.htm
John Ericsson, a Swedish-American naval engineer, received a contract from the U.S. Navy to build an ironclad steamship with a novel turret design that allowed for 360 degree firing. His first ship, the USS Monitor, launched on Jan 30, 1862, just a few months before its historic first naval battle. Its innovative but odd design earned it the name "Cheesebox on a raft."
http://www.johnericsson.org/history.htm
On September 24, 1861, Thaddeus Lowe ascended in a U.S. balloon to more than 1,000 feet (305 meters) near Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, and began telegraphing intelligence on the Confederate troops located at Falls Church, Virginia, more than three miles (4.8 kilometers) away. Union guns were aimed and fired accurately at the Confederate troops without actually being able to see them—a first in the history of warfare.
Both Union and Confederate forces occasionally used balloons for reconnaissance throughout the war. Union forces even built what some call the first first aircraft carrier, the George Washington Parke Custis, based on a rebuilt coal barge with a flight deck superstructure.
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Lighter_than_air/Civil_War_balloons/LTA5.htm
On May 18, The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a front-page article describing an “infernal machine” that had suddenly appeared in the waters off the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Alarmed, the harbor police, acting upon rumors that the 33-foot, cigar-shaped vessel was intent on sabotage, impounded the mysterious boat. It turned out to be a submarine belonging to immigrant inventor Brutus de Villeroi, who had originally hailed from France. Navy officials were impressed by its unique air purifying system and ability to deploy a diver while submerged. That led to a contract on Nov 1, 1861 for a second, larger submarine to be built for the U.S. Navy.
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/usw/issue_30/alligator.html
Confederate forces capture the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia and find the hulk of a steam frigate called USS Merrimack. They set about converting the hulk into an ironclad ram ship that carried 10 guns, could shrug off cannon fire and had the ability to ram and sink wooden ships. Their hope was that the renamed CSS Virginia could break the blockade imposed on the Confederate states by the superior Union fleet.
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-us-cs/csa-sh/csash-sz/virginia.htm
At 4:30 a.m., the heavy thud of a mortar broke the stillness. A single shell from Fort Johnson on James Island rose high into the still-starry sky, curved downward and burst directly over Fort Sumter. Confederate batteries on Morris Island opened up, then others from Sullivan’s Island, until Sumter was surrounded by a ring of fire. As geysers of brick and mortar spumed up where balls hit the ramparts, shouts of triumph rang from the rebel emplacements. In Charleston, families by the thousands rushed to rooftops, balconies and down to the waterfront to witness what the Charleston Mercury would describe as a “Splendid Pyrotechnic Exhibition.”
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Fort-Sumter-The-Civil-War-Begins.html#ixzz1J5WxznXk
Eli Whitney patented his cotton engine, or “gin,” in 1794. Overall, the slave population in the South grew from 700,000 before Whitney’s patent to more than three million in 1850—striking evidence of the changing Southern economy and its growing dependence on the slave system to keep the economy running. The total number of slaves had soared to almost four million by 1860.
http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24411
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