Civil War Technology

The movie Glory accurately portrayed several aspects of the Civil War. One example was the battle scenes. Just like during the Civil War, the movie portrayed the soldiers fighting by lining up in a row and firing at each other in a straight light. The movie made this strategy seem ineffective as it yielded a large number of casualties, which was the reality of the Civil War. The movie also revealed the difficulties of loading and firing a musket during a battle. The movie also accurately portrayed what

In the history of war there are many different aspects and some similarities. The Great War introduced the “automatic” gun and the idea of trench warfare. The Great War had more casualties by artillery and it was said “No flesh or a bone could live above ground in the battlefield”. Everything was fought across “No man’s Land”. Many advancements led to soldiers hiding behind a wall of dirt in the ground which really changed up the game. Fighting this way seemed more dangerous due to the automatic guns and it was more effective than the U.S. Civil War where everything was fought face to face only a few yards away.

The Civil War is a harsh part of American history but the life of the soldiers was a real struggle. Most people know that the soldiers had a miserable life but it was far worse than people assume. Weapons weren’t easy to use, training was like starting from scratch and the camp life was miserable. Whether is was the North or the South, life wasn’t easy. Therefore, during the Civil War, the soldiers continued the courageous and daring fight in spite of poorly constructed weapons, labored training, and dreadful living conditions.

In August of 1861, William F. Ketchum patented the Ketchum Hand Grenade. Shortly after, in the years of 1863 and 1864, the grenade was implemented in the American Civil War.

A Rifle could shoot a bullet up to 1,000 yards–and were more accurate. However, until the 1850s it was nearly impossible to use these guns in battle because, since a rifle’s bullet had roughly the same diameter as its barrel, they took too long to load. (Soldiers sometimes had to pound the bullet into the barrel with a mallet.)

Rifling was lining inside the barrel of the gun which made the bullet go much farther and faster. Rifling made the bullet not move in the barrel of the gun. With muskets, the soldier had to push the bullet into the barrel of the musket, taking a large amount of time because the musket and the ammunition was the just about the same size. While with the minie ball fit easily into the gun because the diameter of the bullet was smaller than the barrel. Some of these guns also had different technology. The Spencer Rifle had a very quick reload, and was very dangerous in war. There were also repeating rifles, these could shoot multiple bullets in a row. This was an upgrade of the Spencer Rifle and the musket because it was the first gun to be able to shoot more than one bullet in a row. Most of the repeating rifles that were used in the Civil War could shoot up to seven bullets, making it not just a skill of who could reload faster, but who had a better shot. The Union in the north had repeating rifles, while the Confederates in the south did not have them. This is because the North was much more industrialized than the South, so the North could make many more guns than the South. Ships were also used in the attack at some points, but sips were mostly used for transporting cargo and blockading the

Following the Civil War, a second industrial revolution in America brought many changes to the nation’s agriculture sector. The new technologies that were created transformed how farmers worked and the way in which the sector functioned. Agriculture expanded and became more industrial. Meanwhile government policies, or lack of them for a while, and hard economic conditions put difficult strains on farmers and their occupation. These changes in technology, economic conditions, and government policy from 1865 to 1900 transformed and improved agriculture while leaving farmers in hardship.

The Union army, unlike the Confederates, had multiple companies that provided simple, yet devastating weapons. One of these weapons was the .52 caliber breech-loading Billinghurst-Requa battery; it was produced only 50 times. This weapon consisted of 25 rifled barrels side by side that, when primed, were set off by a lanyard to inflict massive damage over a small range of territory.7

Railroads are a form of transportation which isn’t used as much anymore, but in the Civil War, it was a very important way of transportation. The transcontinental railroad was invented around the Civil War and was a faster way to transport goods, troops, and people. The Civil War was also the first war in US history to use railroads because they were important in moving troops and goods faster. “The Civil War was the first war to use railroads, encouraged by President Lincoln — himself a former railroad lawyer — who understood how vital they were for moving men and supplies” (http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/). The North also had an advantage as far as trains came with 20,000 miles of track compared to the south’s 9,000. The north also had their own locomotive

The Revolutionary soldier and the modern soldier battled for similar reasons but the resources available to them such as rations, uniforms and weapons were very different indeed. As you can imagine, the resources in 1775 were much more limited than that of today 's interconnected networks which provide fast and seemingly unlimited resources to the soldiers of the modern armed forces. During the revolutionary war, the soldiers were not only battling the invading British forces, but a limited supply stream due the infancy of the nation they were fighting to protect. The modern soldier fights wars all across the world and can receive supplies seemingly as easy as you or I could buy bread from the grocery store. The revolutionary soldier had to battle a larger, more well supplied and better trained British army with less than half the quantity of supplies and those of lesser quality as well. American revolutionary soldiers, British soldiers, even the modern soldier must rely on supplies and resources, if these are cut off, or wasted, it could spell disaster for any army.

The Civil War, also called The War Between the States, was one of the bloodiest wars in American history. What made the Civil War such a massacre? The Civil War was such a bloodbath because the technological advances were so far superior to the tactics of the infantry, that the weapons virtually obliterated the soldiers. Soldiers would form lines known as a battalions. In these battalions, soldiers would basically march to their deaths. In addition to weapons doing so much damage, fortification on the battlefield was far more advanced than had ever been before. The Cheveau-de-frise was the main focus of armored fortification in the Civil War. This fortification consisted of 10 to 12 foot logs with large spiked-shaped, wooden stakes

The most important technological advance was the change from the highly used musket ball to the Minie ball. The Minie ball was a cone shaped bullet looking ammunition. Made by Claude Minie in 1846 made the Minie Ball and changed the ammunition that soldiers used in war. The original musket ball was very inaccurate and usually bounced around inside the

Around noon, Union and Confederate cavalry troops battled three miles east of Gettysburg but Stuart was eventually repulsed by cannon fire led in part by Gen. George Custer and the Union Cavalry. The diversion attempt failed. Back at the main battle site, just after 1 p.m. about 170 Confederate cannons opened fire on the Union position on Cemetery Ridge to pave the way for the Rebel Charge. This was the heaviest artillery barrage of the war. The Federals returned heavy cannon fire and soon the battlefield was covered in smoke and dust. Around 2:30 p.m. the Federals slowed their rate of fire, then stopped firing, to conserve ammunition and to fool the Rebels into thinking the cannons were knocked out-and that's exactly what the Rebels thought too. But as the Rebels got within range, Federal cannons opened fire using grapeshot which is a shell containing iron balls that flew apart when fired, and they also used deadly waves of rifle fire. Soon the Rebel army was torn apart but they still moved forward. Pickett’s charge was almost more after the once majestic army of 13,000 had its numbers of troops dwindle.. The Rebels still move forward, shooting then charging with bayonets. The battle lasted for about an hour mostly of hand-to-hand combat. Finally what was left of Pickett’s charge (5,500) retreated. Lee admitted this was his mistake and the tide of war now turned in the North’s favor. The Union lost (either dead, wounded, or missing) about 23,000, and the Confederates lost about

Modernizing war became easier when new weapons were developed. The American Civil War was the first place that weaponry began to change. The infantry carried new handheld guns such as rifles with breech loading and shells that exploded. The range of fire with the rifles was now unlimited so soldiers could hit anything they could see. Cannons were no longer in battle because of the invention of rifles. The rifles were more accurate than the other guns; therefore, the men that were shooting the cannons could easily be killed. The Battle of Gettysburg is a prime example of how these weapons changed the way wars were fought. The Gettysburg battle was fought with ninety thousand union soldiers and seventy-five thousand confederate soldiers. The

Both the Union and the Confederacy had good military leaders who used and/or invented promising war tactics. The North used a strategy known as the Anaconda Plan. This is where the Union Forces would surround the Confederacy, cut its trade, divide it into two at the Mississippi River, and squeeze it to death. At first the Anaconda Plan was ridiculed, because both sides were originally stuck on old fashion tactics of using mass troops to attack a certain point. When both sides found the new technology in weaponry, made this old strategy suicide the Anaconda Plan was implemented. New technology caused old war tactics to change. Another strategy, I personally like to call “The Jaw” was demonstrated by the brilliant Robert. E. Lee from the South. One war tactic used by Ulysses S. Grant from the North in The Siege of Vicksburg changed the way war was fought from then on. It was called Total War. Total War involves not only war against the opponent’s soldiers but war against their civilians and economic system, in hopes of breaking their moral and in hopes that they give up the thought of winning because victory is just not worth the losses, so defeat may be welcomed. The combination of the ancient technique of total war, which