Civil War Technology Research Paper

American Civil War Technology The election of 1860 was among four candidates: John Breckenridge, a Democrat, John Bell, Constitutional Union Party, Stephen Douglas, a Democrat, and Abraham Lincoln, a Republican from the North. When election day came and all votes were in Douglas had twelve electoral votes, Bell had thirty-nine, Breckenridge with seventy-two, and in the lead, Lincoln had 180 electoral votes (Peters and Woolley). Lincoln had won the election, but he had not won everything yet. The South would succeed into a new country called the Confederates and start a war over slavery. Lincoln would need some help to win the war, but what could give him the advantage? The solution were three new inventions. While many innovations were
“It [the telegraph] worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations” (“Morse Code and The Telegraph”). Basically, the telegraph would send electrical impulses over a long wire laid between two points connected by telegraph stations, and once the electricity hit the other station it would pick up the impulses. These electrical impulses were received in a code of dots and dashes called Morse code made by Samuel Morse (Mountjoy 32). Samuel Morse was one of the top contributors to the telegraph along with William Sturgeon and Joseph Henry (Doss 40; Mountjoy 32). Shockingly, the messages sent by telegraph were delivered almost instantly no matter how far (Mountjoy 30). Additionally, these messages were called telegrams, cablegrams, wires, and a cable because of the way they were sent (31). Before the war, the war department in the government did not have the telegraph. To communicate, they sent letters by a person on horseback (Wheeler). By the time the war started, there were about 50,000 miles of telegraph wires strung (Mountjoy 33). In 1857, the Confederates only had 107 telegraph stations compared to the 1,467 that the Union had (Allen and Allen 116). Because of the need to communicate during the war, the Union established a telegraph corps in 1661 with 1,200 operators. To gain an advantage in battle, soldiers would carry telegraph lines into battle areas and other places
Originated in France in 1815, the ironclad was steam powered by burning coal (Bailey; Weaver). Before the war, the ships used in the U.S. were made of wood and used sails to catch the wind until a Swedish man named John Ericson made the first Union ironclad (Allen and Allen 53; Doss). A mighty ship, the ironclads made wooden ships seem unusable because they could destroy one with minimal effort (Weaver). Ironclads had many innovations such as the use of steam power, plating of iron, exploding shells, and iron rams. Even though steam power required coal, it was much more useful than sails (Mountjoy 61). Steam power allowed faster travel, and it did not need favorable winds (63). The ironclad was also equipped with iron plating so when they were shot it would do minimal to no damage to the ship. Iron rams were also a significant threat. If an ironclad rammed a ship, you could count on that ship to sink (Bailey). During the war, six hundred ironclads and other ships were used to set up a 3,000-mile long blockade along the southern coast with a purpose to stop ships called the Anaconda Plan (Bailey; Hill; Mountjoy 60-61). This plan would help to prevent trade in the South causing them to lose money. While there were ironclads involved in the blockade, a main series of battles were between ironclads called the Monitor and the Merrimack (¨Battle of The Merrimack and