Tech and Tactics

During the civil war hundreds of Americans died protecting what they believed in. They died in hope of protecting what they loved and cherished, their country. After going through several pieces of evidence it became obvious that service to one's country was much more important to the men than preservation of ones self. The civil war caused a wave of new weapons and and technology that were used by each side. One example of the new technology was the ironclad. An ironclad was an iron military vessel with several cannons and a very hard shell that wasn't easy to penetrate. Each side had a different type of ironclad. The Confederates called theirs the Merrimack, it had 10 cannons on it, the Unions was called "The Monitor". "The Monitor" was an iron clad with only 2 cannons but they could rotate around to any side. This gave "The Monitor " an advantage because of that ability to rotate where they were aiming. Many navy experts doubted "The Monitor" and didn't want it to be produced, but Lincoln over ruled them and made it. Another several inventions were the railroad artillery, telescopic sights, military telegraph, and land mines. There was about 240 military patents in 1862 alone.

Each side of the civil war had very different strategies. The Unions plan was to basically invade the South, destroy its capacity to wage war, and crush the will of the southern people to resist. The Southerners thought they could hold their defenses and prolong the war to a point where the loyal citizenry considered the effort to costly in lives and money. The Union called their plan the "Anaconda Plan", the plan was to set up a naval blockade cutting off their cotton trade. By cutting off their trade they were cutting off the Confederacy's income which was crucial for making weapons and supplying troops with necessities like food, water, and medicine, etc. They also planned to use their Army/Navy to divide the Confederacy by seizing the Mississippi River. The Confederacy's plan was to defend all of its borders, but for most of the war Jefferson Davis and his advisers followed what often is termed a defensive-offensive strategy. Confederate armies generally stood on the strategic defensive, protecting as much of their territory as possible. When circumstances seemed favorable, the Confederacy launched offensives. Confederate military strategy was to gain important diplomatic allies. Specifically, Confederate leaders felt that if cotton was withheld from Britain and France, those nations would formally recognize their nation and provide them with much needed material support.

To be wounded badly in the civil war was very unlucky. Most serious  wounds meant they had to amputate a limb or a part of the body as to prevent infections. Reading the article "Under the Knife" revealed how far back the medical world was in the mid 1800s. Although the soldiers were lucky to get to the field hospital alive they often didn't survive. There were not a lot of technique's though. The article said "When bone was damaged, surgeons had to decide quickly on one of three possible treatments. If it was a simple fracture, a wooden 
or plaster splint was applied, but if the bone was shattered the surgeon performed either a 
resection or an amputation."  Resection involved cutting open the limb, sawing out the damaged bone, and then closing the incision. It was a time-consuming procedure and required considerable surgical skill. There were two types of amputations, primary and secondary. The difference was primary amputations were the amputations that occurred 48 hours after the injury and secondary amputation were past that. Primary amputations were preferred because the morality rate for primary was 25% and secondary was twice as high. Infections were another serious cause of death in the war. It was such a big cause of death because if a wound were to get infected it often caused death. For example "Two members of Company B, 19th Michigan Infantry, were shot in the index finger in the same battle during the Atlanta campaign. One man treated himself by cutting off the mangled finger with his pocket knife. He wrapped the stub in a handkerchief and waited until the battle was over to have the wound dressed at the field hospital. The other soldier went immediately to the surgeon for a proper amputation. Gangrene set in within days, and the surgeon was later forced to amputate his arm at the shoulder. The soldier died soon afterward."

http://www.edline.net/files/_yMHRV_/ad7f4df9270b953e3745a49013852ec4/Tactics__Tech_Class_Notes.pdf

http://www.educanon.com/delivery/10822/27474
http://www.educanon.com/delivery/10822/27482