¶ … War
The Civil War is hailed by many as the first modern war that was fought, at least within the United States. The dimensions that can be assessed in this regard include technology, public opinion and sustainment operations. There were certainly linkages between the American Revolution and the Civil War. However, a lot changed from the 1970's to the 1860. Indeed, that is nearly a century's worth of time. This paper will explore what set the Civil War apart from the Revolution and other wars in terms of modernity. While the Civil War was a lot of the same in many regards, there were also some things that clearly set it apart from prior wars.
One historical matter that has to be discussed when it comes to comparing the Civil War to prior wars is indeed something that happened between the aforementioned Revolution and the Civil War. Of course, that would be the Industrial Revolution. The two wars mentioned thus far basically bookended the Industrial Revolution. The industrialization of what is now the United States basically started just before the Revolution and concluded about a generation or two before the United States Civil War. In the three to four generations that passed in between, a lot of things changes and the tools...
What was done before in small batches and in piecemeal fashion was now being done much more quickly due to the creation and advancement of factories that could produce output in a much faster fashion. To further prove the point, the Union had a distinct advantage due to the path it chose in terms of economic patterns. The Union shifted more towards the factories and manufacturing referenced above. At the same time, the Confederacy had focused more on their agrarian roots and their crops. Further, the North was much more urbanized and a fourth of all people in the North lived in urban areas. In the South, it was a fraction of that. Throw in the Emancipation Proclamation that Abraham Lincoln unleashed in the midst of the war, the slaves of the South and other blacks took up with the Union, thus neutralizing a lot of advantages that the South had (NPS, 2015).
Mass production obviously was a boon for both sides of the Civil War to some degree. This is true even if the North had a decided and obvious advantage. However, it is not just mass production that changed things but also what precisely was being manufactured. Rather than muzzle-loaded guns, many soldiers had rifles with much better range and ease of loading. Railroads did not exist in the Revolution and other earlier wars but this mode of
transportation was pivotal in the Civil War. Another huge game-changer when it came to the modernity of the warfare involved was what was known as the telegraph. Using the
manipulation of a signal, people could communicate with each other over wires one tone at a time in the forms of what was then translated to dots and dashes. This
technology was not developed until the…
