Astride Two Worlds: Technology and the American Civil War

by Barton C. Hacker (Editor)

Overview

By the middle of the nineteenth century, industrialization and military-technological innovation were beginning to alter drastically the character and conditions of warfare as it had been conducted for centuries. Occurring in the midst of these far-reaching changes, the American Civil War can justly be labeled both the last great preindustrial war and the first major war of the industrial age. Industrial capacity attained new levels of military significance as transportation improved, but in this, as in many other respects, the Civil War was distinctly transitional. Smoothbore artillery still dominated the battlefield, horse-drawn wagons and pack mules still carried the main logistic burden, seamstresses still outnumbered sewing-machine operators. Astride Two Worlds addresses the various causes and consequences of technological change for the course and outcome of the American Civil War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935623922
Publisher:	Smithsonian Institution Press
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	267
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Barton C. Hacker, Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1968), is senior curator of armed forces history in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. He is also the founding editor of Vulcan: The International Journal of the Social History of Military Technology. He has lectured widely and published on the histories and historiographies of military technology, non-Western military institutions, women and armies, nuclear weapons testing, and manned spaceflight. In 2003 he received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society for the History of Technology.

Table of Contents

Preface v

Chapter 1 How Technology Shaped the Conduct of War Barton C. Hacker 1

Part 1 Technological Realities

Chapter 2 Yankee Armorers and the Union War Machine Merriti Roe Smith 25

Chapter 3 Heavy Artillery Transformed Steven A. Walton 55

Chapter 4 Information Flows and Field Armies Seymour E. Goodman 87

Chapter 5 Veterinary Care in the Union Cavalry David J. Gerleman 115

Part 2 Technological Dreams

Chapter 6 Confederate Spar-Torpedo Boats Jorit Wintjes 137

Chapter 7 Armor, Manhood, and the Politics of Mortality Sarah Jones Weicksel 157

Chapter 8 "Quaker Gun" vs. Observation Balloon John A. Macaulay 191

Chapter 9 Dreams of Aerial Navigation Tom D. Crouch 205

About the Contributors 245

Index 247