Technological Improvements During The Civil War

The Civil War was America's deadliest conflict. The violence of battles such as Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg shocked people around the world. Almost as many men died in captivity during the Civil War as were killed in the entire Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands died of infections and disease. Roughly two percent of the population, which is estimated to be about six-hundred and twenty-thousand men, lost their lives. Taken as a percentage of today's population, the death toll would have be equal to six-million ("Civil War Casualties"). The Civil War is known as “The First Modern War” being the first war fought after the Industrial Revolution. The war saw newer, faster weapons including the rifle, minie ball, and other such improvements.

The new weapons in The Civil War were mostly possible due to the Industrial Revolution, a period in America and Europe when industry and factorization boomed. With these technological advances came the ability to make better weapons. Before the Civil War, infantry soldiers typically carried muskets that held just one bullet at a time. The range of these muskets was about one-hundred yards. However, a soldier trying to aim and shoot with any accuracy would have to stand much closer to his target, since the weapon’s effective range was only about 80 yards. Therefore, armies typically fought battles at a relatively close range ("Civil War Technology"). The Civil War saw weapons such as the rifle. Before the rifle, armies used smoothbore muskets, a straight, tube-like barrel that simply channeled the energy to the bullet. The rifle however had spiraled grooves, which gripped and spun the bullet out of the barrel, allowing it to travel further, faster, and more accurate ("Rifling."). The downside to the rifle was the reload time. While a skilled

With new weapons comes the need for new tactics. lining up in two lines and firing at one another worked when using old fashioned muskets. When done so against rifles, the chance of dying in the front row increases to almost fifty percent, where in the American Revolution it was a little less than thirty percent. These increases in casualties combined with the unwillingness to change tactics from the ones they were familiar with, in turn death rates soared. No battle epitomizes this better than the battle of Gettysburg, which saw nearly nearly sixty-thousand casualties in total, due to the charges by the Confederacy against the Union lines. This proved that the once iconic bayonet charge was a thing of the past in the age of rifles and entrenched defenders. The union lines held, but at a cost, nearly twenty-eight percent of the forces deployed by the Union were killed or wounded by the end of the three day battle. The Confederacy fared even worse, losing nearly thirty-five percent of the forces they deployed. When the smoke cleared the battle was seen as the bloodiest in American history. The war became much more real for the people of the North ("The Battle of Gettysburg."). After Gettysburg, generals began to use more modern tactics, such as digging trenches and using objects for cover. Soldiers began to adapt to the battlefield in battles instead of just marching