The Leap Forward During The Civil War

The Leap Forward

It took only four short years to change the tactics, practices, and attitude on war entirely. The technology used in today’s warfare is in no doubt in direct correlation from the great advancements during the Civil War. All advancements are due largely to the industrial revolution that was taking full effect in England; this eventually grew roots in America. By the 1850s the industrial revolution had engulfed America allowing production on an enormous scale. However the northern states of America held the large majority of the production faculties, while the south states were made up of a booming cotton industry. These two major economical differences were about to start a domino effect of the bloodiest America ever took
Prior to mass production soldiers used a dated smoothbore muzzle-loading rifle that was extremely time consuming to reload, and extremely inaccurate to shoot, giving a killing range of under 100 yards. A new manufacturing practice to increase the killing range was to “rifle” the gun barrel. This practice was not a new technology, it just took so long to preform by hand no army could afford to purchase the rifled gun barrels. Of course with new equipment available this practice became widely used. The gun barrel would have a machine cut groves into the inside of the barrel, this paired with a new bullet that took the shape of a missile caused a huge increase of killing range, up to 500 yards. From 1861 to the end of war over 1.5 million of the new rifles were mass-produced with the majority going to the Union army. Even with that huge step forward a new creation from B. Tyler Henry would leap the firepower of the civil war into what technologies we still use today. He created the Henry Repeater; it could shoot up to 30 rounds a minute compared to the others that shot only three rounds a minute. This increase in fire rate was largely due to the idea of packing the gunpowder and bullet into one compact shell. Around 13,000 of the new Henry rifles were mass-produced in the time from 1862 to
Most ate biscuit made of just flour and water. This led to very unhealthy soldiers due to lack of nutrition. This all changed with the innovation of canning food. From the beginning of the war American factories produced just five million canned food products compared to the near 30 million at the conclusion of the war. New practice of adding salt to water while cooking canned food increased the boiling point of the water, so you could heat the water even higher, therefore cooking the canned food up to 10 times faster. For the first time ever the soldiers were getting vegetables, fruits, milk and other essential nutrients while on the battlefield.
Even as the health of the soldiers increased there was still huge loss of life due to battle, over the war there is an estimated 250,000 people killed. Prior to the civil war it was common to only retrieve the wounded once the fighting was over. This would leave hundreds of troops lying helpless dying on the battlefield. A new practice of receiving downed soldiers was implemented. They also started doing reconstructive surgery on many injured fighters after the war. Prosthetic limbs also took a huge step forward making the old wooden peg leg obsolete, replaced by a skin colored, bendable, lightweight