American Civil War Firsts Trivia Quiz

Answer:

It could be argued that the Confederate seizure of Fort Sumter in April of 1861 was their first victory, however, that was more of an opening salvo rather than the major coup that the Bull Run, also known as the First Manassas, represented. Led by Generals PGT Beauregarde and Joseph E. Johnston, three months after Fort Sumter, the South's army was able to force the Union to retreat to Washington DC. The psychological impact would have been immense... it was here that realization dawned onto the forces of the North that this would not be a mere skirmish, but one that would become a protracted affair.

Yes, the armies of the North had also achieved some small victories prior to their captures of the forts at Henry (February 6, 1862) and Donelson, some ten days later, but their impacts were nowhere near as significant as these two claims. Led by Ulysses S. Grant, the Union was able to gain some crucial territory in the Western theatre, breaking the Tennessee line of the Confederacy, and opening up the river routes for further invasion.

The Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee in early April of 1862 was only a two-day affair but its savagery saw it labelled as the first "modern" battle. The casualties were horrendous with more than 23,000, from both sides, perishing. To put this into some context, this number was greater than all of the casualties that the combined battles of the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Mexican American War produced. Shiloh also heralded the start of industrial-scale warfare. The latter, among others, alludes to the introduction of large-scale maneuvering, improvements in the production of weapons and their firepower and the upgrading of transportation to secure advantage. Following is a more detailed look at some of these aspects.

Both sides of the conflict would develop some form of aerial reconnaissance to gather details of troop numbers and their movements and vital data such as where the enemy's major guns were located. President Lincoln would establish the Balloon Corps in 1861, and their maiden voyage took place toward the end of August that year. To augment this form of information gathering was the telegraph. Samuel Morse had previously demonstrated the telegraph to Congress in 1837 and, seven years later, the first commercial line was built. During the Civil War, some 15,000 miles of cable were installed. While these provided the forces with timely information it was also used by the news services and this presented the government with another issue to deal with.

Many forget that, prior to becoming the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln had been a railway lawyer, and he knew full well the advantages this system presented to the Union in respect to the rapid movement of troops and supplies to areas where they either vital or strategic. In this respect, the Union had a decided advantage. They had some 20,000 miles of track available to them whereas the Confederacy only had 9,000. In addition, the South did not, immediately, see this as an advantage and had converted their locomotive shops to enable and enhance the manufacture of armaments. As a consequence, railway infrastructure became a significant target. Similarly, guerilla attacks to cut down the opponent's advantage became a strategy, and a classic example of this is the Confederate attack on the Burning Springs oilfield in West Virginia in May of 1863. The aim of this was to try and cripple the Union economy and paralyse the industrial infrastructure of a fledgling state.

Technological advancements were also found in weaponry, and the two key ones were the creation of the Minie bullet and the Gatling gun. Before the war the key weapon for foot soldiers was the smooth-bore musket which had a range of 300 feet and was not the most accurate of arms. Rifling of the barrel (creating grooves within it) caused bullets to spin and increased their range. Then came the Minie bullet, which was faster to load and was smaller than the barrel of the musket. When it was fired, its unique hollow base allowed it to expand and spin faster in the barrel. The range increased to 900 feet and the accuracy for the soldier improved five-fold, making it a seriously deadly weapon.

Richard Gatling's weapon became the antecedent of the modern machine gun. He had created the weapon with the naïve view that if he showcased the damage, it would cause it would be the greatest argument toward stopping wars. He was very wrong. Rather than preventing the fighting, it made wars far more deadly.

The North had a significant naval advantage over the South, and this provided them with the foundation with which to block or control vital waterways. This allowed them to enhance their own operations while crippling the Confederate economy and preventing them from trading with any allies they may have had in Europe. Both sides, however, saw the value in having armoured ships at their disposal, ultimately leading to an iron-clad confrontation between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia in March of 1862. The Monitor proved supreme, further adding to the Union's water dominance. The North didn't have it all their own way with the Confederates chalking the first sinking of a ship by a submarine during warfare. The date was February 17, 1864, when the H.L. Hunley sank the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor.

The use of the ambulance was not a new innovation of the Civil War, these had been utilized in some form as far back as ancient times. Dominique Larrey, who would become Napoleon Bonaparte's chief physician, created a system that used two or four wheeled horse-drawn wagons to ferry the wounded from the battlefields. Jonathan Letterman and co-physician Joseph Barnes designed both a pre-hospital care system for the wounded and then extended Larrey's work by ensuring that every regiment possessed at least one ambulance. The carriages that they initially used proved to be too lightweight and were replaced by the "Rucker" ambulance. They also pushed for other vehicles to be introduced to transport the injured, drawing in steamboats and the railway system.

There were a number of other innovations and first that were established during this conflict that did not find their way into this quiz. Among them were the introduction of the Medal of Honor, which was authorized by Congress in 1861, this war was one of the earliest to boast a significant level of photographic record, riots ensued when the first Federal draft for conscription was passed in 1863, an income tax was introduced in 1861 to help fund the campaign, the bugle call "Taps" was initiated in 1862 by Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield and, in 1865, the Secret Service was created to deal with counterfeiting that threatened to destabilize the economy in the aftermath of the war.