Why was the civil war called the first modern war

It was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the era, and arguably the first “modern war.” It saw a wave of new innovations including modernized warships, the use of aerial observation, more rapid firing small arms and even submarines. If this sounds like the First World War that would be incorrect.

The American Civil War was truly the first modern war and a plethora of new advances were introduced and changed warfare forever.

The Telegraph and Railroad

Prior to the Civil War communications could take days, even weeks to travel only few hundred miles, but that began to change as the telegraph provided vital tactical, operational and strategic communications. Its use has been credited as a contributor to the Union victory. During the war the United States Military Telegraph Service (USMT) handed some 6.5 million messages and laid some 15,000 miles of telegraph lines.

Likewise, the American Civil War was the first conflict in which railroads also provide to be a major factor. In the years leading up to the war, the Northern states laid around 22,000 miles while the South had laid 9,500 miles. The use of railroads on both sides became critically important in transporting men and material.

Iron Ships and Submarines

While the European powers—notably France the United Kingdom—had developed modern naval warships or so-called “ironclads” before the outbreak of the Civil War, it was in the waters off the coast of Virginia where the warships first engaged in combat. After the Civil War, naval warfare never went back to wooden sailing ships and the latter half of the nineteenth-century saw a naval arms race as ships became larger and more heavily armed.

The War Between the States also saw one of the first successful uses of a submarine. The CSN Hunley was essentially an iron tomb for the eight man crew, but it became the first submarine to successfully sink an enemy warship when it was used to successfully deploy a mine on the USS Housatonic.

Rapid Fire Weapons

It is correct that the First World War was the first large scale conflict to see the use of machine guns, but it was the Civil War some fifty years earlier that introduced modern firearms. Muzzle loading firearms gave way to breach-loading repeating rifles, while the Gatling Gun was employed in small numbers.

Fifty years before the Civil War, armies fought with weapons little improved from those employed for well over a century. But fifty years after the Civil War, rapid fire machines changed the concept of war. It was on the terrible and bloody battlefields of conflict that a small arms revolution took place.

Aerial Observation

The American Civil War was fought four decades before the Wright Brothers successfully conducted the first powered flight, but the war is notable for the use of observation balloons, which allowed both sides to monitor enemy troop movements and to direct artillery fire. U.S. Army aviation can also trace its origins back to those hydrogen-filled balloons.

Moreover, both sides had reportedly considered powered flying machines—precursors to the airplane. Nothing came of these efforts, but it is clear that even before the word “airplane” entered in the vernacular forward thinking military planners were already considering how such a weapon could be employed.

Photography

Photographic images of earlier conflicts exist, notably the Crimean War, but it was the American Civil War that is considered to be the first major conflict to be so extensively photographed. Studio owner Mathew Brady is usually credited with most of the photographs taken, but it was Alexander Gardner and his team—working for Brady—who actually took most of the photos.

The use of photographs chronicled the conflict in a way unlike any prior conflict. It allowed a greater understanding of what it was actually like in the field. While painters still traveled along with the armies, few paintings of any battle had shown the bloated corpses or the other horrors of war that photographs provided.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Reuters.

The technology of the industrial revolution applied to the science of killing made the Civil War a turning point between the limited combat of professional armies of the 1700s and the "total" mobilization of World Wars I and II.

Muzzle-loading firearms and communication by drum, flag, and bugle were holdovers from the past, but rifled weapons increased the range of firearms, and telegraphy allowed distant armies to communicate and coordinate. Railroads moved armies faster than before, and iron ships, land mines, hand grenades, and torpedoes made their debut. As reconnaissance balloons took war to the skies, many of the essential elements of modern warfare were in place by 1865.

Text Messaging

Not only did this allow distant military commanders to communicate and coordinate more effectively, but newspaper reporters could send news to the home front instantaneously as well. With this expanding media coverage, the military took on the added responsibility of managing information as well as their armies.

Military Balloons

Although European armies experimented with aerial balloons as early as 1783, it was not until the Civil War that they were used in America. Their presence forced enemy commanders continually to conceal the placement and movement of their armies.

Following a demonstration for President Lincoln in July 1861, Professor Thaddeus Lowe was granted permission to construct and operate balloons for the Union army. The earliest flights occurred near Washington, D.C., where, for the first time in military history, airborne observers accurately directed artillery fire. The Union balloon corps was plagued by financial and personnel problems and disbanded in August 1863.

The Confederates developed a balloon corps that made its Virginia debut at Yorktown in April 1862 but soon disbanded when its only balloon was captured.

On April 9, 1862, Pvt. Robert Knox Sneden of the 40th New York Infantry wrote that "[Professor Lowe's] balloon went up for the first time this forenoon. . . . They could see, of course, the inside of the enemy's works, sketch the outlines of parapets, and count the guns already mounted, and note their bearings. From this, the draughtsman can make the maps and plans which they are waiting for."

Revolution at Sea

The next day the Union’s first ironclad—the USS Monitor—arrived and fought the Virginia to a draw, ensuring the safety of the Union blockade fleet. A Union sailor from Staunton remarked that "John Bull [Great Britain] will have to build a new navy." Within weeks, Great Britain—the world’s leading naval power—canceled construction of wooden ships.

Constructed on the salvaged hull of the captured USS Merrimack, the first Confederate ironclad was rechristened the CSS Virginia. Artist Xanthus Smith and the northern press, however, rejected that name in favor of the alliteration of Monitor and Merrimack.

War Rides the Rails

For thousands of years, every army that went into battle did so by the power of men and animals carrying it across the countryside. By 1860, however, 30,626 miles of railroad track spread across the United States—1,771 of these in Virginia.

Locomotives traveled five times as fast as mule-drawn wagons, transported soldiers close to the scene of battle without tiring them, and allowed armies to operate farther from their bases of supply.

The strategic importance of railroads tended to channel offensive operations along the routes of railroad lines. Railroad centers—such as Grafton, Manassas, Petersburg, Charlottesville, Lynchburg, and Wytheville—became important military objectives.

Throughout the war, Confederate forces in Virginia slowed United States troop movements by destroying wooden bridges that spanned Virginia’s countless rivers and streams. The artist, Alfred Wordsworth Thompson, noted: “The destruction of Locomotives on the Baltimore & Ohio R. Road has been terrible; no less than 50 of the finest kind having been burnt or broken up, at Martinsburg & other points on the Road."

Photography

On the United States side, most photographs were made by entrepreneurs. The only photographer hired by the military who left a substantial body of work was Capt. Andrew J. Russell. Russell served as a photographer for the U.S. Military Railroad and the Quartermaster Corps. His images capture the technology, infrastructure, and transportation systems used to move and supply Union armies.

The album of 132 photographs is one of only several bound volumes compiled by Russell that survive in their original form.