Okay, welcome, this is the last lecture of the winter lecture series.
Thank you for being here, and how many of you were here to hear James Hessler speaking
today?
Isn't it wonderful that you come to Gettysburg National Military Park and do seminars throughout
the day like this, and your tax dollars at work?
Yeah, okay.
Well, thank you for being here and this will be the last one.
Of course, here in the park internally, we think in the park of tomorrow as a big day,
March 12th, because we get to wear our summer uniforms.
So, you all didn't know that, so symbolically is the ending of the winter and passing onto
the Spring.
But, today we are going to talk about the Civil War as the 1st Modern War.
And, I've got some broad points to make, contextual points to make, to try to put the
war itself into context in world history.
And, then I have a lot of detail stories that have to do with the actual modernization of
the war.
We will look at newfangled weaponry, and those kinds-of things.
So, now we start with big picture.
You always want to answer the "why and so what?"
questions when you are doing history.
So, let's start with the big questions and the big points.
You know, how can the Civil War be the 1st Modern War?
What context do we have to consider it's the 1st Modern War?
Well, in the broader context of the Renaissance it does?
For fifteen years, I taught at Harrisburg Area Community College, in the history department,
I taught credit courses in the evening, while working here by day.
I would work there by evening.
This would be a point that I would make over several weeks, so we will kind-of create a
quick outline, kind-of a bullet list of how the 19th century, and how the American Civil
War comes to be, which is really the first modern century and the 1st Modern War.
We start with the Renaissance.
The Renaissance is from about 1400-1600 AD.
And, when you think of Renaissance, you think of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and
Rafael and Botticelli, and some of the artist, and how they brought three dimension to their
sculptures and paintings.
You also think of the humanist writers, of which we think of Chaucer and his Canterbury
Tales.
We also think about Shakespeare.
There are a number of famous writers that come out of that Renaissance period, such
as Machiavelli, who is part of that same milieu.
And, the Renaissance was a, it literally means a new birth, or reborn.
It's the idea that the Middle Ages were starting to give way to culture again.
The Renaissance prided itself, those who helped shape the Renaissance, they prided themselves
in linking themselves back in antiquity with Ancient Rome, and Ancient Greece and Ancient
Egypt.
And, they wanted to forget that middle period, the Middle Ages where culture went backwards.
So, the Renaissance fueled Humanism.
Humanism recognizes human potential and that became the spark or seed for the movements
that would follow as in the Science Revolution, which would be the next major movement.
When you think of Science Revolution, you think of Galileo, you think of Tycho Brahe,
you think of Isaac Newton.
And, they tried to scientifically explain the heavens.
They tried to mathematically come up with equations, and quadrants, and calculus, and
all of that was invented in the 1600s and 1700s to try to explain the universe in logical,
mathematical terms.
This was an attempt to deliberately reject the superstition of the Middle Ages.
Astrology was giving way to, "let science typically explain what we see in the sky."
So, the Renaissance sparked that with it Humanist Movement, then the Science Revolution, and
then the Enlightenment.
And, the Enlightenment, you heard the names Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Hume,
Bacon and Thomas Jefferson.
These were individuals who said, "okay, if the Isaac Newton's of the world can explain
the universe scientifically, let's explain human needs, human government scientifically.
And, so they came-up with political science.
I used to work at Independence Hall in Philadelphia in the 1980s as a ranger, and gave tours there
where the Declaration and the Constitution were both written and signed.
And, the story there is our founding fathers wanted to apply science to human behavior.
Our constitution was written scientifically to try to rule out monarchies, dictatorships,
to try to bring balance to government, to try to create a more perfect union.
And, in that same tradition, you people like Frederick the Great, and Napoleon and their
disciples come along, and write about the military in a scientific way.
So, by the middle 1700s, and into the early 1800s, you these books called the Art of War
that would try to scientifically explain in formulas, not unlike Newton and Galileo trying
to explain the universe mathematically, you had people like Antoine-Henri Jomini, and
others writing formulas.
Napoleon's Maxims did the same with the idea that if you are going to make a direct
frontal assault, you should have a 3-1 ratio over the defender whom you're attacking
if you want to carry the position.
Those are the kind-of things they thought about.
If you divide your forces in the face of an enemy, you can be defeated in detail, and
those kinds-of things.
So, they thought scientifically about the military.
And, so industrialization is kind-of the book end on this discussion about the Renaissance
starting the thought-process of science.
Industrialization became the application of science to everyday life, and we are going
to see some of those industrial breakthroughs as we go along today.
Industrialization became the practical application of science to human affairs to human government.
And, Max Weber who you see there on your right, and Karl Marx on your left, we're not necessarily
fans of theirs, not fans of them, but if we are going to talk about what is a modern war,
then we have to acknowledge these two philosophers and writers, in the 19th century, defined
the notion of what is a pre-modern world versus a modern world and a post-modern world.
Now, pre-modern – now there's a long definition if you were to go back to Communist Manifesto,
but the short of it is pre-modern has to do with agriculture, it has to do with energy
sources related to wind power, water power, literal horse power, human power.
And, that's the way of the world for most of history, history has been pre-modern.
But, then the steam engine was patented by James Watt in 1781, which set in motion a
modern world.
We'll see that the application of steam just changed the world.
It's not unlike President Clinton signing legislation in 1996 that commercialized the
internet.
It went from an internal thing used by the government to suddenly commercialize.
And, the day that was signed, all malls were dead.
And, we did not know it yet, we had to wait and watch that play-out.
The Walmart's and Targets of the world are still reeling from that signature.
That's how technology works.
The modern era would be the 19th century.
And, we will define it as we go along, in passing about post-modernism.
Post-modernism is a theory that certain economic historians hold onto that eventually there
will come a time when nationalism, when competitions between nations, including imperialism, colonialism,
religious zealously, all will eventually give way to a global world where everyone sort-of
blends together.
Post-modernism is controversial, but that's been foretold and predicted by philosophers
in some look to it as a reality.
Okay, so the Civil War falls within that broader context of the Renaissance to these various
movements up to the point of Industrialization thanks to the steam engine.
And, so let's look at how the North was modernizing on the eve of the Civil War.
You are looking at a picture or lithograph of Frederic Jones Shoes from the 1850s.
There were over 1,300 shoe factories in Massachusetts in 1860, with 60,000 plus employees in Massachusetts
involved in shoes.
A few years ago, I got a chance to speak in Lynn, Massachusetts at the GAR Hall there.
And, it's a wonderful visit if you get a chance to go, and they took me to the Lynn
shoe factory.
Well, some of those buildings are gone now, they took me to the district where the original
buildings were.
Lynn, Massachusetts was also a major producer of shoes, producing shoes for Civil War soldiers.
So, contracts for the Union armies looked to factories like Frederick Jones, and looked
to factories like the one in Lynn.
So, the North was industrializing, that's industrialization, which is the outgrowth
of science applied to political economies.
Also, the North was becoming modernized through other examples such as McCormick Reapers.
Here's a picture of McCormick Reapers in 1847.
McCormick Reaper was to the West and to wheat, Midwest in wheat production, what the cotton
gin was to the South and cotton production.
It revolutionized the West to be the breadbasket of the country, and some cases, the whole
world.
The McCormick Reaper, it's a complex machine that pull-in grains and it would cut-down
on the laborious aspects of gathering wheat.
By 1853, the North was modernizing in yet other ways through the Singer Sewing Factory.
And, so Singer Sewing machines allowed for textile mills to produce even more, because
now you had these sewing machines.
And, there would be a room where all these sewing machines were set-up, there was a peddle
you would press, that's how you powered it.
How many of you remember that, it's okay?
There were also steam powered ones as well connected through pulley systems and belts.
Connecticut Clocks, this is a picture of such clock factory in New Haven, Connecticut in
the 1840s.
So, Connecticut was known for clocks, just like Massachusetts was known for shoes.
Lowell Mills by 1850 had converted from water power to steam power.
And, they were producing textiles, you know, in a major way.
The Springfield Armory also represents industrialization and modernization in that within the Springfield
Armory they were using jigs, fixtures, gages, templates to replicate parts in such a way
where you could make interchangeable parts.
That's important to note.
In the late 1980s, I worked for two years at Valley Forge National Military Park, and
my role was to wear a tricorn hat, and sit around a campfire on weekends for two years
and I was stuck in the year 1777-1778.
But, as I did that, in that time period the Brown Bess and Charleville muskets that they
carried into battle, if they were damaged, they were only used from that point on as
corduroy for the roads.
You couldn't do anything with them, because they were made by a gunsmith by hand, and
the parts were not interchangeable.
By the time of the Civil War, thanks to Springfield Armory, and Harpers Ferry Armory, you had
these machines that could replicate parts.
When you read accounts sometimes of the Battle of Gettysburg, and the immediate aftermath,
you read of Union contingents, regiments going around the battlefield with horse and carriage,
picking-up rifles and throwing them in the back of a wagon.
And, what are they doing?
They are sending them back to Springfield to be reconditioned, because you could just
replace parts and use them again.
When I worked in Appomattox in 1984, one of the points we would make there, people would
ask, "This is where the Confederates surrendered, this is where the Confederates gave-up all
their weapons, where are those weapons?"
I suppose it was kind-of silly, but the Confederates worried that if they surrendered their weapons,
they would be used against them by other Union forces combating other Confederate forces
still in resistance from Virginia through North Carolina all the way to Texas.
And, so there were some Confederates who buried their rifles, and those sort-of things still
turn-up today.
There are stories of complete cannons being buried.
And, it's silly because the North had more than enough.
They took the Confederates weapons that they gathered at the surrender and used them for
corduroy in the route back to Washington, as their armies marched back to a victory
celebration in Washington D.C.
But, the Springfield Armory then represents industrialization, modernization.
And, if you study the history of technology, armory in Springfield is really important,
because it represents the introduction of interchangeable parts.
Singer Sewing machine, there were interchangeable parts there too, but they had to do some filing
to make things fit better.
The first fully assembled devices that you could buy were Western Bycycles in the 1890s.
And, then Henry Ford perfected it with the Model-T in 1914 with full assembly.
Once you have full assembly, it was sort-of the end of the craft tradition, which is tragic
and sad.
I suppose from a technology perspective, though, it represents the fulfillment of what Springfield
Armory started.
The North was modernizing too economically.
Banks were starting to appear all throughout the North.
I should say this in the way of background.
If you were to travel back to 1810s, 1820s, there were virtually no banks.
There was a National Bank, and there were some Wildcat Banks in the 1830s that printed
their own money, or depended on loans from state banks.
But, banks were very limited, because there was not a lot of capital in this country.
If you really wanted a loan, let's say to buy expensive material to build a railroad,
you had to either a loan from Great Britain, or you took a loan from a merchant who would
dock in New York Harbor, for instance, or Charleston.
And so, money was handled not through banks but merchants.
Well, that was changing by the 1850s.
There was more and more money being generated by industrialization in the North.
So, you had banks, Wall Street came into existence.
In Chicago, they had their Union Stockyard by 1865, but that was on the heels of having
produced three times more Civil War beef, over 100,000 beef per year produced for the
Union armies, during the war.
So then, Chicago as the war was ending, went ahead and opened their stock exchange.
Telegraphs helped stock markets come into existence.
Why?
It is because, knowledge is power.
If you can get information on an incredible crop, let's say out in the Midwest, an incredible
bounty of wheat, and you know about it, and you're living in New York City, you can
buy it by telegraph, because you got the news by telegraph.
You buy it before anyone else, and then you sell it at higher shares to everyone else
and make a profit.
So, the telegraph went hand-in-hand with the stock market.
The North was modernizing.
I think I mentioned this to Larry the other day, because Larry and I have these good discussions,
about the Erie Canal.
Occasionally in the classroom this provocative point is made that the Civil War would not
have been fought without construction of the Erie Canal.
And, when it was completed in 1825, it linked the Hudson with Lake Erie, which linked New
York through Lake Erie to the Midwest, and specifically more-so than any other place,
Chicago.
But, you know, the Midwest today we consider to be Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota
and Ohio.
We would consider those the Midwest states.
Those states prior to the Erie Canal's construction were economically connected with St. Louis,
New Orleans and the Gulf via what body of water?
It was the Mississippi.
And so, the Erie Canal, the argument goes, connected the Midwest economically with the
Northeast, and then rail just reinforced that.
And, then once those economic connections were rearranged, then eventually there were
political alignments that went along with that.
So, sectionalism, which is a major cause of the Civil War, where the South and North were
virtually not speaking and not trading, the Erie Canal played a role in that.
But, it's all part of pulling the North together toward modernization.
And, then rail would eventually just reinforce all of that.
So, the stage was set for the 1st Modern War.
You had steam ships, steam trains, steam factories and so-on.
So, now we are moving from the very broad to the very specific now.
And, we are going to talk about, let's start with balloons.
And, I am going to tell a lot of stories.
I love telling stories, and narratives are fun, but they are meaningful stories, and
they help make the point.
One of the mediums, or lenses that we look at the past through is through people.
You know, great events, great men, great women.
But then, if we refine the great men and great women lens to look at the past through, there's
also conflict between men and men, women and women.
That's a major theme all throughout history.
Envies and jealousies and conflict, it goes on-and-on, and competition.
Thaddeus Lowe and John La Mountain, both had the desire to be the chief contractor for
balloons in the Union army.
And so, they would not only approach the Army of the Potomac, but they would approach officials
in Washington and make their bid to be the supplier of balloons.
And, before I move on, let me say something about how aero pilots were received back then.
Aero pilots, or balloon pilots, if you will, were seen in the armies as eccentric people.
They were seen, they dressed a little different, they carried sextants in their hand, you know
this instruments for measurement, they carried these bulky contraptions, these hydrogen inflators
and they had wagons.
And, they had titles that gave them status, but the average soldier never acknowledged
them as official military.
So, chains of command were always precarious trying to work through the contracted balloonist.
And, I will make a broader point about that.
Some of you have been out there with me on my Samuel Johnston walk.
And, he did the reconnaissance for General Longstreet's attack on the Union left, the
Round Tops and Wheatfield and that part of the battlefield.
And, you know that Samuel Johnston, there were problems after the war when Confederate
veterans corresponded with him, about exactly what he was doing, and did he make it to Little
Round Top, and could he have made it to Little Round Top?
And, seeing what he saw, or not seeing what he saw – some of you know that story real
well, -- well, one the problems with Samuel Johnston, in the Army of Northern Virginia,
is that he would be considered an outsider, not unlike the balloonist.
"This eccentric subcontractor that was brought in, he was not official army, and we don't
know if we should listen to him or not.
He didn't go to West Point, and he doesn't wear our uniform, and we are not sure where
he falls into our order."
The average soldier would have walked past both of these individuals and looked at them,
you know, strangely.
Thaddeus Lowe eventually got the primary contract.
He would send-up balloons not only along the Rappahannock River, but the Rapidan, and he
would keep a constant eye on the Confederates.
But, he would send-up his balloon in other places in Virginia, depending on where the
armies moved.
And, the Intrepid is synonymous with Thaddeus S.D.
Lowe.
Now, the Intrepid, one incident involving it was that it was captured in a flight from
Cincinnati to Charleston.
It just so happened to land right after the firing on Fort Sumter.
That's really bad timing isn't it?
And, so after some explanations and official letters, the Confederates let him go, and
he made it back North again.
But, I mention that story because that story spread throughout the South, and it also spread
throughout portions of the Union army as well, and so it just added towards the mistrust
that the average soldier had toward an aero pilot.
"Here's an individual that floated off-course it seems like several hundred miles," or
that's how the story evolved.
The average soldier also looked at the balloonist in the light of going to a county fair or
carnival.
They would go there, and they would have the balloon ride.
Have you ever taken a balloon ride?
And, you hear the fire blast forth.
I don't know how that sounds on Facebook.
But, the balloon would go-up on a tether, and then you would be able to look across
the countryside.
And, those balloons were a novelty.
And, they seemed to be a carnival act, seemed to be the outgrowth of charlatan-like behavior.
So, the average soldier the average soldier in the ranks did not know what to do with
the aero pilot.
And, okay Thaddeus Lowe did most of the ballooning near Confederate lines.
Notice the contraptions here that I made a reference to, as in the hydrogen or oxygen
tanks that would inflate the balloons.
These balloons were very prop heavy.
And, of course, tethered means you are using a rope or chain to allow the balloon to go-up
to a certain distance.
And, we can see one of the pilots there on his mission.
And, the balloons would be raised to a certain level so that a telegrapher could telegraph
what he saw from this bird's-eye perspective.
And, the telegrapher would have cartographer ability, so they would map-make.
I suppose the equivalent today would be Google Earth.
But, they would be high above, and they – You know, there was a point just before the Gettysburg
Campaign where Thaddeus Lowe would have had upwards of seven balloons, tethered above
the Rappahannock, watching the Confederate movements south of the Rappahannock, all throughout
the day, and watching their campfires at night.
And, so when General Lee stole a march to come North, you may not know this, but as
he moved North, around the federal right flank, into the Shenandoah-Cumberland Valley – again
going North up-through Maryland into Pennsylvania – as he did that, the Confederates left
a lot of campfires burning to keep the balloonists unsuspicious of the flanking maneuver that
was occurring.
Other ways the Confederates tried to fool the balloonists, the aero pilot, is they tried
to cut down trees to the trunk and then paint the trunks black so they looked like artillery
pieces from the sky.
This was very precise as we talk about the 1st Modern War, the balloonist on a tether,
could save a lot of running around, and a lot of wasted time and energy.
If they spotted what looked like Confederate movements of cavalry or infantry, the aero
pilot could make a precise reading, and that would allow him to telegraph that to the ground,
and that would allow a commander to send out a precise amount of cavalry to check-it-out,
to debunk it, or to affirm it.
This is the George Washington Parke Custis floating from a coal barge on the Potomac
early in the war.
This would be considered, along with the Teaser – some of you know that the Confederates
had a barge like this that floated up and down the James River, during the Peninsula
Campaign, in May and June of 1862.
And, a balloon was connected to a barge so that McClellan could be studied from the air.
Do you know who the pilot was in that one Confederate balloon?
It was Edward Porter Alexander, who commanded artillery for Pickett's Charge here.
So, he would have been one of those eccentric people that somehow eventually fit-in.
But, the balloon being pulled along the barge has caused modern technology historians to
say these were the first examples of modern aircraft carriers.
So, there you go, okay.
Okay, and then you have – notice I'm jumping around to different themes, the broader theme
is the Science Revolution which leads to Industrialization, which leads to the 1st Modern War.
But, there are some other themes going on, just underneath that, and this one, or one
of those is personalities, and how they come into play.
And, so here we see Joseph Henry and Samuel F.B. Morse.
And, when you think of them, you immediately think of Morse Code and you think of the telegraph.
Joseph Henry was working with electromagnetism, and impulses that were communicated in a telegraph
fashion before Morse, and he inspired Morse.
But, as is often the case, one person gets the credit, and there are others who are discovered
a little bit later.
Thomas Edison wasn't the only person who ever worked with electricity.
Have you heard of Nicholas Tesla?
Alright, but only recently is Tesla getting his due, though it took over a century.
It's usually one person who beats the others to the patent office.
That allows me to make this point, this broader contextual point.
That is, if you go back and do a little research when the program is over, go online and check,
"how many patents were there in the 19th century filed to the government in Washington
D.C?"
And, it's thousands.
Everyone became their own personal inventor.
You read, I mean there was this incredible fascination with science.
And, so this is a really good broader contextual point.
If you read diaries and memoirs, let me stick with diaries in particular, if you read diaries
of the 19th century, oftentimes the person keeping the diary starts-out every morning
with the weather and temperature.
They will go outside and record those things, they thought of themselves as their own personal
scientist.
In the early 1920s, people buy their own radio kits and buy their own radio.
They thought of themselves as scientific doing that.
So, there was this fascination with the Renaissance and carried all the way up, even unto this
present day.
As I hold this device in front of you, it's a modern version of what we're about to
talk about.
Okay, and so in the field, the telegraph wires were called the grapevine.
Have you heard that expression, I heard it through the grapevine?
That's where it comes from.
And, the grapevine connected for the first time, we're talking about the 1st Modern
War, for the first time in history, divisional headquarters and corps headquarters were connected
by wire, so that there was communication within the lines.
And, I'm thinking of Frank O'Reilly's excellent on the Battle of Fredericksburg.
You all know that about that book.
One of his arguments is that the main attack, or what we think of as the main attack at
Fredericksburg, involving Burnside's repeated, seemingly futile attacks against Marye's
Heights, and the stone wall, Frank argues those were not the main attacks.
Those were the diversionary attacks.
And that Burnside kept ordering them over and over and over, not out of futility, but
to try to give William Franklin a chance on his left to coordinate, turn the Confederate
right flank, cut them off from Richmond, cut-off their water supply along the Rappahannock,
and cut-off the road to Richmond from Fredericksburg.
It is an intelligent argument isn't it?
Very, very good argument, and in any case, he's a good friend of mine, very, very smart
book.
But, one of the points that Frank makes is that Burnside set-up wires to Franklin, so
that his subordinates, Reynolds and Meade would make their attack against Jackson's
portion of the line at the right time.
That is, Burnside set-up the grapevine to connect the main attack with Franklin, the
diversionary attack of Burnside against Marye's Heights, and that Franklin never hooked-up
the wire and made the connection.
Okay, and that Burnside, when he was brought before the Committee on the Conduct of War
in Washington, the congressional hearings, he was the gentleman, took the blame himself
and never put the blame on Franklin.
I should say something technical, because when you are doing technology history, we
have to bring-in some of the technical aspects too.
Impulses, okay, so through electromagnetism you have impulses, they were transmitted through
copper.
Copper could easily break, so you had the option of transmitting these signals through
iron, but iron is not a good conductor, so what these soldiers or telegraphers were doing,
in the field by the 1860s, is they would wrap copper around the iron to get the best of
both worlds.
And, then wrapping them both up in cloth, putting them underground.
Well, the problem with that is the cloth deteriorated and eventually it affected the connection,
because there would be corrosive qualities with the copper.
So, it led to what we look at is telephone poles.
So, that's why that comes into existence.
Telegraph typically followed rail lines because the right-of-way was already cleared with
the rail line.
You know how today there will be wires that you see riding down along the highway, and
you'll look to the top of the hill and there's high-wire cables extending all the way up?
There are these magnificient towers and a clearing in the woods that go all the way
up to the top.
But, also if you look carefully, you'll see cell phone towers in that same space.
And, the reason is because the utility company already has a right-of-way, which if you're
a cell phone company, you use that right-of-way and you don't have to invent the wheel all
over again, getting permissions across private property.
The same is true with the telegraph.
The telegraph ran along rail, because that was already circumvented through peoples'
properties.
Also, rail followed the shortest distance between two points.
Roads will meander.
Rail tends to go very straight.
And, then rail is a good plumb bob or chalk line to guide on.
Armies tended to follow rail, because they knew that if they looked on a map and followed
rail, it would always lead them to where they were going.
It was an axis they could trust.
Notice I have the letters LOC that stands for lines of communication.
That's a military term.
Lines of communication also include lines of supply.
If you are advancing, along a rail line, not only can you control the rail, and protect
it, but you have communications the whole way.
Communications mean supply trains are coming-up, as well as control of the telegraph.
So, telegraph would follow rail.
Armies tended to march along rail.
It's not a coincidence that Robert E. Lee's Army followed the Cumberland Valley Rail Line,
and that Stuart's cavalry followed the Northern Central Rail Line to try and meet them in
Carlisle.
There's a rail line the whole way.
So, the rail line would dictate a lot of those things.
And, then as we continue to talk about the 1st Modern War, now look at the clock, the
time is just running away from me here.
But, there were two companies that were private companies that immediately helped out the
armies.
One was the American Telegraph Company, the other the Western Telegraph.
The American Telegraph was preferred early-on by the Union Army, but the trouble with the
American Telegraph Company was that it ran across sectional lines from North to South.
So, when the war started, something like half their customers were in alien, that is, in
enemy territory.
So, financially American Telegraph did not survive the sectional split.
Western Telegraph survived really all the way up to modern times, and Western Telegraph
still exists.
They ran more laterally, more horizontally East to West, and that helped them survive.
And, then a sub-category under that would be the military telegraph, and the military
telegraph was tied-to a signal flag corps.
And, so let's talk a little about the Signal Corps, and relate that to the telegraph.
Now, let's use a personal example at Little Round Top.
Little Round Top, along with Cemetery Hill and Powers Hill were the three primary signal
flag stations here at Gettysburg.
I imagine most of you knew that.
And, so at any given time, you would see someone standing with a white flag with a red border,
or red flag with white trim, and that flag would be waved from atop Round Top to, let's
say, to a signal station on Cemetery Hill and over to Powers Hill.
The Confederates watched all these signals, by the way, trying to decode them, and were
not able to break the code.
You here coaches sometimes complaining about someone watching their signals on the sideline.
The armies did that during the Civil War too.
But, you would see the flag, for instance, if you were on Cemetery Hill, and you were
looking through your field glasses, from your signal station on Cemetery Hill to the Union
signal station on Little Round Top.
As you looked through your field glasses, and you saw the flag waggle, a couple times
to the right and once forward, you took out your cipher disc and turned it, and that might
be the letter "H" or "L." And, so they were able to communicate through what
is called aerial telegraphy, or semaphore communication.
Now, balloons were not here at Gettysburg.
We talked about balloons.
One reason they were not here is because the Confederates tore-out so much rail, it was
impossible to transport them from Northern Virginia.
Secondly, the battle happened so quickly, relatively speaking after General Lee left
Virginia, that there wasn't time for all federal logistics to catch-up.
The balloons were bulky and they needed rail transportation to be there.
Well, how did the federals compensate here at Gettysburg?
They picked the hilltops that I mentioned so that they could communicate.
That information would be transcribed and then passed to generals and then generals
would communicate.
There was a telegraph station out on Hanover Road near East Cavalry Battlefield.
That was another one.
And, then there was one for a short while on Steven's Knoll, or McKnight's Knoll
next to Culp's Hill.
So, the federals were using those signal stations effectively.
And, so the Confederates were on the outside, the Federals had the interior lines.
So, their communications wouldn't be easily be seen by flag across Union lines.
Can you see that problem, that's another problem with exterior lines.
Now, today that can be overcome through what's called super lateral communications.
Super lateral communication is wireless communication, it's aviation, it's satellite communication,
so you no longer need interior lines to communicate quickly.
You have technological advancements that compensate for all that.
And, you have transportation systems that can take you, let's say, from one side or
the other of an interior position just as fast as if you had interior lines.
Now, the signal station – how do you like my gif there?
I was real proud of that.
And, the signal station on Little Round Top, this is fascinating now, they communicated
with Jack's Mountain, which is about twelve miles west of here, out in the vicinity of
Fairfield and Ski Liberty.
If you know where to look, you can see it from Little Round Top.
On Jack's Mountain, for a while, until the Confederates went up to the top of it on July
3rd, and ran the signal station off, and captured a few.
Prior to that the Jack's Mountain signal station waited for signals that General Meade
wanted to send to Washington D.C.
They would be sent from Little Round Top to Jack's Mountain, from Jack's Mountain
there was a line of sight to Harpers Hill, which is four miles south of Big Round Top.
From Harpers Hill, there was a signal station that had a line of sight to Indian Lookout
Mountain, that would be where Mount Saint Mary's is.
From there, the Western Maryland line did not have telegraph.
Do you all like this kind-of information?
If you want credibility, you want to bring details into a discussion.
There was a group called the Adams Express, and there were twelve horses, and the horses
would run at breakneck speed, even to their death, to a premature death, to carry messages
from Emmitsburg to just north of Baltimore, and from Baltimore along the B&O, telegraph
communications would go all the way from Baltimore to Washington D.C.
By the way, the station where Adams Express would arrive, with the horse from Emmitsburg,
was called Relay Station.
For those who like those kinds-of details, it is just north of Baltimore.
So, theoretically within three hours a message from Little Round Top could reach the White
House.
And, so that is how they compensated with having to fight the battle before all those
grapevines were in place.
Okay, and we are looking at a map that's put out by the census bureau, in concert with
the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and it's on the Hofstra page.
And, it shows us what rail lines looked like in 1860, and where the greatest populations
were near those rail centers.
Now, it's important as we talk about rail as part of the 1st Modern War to make the
point that the North had a lot more rail than the South did.
Can you see that?
The South typically, if you do a study of Southern railroads, before the Civil War,
the South tended to build rail lines from places like Charlestown, South Carolina, Wilmington,
North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia on an East-West construction, out to somewhere in the Piedmont
region of one of those states, and then it didn't connect to anything.
There were no trunks that they were intentionally connected to.
The North had a problem with their rail lines.
They had trunks.
There was a trunk in Harrisburg, for instance, that brought together several lines, one from
Delaware, one from Philadelphia, one from the Ohio Valley, and then of course, from
the Northern Central that came up from the B&0 at Washington and Baltimore.
But, the North had the problem that there were many different rail companies, and they
were in competition with each other, and they didn't want to unite, and they didn't
want the federal government to control their rates.
They wanted to have their own companies.
So, you had the Northern Central, the B&O, the Cumberland Valley, the Hanover-Gettysburg
line.
They were all, they had different gauge track.
There was so such thing as standard time.
That didn't come about until the 1880s, where there was Eastern, Pacific and Central
time.
That would come later because of some horrific train wrecks.
The rail, then, the problem then in the North was one company would have a line end in a
city like Baltimore, and if you wanted to transfer, there was all this entourage of
people, haulers and carters, that would unpack all of your material from one rail company
and put it on a train of another rail company.
And, that was so you stay overnight in one of their hotels and dine in their restaurants.
So, that's why cities were in collusion with these rail companies.
They wanted people to take time to transfer.
That caused problems during the Civil War, because the rail lines were not integrated
yet, different grades of track, you had different gauges, different deepness in grade, some
rail had sidetracks where you could park vehicles off to the side, others didn't.
Now, some of the more famous stories, I told you I wanted to integrate some stories, some
of the more famous stories related to rail during the war, and how it's part of the
1st Modern War.
One was Longstreet's 5,000 troops, you know McLaws' and Hood's divisions transferred
to Chickamauga, where the battle was from September 18th to 20th, but they arrived to
participate on the 20th.
And, those 5,000 troops became pivotal in the outcome of Chickamauga in Tennessee.
There were six different railroad companies used, 775 miles of track.
And, the Confederates were sitting on the rooftops during the ride.
Again, there was no central control in command, and that was one of the problems of the Confederacy.
Their lack of central government made it very difficult for all the rail companies to work
together for the military to use them to their advantage.
Oh, before I go to this one, let me add a couple more stories.
When you think of the Confederacy using rail, another example would be the battle of First
Manassas, First Bull Run, and the Manassas Gap Railroad was used by Joseph Johnston's
troops, and they arrived just in time to support Beauregard against the fight against McDowell
at the Battle of First Bull Run.
Another famous Southern example of rail, bringing troops in the nick of time, was Stonewall
Jackson's joining of Lee in the Seven Days Battles, or the Peninsula Campaign.
After Jackson fought in the Valley, he had his troops board, well it was a little more
complicated than that, a little more complex, but they eventually boarded the Central Virginia
line and it brought them to just outside of Richmond, where they were able to join Lee's
push of McClellan back on the James River, and his exit via the Chesapeake.
On the Union side, you had an interesting story.
The Union 11th and 12th Corps were sent to Tennessee, shortly after the Gettysburg Campaign.
This would have been in late September of 1863.
After the Confederates had shifted troops and won the Battle of Chickamauga, and the
federals under Rosecrans had to fall back on their defenses in Chattanooga, and the
Confederates were starting to lay siege there, the federals countered by taking the 11th
and 12th Corps, later combined and became the 20th Corps.
But, they were taken from Meade's Army of the Potomac, placed on the B&O line where
they would eventually access the Louisville line, and that would take them essentially
to the banks of the Tennessee River.
And, so they were able to travel with 20,000 men, 1,200 miles, in less than a week.
That's all part of the 1st Modern War.
You have to understand that no previous war has an example of this.
So, this was all monumental.
And, technology has always been about who is quicker to adapt.
If you adapt to a new technology, you have an advantage over people.
Those who don't adapt as quickly tend to lose – it's that way all through history
folks.
When you teach the Hittites, they were able to overthrow Northern Egypt, because they
adapted to the new technology of iron, which was stronger in battle than was copper, and
brass, and bronze.
So, if you have a new technology and you put it to use quicker, you are likely to benefit,
while the other person is catching up to speed.
Of the units that were in that shift, from Meade's Army on the banks of the Potomac
to Tennessee, were 11th and 12th Corps.
And, one of the brigades was George Sears Greene's brigade, Pap Greene that fought
on Culp's Hill at Gettysburg here.
The 149th New York from Syracuse, and the 60th New York from Ogdensburg, you can go
on down the list, the 137th New York from Binghamton.
Those New York boys, when they were traveling South, they took all kinds of tools, implements,
you know, axes, for example, and they chopped-up the box cars so they could get fresh air.
And, I remember when I was first reading that I thought, "what if they used some of the
same axes that they built those fortifications on Culp's Hill with?"
Those folks, those New Yorkers from Greene's brigade, Geary's division could rearrange
a train car, a freight car as well as they could rearrange the earth over on Culp's
Hill.
I mentioned Ruger NYC.
Ruger's brigade of 12th Corps, you all know they fought on lower Culp's Hill during
this battle.
They made that ill-fated charge with the 27th Indiana, 2nd Mass made that ill-fated charge
across Spangler Meadow and they lost a lot of men.
Well, they recovered well enough to within just a few weeks after that were on a train
headed north, and they would help quell, or put down the draft riots in New York City.
That's pulling double-duty isn't it?
But, it's not possible without rail.
That's the underlying point here.
Hospital trains are important.
This is another big picture point.
Did you all know there was a hospital here for over four months called Camp Letterman?
And, it was east of Gettysburg, and not far from where Giant food store and Walmart is
today, along the York Pike.
There were, at any given time, there were upwards of 1,600 beds, sort-of like applying
for a nursing home, or institution, or hospital, or something, and would have to wait for a
bed.
But, there were still way more troops processed through Camp Letterman than actually had a
bed, way more than 1,600.
It is a very bad notion to say there were only 1,600 cared for at Camp Letterman.
There was something like 20,000 wounded patients processed through Camp Letterman.
Not all of them got a bed.
Only 1,600 got a bed.
Keep in mind, where did the other 18,400 go?
They boarded a train not far from where Walmart is today, and they were taken, with whatever
their would was, they were taken to Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Baltimore or in Washington.
And, within a few hours, they went to a place where there was a better ration of help to
need.
So, they suddenly had a bed, and more doctors and nurses caring for them.
And, when I went to Walter Reed Medical Museum a few years ago, with another ranger here,
and we visited there, they gave us a behind the scenes tour, and they let us handle with
cotton gloves, two skulls of people who had fought in this battle, who had died in Washington
D.C.
And, the first point they made was, "those people died something like a week or two after
the battle, in Washington."
How did that happen?
It is because of rail, the 1st Modern War.
Now, let me put that in context.
Do you remember after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there were all of these buses parked
outside of New Orleans, and they, while the city was flooded, and helicopters were taking
people off their roofs and putting them on buses, the buses took them to Atlanta, to
the Houston Astrodome, to San Antonio, and gave them shelter, and pets were being adopted
all through the United States from there, and there was a dispersal of people from the
flood area, because the area was overtaxed even for drinkable water.
Do you remember that?
Alright, now think of that example as it relates to rail at Gettysburg, of dispersing the need
into the population, where there's a greater ratio of help to need.
Isn't that fascinating?
Today, if a soldier is wounded in Afghanistan, theoretically within a few hours he can be
convalescing in Germany, far from the scene of action.
And, then theoretically within a couple of weeks, or less than that, he can be at Fort
Hood, Texas way from the scene.
Now, his mind is still swimming from what he endured, and may for years, and he may
never fully recover, but he is geographically far from where he fought.
The first war in human history to remove someone, from the battlefield, that quickly was the
Civil War.
Gettysburg is a great example of that.
It's the 1st Modern War.
Hanover Junction would have been the primary link from the Northern Central to Gettysburg,
via the Hanover-Gettysburg line.
So, Hanover-Junction was a really important holding area.
If you look at some of General Meade's original orders, his Pipe Creek orders, Hanover was
one of the four options where the battle might take place.
You all know that because of the rail.
Okay, that was important, and it turns out that the Confederate troops were not that
far east.
Jubal Early's troops marched back towards the South Mountain, and the battle ended up
closer to, and in Gettysburg.
Jubal Early burned twenty-two bridges, from Gettysburg to Hanover Junction.
Did you all know that?
Twenty-two bridges, it is like I tell people in the field, these are random acts of violence,
and these are not anger management issues, this was intended to target the rail.
General Pickett's division, you know one of the reasons why they were not here at Gettysburg
until the evening of July 2nd and on the battlefield July 3rd, it is because they were tearing
up rail along the Cumberland Valley line.
You know why?
So, the federals could not transport troops in from the Ohio Valley to join the fray.
Rail is very important, you know, so.
And, Lincoln, when he came to speak, he used the same line and he stopped at Hanover Junction,
and Grant came there in 1869 and sat there for a while at the Hanover Junction, before
he came to be hosted by John White Geary, the Governor of Pennsylvania for a tour of
Gettysburg.
He always wanted to see this battlefield that he had heard so much about through Meade,
and other members of the Army of Potomac.
Disrupting rail was also part of the equation.
I have already made a reference to that.
It is estimated that between the four rail lines that I mentioned, the Confederates tore-up
approximately a hundred miles of rail, during the Gettysburg Campaign.
And, so there were ways to achieve this.
The USMRC is demonstrating this, the United States Military Railroad Construction Corps
sometimes would strategically tear-up rail, and you can see them at work there.
Sabotaging rail was turned into a science by Sherman late in the war, into Sherman's
neck-ties.
But JEB Stuart did that during the Gettysburg Campaign too.
You would tear-out a certain section of rail, not the entire length of the rail, but just
a few ties, set fire to the ties, put the rail across until they melted, twist them,
and toss them down into the woods.
And, so then, someone would have to come along and repair them.
And, that was Haupt's United States Military Railroad Construction Corps.
Did you know that Haupt was from Gettysburg?
He lived in the Schultz House.
I know the guides know that, Jim knows that.
His house is beautifully restored, it sits right next to the Lutheran Theological Seminary
at the juncture of Fairfield Road and the Seminary Avenue.
But, Haupt was the military superintendent of all railroads, or a title very close to
that, and he would come along after the Confederates damaged the rail, and he was a wizard at repairing
it.
And, one of his greatest feats, and Lincoln made a special trip just to see it, was the
Potomac Creek Bridge.
It was 400 feet long, 100 feet high.
It was rebuilt by Haupt in 72 hours.
And, Lincoln made the comment that it was made of bean poles and corn stalks.
Have you all heard that before?
And, it was amazing that he learned the old Etruscan – Roman idea of using crisscross,
if you crisscross the wood, you create trusses.
And, therefore, you create more support.
And, that would inspire high rise, steel cage construction.
We have to answer the why?, and the so what?, to all of this.
Not only were the Confederates dumbfounded by how quick Haupt was ready to repair everything,
but then Haupt's construction inspired Carnegie, and his high rise, steel cage construction
in Chicago.
That's where the idea came from, "Haupt of Gettysburg" trusses.
And, then let's talk about ironclads briefly, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy is on
your left, that's Gustavus Fox, the Inspector of Ironclads was Alban Stimers, and the Inventor
and Inventor and Systems Manager was John Ericsson on the far right.
Here's this subtheme of mine, interplay of competing individuals.
And, these three individuals put into the waters, on behalf of the Northern Navy, they
put into the waters these ironclads.
The most famous would be the Monitor and the Merrimac, or the C.S.S.
Virginia.
The Confederates captured what were the remains of a U.S. ship known as the Merrimac, and
they converted it into the C.S.S.
Virginia.
They met on March 9, 1862, in a classic battle off the shores of the coast of Virginia.
And, they lobbed shells back and forth.
The noise was such that sailors inside had nose bleeds and ear bleeds from the concussions
of the noise.
Their shells were not able to penetrate either vessel.
So, after pounding each other for many hours, they disengaged.
When that battle was over, all the wooden fleets of the world were obsolete.
And, so that's the significance of it.
The federal Monitor had the advantage of revolving turret, which allowed them to line-up their
guns no matter how the boat was situated, whereas the C.S.S.
Virginia just had 12 guns broadside, and if the broadside wasn't facing the Monitor,
they were in trouble.
And, so you had turret that revolved.
And, so where did the turret construction, where did the ironclad construction come from?
It came from forges.
This is an interesting point for those who like the study of technology and the development
of technology.
When Fox, Stimers and Ericsson got to together and talked about how to produce many ironclads,
like the Monitor, or similar to the Monitor, vessels that could be placed in the Gulf,
placed in the Mississippi, placed along the coast, is they had those conversations.
Then the question was, who are we going to contract to build them when ship builders
were still building the old technology which was wooden ships?
So, they went to forges, to iron forges.
And, oftentimes the person who agreed to the contract had never built an ironclad before.
I would say in all cases they had never built an ironclad before.
But, they took the contract anyway.
It was good government money coming in, so they would just hammer it out and build these
things according to the design that was given them.
The design, it was originally designed by Ericsson, it was approved for aesthetic purposes,
for artistic purposes by Stimers, and then Gustavus Fox, who was Assistant Secretary
of the Navy went ahead and implemented it.
But, that's what we had going on.
And, then the Passaic was one of the common ironclads that you would see in the bodies
of waters that I mentioned.
And there were coaling stations.
People ask sometimes how, or, why was Florida important during the Civil War, and why were
there skirmishes there at times, conflicts there at times?
And, the answer is, it was an important coaling station along the East Coast.
So, if you controlled it, then you could stop and get coal to continue your journey.
Submarines, well during the American Revolution, there were submarines, including the most
famous American Turtle.
But, the Civil War would improve upon that with the H.L. Hunley.
I tell my son this sometimes, my fourteen year old son, Thomas Edison was asked about
how he invented the lightbulb.
When praised for inventing the light bulb he said, "no, don't praise me, I just
learned 2,000 ways not to invent the lightbulb."
And, that is hard work in experimentation.
Hunley is a similar case.
Hunley had several failed missions, where people died to the point the Confederate government
was leery of giving him another chance.
But, he decided he wanted to break the naval blockade at Charleston Bay.
And, so he convinced enough higher-ups that he could do it.
And, so the Hunley, this is in 1864 now, we will look at specifics in a minute.
The Hunley had a spar on one end.
Can you see the sharp point on the far left?
And, it was harpoon of sorts.
And, so explosives were placed on that harpoon and you would try to align, if you were navigating
the Hunley.
The idea was to align the spar so that it could be rammed and inserted into the side
of a Union ship that was blocking trade in Charleston Harbor.
And then when retracting, the explosive would fall inside the ship, and then it would blow-up.
Inside, it had several people turning cranks.
Okay, and as we try to look for connections across time and space to look for patterns,
the Vikings had oars under ship, you know.
But, these members of the Hunley, they stood inside of a particular groove, and they would
turn the crank.
How did they descend?
Well, there were ballasts under the ship.
Ballasts could be opened to allow water to come in and it would sink.
And, so it would take water.
And, then when they wanted to come up, they released the water from the ballasts and it
would come back up again.
To know that they were running out of oxygen, they had a candle.
As the candle started to flicker, it meant its time come up.
In the two previous instances where it didn't come up, and some people died, they opened
the hatches too early, and it just flooded.
So, this was a very tricky thing.
But, after dark the Hunley approached the U.S.S.
Housatonic, a 16 gun Sloop of War on February 17, 1864, in Charleston Harbor, and successfully
planted the spar in the ship and sunk it.
And, the significance was this was the first example in human history – as we talk about
the 1st Modern War – the first example in human history of a submersible vessel, a submarine
destroying any sort-of floating vessel.
And, in this case, they destroyed a sloop.
And, the Hunley was recently raised.
How many of you knew that?
Just a few years ago, the year 2000 I believe it was raised.
Were any of you there for the ceremony when they reentered the craft and found remains
and reburied them there in Charleston?
And, they had a major ceremony.
Bernadette Atkins who is a dear friend of some, or many of you here, and myself, she
used to run the Eastern National Bookstore.
And, she has a bookstore here in town.
Bernadette was there and brought a stack of pictures back for me to look at.
She was there for the ceremony to celebrate they had found it.
It is in remarkably good shape isn't it?
And, there it is.
It is almost kind-of haunting to see something like that be found on the bottom of the bay
and be brought up.
The North had their version.
It didn't have any, there were some experimental launches, but it didn't have the prestige
of sinking an enemy vessel.
But, nevertheless they had the technology.
It was called the Intelligent Whale.
There was also another one called the Alligator.
But, the Intelligent Whale, this particular one is in the Washington Navy Yard.
I was doing a tour with some group, and we went to Washington, and it was not my part
of the tour, someone else took over at that point, that was their expertise, but they
let us off the bus and told us to walk around the Washington Navy Yard.
I don't know if you have been there, but I stumbled onto this room, and it was really,
really hot that day, there was no air conditioning.
And, I looked-up and saw a sign that said Intelligent Whale.
I thought, "Oh my gosh, there it is."
And, Jules Verne, as we talk about the importance of science -- Einstein said "imagination
is more important than knowledge," right?
Because, you can see that knowledge has limits, but imagination has none.
It's the imagination that leads to inventions like this, and then the knowledge to replicate.
Jules Verne, about that time in his writings, probably inspired the Intelligent Whale.
Leonardo de Vinci did some drawings that are similar hundreds of years earlier, during
the Renaissance.
Yes, the Coffee Mill Gun.
Did you know that the first machine gun was not the Gatlin Gun?
It was actually the Coffee Mill Gun.
And, it was used really earlier in the war in 1861, and seems to have disappeared by
the end of 1862.
But, one of the notable people who ordered it was John White Geary, in his defense of
Harpers Ferry.
Geary was Governor of Pennsylvania from 1867-1873.
He was in command of the troops on Culp's Hill for the most part, and repelled the Confederate
attacks there.
But Geary, he said that they fired at a keg, and six of the ten shots hit the keg, and
he didn't say from what distance.
There is some obscure information on the Coffee Mill Gun, but you would feed the ammunition
in through what looks like a coffee grinder.
And, one other interesting point about all of this.
James Ripley, he was in charge of all the ordnance distribution in Washington, he was
logistics guy.
And, people will ask sometimes, "Why didn't Spencer Repeating Rifles enter in the federal
armies in bulk and in mass earlier?
Why were there only two regiments here at Gettysburg, 5th and 6th Michigan Cavalry that
had them?
Why weren't there more plentiful?
Why wasn't the Gatlin Gun, or Coffee Mill Gun mass produced?
It would have given the Union a unique advantage earlier in the war.
And, one of the answers for all of the above, if you have ever had those thoughts, is James
Ripley.
James Ripley was older, he was from old school, he thought the war was going to be a short
war.
The men had learned Hardee's tactics, and a variation of that later called Casey's
tactics.
They had been trained to fight with Springfield's and Enfield's, and he was not going to mess
with that, and start mixing supplies, causing differences behind the lines, and then confuse
men on how they should fight.
Ripley was out by the middle of 1864, and then you start to see those newfangled weapons,
as he called them, being used in the ranks more plentifully.
There was the Gatlin Gun then.
Its two claims to fame during the war was it was used in the trenches of Petersburg
in the last year of the war, and this may be an urban legend, but there's been a story
for years that for a show of strength, it was brought to the draft riots in New York
City, in July of 1863.
But, that is sometimes disputed.
It would be more commonly used in other wars like the Boer War, the Russians purchased
them, the English purchased them and used them in late 19th century wars.
It was a .58 caliber that fired 200 rounds per minute.
It was steel jacketed.
One of the problems with the Spencer cartridge is that it was copper, for the Spencer Repeating
Rifle, and it would heat up and melt and jam.
Some of you know that.
But, this Gatlin Gun was full proof with a steel jacket.
Let's see, we need to wind down here.
You have the 1862 Springfield, and then you have the Enfield that were produced at armories,
various armories, and the biggest producer would be, of course, at Springfield, Harpers
Ferry, but there were some other armories.
And, the soldiers carried them in the field.
And, one of the problems with the rifle was parabolic trajectory.
If you have been with me on tours out on the battlefield, you've heard me say that on
occasion.
Parabolic trajectory is the arc flight to the projectile.
If you have ever fired a rifle, even now, you don't fire the barrel level to the ground,
because of the curvature to the flight, the ball will curve right into the ground, way
short of its mark.
If you are firing at something a football field's distance, you need to slightly raise
the rifle, so you aim high.
And, then the ball curves, and there's a precision to all of that.
Well, Earl Hess, in his controversial book on the rifled musket argues that the rifled
musket, during the Civil War, was less effective than the smoothbore musket in other major
European battles.
He uses the example of the Battle of Prague, the Battle of Austerlitz.
These are battles that either involved Frederick the Great or Napoleon, where the smoothbore
musket casualties he said were upwards of 28%, whereas the rifled musket, in Civil War
battles, accounted for 10% casualties of the opposition.
Now, why?
Well, you think of the rifle, and this is why the book is so controversial.
Why would that be?
Why is that the case?
Because, of parabolic trajectory, and because they were still firing with weapons before
the era of smokeless gun powder.
So, if you are firing with a precise weapon, and you can't see after the first couple
of volleys, the precision is gone.
Right?
Visibility is key to precision.
So, the attacker, so, you fire high, and so what the attacker does is they go through
low ground.
I've told some of you this a number of times, over the years.
The reason that Pickett's troops went through that low ground beyond the Codori Buildings,
one of the reasons they marched towards the Codori Buildings, because Union artillery
wouldn't fire directly at that house, or the barn.
The barn was a little bit smaller, it was about half the size it is now.
Let me give you a quick example.
You know how you're driving down I-81, and pull-up behind a tractor trailer.
And, if you get close, you can let off the peddle, because he is pulling you.
You know what I'm talking about?
It's called drafting.
It's because that tractor trailer is big enough, it's creating a vacuum of air around
you, and then when it closes-off around your car, you're in that vacuum, that pocket
is just pulling you down the road, and you can just take your foot off the peddle.
But, you're supposed to disconnect.
Why?
It is because your engine will overheat if it is not using its own fan after a while.
So, I thought I would put that precaution in there for you.
The Codori Barn and the house then, think of it as a vacuum that Union artillery could
not curve around.
If you know how to hook a golf ball, I suppose you could fire a draw or fade, or something
like that, but Union artillery could not go around that barn, that's one of the reasons
why the Confederates were guiding on it, at least part of the way.
And, you see in their accounts they mention seeing this conspicuous red building in the
march.
Marching toward that red building would have obscured, you know, a third to maybe half
of the Union artillery.
Now, when they crossed the road, they were in low ground.
And, if you read Armistead Long's account, he was on Lee's staff, he doesn't mention
a 'copse of trees,' or anything like that.
What he mentions is that the Confederates were trying to get into that low ground.
Why?
Because if you are standing on a ridge, and you are Hall, or Harrow, or Webb's brigade
of Gibbon's division, Hancock's Corps, and you are firing off that ridge, and you
are having to aim high to reach the barn, and the Confederates are in low ground, and
you add smoke, a lot of the shots go over their head.
You see that?
And, so they were trying to move – by the way, we are doing history at a higher level
when we look for patterns across time and space, patterns tell us something deeper about
ourselves.
So, apply that pattern everywhere you go that attacks during the Civil War always go through
the lowest possible ground, even if the ground isn't the size of the Grand Canyon.
If it is enough of a depression, it plays games with the parabolic trajectory and the
accuracy of someone who is firing at them from high ground.
Vis-a-vis, the Confederate attacks on Little Round Top and Devil's Den went through Plum
Run Gorge.
The Confederate attacks on McPherson Ridge went through a quarry and Willoughby Run.
You pick low ground.
The Confederate attacks against Culp's Hill were launched from Rock Creek Valley Ravine.
Firing from high ground to low ground with parabolic trajectory and smoke is very difficult.
So, that's a counterpoint about the importance of rifle technology.
But, you had sharpshooters, and they would go out between the lines, and they would occupy
points to fire at you when you crossed an obstacle like a fence.
And, they waited for the moment, and fired at you.
You want to look for skirmish markers on the battlefield?
Find the nearest fence, or the nearest creek and then back-up about fifty yards, and that's
where the line was.
They made the enemy pay for crossing that obstacle.
So, sharpshooters were out in "no man's land."
They learned how to fire a rifle with the advantages of that new technology.
The average soldier in the ranks just fired three shots a minute behind a wall of smoke,
didn't know what they were firing at, accuracy was reduced by the smoke, parabolic trajectory.
The sharpshooter went far enough out in front of the lines where the smoke cleared.
They separated sometimes 15-50 yards so that they would have the smoke clear, and they
would have one clear shot after another.
There were ethical problems with that.
Nineteenth Century people were very concerned about shooting at someone when they were not
defending themselves.
But, sharpshooters were introducing the rifle as a new technology.
Did you know that the Confederates used rifling to keep Union artillery from being as effective.
Do you recognize McGilvery's batteries there near the Pennsylvania Memorial and 1st Minnesota
Monument?
It is over on the far left in the Union defense against Pickett's Charge.
And, do you see the George Weikert Farm beyond that?
Okay, the woods to the right of the George Weikert Farm, a little bit farther to the
right, beyond our view, would be called Trostle Woods.
And, the Confederates after the fight in the Wheatfield on July 2nd, mostly the 18th Mississippi
sent their best squirrel hunters to climb the trees, not unlike someone working on a
utility pole, you know, working their way up to the top to work on the transformer box.
And, they just shot constantly at McGilvery's guns.
If you go over there today to the Pennsylvania Memorial, and you will see all those guns
aligned, and there are lunettes in front of them, these crescent moon-shaped lunettes,
they are earthen mounds.
And, why were they built?
They were to absorb incoming sharpshooting fire, as well as explosive shell.
Isn't that fascinating?
What were the sharpshooters trying to do?
They were not only trying to weaken the federals, and kill a number, and wound a number of their
artillerymen -- that would cut down on Union efficiency during the cannonade, where if
you have to sequester infantry, and do on-the-job-training to replace people that have been wounded,
you don't fire two shots a minute with artillery do you during the cannonade? -- so, the Confederates
were using sharpshooters to soften up the Union line, their artillery before they made
the charge.
Secondly, by positioning sharpshooters to continually shoot at McGilvery, the 6th Maine,
and some of those other units, received a message of don't dare think of counterattacking
with your artillery.
"If you advance with artillery, we'll take out every one of them."
In Napoleon times, you could advance artillery in a charge, but in the Civil War, there were
no artillery charges.
Why?
It was because of sharpshooters.
And so, we answered the "so what" question there.
And, this is the last portion of it.
My favorite point, we will fly through it.
It's the idea of the Art of War as it relates to field fortification technology.
It is Jomini versus Gay de Vernon.
And, these two thought processes competed with one another all throughout the war, with
arguably Gay de Vernon's concepts winning out.
But, before the Civil War began, there were two schools of thought on how you should fight
Napoleonic War.
The Jomini school of thought said you should mass troops on a critical point of mass and
overwhelm it.
That is, even leave parts of your line vulnerable to counterattack so that you overwhelm the
most important point on the battlefield.
Vis-à-vis, the continual Confederate attacks on Culp's Hill, and the Confederate attacks
"up the Emmitsburg Road," were supposed to sandwich the Union line at Cemetery Hill,
disconnect the federals, cut the head-off, and separate the Union in two, force them
to fallback across the logistical wagons somewhere closer to Maryland.
Alright, and that's why we have that.
Lee believed in critical mass on one point.
Grant did too.
But, that was the Jomini thing, put troops, mass them, overwhelm a point, and then all
of the other pieces will fall into place.
But, what was starting to replace that with modern war was Gay de Vernon's ideas that
– and you can see his book on the right, Science of War and Fortifications – he was
arguing, "no, leave a leaner, meaner, smaller force with field fortifications that will
make them larger.
So, instead of putting 5,000 troops in one location, for critical mass, put 1,500 troops
there and learn how to throw up field fortifications, which will turn them into a 5,000 man force
if you know how to build them.
You see what I am saying?
And, in that way, you can avoid putting all your eggs in one basket, all your chips on
the table with critical mass.
Instead, you can spread those troops out to cover passes, to cover pontoon bridges at
key river crossings, to cover symbolic places, to cover naval yards, to cover army headquarters.
You can diversify where you place everyone by just learning the technology of field fortifications.
And, by the end of the Civil War, his ideas were gaining traction.
Gettysburg is considered a pivotal moment.
Some of you heard me in my lecture a couple months ago say that the Battle of Gettysburg
is sometimes referred to as the "last romantic battle."
That's imperfect language, but last romantic battle is the last battle where people stood
out in the open to some degree, toe-to-toe, and fought each other like a gentleman's
duel on a grand scale.
And, you face your accuser out in the open, and you restore your reputation, and you fire
back and forth.
Gettysburg, though, like all historic events is more complex than that.
Larry, you know that field fortification technology was being subtly introduced into this battle.
It was not full-blown trench warfare, but there was field fortification technology.
As you look at East Cemetery Hill, for instance, this is a photograph taken a few days after
the battle, looking from the Baltimore Pike to the north.
And, where you see the trees and some fallen brush, if you look through a magnifying glass,
you'll see abatis and palisades there.
Abatis, in the era before barbed wire, were branches or small woods that you would cut,
and sharpen the end just like a pencil.
And, stick it in the ground to impale your opponent if they didn't watch their step
as they came towards the artillery.
It's a way of slowing them down, creating points where the enemy has to stop and you
get a clear line of fire at them.
And, if you read Harry T. Hays' account, he commanded the Louisiana Brigade at Gettysburg,
and he had charged up East Cemetery Hill.
He said, "we overran their abatis," he actually mentions the abatis in his account.
And, I remember the thrill I had in the book Gettysburg: A Journey in Time, the first time
I looked in Frassanito's book with a magnifying glass, and saw the abatis.
Do that yourself when you get home.
You know, maybe that's a little strange, but in this audience that's normal.
And, palisades are the same kind-of thing.
They are small woods driven into the ground that are sharpened.
You see this picture taken from the Evergreen Cemetery Gatehouse looking north toward where
the Hancock and Howard monuments are now.
And, there's a Union regiment there.
They were cleaning up muskets off the battlefield, burying the dead, and doing various other
things several days after the battle when this photograph was taken.
And, notice over on the far right side of their tents you see smoke.
They were burning palisades and abatis and using it for firewood.
So, East Cemetery Hill had field fortification technology.
This is just so fascinating.
If you read Isaac Seymour's account, he was on Harry T. Hays' staff, the Louisiana
Brigade that attacked East Cemetery Hill, and he said, "we could hear the federals
up there working like busy beavers all night."
Well, he wasn't talking about Culp's Hill, he was talking about East Cemetery Hill.
Isn't that fascinating?
And, where did they get the wood from, by the way?
There was a patch of woods where Georgia and Ginny Wade House is today, and you all know
where O'Rorkes is?
Did you know there was a patch of woods there?
GTC bus parking lot is there now.
That's the patch of woods where they were getting their wood materials from.
Okay, and embrasures were also part of the field fortification technology -- of this
1st Modern War -- that Gay de Vernon recommended.
Embrasures, have you ever seen a turret at the top of a castle, and it has dental-like
indentations?
That's so you can step behind, if it's an arrow or whatever it is you are loading,
you can step behind the denture, and then step back into the portal and fire.
And, those are called embrasures.
And, see how the federals built their redoubts around their artillery, and placed their planks
in such a way so they had walk-through points.
Lunettes, and you can see the Confederates attacking East Cemetery Hill, with the famous
Evergreen Cemetery Gatehouse as the focal point in the background.
And, you can see the Federal 11th Corps up there behind their lunettes.
And, this is what they look like, you know, today.
They were re-dug in the 1930s by the CCC boys.
And, then you have earthworks.
If you go over to, between McKnight's Knoll or Stevens Knoll, and Culp's Hill, and you
walk up through the woods towards Culp's Hill, did you know there are earthworks up
through there?
Yes, it's fascinating.
They are still there.
They are actually there.
I don't believe most people see them.
And, it's probably better that they don't.
We want to keep it a secret.
But, with the woods recently being cleared there, you can see them even better.
Just take your dog and walk through there at some point.
On Stevens Knoll, you can see the Iron Brigade's earthworks.
They are still there.
Again, they were re-dug, re-entrenched in the 1930s, but they are where the Iron Brigade
left them overlooking, you know, from Stevens Knoll out towards East Cemetery Hill.
And, then the breastworks on Culp's Hill, they were fairly elaborate.
Here's kind-of a caricature of the 149th New York from Syracuse on Culp's Hill firing
behind these fortifications.
If you read Edward O'Neal's account, he commanded the Alabamians that attacked the
Syracuse line on July 3rd.
He said they were like log cabins at the top of the hill.
The federals actually felled trees and did some master craftsman work.
You can see Color Sgt.
William Lilley being presented there on the relief.
What he did was, there were so many Confederate projectiles that flew through there that it
cut the flag staff in half, of the 149th New York.
So he's spliced it together.
Isn't that neat?
So, he using a splint and putting it together so that he can plant it back and show the
Confederates, discourage them from trying.
There were traverses on Culp's Hill.
That's all part of the Gay de Vernon idea on field fortification technology.
A bonnet traverse is like a bonnet you wear on your head.
That means it's a head covering.
But, the traverse is something that goes at right angles with the main line.
And, on Culp's Hill, you all recognize Dr. Fennel there, Charlie Fennel, one of our licensed
guides?
He's standing where the traverse is today.
If you walk over there on Culp's Hill, the earth is still risen up from the traverse
built there by David Ireland and the 137th New York from Binghamton.
And, but there's a mound there.
A traverse also indicates that there are compartments that protect you at right angles.
So, there would have been a little zig-zag to the traverse.
When the Confederates from Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland attacked that position,
they would have had trouble being able to approach the federals in any direction and
have a clear line of fire.
Traverses also tend to have boards that go across the forehead.
And, we don't have precise proof that this particular traverse on Culp's Hill had one,
but a lot of traverses have a board that covers the forehead.
You know why?
It's to protect against plunging.
The federals might have had these headboards as well.
It is like a football player who has a face mask.
It doesn't stop his eyes from being harmed, but it fends-off a lot of blows to the head.
In a similar way, a board at forehead level stops a Confederate on lower Culp's Hill
from shooting down into the ravine into the top of the head.
That's called plunging.
So it is with the traverses.
Big Round Top has stone walls that were constructed the night of July 2nd.
Did you all know that?
And, they run from the top of Big Round Top all the way to near the 44th New York monument,
not quite that far, but almost to Little Round Top.
Unbelievable, and they built them up there.
And, the Confederates said, General Longstreet told Lee, "You don't want to attack Round
Top again," he told him on the morning of July 3rd, "they have been building stone
walls up there all night."
They could hear the echoes of the rocks being put into place.
The 20th Maine, the stone wall that's been put into place to the 20th Maine, where Joshua
Chamberlain made his famous counterattack, was not there when the 15th Alabama attacked
them.
It was built after the attack, in case they attacked again.
And, that's field fortification technology.
Now, the stone wall itself would have been dressed up with abatis in front of it.
It would have also been built into natural rock formations already there.
So, by the time the Confederates get anywhere near the house, he's stumbled and bumbled
across all kinds-of natural obstacles that he stone wall enhances.
Yes, that was built after the famous fight.
The 13th Vermont rifle works, can you see behind the Sgt.
Brown statue and the 13th Vermont monument, along the fence there how the earth has been
changed?
That's over on the fields of Pickett's Charge.
Those are field fortifications.
The 13th Vermont would have dismantled that fence, and laced it in with the earthwork
to make it stronger and give it fiber strength.
Out in front of the Hancock wound monument, in the fields of Pickett's Charge, out on
that little plateau, in front of it was field fortifications built there too by the 13th,
14th and 16th Vermont.
It would have been about waist high.
It would have been laced with stone, dirt, dismantled rail.
And, it was one of the reasons why Pickett's troops had to march in front of the Union
line.
They couldn't flank it because of the field fortification technology.
Isn't that fascinating there?
You normally never hear that.
If you look at the Codori Thicket, and how rough that is, tie that into McGilvery's
lunettes, and then tie that in with the field fortification technology the Vermonters put
there, the Confederates were not, would have ideally wanted to flank Hancock's line,
and get reverse fire with frontal fire and roll the Union line up in the direction of
the Angle and beyond.
But, they were never able to flank, and then the federals turned the trick on them by pivoting
Stannard out into the field.
But, they were initially firing behind fortifications.
Where did those fortifications go? 1n 1887, a rail line was built across from Harrisburg
to Gettysburg, and then across the fields of Pickett's Charge.
And, that's when the field fortifications were leveled.
The whole National Cemetery would have looked like a hundred ground hogs were let loose
in it, before the cemetery was created.
The National Cemetery smoothed all that ground out, but there was all kinds-of field fortification
technology in what is now the National Cemetery.
And, in front of the 20th Massachusetts Infantry marker, see those field fortifications?
They're significant.
That's what Pickett's troops were up against.
If you read James Kemper's account, to John Bachelder, its 1871 or 1873, he wrote Bachelder,
Kemper was the Governor of Virginia at the time.
He had been in Pickett's Charge, was wounded.
He wrote Bachelder and he said, "I didn't allow any of my men, in the preliminary hours
before [we call it Pickett's Charge] the attack to leave their swales, and walk to
the top of the ridge where the artillery was," he said, "I didn't want them having a
look at the field fortifications."
He actually mentions them.
They must have been formidable.
And, then we have the stone wall at the High Water Mark.
How many of you have noticed the new stone walls that are being put up out there?
Okay, now they are not exact replicas.
There are some differences and people have raised concerns, and that kind-of thing.
Although, I think all of those concerns have been addressed.
The park has been real attentive to that.
But, they are meant to represent where the actual stone walls were.
We are trying to put back stone walls that were removed with construction of the Cyclorama
building.
But it's gone, the Cyclorama has been demolished.
We're putting those old, original stone walls back up.
But, occasionally somebody will look at the representation walls that we put up in the
last nine to ten months, and they'll say, "could they have been that tall during the
battle?"
And, the answer is yes.
Look at this hand shake in 1938 at the 'Angle,' where Pickett's Charge was repulsed.
Look at how high up they are.
And, the 69th Pennsylvania, they felled trees from the 'copse of trees' to create abatis
all out in front of them, that position.
The 'copse of trees' was not very tall, but they extended all the way out towards
the Emmitsburg Road.
And, all those trees were ground down like an orchard manager prunes down an orchard
to just nobs, sharpened knobs.
The Confederates called the area all in front of the 'copse of trees' the 'slashing.'
Slashing, have you ever been into a forest where they felled a lot of trees, and maybe
the trees have been dragged out of there, but there's still a lot of debris lying
around, that you better not walk through without steel-tipped boots.
You know what I'm talking about?
That's slashing.
The 69th Pennsylvania, the 71st, 72nd, 106th Pennsylvania, 59th New York, they put all
of those sharpened abatis obstacles out in front of the line.
Okay, our summary conclusion.
The 19th century has been compared to a driver who looks in the rearview mirror at what is
behind them, while they drive down the highway at 65 mph.
Similarly, generations that lived between 1800 and 1903 witnessed the steam train, steam
boat, steam factory, steam press, photography, telegraph, telephone, x-ray machine, electric
grids, combustible engines and first flight, even as they clung to the past.
With all of this rapid change, they still looked to pre-modern traditions for meaning
with their Victorian dress, manners, social values and class structure.
They fixated on the past, while charging full steam ahead.
The American Civil War represents the clashing of pre-modern and modern worlds in favor of
modernization.
The war became a testing and proving grounds for the modern world.
Thank you for coming out today, and coming out all winter.
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