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Some
info on the Civil War you
may not have known...
Or,
if you're from the South-Eastern regions of the United States,
"The war of Northern Aggression". Here's how the lines
were drawn...
The
war lasted almost exactly 4 years.
An
interesting thing about war is that the country or countries actually IN
the war learns quite a bit about warfare... Most armies around the world
at the time were still using basically the same methods used in the
Revolutionary War... the American Civil War changed the face of war
forever. Britain, Germany, Canada, France, and other countries
sent observers to see what the Americans were doing on the battlefield,
and what they saw shocked them... war had entered the modern era.
Here's
a short list of innovations and inventions made during the American
Civil War:
Gattling gun
Repeating Rifle
Hot Air Balloons were first used, by the Union, later
the Confederacy, to spy enemy movements
Submarines were first used successfully by the
Confederacy,
but were first invented during the Revolutionary War
Iron Clad Ships
Trench Warfare
Luminescent Flares
Land Mines
Prepackaged ammunition
Floating Torpedoes
Exploding Shot
Sterilization of Medical Equipment
Shortly
after the civil war ended, the United States reviewed what it had
learned, and retrained its military from the lessons learned, shortly
afterward, the US started doing 'show of force' operations around the
world, but at the time the US was not considered to be on par with other
European countries. About 25 years after the end of the Civil War,
the American military machine finally applied its newly learned skill,
and picked a fight with Spain, using a boiler accident aboard the USS
Maine to initiate a war. After easily winning the war, in an
overwhelming display of skill, technology, and tactics, the US finally
earned its way into the inner circle of "Major Players"...
however, it was not until WW1, about 20 years later, that the US
was considered a global power.
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