Book Review: Mighty Ironclads and Other Amazements: Civil War

Mighty Ironclads and Other Amazements by Alison Wells, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 2005

The first Ironclads are amazing enough, but this booklet talks of other advances and how they effected the Civil War.  Improvements in photography brought the war to people.  Pictures of the dead were often taken and sent to home states.  Mathew Brady sponsored a crew of photographers, who documented much of the war.  However, the first battle, Manassas or Bull Run has no surviving photographs.  In the Union retreat, the wagon of Brady was upset, and the pictures were ruined.  There of course were other photographers.  Newspapers did not always purchase pictures, and they were wold directly to the public.  Also soldiers also wanted their image taken in case they did not make it home.

The telegraph was also a major advance.  Information could travel the speed of light.  No longer were there long delays in disseminating information.  The advance of Morse Code gave a method for exchanging information.  It was not unheard to have telegraph wires lined to the battle front.  Along with the telegraph, was the use of balloons for spying on military formations of the enemy.  Telegraph wires were also wired right to the balloon.

The telegraph wire did have it drawback.  The enemy could intercept messages, or worse could fake messages.  However, telegraph operators were familiar with the patterns of those with whom they communicated frequently.  They often could tell the difference between fake and real messages. 

The Virginia against the fleet blockading Richmond was a pivotal moment in history.  The Virginia was the Confederate conversion of the ship Merrimac, a steam powered ship.  It had been lined with steel.  There was some difficulty getting enough, and in some cases rails were used, having been melted and formed into plates.  These were attached to the ship.  This ship was 263 feet long.  In addition to cannon, it was armed with a battering ram.  The first day on Hampton Roads, the ocean waterway where the James River drains, the Virginia had great success.  Cannon fire from the ships did not affect the Virginia, and it was able to ram and sink the Cumberland, one of two ships (of about fifteen Union ships) that had cannon large enough to do any damage to the Virginia.  The other ship, Congress, it had badly damaged and ran aground.  Another ship had been sunk, and two more run aground.  At the end of the day, it withdrew, with the expectation of retuning to finish the job the next day. 

The Union had heard of the Confederate plans for an armored vessel, and had made their own.  When they heard of the battle in Washington, the USS Monitor, a flat vessel with a turret had been floated to the area.  The trip had been rough.  The USS Monitor almost sunk in the high seas.  However it was there waiting the next morning, and thus the first ironclad battle took place.  The USS Monitor was smaller, but its turret made a difficult target.  It was also better able to steer because of the smaller size.  The ships battled for four hours with no clear winner.  The Virginia withdrew and steamed upriver.  The blockade held. 

Book Review: Documenting U.S. History: The Civil War through Photography

Documenting U.S. History: The Civil War through Photography  Darlene R. Stille, Heinemann Library, Chicago, Illinois, 2012.

 

This is not a very good history of the Civil War; but is a better history of photograph and wartime photography.  It starts with a god explanation of primary sources versus secondary sources in term of documenting history.  Primary sources are letters, diaries or newspaper articles written by witnesses to an event.  Official reports such as orders would also be a primary source.  A picture also would be a primary source, such as a map drawn to show a path, or a drawing or photographing of a first person witness. 

Secondary sources are such things as reports or pictures drawn based on the witness of someone else.  This would include biographies or paintings. 

Photography had gone through several stages.  The first photograph was mad in 1826 by French inventor Joseph Niepce.  Fellow Frenchman Louis Daguerre invented the Daguerreotypes which had better image and was us mercury vapor.  Tintypes were invented in the 1850s and were easier to use.  Glass plates also came into use in the 1850s.  The difficulty about photography was the photographer had to take a dark room with him in order to develop the pictures. 

Mathew Brady was a famous Civil War photographer.  However he more organized teams of photographers because of his failing eyesight.  Alexander Gardner and others worked for him and did the actual photography.  Because of the limitations of photography, action scenes were not possible.  However there are many camps scenes, personal portraits, pictures of officer staff, artillery crews with their cannon.  Many after battle pictures were taken.  This included photographing dead soldiers.  This is the first time this had ever been done.  There are also many pictures of the destruction of war; buildings destroyed, mostly in the South.  There is documentation through photography of the conditions in prisoner of war camps as well as hospitals. 

As I said, a better history of photography rather than the Civil War.  I could have used more pictures, but it pointed to a web site which you can search Library of Congress Civil War pictures.  They have over 7500 pictures in the public domain.