# American Civil War: questions from a Canadian **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 30, 2019, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680 "2019-10-30T01:18:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2019, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/101 "2019-12-12T07:24:11Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > **Event:** One of the Mexican civil wars, circa 1911. > **Place:** Naco Sonora/Arizona. > **Action** : Rebel vs Federal troops skirmishing just south of the US/MX border. > **Viewers:** Gringos from Tucson and closer sitting in railcars and bleachers on the US side, watching the battle a few yards away. With boozy picnics. > **Priority:** Warfare’s first recorded motorized (not balloon) aerial bombardment. > **Fun:** A US pilot was hired by one side to bomb the other. He carefully circled his biplane and tossed a grenade overboard. Which landed on the US side. In a warehouse. Where the federal general’s Rolls limousine was safely stored. Boom. Bye-bye, car. And bye-bye pilot, who wisely amscrayed ASAP. > > Watching wars from a safe distance is fun - unless TV coverage ruins everything. From what I’ve read, there were three battles (sieges, really) between rebels and federalistas in Naco. The first was in 1911, another in 1914, and the last in 1929. The aerial warfare, with American pilots/planes hired by the rebels, was only in the last one. (Airplanes were just not that common before WWI.) And there were several bombs that went astray to the Arizona side of the border. Picnickers observed all three conflicts from the relative safety of the north. Also it was not uncommon for deserters to flee to the AZ side. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2019, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/102 "2019-12-12T11:22:59Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, all the Calvary at the Little Big Horn died, so, yeah, pretty much. I think you mean **Cavalry**. As for uniforms, they weren’t always, well, uniform. The 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, for example, wore grey at least some of the time. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2019, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/103 "2019-12-12T11:36:21Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The new rifled muskets and the occasional use of repeating carbines made the napoleaonic method of lining up in bright uniforms, exchanging a volley of very inaccurate fire then closing with bayonet not as feasible. Sure, they still did it, but defense went to trenches and fences quickly and they learned to charge at a run. Skimishers became important. There were certainly skirmishers in the Napoleonic wars. And green-coat regiments using green-coat tactics. Conversely, both sides were still trying to bring vast armies to close up during WWI. It all seems much less clear-cut than you suggest. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2019, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/104 "2019-12-12T13:44:46Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I can completely believe the idea that someone in the Army of that era would balk because of the idea that a Gatling gun would waste bullets. This is absolutely correct. There were actually quite a few different “machine gun” type weapons in the Civil War. They were typically placed near bridges, mountain passes, and other choke points where military commanders felt that their tremendous expenditure of ammunition would not be wasted. It wasn’t until later guns like the Maxim Gun proved their worth that military commanders truly understood how these guns with high rates of fire could be used to great effect on the battlefield. While the Gatling Gun is by far the most widely known, there was also the earlier Agar Gun (aka the Coffee Mill gun because of its shape). Abraham Lincoln was very impressed with a demonstration of the Agar Gun in 1861. and immediately ordered the army to purchase ten of them. About 60 or so were produced and were used during the war. The Confederates captured some of them at Harper’s Ferry, so they ended up being used by both sides. The Agar Gun had a single barrel and tended to overheat as a result of this. The Gatling Gun solved this problem somewhat by using multiple barrels. While the Gatling Gun would see a lot of service after the Civil War, the Agar Gun would not, mostly because of overheating and jamming issues. A modern reproduction of the Agar Gun: Note that they are using shotgun primers instead of the original percussion caps, which makes the gun significantly more reliable. The earliest hand-cranked gun that I am aware of was the Puckle Gun, which was a revolving flintlock gun patented in 1718. The Confederates had a revolving cannon which they used at Petersburg that was kind of a similar idea. The Confederate revolving cannon, while innovative, did not contribute significantly to the battle. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2020, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/105 "2020-09-26T20:49:33Z")
An article from The Washington Post claims there is enormous criticism of this show, watched by 1 in 6 Americans. This is purportedly due to an unbalanced discussion of slavery. In essence, critics claim that too little time is spent discussing slaves and too much is spent with Shelby Foote ostensibly somewhat minimizing its role. > **[Analysis | Re-watching ‘The Civil War’ during the Breonna Taylor and George...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/09/26/ken-burns-civil-war-breonna-taylor-george-floyd-shelby-foote/)** > > The landmark Ken Burns documentary, which began airing 30 years ago this week, hasn’t aged well. But it continues to shape American perceptions about the Confederacy and slavery. I don’t fully agree with these criticisms. Surely Foote is given too large a role. But the series, which I recently found excellent, includes a multi-faceted discussion and a fairly complete one. However false, there were many Confederate justifications for the war at the time, and not including or discussing them would be misleading. I disagree the series has “aged badly”. Which in no way minimizes contemporary issues or concerns - many of which are not the subject of the show. Your thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2020, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/106 "2020-09-26T22:38:37Z")
Yes, there were other justifications. But if a state listed seven reasons for secession, the first six would all be slavery. The seventh might be some sort of vague mumbling about tariff policy, without even specifying whether the state supported or opposed tariffs. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2020, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/107 "2020-09-26T23:35:46Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > Isn’t it odd no pictures seemed to show active battles? > [@Colibri](#): > > That one’s easy. The photography of the time required long exposures, so anything moving would be blurred. There’s lots of photos of dead bodies and people posing, but photographers would try to photograph a scene with much action. > [@yabob](#): > > Hmmm, this came up just recently. Not just the exposure times, which could be as short as a few seconds in decent light, but the cumbersome process involved. Mathew Brady and other photographers of the era used the wet plate collodion process: > > [Collodion process - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion_process) > > The photographer basically had to cart their darkroom around with them. The plate had to be prepared, shot, and developed within a very short interval (15 minutes according to that wiki article - other sources give different figures, but certainly no more of a window than half an hour). Photography became dramatically less cumbersome as well as having shorter exposure times about 20 years later with the development of the gelatin dry plate, baking them for faster emulsions, and Eastman then coming up with practical roll film. So the result was that it took a long time to set up a camera (which were large and elaborate horse-drawn set-ups) and a long time to expose the plate. It wasn’t like wartime photographers in the 20th century and later that could take a quick photo during the battle. On the contrary, with the equipment constraints on photography in the 19th century, it was the wartime equivalent of still lifes: static images of the aftermath of battle (like Mathew Brady’s famous images). [ETA: I actually thought this was a new thread initially, before I realized it’s been going for a while, so I modified my reply accordingly.] ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/108 "2020-09-27T00:51:23Z")
True enough. But my recollection was that there was a fairly thorough discussion of slavery. Inevitably, there was also discussion of how the Confederates justified their actions. It seems reductionist (but not absurd) to argue on the basis of time given to a few people, or their degrees. In fact, for me this series inspired a lot of further reading and knowledge of the issues. As in my OP, I was shocked to learn only 4% of slaves reached age 60, even if life expectancy was generally lower. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/109 "2020-09-27T05:06:26Z")
> [@robby](#): > > (which were large and elaborate horse-drawn set-ups) ??? Lewis Caroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) was a contemporary photographer, and he describes setting up a camera, and it wasn’t horse drawn: ``` From his shoulder Hiawatha Took the camera of rosewood, Made of sliding, folding rosewood; Neatly put it all together. In its case it lay compactly, Folded into nearly nothing; But he opened out the hinges, Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges, Till it looked all squares and oblongs, Like a complicated figure In the Second Book of Euclid. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/110 "2020-09-27T05:18:24Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > . As in my OP, I was shocked to learn only 4% of slaves reached age 60, even if life expectancy was generally lower. Not shocked after reading Roman history ☹ Rome suffered from ‘bad air’ – malaria, and most of those slaves captured in war and sent to Rome only lived 2 or 3 years. Just as America has a film tradition of subtly referencing the Civil war from the Southern side (Star Wars, The Last Samurai, Firefly etc), the English had an idea of Roman Empire that subtly matched and justified the English Empire. So for me, it was a bit of a shock to realize that the Roman Empire was a slave state and Roman Civilization existed by exploiting slaves in appalling conditions. I often see 'Roman Slavery wasn’t that bad! You could buy your way free!" Not if you’re dead you can’t. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/111 "2020-09-27T05:38:06Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > ??? Lewis Caroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) was a contemporary photographer, and he describes setting up a camera, and it wasn’t horse drawn: Horse-drawn wagon for the whole set-up, including plates and a darkroom. See here for details regarding the process Mathew Brady and Lewis Caroll used: > **[Collodion | Wet-plate collodion photography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion#Wet-plate_collodion_photography)** > > In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer, an Englishman, discovered that collodion could be used as an alternative to egg white (albumen) on glass photographic plates. Collodion reduced the exposure time necessary for making an image. This method became known as the 'wet-plate collodion' or 'wet collodion' method. Collodion was relatively grainless and colorless, and allowed for one of the first high-quality duplication processes, also known as negatives. This process also produced two types of positiv Th... > [@](#): > > All of this was done in a matter of minutes, and some of the steps in (red) [safelight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safelight) conditions, which meant that the photographer had to carry the chemicals and a portable darkroom with him wherever he went. After these steps the plate needed rinsing in fresh water. Finally, the plate was dried and varnished using a [varnish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varnish) made from [sandarac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandarac), [alcohol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol) and [lavender oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_oil). > > Dark tents to be used outdoors consisted of a small tent that was tied around the photographer’s waist. Otherwise a [wheelbarrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow) or a horse and covered wagon were used. Mathew Brady took photos of Civil War battlefields, and used horse-drawn wagons. > **[Google Sites: Sign-in](https://accounts.google.com/v3/signin/identifier?continue=https%3A%2F%2Fsites.google.com%2Fsite%2Fsites%2Fsystem%2Ferrors%2FWebspaceNotFound%3Fpath%3D%2Fkelln5bradytelegraph%2Fpics-by-and-of-mathew-brady&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fsites.google.com%2Fsite%2Fsites%2Fsystem%2Ferrors%2FWebspaceNotFound%3Fpath%3D%2Fkelln5bradytelegraph%2Fpics-by-and-of-mathew-brady&ifkv=ATuJsjxmkzhDWRY6W6l9W3YjxFFM_6hxAOkt4CdqC-2fLXeHhYwl3fji25-t1bxro7h6aAAbDyYa&passive=1209600&service=jotspot&flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin&dsh=S-939383257%3A1707911203260482&theme=glif)** > > Access Google Sites with a personal Google account or Google Workspace account (for business use). ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/112 "2020-09-27T05:48:43Z")
P.S. Lewis Carroll’s poem ends this way: > [@](#): > > **But my Hiawatha’s patience,** > His politeness and his patience, > Unaccountably had vanished, > And he left that happy party. > Neither did he leave them slowly, > With the calm deliberation, > The intense deliberation > Of a photographic artist: > But he left them in a hurry, > Left them in a mighty hurry, > Stating that he would not stand it, > Stating in emphatic language > What he’d be before he’d stand it. > Hurriedly he packed his boxes: > Hurriedly the porter trundled > On a barrow all his boxes: > Hurriedly he took his ticket: > Hurriedly the train received him: > Thus departed Hiawatha. So not a wagon in this case, but a porter and a barrow. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/113 "2020-09-27T12:22:50Z")
Often? ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/114 "2020-09-27T12:24:28Z")
Carroll’s poetry tends to be a little more whimsical. I think Hiawatha was written by someone else. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/115 "2020-09-27T13:34:02Z")
Everything I can find online indicates _Hiawatha’s Photographing_ was written by Lewis Carrol (pen name of Charles Dodgson) as a parody of Longfellow’s _The Song of Hiawatha_. Carroll completed the poem in November 1857. > **[Carroll's camera](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03087298.1984.10442219)** > > Ottewill's Registered Double Folding Camera was introduced in 1853. A camera of this type was purchased in 1856 by Lewis Carroll, who described it in Hiawatha's Photographing, his parody of Longfe... [http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/carroll/hia.html](http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/carroll/hia.html) ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/116 "2020-09-27T15:12:20Z")
Guess I stand corrected. I can’t say I’ve read more than the two obvious works by Carroll (not including math puzzles). Part of the beauty of the Dope is the eclectic contributions. I appreciate you citing this. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/117 "2020-09-27T15:46:17Z")
And I appreciate @Melbourne bringing it up in the first place. I’d never actually heard of the poem before. Reading it brought a smile to my face. Incidentally, if you look at the details of wet-plate collodion photography, it wasn’t just that the plates had to be developed within minutes. They also had to be prepared in the portable darkroom immediately before taking the photograph. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/118 "2020-09-27T16:41:41Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > Why were casualty rates so high? Was it normal for prisoners of war to be treated so badly? Casualty rates in terms of battle injuries and deaths weren’t THAT high. We tend to concentrate on the biggest battles, like Shiloh and Gettysburg, but in most battles, most guys walked away unscathed or lightly injured. At Antietam, where some 65,000 men clashed in a ferocious battle, about 4,000 died - an awful toll but a casualty rate of six or seven percent. Wildnerness, which involved a three day fight between well over 150,000 men, killed about the same number. Shiloh, involving 100,000 men over two days of the most horrific fighting, also killed about the same number. And that was sufficiently bad to scandalize newspapers throughout the country. What resulted in so many men dying during the war, aside from disease, was that there were SO MANY battles. The American Civil War was fought on a scale - geographic, numerical, and industrial - that was gigantic to an unprecedented degree. The two sides sent truly immense numbers of men and material into war, fighting constantly, for four years. If you look at wars not too long before it, battles were not only less numerous but often intensely decisive. Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo instantly ended his second run, just as battles like Austerlitz had brought him crushing victories over his enemies. War in Europe at that time was generally about brining one’s army in battle at a time and place of your choosing to eliminate the enemy in a single day. Austerlitz started at 8 AM and was over long before lunch. Civil War battles dragged on, sometimes for days, and there was almost constant low level fighting or minor battles in many areas. During the Vicksburg campaign, after invading Mississippi, Grant’s forces fought a dozen named battle and any number of smaller skirmishes in a span of eight weeks. It was this sort of constant, never-ending grind of battle that killed so many men, a grind that would only get worse in future wars. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/119 "2020-09-27T17:07:31Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Wildnerness, which involved a three day fight between well over 150,000 men, killed about the same number. And it was just the first of a series of four major and several minor battles during Grant’s Overland Campaign that dragged on for six weeks. The thing was, every previous Union commander, after taking such casualties, would stop and often retreat. Grant was willing to continue attacking Lee again and again and again, no matter how many men he lost. He finally realized that it was a war of attrition rather than of decisive battles. Even if Lee won an individual battle, he still lost men he couldn’t replace. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/120 "2020-09-27T19:04:25Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Grant was willing to continue attacking Lee again and again and again, no matter how many men he lost. He finally realized that it was a war of attrition rather than of decisive battles. Even if Lee won an individual battle, he still lost men he couldn’t replace. Grant’s armies inflicted more casualties than they took, and not by an insubstantial number, when you count prisoners. Grant’s understanding of warfare went way past just “I can take casualties he can’t.” Grant got that the war was strategic, fought on a grand, continental scale. Lee didn’t quite get that, which, to be fair, most of their contemporaries also didn’t. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680.md?page=7)