Engineering Victory: How Technology Won the Civil War (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)

Synopsis

Engineering Victory brings a fresh approach to the question of why the North prevailed in the Civil War. Historian Thomas F. Army, Jr., identifies strength in engineering--not superior military strategy or industrial advantage--as the critical determining factor in the war's outcome. Army finds that Union soldiers were able to apply scientific ingenuity and innovation to complex problems in a way that Confederate soldiers simply could not match. Skilled Free State engineers who were trained during the antebellum period benefited from basic educational reforms, the spread of informal educational practices, and a culture that encouraged learning and innovation. During the war, their rapid construction and repair of roads, railways, and bridges allowed Northern troops to pass quickly through the forbidding terrain of the South as retreating and maneuvering Confederates struggles to cut supply lines and stop the Yankees from pressing any advantage. By presenting detailed case studies from both theaters of the war, Army clearly demonstrates how the soldiers' education, training, and talents spelled the difference between success and failure, victory and defeat. He also reveals a massive logistical operation as critical in determining the war's outcome. -- Inside jacket flap. Introduction: masters and mechanics -- Part I. The education and management gap: schooling, business, and culture in mid-nineteenth century America -- Common school reform and science education -- Mechanics' institutes and agricultural fairs: transmitting knowledge and information in antebellum America -- Building railroads: the early development of the modern management system -- Part II. Skills go to war -- Wanted: volunteer engineers -- Early successes and failures: Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, Island No. 10, and Middle Tennessee -- McClellan tests his engineers: the Peninsula Campaign, 1862 -- Thomas Scott, Daniel McCallum, Herman Haupt, and the birth of the United States Military Railroad -- Summer-Fall 1862: Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee -- Part III. Applied engineering -- Vicksburg -- Gettysburg -- Chattanooga -- The Red River and Petersburg -- Atlanta and the Carolina Campaign -- Conclusion: know-how triumphant. Thomas F. Army, Jr. Includes bibliographical references and index.