Technology

By 1860, 30 years after the debut of the steam locomotive, railroads had come to dominate the nation's transportation system and fostered explosive economic growth.During the war, railroads enabled the quick transport of large numbers of soldiers and heavy artillery over long distances. Control of the railroad in a region was crucial to military success, and railroads were often targets for military attacks aimed at cutting off the enemy from its supplies.Construction of a long-awaited transcontinental railroad began in 1863. Stalled somewhat by the war, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad Companies raced to complete the task, driving the last spike at Promontory, Utah, in May 1869.
 * Railroads **

[] Primitive by modern standards, army medicine confronted greater challenges during the Civil War than in any previous conflict.The weapons and ammunition used caused horrific wounds, and surgeons resorted often to amputation performed with the aid of anesthetics like chloroform (when available) under poor sanitary conditions. Soldiers were treated with heavy doses of toxic medications such as calomel, quinine and laudanum. Disease especially dysentery, typhoid, malaria and pneumonia--killed twice as many Union and Confederate troops than died in combat. Hundreds of female nurses trained by civilian organizations like the U.S. Sanitary Commission helped improve conditions in army camps and hospitals. []
 * Medicine: **

** Repeating rifles: ** By mid-1863, the North was able to equip cavalry and some infantry with newly developed repeating rifles. The most successful of these repeaters was the Spencer carbine, used by Union troops in the Battle of Gettysburg. The U.S. government purchased more than 95,000 Spencer carbines during the war. Though able to fire seven shots in 18 seconds, the Spencer carbine had a shorter range and malfunctioned more often than single-shot muzzle-loading rifles, which remained the primary weapon of the war. The Gatling gun, a hand-powered six-barrel repeater patented in 1862, became the first successful machine gun used in warfare. After limited use in the Civil War, the U.S. Army officially adopted it in 1866. []

During the Civil War, the Union made extensive use of the telegraph, creating a civilian-staffed bureau, the U.S. Military Telegraph, to handle the high daily volume of messages.President Lincoln, who sent 1,000 telegrams over the course of the conflict, used the telegraph to stay in touch with his generals in the field and enforce his decisions as commander in chief. Unions had 45,000 miles of telegraph wires while the confederates had only 5,000 miles. But the unions had about 15,000 miles of new wire added, and about 100 miles of new wire was added to the confederate side. The telegraph was difficult to manufacture because of a metal shortage. The White house did not have a telegraph; Lincoln had to visit the War Department regularly to monitor the events in the field.
 * The Telegraph**

[|**http://www.history.com/shows/modern-marvels/videos/the-telegraph-and-telephone#the-telegraph-and-telephone**] 

**The Anaconda Plan** On May 1861, Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott planned to blockade the southern coast while gunboats drove down the Mississippi River. With the South sealed off, Scott believed, southern Unionists would eventually overcome secessionists. When word of Scott's plan leaked out, Northern critics called it the "Anaconda Plan," in honor of the snake that squeezes its prey to death. At the time, few people in the North or South expected the Civil War to be a long conflict. The aging general retired that year, but the spirit of Scott’s plan reemerged in 1864, when Grant's attack in Virginia and Tennessee and Sherman's march through Georgia combined to squeeze the life out of the Confederacy.

**Artillery** The North gained a great advantage over the South in terms of artillery production, and many of the Confederacy's cannons came from Federal forts and armories captured at the war's outset. Artillery units used a variety of cannons including guns, shorter-barreled howitzers and mortars to fire shells and other ammunition such as canister (tin cans full of lead slugs) at approaching enemy soldiers. The defensive mechanism of artillery meant that most frontal attacks failed, or succeeded only at the cost of heavy casualties. Rifled cannons--which fired further and with more power than smoothbore--were developed during the war; some of the most widely used were the Parrott gun and the Blakely rifle.

[|**http://www.history.com/videos/self-propelled-vs-towed-artillery#self-propelled-vs-towed-artillery**]