"Engineering in the Confederate Heartland" Topic

"While engineers played a critical role in the performance of both the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, few historians have examined their experiences or impact. Larry J. Daniel's Engineering in the Confederate Heartland fills a gap in that historiography by analyzing the accomplishments of these individuals working for the Confederacy in the vast region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, commonly referred to as the Western Theater. Though few in number, the members of the western engineer corps were vital in implementing Confederate strategy and tactics.

Most Confederate engineers possessed little to no military training, transitioning from the civilian tasks of water drainage, railroad construction, and land surveys to overseeing highly technical war-related projects. Their goal was simple in mission but complex in implementation: utilize their specialized skills to defeat, or at least slow, the Union juggernaut. The geographical diversity of the Heartland further complicated their charge. The expansive area featured elevations reaching over six thousand feet, sandstone bluffs cut by running valleys on the Cumberland Plateau, the Nashville basin's thick cedar glades and rolling farmland, and the wind-blown silt soil of the Loess Plains of the Mississippi Valley. Regardless of the topography, engineers encountered persistent flooding in all sectors…"

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Armand

Totally incredible how folk keep finding a new topic for a book on ACW, plus it seems to find an audience.

We have recently had Surrender in ACW, this week Catholics in CSA, here Engineers in ACW, then Conscription in CSA, then many a battle, all in the last 12 months. Fortunately the ACW is so much better documented and recorded than the Napoleonic Wars (OK, I do accept that it helps that they are in "English"…as an accident of history)

(smile)

Armand

And the Civil War was a lot shorter in duration that the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

And the Civil War did not have battles the size of Wagram, Borodino, and Leipzig.