Emily, G11C, RDF International School

瑞得福国际学校 邱淇

It is noticeable that the American Civil War was of great significance in U.S. history. Whether the Civil War was the first modern war has caused a heated debate. From my perspective, I tend to agree with this standpoint, especially when the following reasons are taken into consideration.

To begin with, employing rifles enabled soldiers to have deadly, accuracy and long-range shot, which was more desirable than the old muskets.

Compared with the muskets used before, which adopted a round lead ball as ammunition, rifles put a spin on the bullet with Minie balls inside, allowing for deadly accuracy and long range unprecedentedly. What’s more, soldiers also put little grooves at the bottom of the Minie balls which carried bacteria so as to cause infection while being shot.

Furthermore, utilizing telegraphs during the Civil War furnished commanders with easier and faster communication, which are identical with the mobile phone we are using now. Given that the previous communication measure was to assign an individual to deliver a letter which would be too time-consuming, telegraphs allowed the commanders to provide almost real-time information instantly and accordingly adjust their own troop movements or telegraph back to headquarters what they had witnessed.

Ultimately, railroads were pivotal to transport the supplies and have the war moving. After the industrial revolution, the presence of railroads helped the soldiers get supplies rapidly especially under the urgent circumstances. Compared with the transportation before the industrial revolution, it took a much longer time to get supplies than the Civil War, which means that railroads, which were very similar to trains nowadays, played a crucial role in transportation.

For those reasons, we can safely conclude that modern technologies were too beneficial of factors to ignore and exerted significant influence on the Civil War.

There is no doubt that the Civil War was the first modern war since the employment of rifles, telegraphs, ironclads as well as railroads.