8.10.7

Explain how the war affected combatants, civilians, the physical environment, and future warfare.
             Civil, in accordance with organized society, war, an open armed conflict, it’s incredible how these two words have come together without being noticed as an oxymoron. Our country, the remarkable United States has had troublesome discrepancies in its past but none bloodier than America’s Civil War. With the largest death toll in American history, combatants obviously did not too often make it out alive. Tears have been shed through the entire course of the event and survivors no doubt have told the story over and over to their grandchildren, surviving a battle was indeed probable but other horrors awaited even after the guns stopped firing. Fighters of the civil war spent there whole term in camps, there was nothing wrong with this except that a measles breakout or any other had plenty of hosts at those crowded encampments. This ultimately means that a good number of soldiers died at the hands of their fellow companions or rather at the disease of their fellow companions. Even those who had not participated in the fighting its self were scared for life. Family of those who had bravely fought had illnesses that were caused by the loss of their son, father, or husband.
             On the environmental side of things, wars have always had disastrous affects on the natural world. Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Japan spit massive quantities of radiation everywhere, World War I and later used poison weapons and unused shells of 1914 still lay in France and Belgium, buried beyond recovery. Without the technology of such destructive weapons, the civil war attacked our world much more subtly. Although a lack of humans is considered a good thing for Earth, dead bodies covered everything, making uncountable amounts of litter and an imbalance in a gender ratio. Horses and mules too were a part of the battle so they also suffered the fate of dying by the thousands; epidemic disease was the main cause of deaths in animals though. Horses and mules dragged those pieces of fresh wood back to camp for just about everything, to build and to burn. The forest was brought down en masse to supply troops. Occasionally, an accident occurred burning a whole in mother nature as a forest fire was started, guns were shot off in the heat, wounding horses, mules, and people that were roasted in the holocaust. Animals and plants were destroyed but at least it wasn’t to the extent we humans have gone to as Chechnya, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Even so, the Civil War has brought plenty of destruction to our natural environment.
             The Civil War also helped people improve in the act of slaughtering each other. The Civil War brought trench warfare, the same technique used in WWI. The soldiers in trenches mowed down advancing troops. Fixed up and covered with iron, the ironclad Merrimack of the South wreaked destruction to every manned, piece of floating wood it could find until the Monitor of the North was created and shipped out to sea. Obviously, many more metal ships followed to bring havoc on anything in its way. The war led to the use of much of the new technology that had been invented.


More Information:

   1.    American Civil War: An Environmental View
          by Kirby, J. Temple


Recommended Books:

   1.    http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/nattrans/ntuseland/essays/amcwar.htm
          The Civil War’s connections with our environment is explained in detail here. Many ideas have never been thought about and the author is pretty famous. Plenty of pictures are spread throughout the six page essay and everything is split into several titled sections per page.