Northern Response to the Ironclad: A Prospect for the Study of Military Technology

NORTHERN RESPONSE TO THE IRONCLAD: A PROSPECT FOR THE STUDY OF MIUTARY TECHNOLOGY Earl J. Hess THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF military technology is sizable and growing. The hardware of war machinery has fascinated scholars and generalists, but studies of responses to those new tools are relatively scarce. ' Because of this, the structure of response to military machinery is yet obscure. The following essay is an attempt to outline a method of approaching reaction by society at large to war tools. That outline consists of two parts; response to military machinery that considered it as tools of prosecuting a war, and response that considered it as symbolic of technology. Differences between the two categories of response lie essentially in the immediacy of the particular war experience. Such factors as societal perception of the issues involved in the conflict influenced response to the military machine as a war tool; the desire to achieve victory often could override any possible reservations concerning the use of that weapon. On the other hand, contemporary views of peacetime machines prompted 'For an overview of the historiography of military technology in America see Edward C. Ezell, "Science and Technology in the Nineteenth Century," and Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., "Science and Technology in the Twentieth Century," in A Guide to the Sources of United States Military History, ed. Robin Higham (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1975), 185-215, 269-91. Ezell and Pursell updated their essays in A Guide to the Sources of United States Military History: Supplement I, ed. Robin Higham and Donald J. Mrozek (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1981), 44-55, 69-71. Studies of response to American military technology in the nineteenth century include Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956); Thomas C. Leonard, Above the Battle: War-Making in America From Appomattox to Versailles (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978); and Hugo A. Meier, "American Technology and the Nineteenth-Century World," American Quarterly 10, no. 2(1958): 116-30. A sampling of works on twentieth-century response includes Barton C. Hacker, "Imaginations in Thrall: The Social Psychology of Military Mechanization, 1919-1939," Parameters 12, no. 1(1982):50-61; Allen Guttmann, "Mechanized Doom: Ernest Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War," Massachusetts Review 1, no. 3(1960):541-61; Randall R Waldron, "The Naked, the Dead, and the Machine: A New Look at Norman Mailer's First Novel," PMLA 87, no. 2(1972):271-77. NORTHERN RESPONSE TO THE IRONCLAD127 reaction to a military machine as a symbol of technology in general. Consideration of a weapon as such a specimen demanded that the observer lift himself from the immediacy of the war and ponder longer-term issues involved in technology. And, of course, an interaction of these two factors could have influenced reaction to the military machine as either war tool or as technological symbol. The Civil War is an appropriate field for an inquiry of this sort. Long considered by historians to have been a modern conflict, its participants incorporated a variety of important technological innovations into their war effort, the most conspicuous of which was the ironclad warship. Northern response to this tool was outspoken. Poets, government authorities, soldiers, sailors, and the civilian public largely considered the ironclad a tool for achieving victory, although a few voices raised the question of its significance as a technological symbol. With few exceptions , the response in both categories was largely positive in nature. Northerners began building ironclads soon after the war began. On August 7, 1861, James B. Eads received a contract for seven armored gunboats which, when finished, formed the nucleus of Union naval power on the western rivers. On September 15, 1861, John Ericsson obtained permission from the Navy Department to begin work on a floating battery later named the Monitor. In both the West and East, construction of other armored warships began during the war's initial year, but the first vessels to see action and become largely visible to the public were the products of Eads and Ericsson.2 Because of its spectacular battle with the Virginia in Hampton Roads, the Monitor became the war's most famous ironclad. Historically the world's first combat between iron ships, the Monitor...