OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio in the Civil War Pt 7 *********************************************************************** OHGENWEB NOTICE: All distribution rights to this electronic data are reserved by the submitter. Reproduction or re-presentation of copyrighted material will require the permission of the copyright owner. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 30, 1999 *********************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Diaries of S. J. Kelly Plains Dealer Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley *********************************************************************** Ohio in the Civil War -- Pt 7 Balloons and Telegraph -- continuation. The Confederates too, fielded a few balloons but gave up after their best remembered " gas bag " the " Silk Dress Balloon," so named because it was made from strips of dresses donated by patriotic Southern women-- was captured in 1862. Gen James Longstreet, in a rare moment of romanticism, bemoaned its loss as " the meanest trick of the war." Where there were balloons, there were bound to be antiballoon measures. Chief among these were camouflage and antiballoon artilley fire. The Confederates used camouflage to deceive Union aerial observers, who from their airborne stations could count tents and guns and arrive at accurate estimates of their enemy's strength. Beauregard suggested camouflaged sheds and " Quaker guns" of blackened wood to represent entrenched cannon. More often, draw near and then let loose a salvo of shellfire--the world's first antiaircraft fire. Tom Rosser's battery of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans is said to have shot down one of McClelan's observation balloons in this manner, but " shot down " may have meant " forced down," since there is no record of a Union balloon being so destroyed, nor of a Union aeronaut being lost to Rebel gunfire. The telegraph, invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844, had similarly profound effect on the conduct of the war. For the first time in history, military policymakers. generals in the field, and numerous lesser lights were able to communicate spontaneously and almost instantaneously. By 1864 General Grant , from his post in the field with the Army of the Potomac, could control the activities of a multitude of units operating on widely separated fronts as if he were present with each. The telegraph did not immediately displace more antiquated modes of communication such as the dispach rider, but by the end of the war nearly all strategic and a large proportion of tactical communications ( especially the Union armies ) were being handled by the telegraph. Both Governments adopted the exsisting civilian telegraph network for military use, but the North did so more efficiently, and for two reasons: first, the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, was loath to interfere with private companies, preferring loose supervision to government control; second, Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's powerful Secretary of War and himself a former executive of the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company, secured the active cooperation of Northern firms and created the Federal Military Telegraph System, which operated under his direct supervision. This organization at first worked in tandem with the U.S. Signal Corps ( established since June 1860 ), then in late 1863 all telegraphic communications, both strategic and tactical, became the responsibility of the civilian operators of Stanton's Military Telegraph System. The Signal Corps continued to operate, but was limited to visual signaling in tactical situations. ********************************************** Civil War in Ohio to be con't in part 8.