Despite the thousands of books published on the American Civil War,
one aspect that has never received the in-depth attention it
deserves is the use of landmines and their effect on the war and
beyond. Kenneth R. Rutherford rectifies this oversight with
America's Buried History: Landmines in the Civil War, the first
book devoted to a comprehensive analysis and history of the
fascinating and important topic of landmines. Modern mechanically
fused high explosive and victim-activated landmines were used for
the first time in the world's history on a widespread basis in the
American Civil War. The first American to die from a
victim-activated landmine was on the Virginia peninsula in early
1862 during the siege of Yorktown. The controversial weapon, which
was concealed on or beneath the ground, was built for one purpose:
to kill or maim enemy troops. The weapon was the brainchild of
Confederate General Gabriel J. Rains, who had experimented with
explosive booby traps in Florida two decades earlier during the
Seminole Wars. By the end of the war in 1865, some 2,000 "Rains
mines" had been built and deployed in the field around Richmond.
Simultaneously, other Confederate officers and soldiers also
developed a sundry of landmine varieties, including command
controlled and victim activated, across the Confederacy. The
Confederacy abandoned common practices in favor of innovative
approaches that would help them overcome the significant deficits
in materiel and manpower. The South's reliance on these weapons
pushed the limits of nineteenth century technology against a
backdrop of a deteriorating military situation, setting off
explosive debates inside the Confederate government and within the
ranks of the army over the ethics of using "weapons that wait." As
the Confederacy's fortune dissipated, its military leaders sought
creative ways to fight, including leveraging low-cost weapons with
minimal material inputs. This became an important factor in the
increased support and attention landmines received from Confederate
leaders. As the Civil War progressed, Southern military men
continued to develop landmines with technological ingenuity adapted
to local circumstances. Confederate soldiers manufactured landmines
and also configured spur-of-the-moment landmines in a relatively ad
hoc manner, often recycling unexploded Union ammunition. These
debates over the ethics of mine warfare did not end in 1865. Dr.
Rutherford, who is known worldwide for his decades of work in the
landmine discipline, brings together primary and other research
from archives, museums, and battlefields to demonstrate that the
Civil War was the first military conflict in world history to see
the widespread use of such weapons. His study contributes to the
literature on one of the most fundamental, contentious, and
significant modern conventional weapons. According to careful
estimates, by the early 1990s, landmines were responsible for more
than 26,000 deaths each year worldwide. America's Buried History
traces the development of landmines from their first use before the
Civil War, to the early use of naval mines, through the
establishment of the Confederacy's Army Torpedo Bureau, the world's
first institution devoted to developing, producing, and fielding
mines in warfare. As Dr. Rutherford demonstrates, landmines
transitioned from "tools of cowards" and "offenses against
democracy and civilized warfare" to an accepted form of warfare.
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