FEATURE - CIVIL WAR

More from Tukufu about the Civil War.

Technological innovations like the submarine have led many historians to call the Civil War "the first modern conflict."

For the first time in history, the burgeoning advances of the Industrial Revolution such as railroads, telegraphs, and the steamship were used in battle.

And the war itself brought new technology into being.

Naval mines and torpedoes were first used in the Civil War - advances in nautical weaponry that changed the way ships were built.

Before the war, most were made of wood. But to protect themselves against new threats, both sides rushed to build ironclads.

The first meeting of these metal monsters was in 1862, when the C.S.S. Virginia engaged the Northern ironclad, the Monitor, off the coast of Virginia. The battle was a draw, but the age of modern naval warfare had begun.

Modernization of armed land conflict also began in the Civil War - again resulting from technological innovation.

Civil War soldiers used a new weapon: the rifled musket. The revolutionary design of this gun allowed bullets to spin in the barrel as they were released. This spinning made the bullets fly straighter, further, and with greater accuracy.

Because of these guns, armies would never again charge. This ended a European military tactic that had existed for hundreds of years - and announced the era of trench warfare.

Perhaps the most significant and lasting development of the war was the wholesale renovation of the American economy.

Before the war, the U.S. was a largely agrarian society. But the demands of the war sped up the process of industrialization at a tremendous rate and on a massive scale.

The outcome of the Civil War was not just the abolition of slavery - but also the birth of the greatest industrialized nation the world had ever known.