On a sunny day in May 1862 Thaddeus Lowe looked down on the Confederate capital of Richmond Virginia seven miles 11 3 km away from a hot-air balloon he had built himself The bal loon known as Intrepid was attached to long ropes held by strong men on the ground to keep it from floating away The aeronaut observed the fortifi cations built around Richmond and the movements of soldiers assigned to protect the city He took notes and sketched a map Suddenly he saw a puff of white smoke and heard a loud bang The Confederates were trying to shoot him down If Lowe were captured he might face hanging as a spy He shout ed to his ground crew who frantically began to pull on the ropes while Lowe released gas from the balloon A second cannon blast sailed by the balloon as it descended and set down It had been a narrow escape for a Union master spy SPYING FROM ON HIGH
NOT-SO-UNITED THE STATES V ISITORS TO THE UNITED STATES in 1860 would have noticed that the country was not as united as its name suggested The northeastern and north-central parts of the country were mostly in dustrial with several large urban centers The southeastern and south-central parts were mostly agricultural with more rural set tlements than cities To fill their agricultural needs Southern plan tations and farms required a lot of labor The cheapest labor was provided by slaves Southerners felt that slavery was essential for their region’s economic survival Slavery was also a large part of the area’s history The first Africans had been forcibly brought to Virginia For hundreds of years slaves picked cotton by hand on large farms in the American South
in 1619 By 1860 slaves from Africa and elsewhere made up nearly 40 percent of the population in the Southern states Many Americans particularly in the North didn’t look at slavery as an economic issue They felt that it was morally wrong to control other people and treat them as property They began demanding that slavery be ended in the U S at all costs even if it meant going to war Many Southerners felt that their way of life was being threatened The turning point was the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 Lincoln was known to oppose any expansion of slavery into new states Would he also strive to end the practice altogether Southern leaders decided that they could not wait to find out So one month after the election South Carolina voted to secede from the Union Ten other states would soon follow and together they organized a new country the Confederate States of America CSA with former U S senator Jefferson Davis as its president To emphasize the separation in the early morning hours of April 12 1861 the Confederate army began shelling Union forces occupying Fort Sumter near Charleston South Carolina The first shots of the Civil War had been fired COVERT OPS IRONCLAD INTELLIGENCE Mary Touvestre was a slave in the home of the Confederate engineer tasked with rebuilding the CSS Virginia an ironclad ship One day in 1861 Touvestre heard the engineer brag that his iron-covered ship would soon help break the blockade the Union had on Confederate ports She stole a set of his plans and walked all the way from Nor folk to Washington around 140 miles 225 km to hand them over to the Union secretary of the navy As a result the Union navy sped up construction on its own ironclad the Monitor In March 1862 the Monitor engaged the Virginia in a historic battle that helped keep the blockade intact 0909
