Can you imagine thousands of people charging at you through a field with weapons dangerous weapons? The only defense you would have would be a bayonet (a gun with a knife at the end of it).

This is how many battles were fought in the American Civil War. Believe it or not, the soldiers with the bayonet had a large chance of winning but only if they were in a trench. A trench is a dug up, slim, long pit. Children helped dig the trenches. The soldiers would run in the trench, duck down, and shootout of the trench. The soldiers outside of the trench can try to shoot at the enemies but the enemies can just duck down into the trench. Another thing they did to make it even harder to get to the trench is to wrap barbwire around the trench and even in front of that stacked together logs! It will look like this:

A great weapon for attacking other ships in naval battles was a cannon. Can you imagine how easy it would be to sink a ship with a cannon? It was very easy just to crack a hole in the ship. The negative side is they will have just as an easy time sinking you as you do them. It would be very hard to aim the cannon ball at the ship even though it’s easy to sink it with a cannon ball.

Later the iron ships came along. The Monitor was the second ironclad ship ever built! John Erricson designed it. Iron ships had rams built on them a ram is kind of like a horn on a rhino attached to the bow (the front) of the ship. Cannons were then unable to sink the ships because the iron is protecting it. Sometimes the cannon ball would actually bounce of the iron ship back towards the attacking ship.

Two weapons have just been explained out of thousands of more advanced complicated weapons that were used at the time of the American Civil war.

Spying was a method that is often needed in the American Civil War but was not used enough because of the hard work the soldiers had to go through.