What if A. P. Hill's Light Division had bicycles at Antietam?

[gary]

They had to march from Harper's Ferry to Antietam and on bicycle (perferably mountain bikes), would have moved much faster than marching. The added celerity would have brought welcomed reinforcements quicker to a hard pressed Army of Northern Virginia.

Then again, the historical timing was perfect in that they arrived in time to slam into the left flank of the IX Corps and drive it back to the ridge above Antietam Creek. So, if they got there earlier, they would have to slug it out with the IX Corps and lose man for man. They would probably have been beatened and then the Army of Northern Virginia could have been destroyed instead of merely beaten.

In conclusion, it's a good thing A. P. Hill's Light Division didn't have mountain bikes. The war could have ended in 1862. I'll shaddup now.

[ole]

Amen.
Ole

[samgrant]

Horses better than bicycles, don't have to peddle 'em.

[ole]

And now, for something different, I offer the Ministry of Silly Walks.
Ole

[blue_zouave]

Now what if they had had Segways????

[whitworth]

one should always consider what pitiful shape, that industry was in the Confederacy. They could never make enough of anything.
The Confederacy had enough trouble attemping to supply shoes for its soldiers. Besides the lack of foundries to make the bike bodies, where were the Confederates going to find rubber to make the tires?

[samgrant]

It is not well known that celebrated secessionist Edmund Ruffin was indeed, at the outbreak of the war, very close to the perfection of of his "Flux Capacitor", but the war led to a shortage of necessary materials and components.

From Wikipedia:

"In June, 1860 Edmund Ruffin published a futuristic novel, Anticipations of the Future, to Serve as Lesson for the Present Time correctly predicting Abrahan Lincoln winning the election of 1860, followed by Republican William Seward in 1864. The potential reelection of Seward in 1868 brings secession, then a war that takes place in Virginia. The North enlists "Negro armies," and violence racks Northern cities before a truce leaves an independent South. At the end of the book Ruffin offers a second outcome. The South secedes immediately and "the great cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia... (are) sacked and burnt, and their wealthiest inhabitants massacred, by their own destitute, vicious and desperate population..." "

These predictions were based on his early experiments with "time travel".

Unfortunately, lacking materials to complete his invention, Ruffin so immersed himself in his "time travel" experiments, that he ultimately drove himself insane, finally shooting himself at the close of the war.

That was the end of developement of the "Flux Capacitor" untill the year 1885, when a man uncannelly resemblng Ruffin, one Emmett L. Brown, in a town called Hill Valley, after reading Rufffins works, began to put together those pieces and materials unavailable to Ruffin.

Brown (reputably related to the John Brown(of moulderen in the grave fame), a staunch Unionist (what else in 1985?) did not employ his invention to intervene in that long past war.

see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Ruffin

[trice]

Originally Posted by gary

They had to march from Harper's Ferry to Antietam and on bicycle (perferably mountain bikes), would have moved much faster than marching. The added celerity would have brought welcomed reinforcements quicker to a hard pressed Army of Northern Virginia.

Then again, the historical timing was perfect in that they arrived in time to slam into the left flank of the IX Corps and drive it back to the ridge above Antietam Creek. So, if they got there earlier, they would have to slug it out with the IX Corps and lose man for man. They would probably have been beatened and then the Army of Northern Virginia could have been destroyed instead of merely beaten.

In conclusion, it's a good thing A. P. Hill's Light Division didn't have mountain bikes. The war could have ended in 1862. I'll shaddup now.

Thanks for posting this.

I could not remember whether or not the bicycle had been invented by the time of the Civil War. After searching the Internet and looking at a few fascinating sites, it appears the answer to that is yes-no-maybe-sorta, depending on what "bicycle" means. The actual term seems to have been coined in 1869. For further info, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_bicycle.

One thing: I don't think they had brakes on what passed for bicycles at the time.

Regards,
Tim

[ole]

They did what many of us grew up doing -- dragging their feet.
Ole

[whitworth]

Actually the U.S. Army didn't start experimenting with bycycles until peacetime before the Spanish-American War.