The American Civil War brought more death, destruction, and hardship to Georgia and Georgians than all of America’s other wars combined. Black and white, rich and poor, men and women, old and young—almost everyone had a huge stake in its course and outcome. During this period Georgia became the industrial, transportation, and arsenal hub of the Confederacy. This spring, Georgia Tech hosted the first annual symposium Technology and the American Civil War to explore these themes at the intersection of history, technology, and liberal arts.

Georgia Tech entities—The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs; the School of History, Technology, and Society; the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts; and the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy—teamed up with the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta and the Georgia Battlefields Association to host panels on topics ranging from medical technologies and treatments to field operations and communications. An exhibition of artifacts from the civil war era was presented in the Student Center’s Piedmont Room, adjacent to the theater in which the symposium was held.

The symposium on technology and the American Civil War comprised part of Georgia Tech's contribution to the war’s sesquicentennial commemoration. The program had over 150 attendees including students, faculty members, alumni, and community members. View the booklet passed out as part of the symposium here.

“Not only was this campus part of the Battle of Atlanta,” said Seymour Goodman, professor in The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, “but Georgia as a whole became the arsenal and refuge of the Confederacy as it contracted.

The school that would become the Georgia Institute of Technology was founded less than 30 years after the picture below, a view from where the Habersham building and Ivan Allen College administrative offices currently stand, was taken.

Nearly impenetrable fortifications prevented the grounds of the future site of Georgia Tech from becoming a real battlefield.  The course of technological innovation was no less impacted by the war. As with any notable military engagement, the war spurred rapid technological change over an extremely short period of less than five years, so much so that it set the standard for later wars. Advances in photographic equipment and processes resulted in compelling imagery from the war.

Goodman and Ivan Allen College Dean Jacqueline Royster will be collaborating this fall to teach an honors class that aims to explore the experiences of various segments of the population throughout the Civil War. INTA 3803HP: Georgia During the Civil War Era will spur students to look at all categories of people—white, black, men, women, enslaved, free, affluent, poor— and understand what happened to them over the course of the war.