Union Balloon Corps

Thaddeus Lowe and his Union Army Balloon Corps pioneered aerial reconnaissance over some of the first battlefields of the American Civil War.

This article appears in: July 2016

By Don Hollway A week after the first shots of the War Between the States at Fort Sumter in April 1861, the future of warfare came to Appalachia. Plowmen in the remote Allegheny Mountains heard a voice calling, “What state is this?” and, seeing no one about, replied toward the nearest woods: “Virginia.”The voice answered, “Thank you,” and the farmers were startled by a stream of sand pouring, unbelievably, from the sky. Looking up they saw, hanging in space above them, a gargantuan