Jack Hitt

Everybody suddenly saluting and.

This is Lowe quoting Lincoln.

General, this is my friend, Professor Lowe, who is organizing an aeronautic corps for the army and is to be its chief.

I wish you would facilitate his work in every way and give him all the necessary things to equip his branch of the service on land and on water.

And with that, he leaves.

And suddenly, Thaddeus Lowe is the chief aeronaut of the United States Balloon Corps.

Well, they were terrifying.

When the Confederates realized what these things were, that these were observatory balloons, they would shoot at them.

In fact, at first, it was like ignorant Romans perceiving Hannibal's elephants.

It's like, oh my God, what are these?

And they just unleash fusillades of fire on these balloons.

But of course, their guns couldn't ever mile up.

They couldn't reach anywhere close.

And in fact, Lowe sort of took delight in the fact that the Confederates were just using up all their ammo on his balloons.

And they moved it up and down the Potomac River so they could move their balloon into place up and down in different battles along the edge of this river.

Now, what that typically meant was somebody important, right?

Officers were on horseback.

And so he sent word down the line, aim your cannons over here.

There's a bunch of officers over here, bombard here.

And they do, they come close but miss.