Suppose, for example, a Union regiment at Gettysburg had discovered supplies typically intended for use in teaching chemistry: bottles of concentrated oil of vitriol (as sulfuric acid was commonly known), jars of white phosphorus in inert oil or water, bottles of nitric acid, boxes of sodium chlorite, etc. A knowledgeable officer (say, a professor of chemistry from the University of Delaware) knows how to use these to produce chlorine gas-at least in the laboratory. Could these somehow be deployed as crude chemical shells against the Confederacy--or even have bottles of sulfuric acid and white phosphorus lobbed into the Confederate lines as incendiary weapons?