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I'll be the first to say that the chemical industry in the US in the early 1860s wasn't much more than a handful of isolated skunk works with not much at all in the way of modern chemical engineering. That said, commodities like sulfuric acid and white phosphorus were certainly available at the time.

So...suppose some inventor in the Union (the south probably had next to nothing in the way of capacity of this sort) came up with an idea like, say, making thousands of glass spheres filled with concentrated vitriol or white phosphorus in water? They'd have to be launched mechanically (e.g., a trebuchet) at close range, but when those spheres shattered they'd splatter the contents either on attacking troops or on (say) dry grass (in the latter case they become incendiary weapons).

The effects of concentrated vitriol are not nice, as you may imagine. Thus, what would be the effects in terms of tactics and/or strategy--and on southern morale?
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