Was reading this Wiki article the other day and came across this paragraph:
What if the Union had taken up John Doughty's idea? How effective would these chlorine gas shells have been? How many could have been produced? Where and when would they have most likely been used? Could the Confederates have produced their own version of these weapons? And what effect would their use have had on this war and on subsequent 19th-century wars?
Later, during the American Civil War, New York school teacher John Doughty proposed the offensive use of chlorine gas, delivered by filling a 10-inch (254 millimeter) artillery shell with two to three quarts (two to three liters) of liquid chlorine, which could produce many cubic feet (a few cubic meters) of chlorine gas. Doughty’s plan was apparently never acted on, as it was probably presented to Brigadier General James Wolfe Ripley, Chief of Ordnance, who was described as being congenitally immune to new ideas.
What if the Union had taken up John Doughty's idea? How effective would these chlorine gas shells have been? How many could have been produced? Where and when would they have most likely been used? Could the Confederates have produced their own version of these weapons? And what effect would their use have had on this war and on subsequent 19th-century wars?