Rains, Gabriel James

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Gabriel James Rains
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    South
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Siblings
    1
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    6
    Family
    Gabriel M. Rains (father), Hester Ambrose (mother), George Washington Rains (brother), Mary Jane McClellan (wife)
    Education
    West Point (US Military Academy)
    Occupation
    Military
    Scientist or Inventor
    Military
    US military (Pre-Civil War)
    Confederate Army

    Gabriel James Rains (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    With the outbreak of the Civil War, [Gabriel] Rains accepted a commission as brigadier general in the Confederate army. Assigned command of a brigade under General D. H. Hill, Rains commanded at Yorktown in 1861-1862 and led the retreat before General George McClellan's advancing army. Rains had experimented with explosives long before the Civil War, and at Yorktown he mined the adjoining waters. When he retreated from Yorktown he mined the road against pursuing Union cavalry and again mined the roads at Williamsburg. In the resulting outcry from the Union army and newspapers, his corps commander, General James Longstreet, forbade the use of land mines. The Confederate secretary of war accepted their use but reprimanded Rains for questioning the authority of his corps commander. Rains persisted and convinced President Jefferson Davis of both the ethical legitimacy and the military value of mine warfare. One sign of the shift from limited to total war in tactics was the conversion, as the war progressed, of most of his Confederate and Union critics to the ethical legitimacy of this emerging form of warfare. Rains subsequently used land mines to protect the land approaches to Richmond, Mobile, and Charleston.
    Edward Hagerman, "Rains, Gabriel James," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00645.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "Rains, Gabriel James," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/6444.