It is also a story of the human toil and machinery that produced more than four million small arms for the Union Army and stamped from copper over one billion percussion caps for these weapons during the four years of war. Inside the Confederacy, it is the story of experiments with new weapons-the submarine, iron-clad rams, torpedoes, and landmines-in an attempt to overcome the North's numerical superiority. It is the purpose of The Civil War Centennial Handbook to present this unusual story of the Civil War, a mosaic composed of fragments from the lesser-known and yet colorful facts that have survived a century but have been obscured by the voluminous battle narratives and campaign studies. Much of this material, when originally drafted, was selected by the National Civil War Centennial Commission for their informative and interesting Facts About the Civil War.