The Civil War was the first conflict in world history to employ a large number and a variety of different types of landmines. A handful of Confederates pioneered in the development of contact-activated mines by adding a sensitive percussion fuse to artillery shells and burying them in front of fortifications, at watering places, and along roads and pathways during the conflict. Some mines also were rigged to explode by electricity. But Confederate hopes for the landmine were never realized. While the technology worked, the landmine failed to provide ay tactical benefits. Federal troops quickly learned how to deal with them, often using Confederate prisoners to dig them up. The torpedoes, as they were commonly called in the 1860s, merely angered and embittered the Unionists rather than demoralized or stopped them. Some of these mines killed Southern civilians, including women and children, and many remained in the ground for decades to come.

Despite the tragic consequences, Confederate operatives worked out the first doctrine of landmine use in global history and implemented that doctrine in the 1860s. The key elements of the doctrine resurfaced in European warfare during the Second World War and in the conflicts associated with the Cold War.