It was organized as a civilian operation, which employed a group of prominent American aeronauts and seven specially built, gas-filled balloons to perform aerial reconnaissance on the Confederate States Army.

Lowe met with U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on 11 June 1861, and proposed a demonstration with his own balloon, the Enterprise, from the lawn of the armory directly across the street from the White House.

The Balloon Corps with a hand-selected team of expert aeronauts served at Yorktown, Seven Pines, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and other major battles of the Potomac River and the Virginia Peninsula.

This created a notion at the War Department and at the Treasury that some sort of balloon aviation unit need be established and headed by a "Chief Aeronaut".

Nor was there any set method to the process of selecting a Chief Aeronaut, rather it became a free-for-all in attempts to attract the attention of any officials in either the government or the military.

In actuality the use of balloons was left to the discretion of the commanding generals through a process of trial and error based on the best recommendations of the balloonists themselves.

[3] His scientific record was held in high regard among colleagues of the day, to include one Prof. Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution, who became his greatest benefactor.

[6] On Saturday, 16 June, with his own balloon, the Enterprise, Lowe ascended some 500 feet (150 m) above the Columbian Armory with a telegraph key and operator, and a wire following a tether line to the White House across the street.

I have pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station and in acknowledging indebtedness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the service of the country.

Eventually he worked with Major General Irvin McDowell, who rode along with Lowe making preliminary observations over the battlefield at Bull Run.

His attempts at free flight in preparation for a transatlantic crossing were less than successful, and he did not receive the same type of financial support from the patrons of the sciences, nor did he carry the overall scientific credibility of Lowe.

Mary Hoehling indicated that Captain Whipple of the Topographical Engineers told Lowe that Wise was preparing to bring up his own balloon, supposedly the Atlantic.

Lowe describes the inflation incident in his official report less dramatically, saying that he was told by the gas plant supervisor to disconnect and let another balloon go first.

LaMountain operated at Fort Monroe for a while with the battered Atlantic and was actually accredited with having made the first effective wartime observations from an aerial position.

In Lowe's first instance of demonstration at Bull Run, he made a free flight which caught him hovering over Union encampments who could not properly identify him.

Lowe had to deal with administrative officers who usually held ranks lower than major and had more interest in accounting than providing for a proper war effort.

[18] The generators were built at the Washington Navy Yard by master joiners who fashioned a contraption of copper plumbing and tanks which, when filled with sulfuric acid and iron filings, would yield hydrogen gas.

Eventually the Excelsior was sent to Camp Lowe,[22] a high altitude observation point, as a back-up balloon to the Intrepid during harsh winter weather, but the United States was never put into service.

B. Starkweather; William Paullin, an older Philadelphia colleague; German balloonist John Steiner; and Ebenezer Mason, Lowe's construction supervisor, who requested active duty.

The General Washington Parke Custis, a converted coal barge, had its deck cleared of all items that could entangle the ropes and nets of the balloons, and it was used as a river transport for the Corps.

I left the Navy yard early Sunday morning ... having on board competent assistant aeronauts, together with my new gas generating apparatus, which, though used for the first time, worked admirably.

[32] Lowe was met by McClellan's Army a few days later, and by 18 May, he had set up a balloon camp at Gaines' Farm across the Chickahominy River north of Richmond, and another at Mechanicsville.

[33] A small contingent from Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman's corps crossed the river toward Richmond and was slowly being surrounded by elements of the Confederate Army.

In another incident, one of the handlers became entangled in the ascending tether rope which had to be chopped loose, leaving the captain free-flying over his own Confederate positions whose troops threatened to shoot him down.

The balloon was filled with a coal gas and launched from a railroad car that its pilot, Edward Porter Alexander, had positioned near the battlefield.

In late June 1862, Alexander made a few ascents in the balloon and was able to signal his observations of the battlefield to men on the ground using a wigwag system that he had devised.

A second balloon was put into action in the summer of 1863, when it was blown from its mooring and taken by Union forces and divided up as souvenirs for members of the Federal Congress.

Lowe was ordered to join the Army for the Battle of Antietam, but he did not reach the battlefield until after the Confederates began their retreat to Virginia.

Furthermore, none of the corps ever received a military commission, leaving them facing the dangers of being captured and treated as spies, summarily punishable by death.

In the 19th century, the idea of dropping ordnance on the enemy from an aerial station was not seriously considered, although there was a patent issued to a Charles Perley in February 1863 for a bomb-dropping device that could be floated aloft by balloon.