Civil War historians are reeling over the discovery that a Confederate scientist was just weeks away from perfecting a crude atomic bomb -- and planned to use the device to destroy Washington, D.C., 138 years ago . . . in 1864!
Physicist Thaddeus McMullen was killed before he could carry out the plot, reveals Joel Remarsh, a Civil War historian who uncovered McMullen’s maniacal plan while studying a collection of war-era journals, letters and documents given to him by McMullen’s descendants.
“My blood ran cold when I realized what I was reading,” says Remarsh, who plans to reveal all in a book tentatively titled Southern Victory: The Confederacy’s Atomic War.
“Thaddeus McMullen was a plantation slave-owner who loathed Abraham Lincoln and was willing to do anything to ensure a Confederate victory.
“He was also a brilliant researcher and scientist -- in league with Albert Einstein. This made for a horrifying combination that almost resulted in the fiery deaths of thousands of innocent people.”
According to Atlanta-based Remarsh, McMullen designed a primitive, steel-encased fission bomb using dynamite, uranium ore and other elements -- 80 years before American scientists developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“I showed McMullen’s writings to physicists familiar with nuclear fission and they were stunned,” Remarsh states. “His bomb was crude, with maybe a tenth of the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but it would have worked