lowe, t. s. c

Provides an account of Thaddeus Lowe's efforts to provide intelligence to Union forces during the American Civil War, detailing how he managed to telegraph messages to the War Department in Washington from a silk hydrogen balloon that floated over the battlefields.

When Northerner Thaddeus Lowe lands his huge balloon in South Carolina at the beginning of the Civil War, ten-year-old orphan Ridley Jones joins up with him and the two set out to find a way to use Lowe's balloon to help the North.