Napoleonic vs Civil War [Archive] - Civil War Reenactors Discussion Forums

RJSamp

03-04-2011, 11:42 AM

There are a whole lot of difference in terrain (European battlefields tended to be more open), tactics (artillery for example was deployed closure to the MLR in Nappy's day than in Lee's), deployment of cavalry, etc, etc etc that could have been factors in what happened and why that never show in in mere number.

Now that's extremely debateable.....'open' if of course a relative term....and even varies on battlefields....the stone farm villages\houses every klick or three in Europe were tough for invading forces in 1805 as well as WWII....and I know that the spectre of assaulting from wood lot to village to behind the ridge concealment\hull down tactics has been a daunting tactical exercise for military planners in the modern era as well (nothing like Stingers, WireGuided missiles, NOE Helicopter's, and CHOBHAM\reactive armored AFV's duking it out in the Fulda Gap....).

Artillery had improved in the ACW over Napoleon....not radically, but there had been improvements....enough that between the rifled Minie balls, improved munitions, and 3" ordnance rifles: close in artillery support could wreak havoc on offensive artillery moving up with the cavalry to try to employ grape to break down a square...

Battlefields that might be considered relatively open (Gaines Mills, 1st and 2nd Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Cedar Mountain, Gettysburg, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Missionary Ridge, Champions Hill, Corinth, Iuka, Westport, Marais des Cygnes, Prairie Grove, et al) would have a number of closed terrain tactical obstacles.....and of course breastworks rendered all of this moot by 1864. They weren't all Chickamauga, Rich Mountain, South Mountain, Wilderness, Kennessaw, Raymond, Shiloh, Lookout Mountain.....

I hear you on the more wooded terrain of the America's....but in most cases that didn't hinder the sweep of battle lines and tactics.... and explains why Eastern Cavalry used Poinsett's double rank cavalry tactics, while out west they tended to use Cooke's single rank cavalry tactics....as explained in both Kidd's Michigan Cavalry book and the 6th US Cavalry Book (Common Soldier, Uncommon War or something like that, I'm on the couch at present sipping coffee)...the single rank out East could stretch to the next county and be impossible to have control over the unseen flank companies.....so deploying in two ranks was a necessity out East....

bob 125th nysvi

03-04-2011, 01:09 PM

I admit that there were obstacles on European battlefields but in most cases nothing compared to the wilderness America actually was in the 1860s. The European road system was better developed, Berlin is as close to Moscow as NYC is to Chicago etc.

Waterloo vs. Gettysburg (Bill's Example) were probably pretty close in difficultly as far obstacles were concerned as both battles were fought in relatively well developed (for the time) areas. You certainly can't say that for the Wilderness or anywhere more than 5 miles outside of city west of the Appalachians.

The other thing is that Nappy and company really had not progressed much beyond the "push of the pike" tactically. Battles were still decided by cold steel and cavalry pursuit in Europe. The basic objective was to get with in 80 paces deliver a volley or two, disorder the enemy, push home with the bayonet and pursue with the saber. The guys who fought Agincourt probably could have adapted fairly quickly to Nappy's form of warfare.

Hollywood not withstanding less than 10% of the casualties in the CW were inflicted with edged weapons, can't say that about Waterloo.

And wouldn't Nappy have loved to have had a couple batteries of Parrot guns to level Hougemount with at long distance instead of trying to pry the British out with the bayonet?

Even in the Crimea tactics were much more reminiscent of Nappy the first than the post CW European wars.

I think the studies have shown that the majority of small arms damage done during the CW was between 105 and 125 yards, ragged edge for a smoothbore but well within the killing range of a rifle. And I don't remember if any of those studies differentiated by year.

The amateurs (and maybe even most of the professionals) who fought the war and learned on the go were not taught to extend the killing range of their infantry firepower out to extended ranges. Pre-War drill was ABOUT drill not tactics, looking smart was a lot more important than being tactical.

So the misuse or ineffective use of technology (at least early in the conflict) is extremely understandable as no one knew what changes technology had brought to the battlefield.

You also have the issue (already pointed out) that due to technological limitations CW commanders were extremely limited in their options tactically and operationally.

All in all, it is no disservice to the officers (and men) who fought the war to say that tactical blunders, which with hindsight are perfectly obvious to us today, occurred on a fairly frequent basis and some of them were down right stupid.

Everybody has to learn.

In many ways the start of the CW was very reminiscent to the start of WWI from a tactical and technological standpoint. The technology was there but not fully understood. The tactics to deal with that technology existed on paper but like all playbooks you don't know what does or does not work until you get into the game.

So stupid and brutal mistakes were made but not because the leaders were brutal or stupid but because they did not have the prerequisite knowledge to avoid making those mistakes. Once they learned from their mistakes for the most part they worked hard to avoid repeating them.

One reason that the CW did not degenerate into the bloodbath that WWI did on the western front is here in America the opportunity for strategic, operational and tactical mobility existed were as in France it did not.

johnduffer

03-04-2011, 01:18 PM

" I think the only thing you can say conclusively about 'long range rifle fire' and its effect on tactics is that tactics evolved in the face of that fire from march up and shoot at close range to entrench on defense and deploy more often in open order on offense. "

The Romans entrenched, Wellington entrenched in Spain, the Brits entrenched at Yorktown, etc, etc. And "clouds of skirmishers" were a standard of at least the French late 18th century on.

" For example I could counter your statistics by pointing out that at Picket's Charge, Cold Harbor or Franklin, commanders who should have known better given that they had all taken advantages in the increases in defensive firepower, made major tactical blunders on the level with Ney at Waterloo. "

And fifty years later - with all breech loaders, machine guns, barbed wire and artillery up to 16", the frontal bayonet charge was considered a/the prime weapon. For much of that war 'Let's shell for an extra week this time, that'll do'em' and 'we have a higher birth rate so we'll beat them through one on one attrition' were the tactical innovations.

Blair

03-04-2011, 01:21 PM

Think in terms of Logistics. Supply and demand.
What is needed to keep any unit active?
On a day to day bases, this will probably be food/rations. (most often)
Second will be shelter and/or clothing.
Last will be ammunition... unless the unit is involved with a fight.
At this point, ammunition will become the first priority, providing one wishes to keep the unit engaged.

A basic CW Company can expend about 300 rounds per minute. Meaning the normal 40 rounds carried in their cartridge box will last them about 13 munities of fighting without at least one mule being brought up in that time period to replenish what they maybe expending.
Now multiply that by 10 times for a full strength Regiment and 20 times for a minimal strength Brigade.
These Logistics (rate of fire of these muzzle loading weapons) will not change appreciably between the Napoleonic and CW. Except that the average ACW soldier will usually be able to carry more ammo in his cart. box into a fight.
Just a thought on my part,

billwatson2

03-04-2011, 01:51 PM

Apparently, according to some of the folks I've read and some of the sources they are citing, there's a difference between a weapon that is intrinsically more accurate at a longer range and a soldier capable of getting the most out of it while being shot at himself. Add to that the lack of "scientific" training in the use of the rifle musket with it's parabolic trajectory at more than 150 or so yards, and the "fire 400 rounds to produce one casualty" begins to make more sense.
What it seems to boil down to, in one dimension anyway, is commanders who lacked any faith at all in the ability of the average volunteer soldier to hit a target while under fire, and, eventually, commanders who resolved to create that ability in their commands.
Has anyone noticed that the one thing you never see in soldier accounts is "we were given the order to adjust the elevation on our rear sights?" I mean, they were given orders to fix bayonets and the moment is noted. Lots of trivia is noted in lots of accounts. But never a mention of elevation. Either they didn't get the order or they didn't pay attention to it. And apparently it's critical for effective use of the rifle musket, unlike both the rifle and the musket, which both have a flatter trajectory. Or so I'm reading. (And no, there weren't thousands of native marksmen on both sides familiar with this particular weapon, which had characteristics unlike privately owned weapons of the era. That extreme parabolic trajectory would be something neither the average hunter nor the average shoe salesman would have known about unless specifically instructed. Professional army officers were very aware of what was required to make the weapon effective, but it seems not to have been approached systematically until later in the war.) Brent Nosworthy gets into it in greater detail in "The Bloody Crucible of Courage." Thanks to Col Dave for recommending that.

Maybe when it's all said and done we can simply substitute a better generalization about the relative lethality of the Civil War compared to other wars. It's not like we have to pin anything to the ground and drive a stake through its heart; we simply have to gather enough information to decide if we (collectively, anyway, I know there are some who already figured this out) have been laboring under an impression regarding relative deadliness that's not right.

TheQM

03-04-2011, 02:03 PM

There's a modern military term, "Fire Superiority", which basically means getting more rounds down range than your opponent. If you can get enough of an advantage, your opponent will go to ground and stop shooting back.

In the Civil War, using muzzle loading weapons, the only way to mass fire was to mass the soldiers. The only real change from the Napoleonic period was the ranges increased a bit and it became rare for an attacker to actually close with the enemy.

As the War went on the two major tactical changes were the increased use of trench works and a spreading out of attacking troops. The Confederate Sharpshooter Battalions were probably the best example of this change in tactics.

Artyman

03-04-2011, 02:12 PM

Bill is right about the sight adjustment thing, but historically the British at least had it as standard procedure to place range marker stakes out beyond their intended defensive line that were set at intervals matching the intervals of their adjustable sights. This was done when ever they could, even during the Zulu Wars. They'd even set markers out for the artillery when it was dug into fixed works. It was often considered a manhood honor sort of thing to be the guy running towards the approaching enemy to set out the stakes!

Harry

Blair

03-04-2011, 02:18 PM

Bill,

There is a distinctive difference in the potential accuracy of the weapons. Rate of fire is not all that much different however. The two should not be confused.

A smooth bore musket ball can still kill at 400 yards. It does not mean anyone can hit a target they maybe aiming at, at that distance.
Rifle Musket on the otherhand can. Providing the individual has had the training required to make the weapon shoot effectavely at that range.

Next question that comes into play here, is, can the shooter see that far?
Again, Logistics, and of course training, come into play.

billwatson2

03-04-2011, 02:37 PM

Too many Bills. :)

Blair

03-04-2011, 03:04 PM

billwatson2,

Too many onions too... :-)

Regular3

03-04-2011, 04:16 PM

the lack of "scientific" training in the use of the rifle musket with it's parabolic trajectory at more than 150 or so yardsThis didn't just apply to the vast hordes of untrained state levys either - Even some regiments of the Regular infantry lacked marksmanship training, and it showed in an inspection of the Third Infantry in Texas in 1860:

Nov. 30, 1860: Col. J.K. Mansfield concludes his inspection of Fort Clark with an examination of marksmanship. Firing one round at a target six feet by twenty-two inches, [essentially a man-sized silhouette] 72 enlisted men score 34 hits (47%) at 100 yards, 13 hits (18%) at 200 yards, and 13 hits (18%) at 300 yards. These results compare unfavorably with the results observed at other posts in Texas. Company K of the First Infantry at Fort Lancaster had scores of 62, 56, and 28 percent at distances of 100, 200, and 300 yards. Mansfield considers the men's inability to practice during the long march to Texas as the cause of the low scores.

The Third had spent most of 1860 moving to forts in Texas from forts in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Also, we have no way of knowing how many of the 72 men selected for the demonstration were frontier veterans who would have had the M1855 rifle musket for two or three years, and how many were among the roughly 150 recruits the 5 companies at Fort Clark had received just a few weeks before.

1stSgt45PVI

03-04-2011, 04:18 PM

"Yup. Keep in mind the objective is just understanding. As with the slavery issue, there's a lot in play in tactics and weapons. Perhaps what I'm after is just a shattering of "convenient misunderstandings" on our part? I dunno. First stage in any project like this is just gathering information. Then we'll see if it takes us anywhere worth going."

Mr. Watson,
I think your on to something w/ your 1st posting. Compare side by side as best we can, maybe organizing by how many troops were engaged or even time of year; after all Europe can have a similar climate as here in the US.
Also if we aren't looking @ particular battles and straight casualties overall, we also need to take into consideration that the Napoleonic Wars lasted for approx. 12 yrs, not 5! The over all casualty list should possibly be greater then than the Civil War & if NOT then why?

We know that approx. 2,500,000 Military casualties total in the Nap. Wars
(This does not include civilian deaths which is estimated @ another 1million)
We know that approx. 1,236,444 Military casualties total in the Civil War

However... IF the same amount of time would have passed say 12yrs (per Nap) the YES ours prob. would have surpassed the Nap. #s, considering that @ the 5 yr mark we were almost @ the Napoleonic 1/2 way mark.If we take the CW #s and double it (=10yrs) we get 2,472,888 and we still would have had 2 yrs to go...so to speak to hit that 12 yr mark. So if I take an approx. # of casualties sustained from major engagements in say 1861 (51,188 I choose '61 cause of low casualty #s) and add it 2x (102,376) making up for the 2 missing years we get 2,575,264 possible casualties. (Does that make sense:confused:)

So yes it could have been possible overall if the Civil war lasted 12yrs for our War to indeed be "bloodier" than the Nap. Wars.

Just something to ponder
Zak

regards,
Zak

johnduffer

03-04-2011, 05:05 PM

" we also need to take into consideration that the Napoleonic Wars lasted for approx. 12 yrs, not 5! The over all casualty list should possibly be greater then than the Civil War & if NOT then why? - So yes it could have been possible overall if the Civil war lasted 12yrs for our War to indeed be "bloodier" than the Nap. Wars. "

I hesitate to suggest I know Mr. Watson's intentions, but I take from his statement about the

"myth of Civil War tactical stupidity in the face of more accurate, longer-ranged rifle muskets,"

that he's debunking the notion that on a typical day of battle the CW soldier was in much greater danger of becoming a casualty than earlier soldiers because of rifled muskets and artillery and the failure of his officers to adjust their tactics to meet this new threat. As for "bloodiness" there's also the fact that the Napoleonic wars weren't continuous and had numerous periods of peace or stalemate between actions. The ultimate point is that any particular battlefield was not necessarily dramatically more deadly for the CW soldier or at least not so because of poor leadership.

Bill_Cross

03-04-2011, 05:33 PM

A couple of things to consider:

1.) Logistics are much more critical in the Napoleonic wars because the armies are covering larger distances. I recently finished Domenic Lieven's excellent Russia Against Napoleon, and the problems of supplying huge armies far from their base of supply tended to mean enormous losses, principly from starvation, disease (made worse by malnutrition) and inclement weather. It's hard to imagine that the 500,000 man army that invaded Russia was almost totally destroyed (20,000 left) by the retreat from Moscow that Winter. It won Borodino prior to seizing Moscow, which was a bloody battle, but didn't leave it terribly weakened. The Russians let Napoleon have Moscow, and fell back (as they did 130 years later), allowing the the starving and the Winter to kill more French than they could with their guns and sabers. Lieven teaches at the London School of Economics, so it's not surprising he takes an in-depth look at the logistics, including how Napoleon was fatally weakened by the loss of his horses more than the deaths of his men; the latter could be recruited and trained, but finding huge numbers of suitable mounts proved almost impossible, and resulted in him having inferior cavalry during the remainder of his time on top.

In contrast, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of N. Virginia barely cover any ground at all for four years, with three exceptions (Peninsula, Antitem and Gettysburg). Yet even these movements are nothing in comparison to Napoleon in Russia, Spain or Austria (not to mention Egypt!). It's true Sherman marches over Napoleonic distances in 1865-5, but his critics think he's insane for leaving his supply base in Tennessee, and he succeeds only because he is free to pillage the South. Napoleon often was fighting in the lands of allies or those he did not want to alienate by levying forage and housing requirements on its peasants and farmers, so he couldn't just requisition what he needed.

2.) You can't ask men to "elevate their sights" when the majority of weapons at the start of the war don't have any. I believe the South didn't have everyone in rifled muskets until after Chancellorsville. There are other factors at work, including lack of target practice (a waste of materiel), the poor visibility on the battlefield, noise, commanders who couldn't do much more than scream out orders and who had no real communication with their superiors. So I think the increased killing power of the rifled muskets runs smack into the confusion of Napoleonic tactics when you basically pushed forward and tried to run over the other guy. So both sides stand there in the beginning and bang away at one another.

Still, the number of KIA in most battles isn't the way we stupidly portray it in the hobby with mass "deaths" when everyone runs out of powder. Then as now, most of the casualties are wounded. The horrific death statistics are mostly from disease, whether infected wounds or simple illness (measles killed my gr-gr-uncle Reuben Chapman of the 5th MO CSA).

3.) The myth of Waterloo. Little Mac's letters to his wife are full of dreaming about a "final battle" that would decide the war, much like Napoleon had been finally defeated. Instead of using his troops for smaller tactical strikes, he held back for the "big one." I know today he's villified at battles like Antietem for being a coward, but I don't thank that's the only explanation. He wanted to strike a deathblow to the South, and didn't think carving up a few brigades would be enough. Grant understood that war is attrition, a grinding, savage destruction of the other guy's ability to fight, and that it didn't happen in singular, decisive strokes.

He wasn't alone. References to the Corsican turn up in a number of period writings, and his tactics were studied at West Point.

ScottWashburn

03-04-2011, 08:53 PM

Darn, I hate getting into one of these discussions so late in the game :) Need to check here more often.

But I will just say that I completely agree with Bill. The tactical system used in the Civil War was not obsolete, obsolescent, outdated, stupid or foolish. It was the best tactical system available and probably the best system possible given the conditions. And it worked! Comparisons are often made between Civil War tactics and World War I. It's a completely false comparison. In World War I (the middle years anyway) the tactical system HAD failed. It was no longer possible to attack and win. The defense had completely triumphed over the offense. That never happened in the Civil War (sure there were positions that couldn't be taken by a frontal assault, but that's war). From beginning to end it was possible to attack and win a battle. And we see the same by-the-book tactics being used at Saylor's Creek in April of 1865 as we saw at Bull Run in 1861. The tactical system worked just fine.

I think the myth about the obsolete tactics and the 'bloodbath' of the Civil War comes from the fact that Americans had never fought a large-scale European-style war before. When they did they were shocked by the casualties. They didn't realize that this was the way it worked. You fight big battles, you have big body-counts. But they didn't understand that. To them the easy explanation was that 'something was wrong'. It's them new rifle-muskets! Yeah, that must be it! New weapons and old tactics lead to a bloodbath!. Yup, makes sense and it sounds so logical. Generations of historians bought it hook, line and sinker. But they were all wrong.

Okay, I've said my piece :)

Shortround

03-04-2011, 09:36 PM

The Europeans were really into war and the real beginning of the Great War was forseen when Prussia introduced the Krupp breach loading artillery in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. The Europeans had rifles that were more than a match for the Trapdoor Springfield. But the Krupp artillery with its super quick point detonating artillery fuze really was a battle winner for the Germans. Indeed, the cannons allowed the Germans to win every battle despite some serious tactical mistakes.

The American Civil War was a militia war fought by untrained solders and a staff which has almost no knowledge of the operational arts. Common, seriously, do you think Bismarck would have so well checked by Lee if he had the same resources as McClelland? The Prussians were pros and we copied their general staff arrangement.

I don't know how many reenactors own high powered rifles. But the typical rifled musket is not that accurate past 200 meters. Conversely, a good Mauser G'98 or an Enfield MK III can kill with ease at 500 yards. Indeed, they are better "one shot" weapons than the M-4 our soldiers use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US military is trying to fix the situation with a follow on to the M-14 (tad past its prime) and a 7.62 x 51 version of a Stoner designed weapon. The bottom line is the 7.92, 7.65, and 7.62 are still the kings of the battlefield and it's going on 100 years since the Great War. Conversely, the .58 caliber was obsolete in 1861.

An earlier thread had the subject of Civil War misinformation. It's total misinformation that CW weapons are like Great War Weapons. Most nations in WWII were using improved models of guns used in the Great War (and it could be argued the Japanese guns were not as good). The machineguns used in the Great War were dependable and robust. Indeed, the late WWI design, the M-2, was as good as it gets for a heavy machinegun.

Modern Artillery, machine guns, and barbed wire led to the bloodbath of WWI. It took them until 1918 to figure out how to break the log jam.

BTW, I've done extensive studying of the Civil War Battlefield at Port Hudson, LA. The US troops trying to take that stong hold were held up for weeks. In WWI the Germans would have dragged up some Big Bertha guns (mortars) and flattened the place with a half dozen 16" shells. Gun Powder isn't like cordite based explosives.

There are few things as cool are super heavy artillery. Yes, CW artillery was better than "Nappy" artillery. However, a French 75mm gun would have been more than a match for a whole battery of Civil War Artillery.

sbl

03-04-2011, 11:08 PM

Mr. Washburn's point's are backed up by two of the major battles just before the CW/WBTS in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859. The tactics and weapons were very close to those used by the Union and Confederate forces.

Magenta
French
58,000 French

657 dead
3,858 wounded

Austrians
125,000 infantry

1,368 dead
4,538 wounded

Battle of Solferino

French
160,000 involved
2,492 killed,
12,512 wounded

Austrian
about 160,000 involved

3,000 troops killed
10,807 wounded

Curt-Heinrich Schmidt

03-05-2011, 01:17 PM

Hallo!

IMHO, the larger part of the "problem" is the tendency or desire sometimes, by some authors and historians, to apply modern thinking to what was not true in the past.

I learned in school that it was the machine gun that slaughtered all of the troops. But while it did, and at some 'battles" more than others, it was artillery that took the largest toll.

And speaking of weapon technology, even a WWI Gew 98 or Enfield or "03 Springfield, was often much "limited" at 60-200 yards to the enemy's trench line. So while the Gew 98 was initially designed/sighted to reach out and smite up to 2000 meters across open fields with sweeping tactical movements ended up "backing up" artillery barrages that measured gains at so many men per inches because survival driove men below grround surface.

And last... I am still, "awed' by the casualty numbers in the American Revolutionary War, such as Yorktown...

;) :)

CHS

Colonel Dave

03-05-2011, 01:28 PM

The Napoleonic Wars began with relatively small armies compared to later armies. This results from the quasi["professional" armies of earlier European wars. Without researching the exact number, the British rarely had more than 25,000 men in Spain. But the 1805 armies of France, Austria and Russia numbered in the 100 thousands but learned they could neither supply nor maneuver those numbers and it would not be until 1814 that those numbers were again attained. The exception, of course, is the 500,000 that Napoleon had to invade Russia.
Forget terrain, rear sights, etc, how does one compare an American Civil War army with a 500,000 man army composed of French, Bavarians, Saxons, Wurtemburgers, Italians, Spanish, Polish and others? Not to mention 100,000 Austrians guarding the right flank and 100,000 Prussians guarding the left flank?

There is no comparison with the Civil War that can be made on anything like equal ground.
But, us Americans are spoiled by our 100,000 armies. Genghis Khan invaded with 200,000 men at a time when logistics were in the stone age.Nearly all were mounted. Kubla Khan invaded, or tried, Japan with 100,000 men on ships.
Our armies in the CW were tiny compared to European and Asian standards. Thus, it makes comparisons, other then broad generalities, very difficult.

Blair

03-05-2011, 02:09 PM

Napoleonic to ACW, is a doable comparison.
Comparing the Henley to a 1930's USN "S" boat? Comparing apples to oranges would be too kind. This would be more like comparing Durian Fruit to a Black Walnut!
Both are edible, that is where the comparison ends! At least for those that can get past the smell or the shell.

bob 125th nysvi

03-05-2011, 02:23 PM

Apparently, according to some of the folks I've read and some of the sources they are citing, there's a difference between a weapon that is intrinsically more accurate at a longer range and a soldier capable of getting the most out of it while being shot at himself. Add to that the lack of "scientific" training in the use of the rifle musket with it's parabolic trajectory at more than 150 or so yards, and the "fire 400 rounds to produce one casualty" begins to make more sense.
What it seems to boil down to, in one dimension anyway, is commanders who lacked any faith at all in the ability of the average volunteer soldier to hit a target while under fire,

that unfortunately a universal institutional attitude toward the men in the ranks.

For example there was a great deal of resistance in official channels against equipping Union infantry with repeating weapons because they felt the soldiers would waste ammunition. Given the issues of CW logistics that makes a lot of sense.

However jumping forward the US Army figured out that they expended approximately 10,000 of small arms ammunition for every casualty (WIA and KIA combined) that they inflicted during WWII. That statistic seems to support the concept that the average soldier under fire ain't going to shoot straight.

Jumping a little farther ahead there was official resistance to the M-16 (again because the soldier with a fully automatic weapon will waste ammo) that was resolved by limiting the weapon the a three round burst. By the way that attitude is also involved in the search for the M-16s replacement.

To circle back to the CW I can certainly see officers with a very limited ammo supply on hand (and the chances of getting more not great at best) waiting to give the order to fire until they were sure that their men could hit the target.

What is it I once heard about a Wild West gunfight, the guy who won was not the guy who got off the first shot, it was the guy who got off the first AIMED shot.

Bill_Cross

03-05-2011, 02:56 PM

One thing we're overlooking is the escalation in killing as we move out of the 19th and into the 20th Century, the move from political warfare to TOTAL warfare, often with the resulting death of significant portions of the civilian populace.

I'm not arguing an evolution, either, since in earlier states of history, losing meant death or being sold into slavery. Just look at what happened to Carthage.

Napoleonic warfare was not intended to destroy the other guy, but to force him to say "uncle." Defeat often meant the loss of territory through negotiations: I win, so I'm going to take two of your provinces, you'll pay me annual tribute and I get to choose who among the Polish artisocracy can be king of Poland (or even if there IS going to be a Poland). Part of the genius of Nappy is his ability to come back from the dead over and over. Even exhiled to Elba, he returns for a brief Indian Summer and nearly pulls it off.

By the time of the Great War, as has been pointed out here by several of you, the technology really IS the deciding factor, especially the advances in artillery (which with the aid of balloons and later planes can be spotted and no longer have to rely on direct fire). Of course, the Maxim gun also changes the game quite a bit, to the point that direct assault is no longer possible across defensive positions, though this point doesn't quite percolate up to the general staff.

I disagree that the technology of the CW and the tactics can't be faulted for the carnage. Part of it is the numbers, but by the end, the troops are looking for ways to avoid stand-up fights. Clearly they got the message.

johnduffer

03-05-2011, 04:51 PM

“ I disagree that the technology of the CW and the tactics can't be faulted for the carnage. Part of it is the numbers, but by the end, the troops are looking for ways to avoid stand-up fights. Clearly they got the message. “

Well, yes - BUT - the clever soldier may well have realized that lying down behind heavy cover is safer then advancing in solid lines across open fields. The fly in the ointment is moving the enemy. If you want to make an omelet you must be willing to break a few eggs. Grant in the East constantly stretches out Lee and time to time smashes into him to see if he’s thin enough to break. When it doesn’t work out he’s a “butcher”. In the West Sherman and Johnston play sort of a chess match. Less carnage but folks joke about pontoon bridges to Cuba. If Opdycke follows orders at Franklin there’s an excellent chance Hood’s frontal assault splits Schofield in half. A great deal of tactical ignorance is hindsight.

Bill_Cross

03-05-2011, 05:32 PM

A great deal of tactical ignorance is hindsight.
True, John, except that generals are often very slow to adapt to changing circumstances.

I presume the need to shed the blood of their soldiers produces a certain blindness in military leaders-- I know this will be painful, but it has to be done. Yet Sherman was one who could adapt to new situations. Lee and Jackson, too, at least occasionally. The fact that Lincoln had to replace his top generals repeatedly says something about the Peter Principle in the armed forces. Of course, some of the pressure on Lincoln and the Army of the Potomac was political, but Burnside asked to be sacked when he made that awful frontal assault on Marye's Heights (an assault that even the Confederates thought was horrid).

Lee and Jackson knew enough to turn Hooker's flank at Chancellorsville when frontal assaults did not move him. And the whole reason Jackson got lost at The Seven Days was Lee's desire to turn McClellan's right. Only when Lee had Little Mac on the run did he lose his mind at Malvern Hill, falling back into form. He tried to be creative with Longstreet at Gettysburg, and but for the First Minnesota, almost made it. Then, with his blood up (by his own admission), he fell back into "form" once more, this time with one of the most stupid, juicy frontal assaults in military history.

The notion that "you have to break eggs" is one of those meaningless cliches that can cover for any sort of butchery or stupidity, whether in the Civil War or modern Iraq. Even Grant later admitted Cold Harbor was a mistake, at least the final assault.

A big reason for the horror of the war hasn't been mentioned: low muzzle-velocity heavy caliber unjacketed lead shot, coupled with primitive medical technology. Limbs weren't repaired, they were amputated. The resulting loss of blood and shock probably killed as many as outright KIA. Experts seem to think Jackson would've survived except for the loss of blood and shock from being transported in a buckboard wagon that weakened him so much pneumonia set in.

White Horse

03-05-2011, 09:41 PM

Picking up on posts regarding our (lack of) understanding and facts about what I'll soon start calling the "myth of Civil War tactical stupidity in the face of more accurate, longer-ranged rifle muskets," I took my own advice and started compiling statistics from Napoleonic wars and battles in the Civil War. .

I assume you have read Nosworhty's "Bloody Crucible of Courage?"
Much factual information and some interesting conclusions

flattop32355

03-05-2011, 10:39 PM

A big reason for the horror of the war hasn't been mentioned: low muzzle-velocity heavy caliber unjacketed lead shot, coupled with primitive medical technology. Limbs weren't repaired, they were amputated. The resulting loss of blood and shock probably killed as many as outright KIA. Experts seem to think Jackson would've survived except for the loss of blood and shock from being transported in a buckboard wagon that weakened him so much pneumonia set in.

Amputation was generally only done when the bone was damaged beyond repair for the technology of the time; there was no other choice known to them. Add to that the very limited knowledge of sepsis and its causes.

Dramatic advances were made in medicine/surgical repair during the war. It only seems primitive to us today, but the leaps forward then were comparable to those made in WW2.

bob 125th nysvi

03-06-2011, 08:35 AM

both on the part of the commanders and the troops.

In 1861 almost EVERYBODY (except for a few perceptive soldiers like Scott and Sherman) expected a short war. One good fight and the whole thing would be over.

So they fought that 'one good fight' (and the next half dozen or so) by the manual they had learned on as militia and even RA officers. Tactically those manuals were 'line them up and pitch in'.

Now the manuals (at least for the RA) looked for both strategic and operational maneuver opportunities but tactically it was still very much 'line up and pitch into them' boys. You have to remember that the 'last war' the Americans fought was in Mexico and despite some rifle armed units it was still very much a smoothbore and bayonet affair.

As the real war settled in men and officers learned by their mistakes. Defenders started to entrench, attackers actively looked for ways mitigate defensive firepower by surprise attacks (Shiloh) or flanking maneuvers (Chancellorsville) or strategic maneuvers (Vicksburg campaign).

Tactically you also start to see a difference, despite official reports talking about how the men stood there and took enemy fire you see letters home by both men and officers describing the same engagement as 'running low' around the battlefield, 'dropping and trying to find some cover', etc.

You also start to see troops breaking and running, not out of cowardice, they'd reform as soon as they were out of range, or refusing to advance, because they realized, even if the generals didn't that this attack just wasn't going to work.

By the end of the war you see regiments deploying more in open order when on the attack.

So the adaption was there to the changes that technology brought but you still had certain limitations that created what many would see as 'stupidity' today.

As a line or Battalion officer you could only control that which was in the sound of your voice and with in your line of sight. Those limitations alone allowed for only so much adaption over the tactics that they started the war with.

It boils down to this.

Was there major tactical and philosophical mistakes made in the face of improved and mis-understood technology? There most certainly were. And as ALWAYS on a battlefield mistakes are paid for in blood, way too much blood.

But did they learn and adapt? Yes, yes they did and very successfully too.

But did they occasionally make the same early mistakes even when they should have known better? They sure did.

But then one side as much loses a battle as the other one wins it.

A mere counting of numbers of dead doesn't really explain anything as to who was smarter or dumber. What you have to do is understand the beginning mindset and knowledge and technology available to those who had to fight the war (and in essence isn't that what we as reenactors are trying to do) and then see what they learned and did they successfully adapt to those lessons?

Nappy I would have been very comfortable with the manuals, tactics and operational/strategic concepts both sides started the war with. He would have believed that he'd be successful with in that system.

Yet as the lessons of the war showed technology had made his style of warfare obsolete.

However it is also very obvious that his nephew, Nappy III, had NOT learned the lessons of changing technology had brought to the battlefield during the Crimean and Civil War, to his detriment in 1870.

billwatson2

03-06-2011, 09:59 AM

Tod, I'm reading Nosworthy, and he's got a lot of thought-provoking stuff in there. However, I'd advise anyone who gets hung up on bad editing to avoid the book, or at least approach it forewarned, or you'll spend your time in an endless churn of anger at the idiots who let that book out in its existing condition. I'm not talking typographical errors or an occasional misspelling. I'm talking sentences that include both the original text and the proposed change. It brings me to a complete fuming halt and I want to fire someone. :)
(Writers often can't see their own mistakes. Their minds see what they intend to write, not what's on the page. That's why there are editors. In this case, it really looks like a lot of the chapters were in "draft" form, not final form, when someone pushed a button and it went to press. One can no longer blame drunken type setters for stuff like this, they don't exist. :) )

Anyway, Nosworthy has assembled a lot of information, it's worth reading.

It's worth noting, on the marksmanship issue, that a lot of people had no faith in the ability of anyone, volunteer or a regular, to produce "scientific" firing while taking fire in return.
It's also worth noting that Nosworthy and others, including original sources, indicate pretty decisively that decisionmakers on both sides at all levels were constantly adjusting tactics to accommodate both their understanding and then their experience of the effects of both new rifle-musket capabilities, new artillery capabilities, etc. and even logistical changes like railroads. I'm beginning to wonder if the reenactor's widespread embrace of the idea that they didn't innovate in the face of changing technology is an outgrowth of our own lack of willingness to do more than line up and shoot at each other, an outgrowth based on the same misconceptions some in power held then: "Volunteers," whether for real duty or for the hobby, can't be expected to achieve much in the way of maneuvering, campaigning, etc. Full circle, in a wobbly kind of way.

johnduffer

03-06-2011, 11:55 AM

The military did try to keep up with changing battlefield conditions. The 1831 ORDONNANCE/1835 SCOTT'S TACTICS was considered an important update over tactics used in the Napoleonic era. The 1845 ORDONNANCE/1855 HARDEE'S was a direct attempt to speed up movements and operate in open order so as to reduce casualities. Almost immediately following the war we have UPTON'S showing what were almost certainly considered the lessons learned and changes brought about by breechloading weapons. The square and column at half distance are dropped and there is trend towards single rank, platoon movements and a "front of four men as a UNIT"

From the PREFACE:

" The evolutions of the Brigade and Division have not been essentially modified.

Whatever changes the breech-loader may necessitate in the disposition and management of troops in battle, the employment of lines of battle offensively and defensively cannot be dispensed with, neither can the means of massing and deploying troops be omitted.

While attacks in masses have been abandoned, a preponderance of men and of fire, in the future as in the past, will have to be relied upon to carry positions which are beyond the power of skirmishers.

The rapidity and ease with which a line of battle can be extended by means of skirmishers will render the movements for turning a flank more difficult, but the extension carries with it the danger of being pierced, which is more disastrous.

The introduction of the breech-loader has changed none of the principles of grand tactics; and, while it has given a great impetus to the employment of skirmishers, which is to be encouraged, experience will prove that the safety of an army cannot be intrusted to men in open order with whom it is difficult to communicate; but that, to insure victory, a line or lines of battle must ever be at hand to support or receive the attack. "

Artyman

03-06-2011, 12:08 PM

Bill_Cross

03-06-2011, 12:11 PM

I'm beginning to wonder if the reenactor's widespread embrace of the idea that they didn't innovate in the face of changing technology is an outgrowth of our own lack of willingness to do more than line up and shoot at each other, an outgrowth based on the same misconceptions some in power held then.
It's always dangerous to over-generalize, and I have been guilty of it here.

My intent is not to castigate the past as ignorant just because it's not the present, but to point out those occasions when, in spite of their experience, commanders made what even then were egregious errors. Longstreet saw the folly of Pickett's Charge; I'm sure he wasn't alone, but history doesn't record others who perhaps spoke up or bit their tongues. Frankly, it's astonishing that Lee, who had been moved to eloquence by the slaughter at Mayre's Heights, and had been the recipient of a bloody defeat at Malvern Hill, believed he could overwhelm the Union position with an artillery barrage and a frontal assault. Today we'd say he was blinded by testosterone. As the French say, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ("the more things change, the more they stay the same"). President Bush was warned invading Iraq would be a mistake, but he persisted.

Meade certainly learned a lesson that day, and refused to assault Lee's works in front of the Potomac during the latter's retreat back to VA, then later called off the Mine Run attack at the last minute when the position looked too strong. It bought him a reputation as overly-cautious, but he clearly understood the time for a massed infantry frontal assault was passing. Was there another frontal assault during the war that carried the day after that? I simply don't know the answer, but the Mule Shoe, for example, failed. Grant's hammer blows to Lee's retreating forces in The Wilderness won him the nickname "Butcher Grant," but it was only at Cold Harbor where he truly earned that sobriquet. Chickamauga became the South's last major victory in the field largely because of the "fog of war" uncovered part of the Union line, allowing the South to split the enemy's forces in two. The Crater shows that innovation was hardly asleep during the period (the Hunley, observation balloons, the Monitor, the Henry rifle and dessicated vegetables are other examples).

Our assessment of the era can't be "we intelligent moderns vs. them ignorant ancients." The ancients were smart enough to produce a Hannibal, and dumb enough to produce the Roman defeat at Cannae that made Hannibal's reputation more than his daring crossing of the Alps (the elephants, BTW, were a sideshow and did more harm to Carthage's fortunes in war than helping them).

Do we sell the CW commanders short? Perhaps. But it's usually the generals who are the last to know what the privates and their NCOs understand intuitively.

billwatson2

03-06-2011, 12:19 PM

"My point is, history seems to show in case after case the whatever the manual is at the time, it probably isn't all things to all people.
Harry "

That's for sure. Our problem is that the manuals for 1863 etc. are a lot more accessible to us than an account of "best practices for artillery 1863". Additionally, our knowledge of who did the manuals and where the information originated (usually France) is a lot easier for us to assign a value to than an essayist in 1863 we don't know much about, or an after-action report written by a self-serving colonel looking for advancement in the ranks. Maybe he wasn't; maybe he was a guy in the cavalry who originally thought the saber was obsolete and is going overboard in his praise of it in his after-action report because he's delighted and surprised at the success of a saber charge. It's a lot harder to sort out, so, amateur historians that most of us are, have we trapped ourselves into mistaking our level of comprehension for their level of expertise?

It makes my hair hurt just thinking about it. It also makes me think I'm going to just dissolve into jello next time I'm asked a question at a living history. At this point I've incapacitated myself. :) Thank goodness for tomorrow and all the resolution new research can bring.

Shortround

03-06-2011, 12:50 PM

However they tried to keep up, world wide the playing field was uneven. Nobody knew this better than the British. During the Zulu War at Isandlwana Chelmsford thought that a modern loose formation, armed with the latest breech loaders, supported by artillery, would hold the Zulus off. Certainly there were mistakes made, the biggest being not enough ammo, but after the defeat they realized that the old fashioned square, propped up with Gatlings and lancers was what was needed to stem the Zulu attacks. The latest manual was, therefore, wrong for the place and time it was being used. My point is, history seems to show in case after case the whatever the manual is at the time, it probably isn't all things to all people.

I wonder what the newest manuals says relevant to the type of fighting going on in Libya right now!

Harry

Human waves can overcome superiorty in weapons. The Zulus lost a staggering amount of soldiers taking the British. Mao almost had his People's Army wrecked in Korea. If Xerxes had not been told about the goat path at Thermoplayne then his Army would have would have been wrecked by a relatively small force of Greeks.

The best tactical commanders are the ones who let the subordinate commanders take charge of what is best in a given situation. If a company commander tells a platoon to take a series of houses by X hour then it's the platoon leader and platoon sergeant's job to figure it out. It might be as simple as walking into the houses or as complicated as asking for a coordinated time on target.

Both the Civil War and the early part of WWII had the maximum amount of commander control over soldiers. Excessive control limits the units responses. The US Navy's campaigns at Guadacanal had excessive control of individual ships leading to some huge losses. Little press is given to the fact that the US Navy lost 2 sailors fighting around Guadacanal for every Marine loss on the Island. More American ships in tonnage were lost or damaged in fighting around Guadacanal that the Germans had in total capital ships in WWII. The commander must have the tactical flexibility to meet evolving threats. Conversely, the men must have the proper training and weapons to meet the mission requirements.

The key in fighting is small units with high firepower. There is a formula where the volley (firepower) of a unit is directly related to its combat capacity. Ergo, a civil war unit armed with muskets or rifled muskets are no better than a Revy war unit. Conversely, a German Volksgrenadier rifle squad armed with MP-44s and Panzershrek are nearly equal to a typical Soviet style rifle squad armed with AK-47s and RPG.

Libya is merely a mob civil war. The hired mercinaries have not had the training to be intregal to the Libian army.

But a mob army can win over a regular army provided they are willing to pay the price.

Colonel Dave

03-06-2011, 10:01 PM

You bring up the topic of "Command Control" which has plagued armies since their inception.
In the armies of Ghengis Khan, all of who were mounted, the army was based upon 10 man units. 10 of them formed a higher organization, 10 of them formed a unit and so on and so on up to 200,000. Thus, every tenth man had a command position and relied on simple blasts on a horn or beat of a drum to maneuver the army. BTW, if one of those ten deserted, the other 9 had one year to bring him back or they were executed.

In the Napoleonic Wars, the command structure for each nation was different. In the French, the Marshal was the commander and he had Corps,Division and Brigade commanders and control was demonstrated on each level. Our Table of Organization is a near carbon copy of that system. The British had no formal Organization above the Brigade level until 1814.
The Austrians, if you can believe it, had no organization. The commanding General had to give each individual regiment it's orders, ever day. Sometimes, that meant orders to as many as 155 regiments.
The Russian army then and up to WW2, had one officer for every five men. The absolutely highest officer per soldier ratio. The problem with that was if the officer was killed or wounded, the five soldiers just sat down or ran away since there was no one to lead them. Personal initiative was NOT encouraged in the Russian army.

With our CW, there are numerous examples of successes and failures based upon the command control concept. What kind of command control was in the Federal Army at Shiloh when there was cavalry skirmishing all night long the night before the Confederate "surprise" attack? Effective command control would have had that information moved upwards, a decision to strengthen the lines and put the men on alert would have moved downwards and history would have been changed.
Someone was on Hookers far right flank and was hearing a Division moving through a woods. No command control=no one telling anyone further up the chain of command.

Without an effective Command Control by the officers on every level, the army is impaired and less effective....and history proves that time and time again.

billwatson2

03-06-2011, 10:30 PM

Apparently French command and control deteriorated over time: by Waterloo they'd substituted large groupings of troops under rigid control for smaller formations whose leadership was expected to exercise initiative in maneuvering and fighting. The reason given (ie., the reason as I understand it at this point in my reading) is the erosion of qualified leadership due to battlefield losses over many years of fighting.
In other words, according to this theory, fewer leaders means each is expected to direct more men and to direct them more closely -- just the opposite of what Napoleon originally set out to do and what Lee, particularly, thought was the leadership model he himself should be using for command and control. The downside of larger formations and leaders expected to hold tighter reins is about what you'd expect: Attention to various details by people who should be looking at the horizon and at what tomorrow might bring produced short-sightedness, tunnel vision, and decisions made on the wrong criteria. Kind of like the reenacting captain who insists on dressing the line himself in the middle of a change-front-on-the-third-company deal, thus missing the next order and finding himself in the high weeds -- only, of course, several orders of magnitude higher in terms of numbers and with real-world bad results instead of a few men looking silly as their battalion marches away from them.

Shortround

03-07-2011, 12:20 PM

Without an effective Command Control by the officers on every level, the army is impaired and less effective....and history proves that time and time again.

The problem of the civil war was basic with the Napoleonic system. The soldiers were robots.

The Operations Order that the modern military uses is deciminated down to the lowest soldier with the mission. Honestly, I bet ya if you had gone up to one of the privates at Shiloh and asked him his mission objective it would have been something vague like "We gotta march to them trees." That is a world away from going up to a Ranger qualified 11B and asking him the mission and he will identify the objective, route, times, who is in charge, ect, ect, ect. Modern American Infantry is as well trained as Pre-World War Two German infantry. If the soldier has Jump and Ranger tabs then he is an elite. Conversely, the US military had no elites prior to the Civil War.

An American Civil War soldier was a tough field solder. They could live off the land, could work like dogs, and had the ability to march forever. They were fantastically tough.

But the command structure of the CW was primitive. The message system were notes; that is no better than in pre-cell phone class room when a kid would pass a note to another kid in class. The NCO corps that the US military uses now did not exist in its present form. If a private on guard heard an army passing by his area knew his real job was merely to stand guard in his area. Indeed, this poster does not know if the modern rules of guard duty were given to the sentries. Were the sentries debriefed after a shift? Is this SOP written down any where?

Now, I didn't know about the Mongol command system of 1 to 10 and that ratio keeps up through the chain of command. That's excellent and explains why the Mongols were able to always attack the flanks of any army they encountered.

I really admire CW soldiers. They were tough and fit. But the modern system we have now was invented in the last years of World War One and once you train soldiers to fight like that there is no good way to make them go back to the linear Napoleonic movements. Using Napoleonic movements against modern tactics would be like using an old British ship-of-the-line against PT boats with automatic cannons.

Conversely, over control by officers will stop the individual soldiers initative: witness the Soviets. But the Germans of WWII with the modern British, French Foregin Legion, and Americans all have well trained professional soldiers with men who can function at two levels above their positions with the training and talent to carry out the mission.

Last, modern America has a lot of the society devoted to the study of war. We know what to expect. My sons had no shocks when they went through basic training. Conversely, it's doubtful if many of the Civil War soldiers or officers outside of West Point had read more than one or two books exclusively devoted to the military arts. Indeed, a book on simple operations, like Von Clausewitz's "On War", was not available because it had not been written yet.

Dbackfed

03-07-2011, 01:03 PM

Also, one must remember the Napoleonic wars were fought between nations and not a civil war. Think of how large the US armies could have been had both sides combined troops to fight another nation? Combining the AoT, ANV with the AoP, AoT, AoC, etc would have created substantial fighting forces.
In addition, I would guess the populations of Europe dwrarf the US in size at that point in time seeing as Europe's population has thrived on a pretty consistent basis (except the Plague years). Having 40 million people to draw troops from is going to make raising armies of larger sizes than 25 million.

Blair

03-07-2011, 01:51 PM

Title of this thread "Napoleonic vs Civil War".
This a doable comparison, because, while there were advances in technologies and logistics between 1812/4 and 1861, the similarities in these two conflicts are close enough to make a "reasonable" comparison.
The studies of The Art of War, post 1870, are a very different matter altogether. These may include ancient tactics and technologies in these modern studies of The Art of War, but they simply do not translate in a reasonable comparable manner
Comparing an MRE's to that of hardtack and salt pork are so remote as to being "absolutely ludicrous", along with all the other modern learned concepts of technology and logistics that The Modern Art of War as we know and understand it today, when applied in the context of "Napoleonic vs Civil War"!

johnduffer

03-07-2011, 01:52 PM

Mr. Heilein

" Indeed, a book on simple operations, like Von Clausewitz's "On War", was not available because it had not been written yet. "

Well there were Macdougal's THEORY OF WAR and Jomini to name at least two. Plus, I'm not sure when the first English edition of Von Clausewitz came out but I believe the work was published posthumously in 1832 or so and can't be totally discounted.

For the rest I totally agree with your post - the U.S soldier in 2011 is much better trained than his 1861 counterpart.

John Duffer

billwatson2

03-07-2011, 03:02 PM

"Comparing an MRE's to that of hardtack and salt pork are so remote as to being "absolutely ludicrous", "

I know what you mean, but consider this: If you assume some familiarity with "meal ready to eat" on the part of your modern audience, you are perfectly positioned to launch them into the world of "meal NOT ready to eat." Food that could travel well without crumbling or spoiling in the pre-refrigeration era meant salt or smoke or drying, two of which, at least, required the ultimate user to spend considerable time altering the ration to make it remotely edible. So by giving people something to chew on you get to shift their perspective ever so slightly to look at Civil War logistics and food in ways that they can appreciate.

:-)

Blair

03-07-2011, 03:31 PM

Bill,

I very much agree.
But! Turn your discussion into what "they had" to eat. Not into what modern soldiers have avalable to eat today.
Turn that "then compared to now" experience into a learning experience based on history. Not on what the mordern Military has today.

Of course I could be wrong.
But, why is it we are doing CW, and telling the public about something as modern as MRE's?

Bill_Cross

03-07-2011, 07:06 PM

But, why is it we are doing CW, and telling the public about something as modern as MRE's?
The further away something is from our own experience, the harder it is to imagine what life was like then. TV shows about ancient worlds or the Civil War have done a lot to help the general public know more (as well as perpetuating some myths).

One area where you can bridge gaps, though, is food: we all have to eat. The problem is being true to the subject without "losing" the audience with too much detail. You can show them some dessicated veggies, but unless you have a pot of soup or something using them cooking, you could just as easily tell taters the boys ate Dinty Moore stew.

Come to think of it, if they're at a mainstream event, they might think that anyway. ;)

But I digress.

The best living historian narrators or explainers I've ever seen were the ones who could relate the Civil War experience to the audience. Most guys have probably heard about MREs. If you can tie that in to issued salt pork and parched corn coffee, you're halfway there.

Colonel Dave

03-07-2011, 08:55 PM

The comparison of foodstuffs in the CW vs the Napoleonic Wars has little bearing on the discussion of the similarities or differences between the two wars. It is significant in a discussion of comparing foods during the two wars.

The military differences, as I have stated before, are so vast as to make comparisons of the wars impossible. Considering the terrain, the various nationalities with their unique organizations, languages, traditions, and then add the every growing numbers of troops with a virtually non existent supply and logistics system. Add to the mix the unique troops of the nations, i.e., Curraissier, Carbinier, Young Guard, Middle Guard, Old Guard, lancers, Baskirs with their bow and arrows, Rifles in the British and Saxon armies, the defection of entire armies prior to or, in the case of the Saxons, during the battle.

All of these factors create, in my opinion, a war that cannot be compared to our Civil War.

sbl

03-07-2011, 10:04 PM

Maybe we should narrow down to Napoleon III-ic.

Bill_Cross

03-08-2011, 09:57 AM

All of these factors create, in my opinion, a war that cannot be compared to our Civil War.
???? WTF??

The strategy and tactics of OUR war are the direct descendents of THAT war. The generals of the period read Jomini, idolized Nappy, dreamed of a single Waterloo-type final battle that would settle things. Their continued use of battlefield formations and maneuvers that stemmed from the age of the smoothbore and bayonet helped account for the bloody slaughter. Has anyone done a comparison of hand-to-hand fighting in the CW? It was rarer by then, you couldn't usually get close enough to give 'em "cold steel."

Wars are not fought in isolation, but in response to previous wars. Look at the way we prepared for 50 years to fight the Soviets in the Fulda Gap? Discussing the Napoleonic wars, and the Mexican War are signficant to our understanding of THEIR thinking and actions.

Comparison doesn't mean they're the same. We've already established the two wars were very different. But that didn't stop American military leaders from trying to adapt the insights of their "betters" and "models" to the Civil War experience.

I agree with Bill W: it's all grist for the mill.

billwatson2

03-08-2011, 10:17 AM

"The comparison of foodstuffs in the CW vs the Napoleonic Wars has little bearing on the discussion of the similarities or differences between the two wars. It is significant in a discussion of comparing foods during the two wars."

Really? You mean the thread has varied off topic? OMG! :)

It's all grist for my mill. And some of you are guilty of my crime: Thinking too hard. All that's really going on is we're finding reasons NOT to say, as so many do, that "weapons changed but commanders paid no attention and still used tactics as if they had not changed and that's why our war was so bloody/the bloodiest ever/needlessly bloody" etc. The only thing I'll not find acceptable is someone claiming they never heard some form of that assertion made to spectators at a living history. :) I hear it every time. I've even said it a few times myself, however, now I am edumacated and won't say it again.

Shortround

03-08-2011, 10:24 AM

First, they are not that different. There is 50 years between the end of the Napoleonic wars and the Civil War. The Napoleonic armies were not that different from the Armies used in the fighting between the French and British in the 7 years war. And those Armies were not that much different than the Armies used in the buzz-saw of a war, the 30 years war.

Second, lets just ignore the flintlocks, older cannons, and the lack of revolvers...

If you had put any of the usual group of Union clown generals (there are so many to chose from like the absolutely dreadful Nathaniel "Commisarry" Banks) in charge of the finest army in the world Napoleon and his staff would have run rings around them.

If your generals are not worth a **** what's the point of having a good army? That advise is timeless.

Bill_Cross

03-08-2011, 10:27 AM

All that's really going on is we're finding reasons NOT to say, as so many do, that "weapons changed but commanders paid no attention and still used tactics as if they had not changed and that's why our war was so bloody/the bloodiest ever/needlessly bloody" etc.
Bill, I think you're overly broad here.

"Weapons changed, but commanders paid no attention and still used tactics as if they had not changed."

I haven't seen evidence that this was NOT true in the early stages of the war. Wasn't Jackson fond of saying that the best tactic was a bayonet charge? The only strictly bayonet charge I can recall is the 20th Maine and that was necessity being the mother of invention because Chamberlain's men were out of ammo. I'm sure there were others, but cold steel works best against militia or those with smoothbores. A rifled musket will drop you long before you reach their midst, and the practice of firing by ranks makes getting that close that much harder.

"That's why our war was so bloody/the bloodiest ever/needlessly bloody etc."

I think the increasing killing power of the weapons most certainly is a factor in the carnage, just as advances in artillery and machine guns made subsequent wars more deadly. Clearly NOT the "bloodiest ever," but who's to say if it was "needlessly bloody" or not?

Who decides what is "needfully bloody" or "sufficiently needing to be bloody"? American officers in WWI who stormed German positions on the last day of the war that would have been turned over to them hours later were certainly "needlessly bloody," and there were calls to have those officers court-martialed. They were not because it was decided that would stain their reputations.

We can't throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water. I, for one, will continue holding onto the position that changes in technology were not sufficiently understood by EW commanders, who most definitely WERE using tactics Napoleon would have found perfectly comprehensible.

PMB1861

03-08-2011, 08:55 PM

Actually the tactics were linear with most commanders relying on mass and surprise to carry the day. A few examples of maneuver and speed are out there for the more serious student of military history to discuss.

What is more intersting is that the Union's strategy was one of attrition while the Confederacy had a defensive strategy.

Before I hurt anyone's head further I'll stop.

TheQM

03-08-2011, 11:57 PM

This has been an interesting thread. Here's a few books that may be of interest:

The Art of War by Baron Antoine Henri Jomini, published in 1838. (In English 1862)

Battle Tactics of the Civil War, by Paddy Griffith, published 1989

Attack and Die, Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage, by McWhiney & Jamieson, published in 1982

The Bloody Crucible of Courage by Brent Nosworthy, published 2003

The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat by Earl Hess, published in 2008

If you haven't read it, I would strongly recommend The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat. The subtitle is Reality and Myth. Mr. Hess did a lot of research and came up with some very interesting conclusions.

This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but I found it very interesting. Mr. Hess did a study of the rate of fire of various units at various battles during the Civil War. The fasted rate of fire he could find were the 52nd New York at Antietam and the 9th Kentucky at Chickamauga. These two united fired 1 round every thirty seconds for half an hour. The average rate of fire for the units and battles studied was 1 round per 2.1 minutes. Doesn't sound much like most reenactmants does it?

johnduffer

03-09-2011, 07:22 AM

" The Art of War by Baron Antoine Henri Jomini, published in 1838. (In English 1862) "

I have an original Jomini in English that's 1854 - G.P. Putnam & Co., 10 Park Place, New York.

Rob Weaver

03-09-2011, 07:24 AM

Have we touched on the topic of morale and motivation yet? There's an expression that Civil War units either broke too early, or not at all. Those men were raised on the stories of bravery from the Revolution and Mexico, but also from the endless Napoleonic wars in which the "thin red line" held again and again (for example.) They were fighting side by side with friends, relatives and commuity members (at least initially). Those two factors provide powerful motivation to stand up and take it like a man. They seem to have believed that taking heavy casualties without breaking was a key test of a unit's bravery. This intangible influences casualties as much as tactics. Purely talking tactics is like moving those blocks around in "John Brown's Body:" they don't straggle after blueberries and they don't care what their neighbors think. Real people, influenced by a lifetime of stories of heroism, do.

Shortround

03-09-2011, 08:06 AM

there are two books and one set of books an average reenactor should read:

I still have found no book better for the basic subject of "the stuff" in the Civil War and this goes a long way on explaning why the line formations were necessary.
Arms and Equipment of the Civil War
http://www.amazon.com/Arms-Equipment-Civil-Jack-Coggins/dp/0486433951/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

One of the best essays on the individual soldiers life.
Hard Tack and Coffee
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572154764/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk

And for an overall read of the Civil War there is Shelby Foote' series
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394749138/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk

You can drill down further with other books but those five books will give a person a good general knowledge.

Jack Coggin's book is about the best on the musket vs modern rifle and explaining all the "stuff" from the civil war.

Line formations (Napoleonic) was about the best way to deliver volley fire with muzzle loaders. If General Sibley had allowed the .52 Sharps to be the main infantry weapon the US military would have had about the most modern weapon in the world in 1860.

billwatson2

03-09-2011, 08:53 AM

TheQM

03-09-2011, 09:56 AM

" I have an original Jomini in English that's 1854 - G.P. Putnam & Co., 10 Park Place, New York.

John,

Very interesting. That means The Art of War" was available in English before the shooting started in 1861.

I got my information from the publishing history in the front of my 1992 reprint. It said the English language translation was published by J.B. Lippincott in 1862.

johnduffer

03-09-2011, 10:11 AM

hanktrent

03-09-2011, 10:27 AM

Mine's definately 1854, there's also one of those "Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854,.....Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York." statements on the next page.

1854 edition readable online:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9Pc25v6WaqAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Looks like some of Jomini's stuff was showing up in English as early as 1825, though in London, not America:
http://books.google.com/books?id=mbEkfvDV828C&pg=PA23&dq=inauthor:jomini&hl=en&ei=45p3Ta7sDMz8rAHq3_z3CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

Bill_Cross

03-09-2011, 11:27 AM

These two united fired 1 round every thirty seconds for half an hour. The average rate of fire for the units and battles studied was 1 round per 2.1 minutes. Doesn't sound much like most reenactmants does it?
At McDowell 2001, we did it "by the numbers," including fate cards. The entire company we portrayed had ONE KIA. The way we do it at reenactments is just plain bull$#%& and we all know it, yet do nothing year-in, year-out to change it. "The boys" like "burnin' powder," and since no one is usually shootin' back (other than the occasional worm or rock dropped down the barrel), things don't change.

The problem of black powder fouling meant they could not "pour it on" as reenactor officers continually urge the men to do. When your piece became fouled, you couldn't get the ball down the barrel. You were, as the French would say hors de combat.

But come Manassas 150, the same bull$#%& will happen, just like last year, and the year before, and the year before that.

Imagine if both sides could not take the field with more than one arsenal pack of rounds? ;)

Bill_Cross

03-09-2011, 11:46 AM

IF research showed that the wars of Napoleon consistently had, per battle, a higher percentage of combatants wounded and killed than the battles of the Civil War, what might we conclude from that?
This site (http://www.taphilo.com/history/war-deaths.shtml) says that:

2,456,000 soldiers served in the combined armies of the North & South
618,022 actually fought
204,070 were combat KIA or died of their wounds
One died per every 12 who served; but one died for every three who fought

For the Napoleonic wars, the figures are less-complete, with only numbers for the detail-obsessed French bureaucrats (Schnapps was French in another life) and the British. But for Napoleon, he had a total:

1,706,000 soldiers who served
306,000 died in combat
a staggering 800,000 perished from their wounds, disease and accidents

Since CW deaths are not combined in this way, comparing KIA to those fighting shows in Nappy's wars

1 out of every 5 died

For the ACW,

1 out of every 3 died

If anyone says "something other than the rifle musket was in play for that result," I'll point out that nobody says that when they believe the casualties in the Civil War were HIGHER than during the Napoleonic wars.
Apparently, our war WAS bloodier.

Your thoughts, Bill W?

billwatson2

03-09-2011, 12:30 PM

My thoughts are inconclusive because all the data isn't in.

I'm going to look at 30 CW battles, big and little, chosen randomly and 30 Napoleonic battles chosen randomly and see how the battles stack up. So far, there's not much consistent difference. Higher than each other, lower than each other, you can find examples higher and lower in each era. But there are complications, as you discovered. (Even percentage of those "engaged". Did the number person include just those units that were in combat those three days, or total numbers fielded by each side at that battlefield? (A few brigades in the Union VI corpswere "there" but never got in the scrap.) That's the kind of important detail that can make a simple task turn into a nightmare. "Was that an apple? An orange? Oh, cripes, a banana."

Bill_Cross

03-09-2011, 12:43 PM

"Was that an apple? An orange? Oh, cripes, a banana."
Probably a pommegranite. ;)

We are trying to bring a modern rigor to a time period when people didn't have birth certificates and marriages were often recorded in the family Bible or the church records. I applaud your research, though, don't let me leave you with the opposite impression.

In terms of improving the way we interpret the history, the more we can do to reduce the burning of powder, the better. The times for our sham battles are waaaaay too short so that we don't bore the taters. I remember during Andersburg Bobby Smalls telling Chris on the radios to "get a move on, the spectators think the battle is over and they're leaving." This before we'd even come out of the "Wheatfield."

Still, I suspect we're swimming upstream, Bill. The taters, the boys in the ranks and the movies are all expecting massive carnage and quick resolutions-- everything wrapped up in an hour, thank you. Heck, both sides fought all day long at Chancellorsville the first day and nothing got decided!

reb64

03-09-2011, 01:29 PM

Waterloo
190,000 engaged
55,600 killed or wounded
29.3 percent

Gettysburg
165,620 engaged
35,087 killed or wounded
21.1 percent

I'm just throwing that one out there as an example. I've done a dozen battles so far and it appears "our" war wasn't bloodier.

None of the numbers I'm using come from anyone trying to make a point about deadliness. It's just numbers, a lot of which still need to be doublechecked.

Research. What a concept.

A few sources have the numbers of dead/wounded at over 50000 at Gettysburg

Colonel Dave

03-09-2011, 08:17 PM

Good luck with the statistical study of the battles. That will be a tough task.
My position that the two wars cannot be compared has not changed. Keep in mind that The Napoleonic War was not just about the French and everyone else.
It was about the French who fought in a combined column and line formation called the "Order Mixed" and preceded with clouds of skirmishers. The Order Mixed combined the shock of the column attack with the support of the fire from the adjacent lines. The skirmishers were to keep the opponent pinned while the faster marching French maneuvered into a favorable position.
Meanwhile, the Austrians are fighting in Phalanx's which slows them down and makes firepower useless but their melee capability is tremendous. Then the British, except in Italy, are routed out of Spain. When they return, they learn reverse slope tactics that completely undoes the French's tactics. Where, in our war, did one commander adopt a battlefield tactic that negated his opponent's tactics?
Then, the Pre-1806 Prussian Army uses their 7 Year War, Fredrick the Great linear tactics and are destroyed in one blow by the dual battle of Jena and Aurstadt. It will be 1813 before they are a separtate army again. Did anything like that happen in our war?
The Russians, meanwhile, are fighting the Turks but achieve peace long enough to release their million man army to move to the west to face the French. But, by this time, Napoleon had defeated Austria and a Russian army. Since the King of Austria is, by default, the leader of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian defeat allows Napoleon to abolish the Holy Roman Empire and the French (their liberators) are joined by former countries in the HRE such as Wurtenburg, Saxony, Berg, etc. Napoleon creates the country of Westphalia from territory formerly owned by Bavaria, Brunswick and Saxony and gives command of the 50,000 man army to one of his brothers.

I am going to stop here and again state that the similarities between our CW and the Napoleonic Wars are few. We were fighting a Civil War while Europe, including Spain and Portugal, Sweden, Norway,Greece, Egypt, and Asia were engaged in a World War from which Royal dynasties, Monarchs, entire countries and millions of people failed to survive.

PMB1861

03-09-2011, 08:42 PM

Where, in our war, did one commander adopt a battlefield tactic that negated his opponent's tactics?

Well in my estimation, the Confederate use of defensive tactics, massed rifle fire and entrenching completely negated the Union tactics of massed frontal assaults at both Fredericksburg and Cold Harbor.

I'm separated from my library, but I'm sure someone can bring up a specific example or two from Jackson's valley campaign when his use of speed and manuever negated his opponents tactics of mass and position.

Now are we going to discuss strategy and logistics soon? I once read that only amatuers study tactics.

flattop32355

03-09-2011, 10:34 PM

Where, in our war, did one commander adopt a battlefield tactic that negated his opponent's tactics?

1) Lee's "Pig Snout" defence at the North Anna River.
2) Grant then stealing a day's march around the ANV on the North Anna.
3) 20th Maine at Gettysburg.
4) Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign. Every time Joe Johnston would set a strong defensive line, Sherman would outflank it.
5) Sherman's use of Confederate prisoners to clear torpedoes in his march to the sea.

Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others, both major and minor.

Colonel Dave

03-10-2011, 07:27 AM

Good response, Bernie. I think your #1 is right on point. The others, IMHO, happened in a lot of or most wars. The prisoner thing may be an exception.
I guess I should have re-worded my question. I was referring to the 15 or so battles in Spain wherein the British/Spanish/Portugese/Brunswick army defeated the French EVERYTIME due to their tactics that countered the French's tactics. Not one battle, every battle. The same tactic kind of worked at Waterloo but it is hard to measure since Ney ordered the cavalry forward without infantry support. Those same French tactics in mainland Europe defeated Prussia, Russia, Austria and their allies time after time. I am not sure that was replicated during our war.

billwatson2

03-10-2011, 08:29 AM

"Now are we going to discuss strategy and logistics soon? I once read that only amatuers study tactics. "

Patience, Pete. Much as I enjoy this discussions and given I can write pretty quickly, I'm sitting here reading this with a kitchen exploded down to the studs in a renovation that did not take into account the extreme perversity of the electrician who wired this place by running every wire in the house, it seems, through the chase created by the soffit over the old kitchen cabinets, which soffit has to come out to make way for the new cabinets. It means I have to "unload" parts of the basement and other rooms in order to re-run wires, frustrating because when all is said and done all the wires go to the same place they always did, just a new route.
It is a logistical problem which a strategic decision to go fishing instead of renovating would have made all the difference. :-)
I believe the electrician who wired this place is dead. He's better off that way.
I thought seeding the clouds with the "Napoleonic tactics" stuff would produce a nice cloudburst, which it did. Logistics takes us in a whole new direction, with logistics affecting strategy: Napoleon fielded national armies bigger than anything seen until his enemies also fielded national armies, and nobody had an economy set up to supply those kinds of numbers. It seems like it will be interesting to see how they worked that out and how industrialization between Napoleon's time and the Civil War changed it. Right now all I'm prepared to say with any confidence is you could usually find more meat from a processing plant in a Yankee army and more meat processed on a farm in a southern army. There's a whole world of facts and ideas in just that thought, with one thing that leaps out: Confederate armies relied on small producers to survive, Yankees on industrialized food processing. So was Sherman an innovator or a copycat when he cut loose from his supply line to the stockyards of the north and took off across Georgia?

Bill_Cross

03-10-2011, 10:06 AM

So was Sherman an innovator or a copycat when he cut loose from his supply line to the stockyards of the north and took off across Georgia?
Copycat. Just ask Hannibal.

Logistics are much harder to discuss, not only because we're all amateurs here, but because they're not sexy and people don't generally write about them. It's what makes Lieven's book on Napoleon in Russia so brilliant: at least half of it is devoted to the logistics of fielding an army of a half-million men, as well as getting and feeding the horses that did almost everything.

Our thinking about logistics has been compromised as well: the German "invention" of Bewegungskrieg ("war of movement," what was called after-the-fact Blitzkrieg) freed armies from ponderous, slow tactics to quick thrusts into the enemy's rear. Just when it seemed that warfare had reached a dead end in the First World War, mankind's ability to adapt and kill finds a new, more efficient means of killing!! The invention of the airplane further complicates our thinking: we all assume, like Goering, that planes can re-supply an army on the move or surrounded. That worked at Bastogne, but failed at Stalingrad.

The slow, cautious movement of CW armies is more understandable when one grasps that the commanders could not allow their lines of communication (i.e., re-supply) to be cut off, so they move forward slowly by lengthening those lines and, where possible, securing them with fortifications or riverheads or rail heads.

flattop32355

03-10-2011, 03:42 PM

Copycat. Just ask Hannibal.

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and disagree with Bill, although I know where he's coming from. Sherman wasn't the first general to cut his links to his supply lines and go off cross country.

But he was the first to do so on a grand scale in the Civil War (Grant had done so earlier on a smaller scale), going against the conventional wisdom of the time.

He also knew exactly what he was doing: He had looked at the census and production records for that area in which he would pass, and knew that those production levels had not changed or been affected by the war up to that point.

As for the South relying on smaller sources of production/supply rather than an industrialized food generating process: That was more a matter of necessity than preference; the South simply didn't have the infrastructure to do it any other way, and her armies and citizens in affected areas suffered greatly for it. Add to that the Confederate and states government's poor record of organizing anything economic or logistical, and you get what they got. Sherman didn't copy it, he just used it to his advantage.

johnduffer

03-10-2011, 03:56 PM

" But he was the first to do so on a grand scale in the Civil War "

Perhaps the only one. On the other hand, if memory serves, he got some first hand experience of this in the Mexican War

Bill_Cross

03-10-2011, 04:08 PM

Bernie, we can never know where ideas come from. Billy was a smart guy who learned from his mistakes (not every leader did or does), and gathered intelligence.

I won't press my point, except to say that Cannae is one of those battles that has gripped the imaginations of warriors for thousands of years: the total annihilation of your opponent after suckering him into a trap. Any conventionally-educated man in 186X would have known the Roman navy controlled the Mediterranean, and that Hannibal had been roughing it off the fat of the Italian countryside since crossing over the Alps from Gaul.

I strongly recommend the recent The Ghosts of Cannae. It's one helluva read.

bob 125th nysvi

03-10-2011, 06:59 PM

If (note the "if, I'm not done and not convinced of what I'm about to toss out there for your thoughts, and even when I am, and if this does turn out to be so, there's still going to be "oh, but you missed such-and such and that changes everything") So a big "if." I'll even put it in capitals: IF.

IF research showed that the wars of Napoleon consistently had, per battle, a higher percentage of combatants wounded and killed than the battles of the Civil War, what might we conclude from that?

1) that the close in nature of the fighting made the 'ineffectiveness' of the smoothbore moot as the close ranges did not require any significant marksmanship capabilities. The amount of lead going down range was not only prodigious but virtually guaranteed to hit something.

2) that the extremely brutal discipline of the time and the wide gulf socially between officers and men made the men fear their officers more (what is it Wellington said: "I don't know if they scare the enemy but they certainly scare me.") than the enemy. In the Civil War since the majority of the line officers had to go back to the same home town as their men there was a familiarity and forgiveness of mistakes not present in European Armies Also in European Armies the officer thought of and used the men simply as cannon fodder. European soldiers were less like to break (but when they broke they broke for good) with an eye towards reforming and coming back for a second go without the officer's permission where as American soldiers said "It ain't working this time. We'll leave now and we can try again later or at some other place." And the officers tolerated it to a certain extent.

3) that extremely large cavalry forces, their effective use and suitable terrain led to a significant number of the casualties being inflicted during the pursuit of a broken or routed army. I can't think of a single instance during the Civil War when a defeated army was crushed or destroyed during the rout phase of the battle. And even if you can think of an instance during Nappy's wars there were dozens of instances when that happened.

bob 125th nysvi

03-10-2011, 07:13 PM

Where, in our war, did one commander adopt a battlefield tactic that negated his opponent's tactics?

Chancelorville splitting your army into THREE pieces, one to pin down an enemy diversion, one to hold the main force in place and one to get out on the open flank to roll up the defensive position.

Fredricksburg - digging in to negate your opponents ability to use his superior numbers to overwhelm your force.

Vicksburg running past the cities defenses to cross down river and severing your own supply lines to gain the initiative and by pass the defenses.

Petersburg - forcing your opponent to dig in to defend a static position thus removing from him his one very obvious skill maneuver to capture the initiative.

Shall I go on?

Or are you talking small unit tactics which are limited by your ability to command and control your troops and firepower?

In that case I'll cite Chamberlain stating that by war's end half the regiment (or more) was out in skirmish lines as opposed to the two companies of early war tactics.

Or Buford dismounting two cavalry brigades at Gettysburg to delay an entire corp (which was stacked up behind the attacking division).

Or Warren being perceptive enough (and not worrying about the chain of command) to throw a brigade onto Little Round Top in the face of the rebel advance?

reb64

03-10-2011, 09:28 PM

1) Lee's "Pig Snout" defence at the North Anna River.
4) Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign. Every time Joe Johnston would set a strong defensive line, Sherman would outflank it.
Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others, both major and minor.

I would say it was Johnston who used defense and manuever to win a war of attrition against superior numbers and weapons. Sherman commented he joyed at the removal of Johnston.

flattop32355

03-10-2011, 10:21 PM

I would say it was Johnston who used defense and manuever to win a war of attrition against superior numbers and weapons. Sherman commented he joyed at the removal of Johnston.

I would respectfully disagree. Johnston used typical tactics of withdraw and entrench. With the exception of Kennesaw, Sherman refused to do his part and frontally attack. Instead, he secured himself against his enemy to prevent its ability to go around him, and got around them, instead. I also recall that Johnston did not win that war of attrition, but retreated all the way back to Atlanta, Sherman's main objective.

I would hazard that Sherman's joy was not so much Johnston leaving as it was knowing that a less capable commander would now be his foe.

TheQM

03-11-2011, 12:08 AM

I would hazard that Sherman's joy was not so much Johnston leaving as it was knowing that a less capable commander would now be his foe.

Bernie,

I hate "what if's", but Johnson had kept the AOT intact during that slow retreat to the outskirts of Atlanta. Not really much different then what happened to the ANV during their retreat to Petersburg and the outskirts of Richmond. I often wonder what the results of the Federal November elections would have been, if Sherman had been bogged down in front of Atlanta, the way Grant was bogged down in front of Richmond.

Instead of fighting a defensive battle against a stronger foe, Hood attacked and attacked again, until the AOT was distroyed as a viable fighting force.

johnduffer

03-11-2011, 07:04 AM

I don't think Hood had that many options, Davis was in no mood for the same old same old. A lesser man than Sherman might have taken the bait and withdrawn from Atlanta to chase Hood northwards. I haven't found it again but once saw a period reference joking about Johnston building a pontoon bridge to Cuba. Johnston was a capable commander and much admired by his men but shared that 'battle as a last resort' mentality with McClellan.

flattop32355

03-11-2011, 04:51 PM

Johnston was a capable commander and much admired by his men but shared that 'battle as a last resort' mentality with McClellan.

I think McClellan's problem was a bit more complex than that. From reading some of his letters, etc, he seems to believe that he dared not risk the whole army at any one time, as that could destroy it, and his mission was to keep it intact. He also seemed to think that it was the last hope to defend Washington City if things went to pot. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy, as it were.

Johnston, on the other hand, knowing that he generally had the short end of the stick, kept looking for those opportunites to strike those "major blows" that would cripple his enemy. That such opportunites never really presented themselves helps explain why he kept falling back all the time.

billwatson2

03-11-2011, 09:48 PM

It's possible McClellan, like Hooker, also saw himself as potentially a kind of Julius Caesar, and the Confederates dangled the prospect of a victory over "the Gauls" in front of him like a juicy carrot. A long time ago I read that Confederate officials struck up "negotiations" with him as he approached Richmond, essentially hinting they were ready to turn over the city to him, personally, as soon as they got the red carpet, the crown of laurel leaves and 70 dancing virgins ready, which was always "tomorrow". The prospect of converting the surrender of the Confederacy into political gain, in this version of things, is one reason he dawdled instead of striking. They played to his ego and stalled until they could muster the size army they needed to shove his ego back down the Peninsula.
We'll never know, because if there were any correspondence to this effect, it would have turned up long ago. But it's an interesting possibility, given the man's ego. (That's not an unfriendly knock on him. Certainly anyone given control of the eastern army would need one heck of an ego; he'd need the biggest possible ego, or at least a mammoth dose of self-confidence that could lead to misjudgment, just to outweigh all the other self-referencing federal generals busier fighting for advancement than they were the Confederates at that point in the war. Really, it would make a great soap opera.)

TheQM

03-15-2011, 12:17 AM

bob 125th nysvi

03-15-2011, 09:06 AM

Gentlemen,

I'm sure I'm missing something, but for the life of me, other then the distances involved, I can't see much strategic or tactical difference between Grant's Overland Campaign and Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. Both had the goal of capturing a city, Richmond and Atlantia; and doing as much damage as possible to the defending army. Both Grant and Sherman faced an intrenched enemy and attempted to bypass and flank these intrenchments. Both Lee and Johnson moved quickly to block these movements, but lost ground every time.

As I see it, there was one big differences between these campaigns. Lee wasn't relieved and Grant found himself stuck in front of Petersburg. Johnson was relieved by Hood, who abandoned Johnson's tactics, in favor of frontal attacks on a superior force. We all know the results of this change in tactics. We don't know what would have happened if Johnson retreated into the Atlanta fortifications, the way Lee did on the Richmond-Petersburg Line.

the campaigns were both basically the same because they both had the same objective, destroying the enemy army.

Both Grant and Sherman would have been perfectly happy to trap their opponents in one local regardless of the local because they had both moved beyond the Nappy concept that physical objectives (Richmond or Atlanta) had gaming winning significance.

Nappy moved against physical targets because the nobility he was dealing with had emotional attachments to locations. It worked with the Austrians/Prussians because they valued Vienna/Berlin and little strategic maneuver space, it didn't work against the Russians who had tons of space and little emotional attachment to anything.

Ultimately because Nappy couldn't strike at what his major opponents valued (Britain the economy and the Russians who knows what might force them to give up once invaded) he lost.

Early in the war the in the east Richmond was the target for the Union because the generals and politicians thought like Nappy and it might have worked because the south had an emotional attachment to Richmond. In that they were like Nappy.

Unfortunately the Union had to deal with Lee who intimately understood Nappy's (and Scott's) concepts of strategic and operational maneuver and he was able to stymie them.

It took a western commander (where physical targets were significant but not game winners) to realize the enemy army, and to lesser extent their war making capacity, were the real keys to victory.

Lee didn't understand that Grant was interested in only one thing, destroying the ANV regardless of cost and as a result of that and the fact that Grant had the resources to employ his strategy, Lee lost the war.

In the west, Johnson understood both Nappy's concepts of maneuver AND that his army was more important than any specific local so he was able to frustrate Sherman (to some extend).

Davis who was Nappy and emotional to the core didn't get that the war was not about territory but about surviving long enough for the enemy to call it quits (ala the North Vietnamese) wanted successful military action. There was no way he could replace Lee (who was the most important figure in the south) but Johnson (whom Davis didn't like) was an easy target for Davis' (and the amateur armchair strategists in the south) so away he went.

Unfortunately he picked about the most over his head general of the war Hood who was so thoroughly a Nappy 'at them' type of general, who was so behind the times strategically and operationally, that upon assuming command he managed to make himself and his army irrelevant to the war in an incredibly short time.

To circle back the concepts, strategic, operational and tactical, of the most important previous war(s) (Nappy's) dictated how the Civil War was fought, certainly at least at the start. As both sides learned about the significance of the improvements in technology (especially mobility and logistics) those who adapted and learned the lessons (and had the resources) won. And those who didn't learn the lessons (and even Lee didn't learn a couple of them) that created a new way of war lost.

In the long run we shouldn't be too hard on the Generals not adapting fast enough to the new technological realities of the battlefield. After all tactically, Nappy's 'up and at them' offensive philosophy is still alive today, what has changed is the application of technology to avoid going straight at them in mass. But technology did not improve enough to prevent Generals to still try to smash straight through until at least 1917 as the casualty lists of WWI amply prove.

johnduffer

03-15-2011, 10:47 AM

Bill_Cross

03-15-2011, 11:15 AM

Nappy moved against physical targets because the nobility he was dealing with had emotional attachments to locations. It worked with the Austrians/Prussians because they valued Vienna/Berlin and little strategic maneuver space, it didn't work against the Russians who had tons of space and little emotional attachment to anything.
Bob, I couldn't disagree more.

The Russian tactic of yielding Moscow to Napoleon was VERY controversial, and Czar Alexander I faced a real-life risk in letting his generals follow it: his father, Paul I, had been assassinated by disgruntled officers and nobles, so the threat wasn't just political. He even had replaced his army commander, Barclay de Tolly, with Kutusov, for not stopping Napoleon. Kutusov then continued the same strategy with plenty of howling by the nobility, though Kutusov was seen as "one of us" by the Russians, while Barclay de Tolly was seen as a "foreigner" because of his Scottish lineage). While Borodino is now looked on as a Russian victory, at the time it was seen as a horrible defeat, because it meant abandoning Moscow. Plus the policy of "scorched earth" hurt the peasants as much as it denied Nappy forage and food. To say that Russians "had little emotional attachment to anything" is plain wrong. Just listen to "The 1812 Overture" if you need to feel the electricity the "Patriotic War of 1812" (as the Russians call it) generated in Russian hearts.

I'm no expert on the Russian fight with Napoleon (my points are from Lieven's fine book), but the tactic prevailed because Napoleon was forced to exit Russia relatively quickly (he was in Moscow little more than a month). Had he been able to fortify the city and hold out until the following Spring, it's hard to say what might have happened. His goal was to force peace talks on the Czar as he had after Austerlitz.

Ultimately because Nappy couldn't strike at what his major opponents valued (Britain the economy and the Russians who knows what might force them to give up once invaded) he lost.
Again, Lieven maintains that Napoleon lost because he couldn't supply his army, while the Russians had developed a system of both levying troops and procuring supplies from the nobles in the hinterland that left them prepared for a campaign and not just a battle or two. For Napoleon to win in Russia, he would've had to defeat the army repeatedly and not just at Smolensk and Borodino. The Russian nobility, while proud and patriotic, were heavily-taxed and could not have sustained an indefinite war.

The proof of the Russian success isn't just that they repelled Nappy. Many Russians would've been happy to see his army leave (what was left of it). The Russian victory came in the next two years when its army ultimately helped the Austrians, Prussians and English chase Napoleon all the way back to France and resulted in his abdication and first exile to Elba.

The differences and similarities to the ACW are sharp and important:

1.) Generals on both sides dreamed of a single Waterloo-style defeat that would "decide" militarily what really was a political reality in the best sense of Clausewitz, who wrote that war is just politics taken to another level;
2.) Neither side understood immediately what it would take to defeat the other, though Lee and Lincoln grasped it best (Lee who knew he needed to destroy as much of the AoP as possible and almost did in the Seven Days, and Lincoln who realized taking Richmond would not shorten the war);
3.) Military means were only part of the story: the North was never seriously in any risk of losing militarily, but the South's persistance nearly exhausted its will to fight. The South was able to "make do" with no industry despite a blockade, much as Third World countries have frustrated or even defeated industrial giants since then;
4.) Winning meant denying the other guy the means to fight on. Sherman disrupted the logistical heartland, while Grant tied down and ground down the ANV.

Early in the war the in the east Richmond was the target for the Union because the generals and politicians thought like Nappy and it might have worked because the south had an emotional attachment to Richmond. In that they were like Nappy.
I think there's truth to this, but Richmond was also a logistical center, with both the railroads ending there AND the Tredegar Iron Works, the South's only cannon factory. Losing Richmond would have been a huge logistical problem for the South, though its decentralized economy could cope far better than industrialized countries like the North, Great Britain or even France and Germany (the South was more like Russia in that regard).

It took a western commander (where physical targets were significant but not game winners) to realize the enemy army, and to lesser extent their war making capacity, were the real keys to victory.
Actually, the westerner who understood this best and earliest was Lincoln. ;)

bob 125th nysvi

03-15-2011, 10:26 PM

" a Nappy 'at them' type of general "
" Nappy's 'up and at them' offensive philosophy "

? If you mean this in a 'Pickett's Charge is the ideal' sort of way I have to disagree. There were plenty of occasions like Ulm where Napoleon put armies in the bag with a minimum of bloodshed. Once on the actual battlefield he didn't shy from straight up combat, but, the true Napoleonic move was to divide and conquer - pin a portion of the enemy and fall on another with overwhelming force - or appear from a totally unexpected quarter. Until the opposition finally caught up, much of his success came from the corps system and largely living off the land against opponents that moved in the Frederick The Great mode. The corps moved widely dispersed to find supplies but close enough to aid each other when needed. The Second Manassas campaign is a classic Napoleonic battle example and an indicator the prewar study of his methods wasn't a total waste of time.

John Duffer

Nappy's preference was to strategically out-maneuver his enemy because he realized the value of the army he had built (and the cost of replacing it) and certainly his methods were not a waste of time. His application of logistics was also beyond the pale of most of his opponents, he moved and he moved fast.

But on the battlefield tactically he showed a lot less imagination than say either Scott or Lee did. His sense of timing was exquisite but his battles were mostly contained with in the flanks of the two opposing armies. And at Waterloo he was down right pigheaded about the two forward British outposts.

bob 125th nysvi

03-15-2011, 11:30 PM

Bob, I couldn't disagree more.

The Russian tactic of yielding Moscow to Napoleon was VERY controversial, and Czar Alexander I faced a real-life risk in letting his generals follow it: his father, Paul I, had been assassinated by disgruntled officers and nobles, so the threat wasn't just political. He even had replaced his army commander, Barclay de Tolly, with Kutusov, for not stopping Napoleon. Kutusov then continued the same strategy with plenty of howling by the nobility, though Kutusov was seen as "one of us" by the Russians, while Barclay de Tolly was seen as a "foreigner" because of his Scottish lineage). While Borodino is now looked on as a Russian victory, at the time it was seen as a horrible defeat, because it meant abandoning Moscow. Plus the policy of "scorched earth" hurt the peasants as much as it denied Nappy forage and food. To say that Russians "had little emotional attachment to anything" is plain wrong. Just listen to "The 1812 Overture" if you need to feel the electricity the "Patriotic War of 1812" (as the Russians call it) generated in Russian hearts.

Whether or not abandoning Moscow was "controversial" with some parts of the Russian Nobility/Military is irrelevant because it the Czar and his General had both the foresight and the courage to do it and make it stick. If they had failed they might have been in trouble but they didn't fail and that is the difference between good commanders and say a McCellan, the willingness to toss the book out the window, take the risk AND get away with it. Hannibal, Caesar, Grant during the Vicksburg Campaign, Rommel, you get the drift.

Also trading space for time or drawing enemies deep into Russia was not a new strategy. They basically used it since they lost to the Mongols.

If you came away with the concept that I meant that the Russians were not an emotional people then you misunderstood me (or I didn't make myself clear enough). The Russians are a very pragmatic people, they'll weep for the house they are burning but they'll burn it anyway so you can't have it knowing they'll build another.

Did you know the 1812 Overture was originally written to HONOR Nappy? It only changed once Nappy went to war with the Russians.

I'm no expert on the Russian fight with Napoleon (my points are from Lieven's fine book), but the tactic prevailed because Napoleon was forced to exit Russia relatively quickly (he was in Moscow little more than a month). Had he been able to fortify the city and hold out until the following Spring, it's hard to say what might have happened. His goal was to force peace talks on the Czar as he had after Austerlitz.

Again, Lieven maintains that Napoleon lost because he couldn't supply his army, while the Russians had developed a system of both levying troops and procuring supplies from the nobles in the hinterland that left them prepared for a campaign and not just a battle or two. For Napoleon to win in Russia, he would've had to defeat the army repeatedly and not just at Smolensk and Borodino. The Russian nobility, while proud and patriotic, were heavily-taxed and could not have sustained an indefinite war.

Lieven appears to very blithely dismiss a strategy that has worked for the Russians repeatedly against multiple different enemies.

The Russians very much understand the nature of their country, the vast distances with sparse populations (meaning no where to forage for supplies and long distances to haul your own), the widely varying climatic conditions which render movement next to impossible, not just in winter but in parts spring and fall too. That the terrain and segments of their population are ideally suited for guerrilla warfare.

Nappy could not imagine the distances and terrain (meaning logistically) appropriately enough to realize he couldn't be successful. He looked on a map and saw distances not to dissimilar to distances he had already covered in a populated (and fairly well stocked) Europe. He saw miles on a map, not an wilderness to claw his way through.

He could defeat but not break the Russian Army and with out crushing the Army he had no hope of success. And he couldn't imagine, in his wildest dreams, that the Russians would burn Moscow and leave him nothing. Could he have burned Paris? Not in a thousand years.

The differences and similarities to the ACW are sharp and important:

1.) Generals on both sides dreamed of a single Waterloo-style defeat that would "decide" militarily what really was a political reality in the best sense of Clausewitz, who wrote that war is just politics taken to another level;
2.) Neither side understood immediately what it would take to defeat the other, though Lee and Lincoln grasped it best (Lee who knew he needed to destroy as much of the AoP as possible and almost did in the Seven Days, and Lincoln who realized taking Richmond would not shorten the war);
3.) Military means were only part of the story: the North was never seriously in any risk of losing militarily, but the South's persistance nearly exhausted its will to fight. The South was able to "make do" with no industry despite a blockade, much as Third World countries have frustrated or even defeated industrial giants since then;
4.) Winning meant denying the other guy the means to fight on. Sherman disrupted the logistical heartland, while Grant tied down and ground down the ANV.

The dream of the 'single great battle' goes back much farther than Waterloo. Western Generals through out the ages have dreamed of recreating Cannae, which is interesting as it was only a tactical not a strategic victory. Other than Grant and Sherman (and Scott) I see very little evidence that the Generals who fought the Civil War really understood that war is an extension of politics by other means. They saw war as a stand alone activity which is why they generally all bristled under the thumb of civil authorities.

I don't see where you get the idea Lee came even remotely close to destroying McCellan's forces during the Seven Days. He beat McCellan personally, emotionally and morally but he never came close to destroying the Union Forces. If I remember correctly he suffered more casualties than McCellan did. Lee also was so myopic about Virginia that he tended to down play the other theater of war. Which interestingly enough is where the North actually won the war.

Tactically the south did not understand the concept of a war of rebellion. They emotionally believed that they could "win" the war by winning battles. In this they failed to even understand the nature of our own War of Independence against England. Washington realized he didn't have to win the war militarily (although he tried hard to do so) he realized that all he had to do was contain the British, ebb before them and flow back in after they left. He realized it was more important to keep his army intact and in the field than to crush the British Army. The couple of times when the British were decisively defeat were unique situations when the rebels managed to logistically isolate the force in question. Lee never even came close to recreating the conditions necessary for the smaller power to win the war, he thought in very conventional terms.

I think there's truth to this, but Richmond was also a logistical center, with both the railroads ending there AND the Tredegar Iron Works, the South's only cannon factory. Losing Richmond would have been a huge logistical problem for the South, though its decentralized economy could cope far better than industrialized countries like the North, Great Britain or even France and Germany (the South was more like Russia in that regard).

Actually, the westerner who understood this best and earliest was Lincoln. ;)

I think we can agree that Richmond had value beyond it's emotional value as capital of both Virginia and the Confederacy but even then we can see the emotional attachment that blinded the south to realities. Industry is fairly easy to move, especially when given time (and it was 3 years before the war settled in at Richmond's very feet) yet the south never made the precaution of moving its vital industries away from the cockpit of war. Yet it was very clear from day one that Richmond WAS the target of the National Forces (until Grant came along). The south virtually defied the North to come take it, and if Lee had not been available to the south in all likelihood the North would have taken Richmond in 1862. The initial move from Montgomery to Richmond was an emotional not a logical decision. That Davis ordered Vicksburg held at all costs and that Lee allowed himself to get trapped at Petersburg are signs that the south never truly understood that this was NOT a war of position.

War is a very emotional activity, those who are successful are those who are able to get past the emotion and get to the realities that have to be dealt with.

The Russians, Grant and Sherman were able to get past the emotional value of geography and thus adapt their plans to the realities of the situation and were ultimately successful.

The Southern, Austrian, Prussian Governments (and a host of Union Generals almost too numerous to list) and some extent even Nappy, never learned that wars are lost by putting too great a value on geography instead of logistics and eliminating the enemies ability to fight a war. Ultimately they failed.

The south had plenty of will at the end, they just no longer had the ability to wage war.

And to his everlasting credit Lee realized that and ended the war in the most humane manner possible.

Bill_Cross

03-16-2011, 01:49 PM

If you came away with the concept that I meant that the Russians were not an emotional people then you misunderstood me (or I didn't make myself clear enough).
Fair enough. You said they didn't care about anything they gave up. This wasn't true, and I'm glad we've got that settled.

Did you know the 1812 Overture was originally written to HONOR Nappy? It only changed once Nappy went to war with the Russians.
Bob, I believe you are confusing the "1812 Overture" (written in 1880) with Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony #3.

Lieven appears to very blithely dismiss a strategy that has worked for the Russians repeatedly against multiple different enemies.
I did not get the impression from the book that Lieven dismissed the strategy at all. It was very effective, but it wasn't just about "scorched earth." The Russians had spent some time modernizing their army and preparing a mobile logistical support structure that sustained them through the long 2-year campaign, first to oust Nappy, then chase him back to Paris. Napoleon, OTOH, relied on a supply depot system that was vulnerable to interdiction and destruction. The Russians were more flexible than their adversary, who as you rightly point out, did not understand the huge distances he would need to cover (and re-supply). Much like Hitler in 1941, Napoleon believed he could force the Czar to negotiate after beating his army in the field, first at Smolensk and then at Borodino.

He could defeat but not break the Russian Army and with out crushing the Army he had no hope of success.
This was where Napoleon did not understand the changing political landscape in Europe. Always in the past, a crushing military defeat was followed by negotiations and new alliances, sometimes with former enemies. But Europe was wearying of the Corsican, and the alliances against him could now outlive military defeat (e.g., Lützen and Bautzen in 1813).

The dream of the 'single great battle' goes back much farther than Waterloo. Western Generals through out the ages have dreamed of recreating Cannae, which is interesting as it was only a tactical not a strategic victory.
Waterloo was simply the most-recent example of a "winner take all" battle. There are certainly others, but McClellan refers directly to Waterloo in a letter to his wife.

Other than Grant and Sherman (and Scott) I see very little evidence that the Generals who fought the Civil War really understood that war is an extension of politics by other means.
Clausewitz's writings were not, to my knowledge, widely available, nor studied at West Point the way Jomini was. Generals study battles and tend to re-fight the last war. For us, that was the Mexican War, where most of the leaders on both sides had served (including Jeff Davis).

I don't see where you get the idea Lee came even remotely close to destroying McCellan's forces during the Seven Days. He beat McCellan personally, emotionally and morally but he never came close to destroying the Union Forces. If I remember correctly he suffered more casualties than McCellan did.
The sources I have read say that if Jackson had been able to turn McClellan's flank at Glendale, he would have prevented McClellan withdrawing to the safety of the James River. Consequently, Lee might've bagged much of the AoP without having to destroy it in battle. It's one of two instances in the war where the entire outcome of history could have been altered if the battle is different (the other also involves McClellan, who let total victory and the presidency slip through his hands at Antietem). If Lee had captured most of the Union army on the Peninsula, it would not have crippled the North (who still had a large force around Washington and in the Valley, but it's quite likely England and/or France would have pressured the US for a brokered peace.

Lee also was so myopic about Virginia that he tended to down play the other theater of war. Which interestingly enough is where the North actually won the war.
While I don't disagree on either point, I think you give Lee too much blame for the strategic failures of Jeff Davis. I also think it's easy for us to find fault when the South was faced with ever-worsening military, logistical and even political prospects. That their leaders would toy with emancipating the slaves in return for military service shows just how desperate things got.

The south did not understand the concept of a war of rebellion. They emotionally believed that they could "win" the war by winning battles. In this they failed to even understand the nature of our own War of Independence against England.
That's an excellent point.

Washington realized that all he had to do was contain the British, ebb before them and flow back in after they left. He realized it was more important to keep his army intact and in the field than to crush the British Army.
Yes, several historians have argued that Lee's "at 'em" tactics bled the South white and actually lost the war. He nearly blundered into McClellan's arms in Maryland in 1862, and accomplished nothing more than decimating his army in Pennsylvania in 1863. Of course, that line of reasoning is too controversial for many in the South to accept, given the saintly position "Marse Bob" occupies in the hagiography of the "Noble Cause."

It was very clear from day one that Richmond WAS the target of the National Forces (until Grant came along). The south virtually defied the North to come take it.
Perhaps they were thinking of Μολὼν λαβέ (molon labe or "come and take them," reportedly what Leonidas replied to the Persian demand at Thermopylae that the Spartans lay down their weapons?

If Lee had not been available to the south in all likelihood the North would have taken Richmond in 1862.
Based on what evidence? Johnston was doing fine defeating McClellan at Seven Pines, and Little Mac was doing a good job of defeating himself.

johnduffer

03-16-2011, 02:33 PM

" Johnston was doing fine defeating McClellan at Seven Pines "

I have to disagree here. "Perplexed by this silence, though outwardly calm, Johnston confided to S. B. French that he wished all the troops were back in their camps." says LEE'S LIEUTENANTS. This book also has a split page section showing what HQs thinks the columns are doing versus what they are actually doing that's priceless. In Johnstons defense the army was very green at this point but Fair Oaks/Seven Pines were not stopping the Federals slow forward grind.

" and Little Mac was doing a good job of defeating himself. "

Can't disagree with this one.

" Based on what evidence? "

Johnston had backed up so close to Richmond that Lee and Davis were able to quickly ride to the front lines to their great surprise. He had previously shown no respect for positions or resources (or keeping his government the least bit informed of his plans) that would indicate he cared in the least about saving the city. In seven days Lee completely changed that situation.

Bill_Cross

03-16-2011, 03:45 PM

Johnston had backed up so close to Richmond that Lee and Davis were able to quickly ride to the front lines to their great surprise. He had previously shown no respect for positions or resources (or keeping his government the least bit informed of his plans) that would indicate he cared in the least about saving the city. In seven days Lee completely changed that situation.
I am uncomfortable relying on a book that is so much in thrall to Lee. Even Johnston was in thrall to him and showed no interest in burnishing his own reputation.

Saving the city? How was that to happen, other than the way that Johnston went about attacking the Federals in pieces? Lee did nothing remarkable that his antecedent hadn't already tried, just more of it and in a more-vigorous manner. There was no way the South could have saved Richmond from a siege, and blaming Johnston for not preparing for one is, in my estimation, condemning him for failing to do what would have failed.

Lee himself narrowly escaped being killed on the battlefield along with Jefferson Davis. As another Johnston (Albert Sidney) proves, a possibly able commander (though one who had been mocked as a do-nothing prior to Shiloh) when killed early in the game denies us the chance to know if he'd have gotten better. Lee made some critical mistakes on the Peninsula, none worse than attacking at Malvern Hill, but he looks good in retrospect despite fighting for the losers.

Lack of combat & command experience is an important point to consider: the generals of the ACW started out as little more than amateurs, despite their training or limited battlefield experience nearly 15 years earlier in the Mexican War. They certainly lacked experience commanding large bodies of troops, since the biggest unit the US had ever fielded prior to 1861 was the brigade. The complex attack plans by both Johnston and Lee on the Peninsula are testaments to that lack of understanding how to coordinate forces in the age before radios.