# American Civil War: questions from a Canadian **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 30, 2019, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680 "2019-10-30T01:18:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/61 "2019-10-31T19:56:08Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > If you told a Civil War general that his men would do better by spreading out and taking cover, he would have told you that spreading out and taking cover was an excellent way to lose the war. If you wanted to stop a line, you needed a line of your own. If you want to break through a line, you need to do a mass charge. These were lessons learned the hard way in previous wars, and Civil War generals weren’t too keen on repeating past mistakes. If it didn’t work for George Washington, why would you try it now? Don’t break ranks. Don’t spread out. Bunch up and stick together, or you die. That was the lesson of previous wars. > > Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg looks foolish in hindsight, but that was what they knew worked. There had been some failures with mass charges like that, but a few failures could have just been from poor execution or something else specific to that battle. The military commanders did not have solid proof that the tactic no longer worked. So, Pickett bunched up his men and charged. In any previous war, Pickett’s charge would have worked. In the Civil War, it failed miserably, and a lot of men died. Line infantry tactics were also a response to the rate of fire, accuracy and range of muskets. One guy with a musket wasn’t likely to be terribly effective on his own, but 150 lined up firing alternating volleys was. And until the US Civil War, the general tactic was to advance, fire a close volley, and do a bayonet charge. That’s why large Pickett’s Charge style attacks tended to work- the first ranks might be decimated, but the rest would engage the opposing infantry and cause a breakthrough/roll up the enemy on either side of the breakthrough. And adjoining units didn’t really have the range to put much fire into the attackers either, so once they engaged, weight of numbers usually caused a breach or a disadvantageous adjustment by the enemy. But at Gettysburg, the range of the rifled musket and cannon meant that the Union forces could put enough firepower on Pickett’s Charge to cause it to fail. Line tactics were still the standard way that infantry did business until about WWI- infantry STILL fought in lines and with volley fire, albeit at much longer ranges due to the rifles of the time. It took machine guns to kill that particular tactic. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2019, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/62 "2019-10-31T20:14:42Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > All of you are at least partly missing the point. > > Sure, they had telegraphs. Sure, they had signal flags. It may have be fairly quick and easy to get important information to the top generals. > > But here’s the point: How did the generals get that information and orders to the colonels, majors, and captains? There were no radios; there were no battlefield telephones such as WW2 forces had; runners and orderlies were not immune from getting shot; there was NOTHING that was quick, easy, or completely reliable. > > That’s a major reason for the high casualty rate, which in turn flows from the mismatch between tactics and weaponry. The men HAD to be bunched closely together, because that was the only halfway good way of passing information. But sometimes they weren’t; big battles were often multi day affairs where units fought well out of range of fellow units. A common story in the Civil War was that fighting could rage in places the commanding generals could neither see nor hear, especially in rough, hilly terrain. A very common story is a general coming around a hill or something and seeing, to his total amazement, a ferocious battle taking place, which had been hidden from sight and unhearable due to an acoustic shadow. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2019, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/63 "2019-10-31T20:32:40Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > erviews with the late historian Shelby Foote. He thought Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest were brilliant. Forrest’s “brilliance” included not only being the first leader of the KKK, but also commanding Confederate forces which murdered 300 surrendering Union soldiers (most of them black troops), in what’s come to be known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. To me, while it doesn’t affect all his writing, some of Shelby Foote’s work has an unfortunate ahistorical Southern sympathizing tinge. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2019, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/64 "2019-10-31T23:23:20Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > Civil War artillery was not, for the most part, indirect fire. The gunners themselves could see where their cannons were hitting. You don’t need artillery spotters until you develop artillery that targets things you can’t see from the gun position. This was new for WWI, and largely didn’t exist during the Civil War. They mostly used 12-pound cannon with a range of about a mile that fired on a flat trajectory. There was some use of small howizters that lobbed explosive shells, but their range was no greater. These used mortars for sieges. Which is also when they used balloons sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2019, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/65 "2019-10-31T23:27:36Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Forrest’s “brilliance” included not only being the first leader of the KKK, but also commanding Confederate forces which murdered 300 surrendering Union soldiers (most of them black troops), in what’s come to be known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. > > To me, while it doesn’t affect all his writing, some of Shelby Foote’s work has an unfortunate ahistorical Southern sympathizing tinge. And according to some sources, personally killing a few black soldiers who had surrendered. But NBF quit the KKK! (after being threatened by the Feds) and a little black girl gave him some flowers! So, _obviously_, this vile, racist,semi-illiterate war criminal who was a slave trader, a rapist and a man who routinely tortured black people- was a wonderful man after all. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2019, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/66 "2019-11-01T17:39:03Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > These used mortars for sieges. Which is also when they used balloons sometimes. This was a feature of the riverine war on the Mississippi. The union built some mortar rafts. They floated a single mortar, but these were heavy guns for the time: > [@](#): > > The mortars themselves came from Fort Pitt Foundry in Pittsburgh. These 13-inch Seacoast Mortars, Model 1861 - the Army’s latest and heaviest seacoast mortars. The Army Ordnance Department designed the weapon to arm coastal fortifications. The 13-inch mortar fired a 227 pound shells fired to a maximum range of 4600 yards. Unlike standard guns, the mortars fired the shells in a high, arching trajectory to fall on top of the intended target. The army designed these seacoast mortars to drop shells upon an enemy bombardment fleet attacking coastal fortifications. And they did occasionally try to use balloons for spotting: > [@](#): > > In practice the mortars failed to live up to their promise. Long range indirect fires required coordination to adjust the fall of the projectile onto the target. Although balloons were used at Island No. 10, the mortar shell trajectory was simply too unpredictable for proper fire control. Although impressive to both sides, the mortars offered little practical impact on the Confederate fortifications. Long range, indirect fire support from warships had to wait a few decades for more advanced technology - better guns, projectiles, propellants, and communications. Source here, a decent write-up: > **[The Unfavorable Mortar Boats](http://civilwarnavy150.blogspot.com/2012/04/unfavorable-mortar-boats.html)** > > A blog about the role of the U.S. Navy and Confederate Navy in the American Civil War. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2019, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/67 "2019-11-01T19:31:49Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > And according to some sources, personally killing a few black soldiers who had surrendered. > > But NBF quit the KKK! (after being threatened by the Feds) and a little black girl gave him some flowers! So, _obviously_, this vile, racist,semi-illiterate war criminal who was a slave trader, a rapist and a man who routinely tortured black people- was a wonderful man after all. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: I take objection to your qualifying NBF as a man and a semi-illiterate. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean those aspects of his identity need to be highlighted along with all the rest. Lots of good, honest people have been semi-illiterate men. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2019, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/68 "2019-11-01T23:20:04Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > I take objection to your qualifying NBF as a man and a semi-illiterate. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean those aspects of his identity need to be highlighted along with all the rest. Lots of good, honest people have been semi-illiterate men. 😉 I concede your points. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2019, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/69 "2019-11-01T23:25:43Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Naval mines had been first used in the U.S. in the Revolutionary War. They basically filled kegs with gunpowder and had a sparking mechanism that set off the keg if it hit a ship. They would float these downriver at the enemy and hope for the best. Mines improved a bit in the years leading up to the Civil War. They were called torpedoes back then instead of mines. The phrase “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” refers to a naval minefield, not modern style torpedoes. David Bushnell, who built underwater mines for the Americans during the Revolution, also built an underwater boar. The American Revolution was the first war which saw a submarine used in combat. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2019, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/70 "2019-11-02T00:11:40Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > David Bushnell, who built underwater mines for the Americans during the Revolution, also built an underwater boar. Pics or it didn’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2019, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/71 "2019-11-02T00:43:23Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Pics or it didn’t happen. Is your computer set up to handle eidophusikon files? ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2019, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/72 "2019-11-02T01:23:17Z")
I don’t think the series mentions it, although I had to skip a few small parts. But amazingly, the Civil War had primitive submarines. More surprising, these were first used in battle in 1776. The war also featured the first aircraft carriers (assuming you agree balloons are aircraft) and torpedos. Mines were also called torpedos; I’m talking of an explosive attached to a spar which could sink a ship, which is not dissimilar. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2019, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/73 "2019-11-02T04:44:24Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > But amazingly, the Civil War had primitive submarines. If you aren’t already familiar with it, look up the Hunley, which was a Confederate submarine. I haven’t seen the show so I don’t know if they discussed it, but I would be surprised if they didn’t at least mention it. I kinda think that the Confederacy would have been better off if they had never tried to make it. During development and training, it killed 5 out of the 7 men in its crew when it accidentally flooded. Later, during a mock attack for training, it again sank, and this time killed all 8 men on board. It was only used once in battle. It sank a Union ship, killing 5 men, but the Hunley never returned. No one was really certain what had happened to it until a few years ago, when the sub was finally found. There is some debate about why it sank this third time, but what is certain is that the third crew ended up at the bottom of Charleston Harbor along with the rest of the Hunley. So total score, more Confederates died trying to operate it than it killed, by quite a margin (22 Confederates killed compared to 5 Union crewmen killed). FYI, the Hunley was armed with a single spar-type torpedo. Wikipedia is a decent place to start. > **[H. L. Hunley (submarine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_%28submarine%29)** > > H. L. Hunley, also known as the Hunley, CSS H. L. Hunley, or CSS Hunley, was a submarine of the Confederate States of America that played a small part in the American Civil War. Hunley demonstrated the advantages and dangers of undersea warfare. She was the first combat submarine to sink a warship (USS Housatonic), although Hunley was not completely submerged and, following her attack, was lost along with her crew before she could return to base. Twenty-one crewmen died in the three sinkings of... ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2019, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/74 "2019-11-02T19:24:49Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > **bump** ’s point is still valid. Rifled-muskets did not have much field experience by the start of the Civil War, and what experience commanders did have with it was mostly out west, which was a whole different type of ball game. Minie rifled muskets were used in the Crimean war, the Indian mutiny and the war in Italy in 1859. But for various reasons they tended to be used at close range, just like the old smoothbores. Actually, that also applied in the wars that the Prussians fought in 1864, 1866 and 1870, partly because the Dreyse needle gun was rifled but had terrible ballistics. AFAIK, the Prussians never sold it to anybody else. What would the Civil War have been like if the 1867 Remington rolling block rifle had been introduced? ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2019, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/75 "2019-11-02T20:27:18Z")
I’ve heard of that. I bought the series used and the DVDs were scratched. I cleaned them up, using soap, Windex, toothpaste, some aluminium hydroxide, chamois and magic sponges. This mostly worked except for a few small sections. Is there a better way to clean scratches? A lot of the Internet advice seems (gawsp!) dubious. That said, I also bought the book of the series, The Civil War. It is a little more complete than the show but does not mention submarines. So I’m guessing the show doesn’t either. The Eagle and The Turtle were involved in a battle in the American Independence War (IIRC), which might have been the first use of submarines(?), though not so successful. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2019, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/76 "2019-11-02T21:44:30Z")
> [@Brayne\_Ded](#): > > What would the Civil War have been like if the 1867 Remington rolling block rifle had been introduced? They had cartridge rifles in the Civil War. The Spencer, Henry, Sharps, and Burnside (and probably a few more that I’m not remembering off the top of my head) were all invented before the war and all saw use in the war. The two things that held them back were cost and ammunition, and ammunition mostly comes down to cost so I guess you could say it was cost and cost. The rifles themselves were much more expensive to produce than the standard muskets like the Springfield and Enfield. And brass manufacturing wasn’t where it needed to be for large scale cartridge manufacturing. There were a lot of advances in brass manufacturing in the 1870s that made cartridge rounds much less expensive and therefore much more practical to produce. Cartridge rifles hadn’t really proven their worth on the battlefield yet, so even if the improvements in brass manufacturing had come a couple of decades earlier, I’m not sure if military commanders would have switched weapons. Military commanders at the time did not think that they had the logistics and manufacturing capability to supply enough ammo for weapons with a higher overall rate of fire. Cartridge rifles definitely proved their worth during the Civil War though. At the battle of Gettysburg, for example, Confederate troops happened to run into Cavalry on the first day of the battle, and those Cavalry were armed with Spencer rifles. The higher rate of fire from the Spencer made the Confederates think that they were facing a much larger force than they actually were, and if the Confederates had realized how much they had outnumbered the Union forces at the start of the battle, they might have just charged and overwhelmed them, which could have drastically changed the entire Battle of Gettysburg. Instead, the Confederates held off and waited for reinforcements, which allowed the Union to get reinforcements as well. Cartridge rifles worked so well during the Civil War that the army immediately switched to cartridge rifles after the war had ended, starting with the Allin conversion to cheaply modify Springfield muskets into cartridge breech-loaders. This is getting into IMHO territory, but if cartridge rifles had somehow been able to prove their worth before the Civil War had started, and brass production had been better at the time, I think it’s a fair guess to say that the Civil War would have been fought with cartridge weapons instead of muskets. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2019, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/77 "2019-11-02T22:28:24Z")
On closer review, the book has three sentences on submarines without any detail. So the show probably mentions it very much in passing. ---
**Author:** ![mako88sb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@mako88sb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mako88sb)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/78 "2019-11-03T17:03:56Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > If you aren’t already familiar with it, look up the Hunley, which was a Confederate submarine. I haven’t seen the show so I don’t know if they discussed it, but I would be surprised if they didn’t at least mention it. > > I kinda think that the Confederacy would have been better off if they had never tried to make it. During development and training, it killed 5 out of the 7 men in its crew when it accidentally flooded. Later, during a mock attack for training, it again sank, and this time killed all 8 men on board. There was a 1999 movie called “The Hunley” that I thought was pretty decent. Certainly got across how dangerous and claustrophobic it was to operate. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2019, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/79 "2019-11-03T20:29:45Z")
> [@mako88sb](#): > > There was a 1999 movie called “The Hunley” that I thought was pretty decent. Certainly got across how dangerous and claustrophobic it was to operate. They sank the USS Housatonic. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2019, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680/80 "2019-11-03T22:17:42Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > This is getting into IMHO territory, but if cartridge rifles had somehow been able to prove their worth before the Civil War had started, and brass production had been better at the time, I think it’s a fair guess to say that the Civil War would have been fought with cartridge weapons instead of muskets. Another innovation that just barely missed the cut was barbed wire, which was invited just after the war ended. Things would have been incredibly different had it been available for use. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-questions-from-a-canadian/842680.md?page=5)