**Question: **Were there alternatives to massed formations and the resulting slaughters such as Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg (50% casualties- 1,123 killed and 4,019 wounded)? What would you have done differently to preserve your fighting forces in the face of long range rifles, cannon and even gatling guns?
Background: I’m watching Ken Burn’s The Civil War and the point is made early that the war’s casualties were so high because weapons technology had outpaced tactics by 1861. I asked myself why troops didn’t just dig in? In episode three they showed photos where troops did just that for nine months in the siege of Petersburg, 1863. This was one of the earliest examples of trench warfare.
The Civil War was also one of maneuver through the use of railways, troop ships and even pontoon bridges, so I can understand why trench warfare wasn’t more widespread.
Would steam-driven tanks or primitive body armor have helped?
Revolutionary war / Napoleonic war, the troops used muzzle-loading smooth-bore as I understand. The resulting gunfire was painfully inaccurate, so the appropriate tactic was to line up a huge line of troops, have them all fire at the general direction of the other side’s, and fire; they’d hope to hit some of them. The gunpowder was so smoky that they wore bright uniforms so youu could tell one side from the other in the chaos.
In the next 50 years, the firepower technology advanced. After Napoleon and the war of 1812, things were generally peaceful until Crimea and the Civil War, so this was the first try-out for the new technology in full-scale war, while all the generals (as always) had to learn they were not fighting the same as the last war.
Trenches work great when you have a lot of men and a short distance. Half the armies of Europe were concentrated in the stretch of border between Germany and France from Switzerland to Belgium. It was logisitically possible to build a complete trench front the enire length. In the Civil War, the frontier was sparsely populated, between railroads and horse cavalry the troops could move much faster, and when two armies collided there was often not enough time to build cover berms and trenches. They didn’t have the troops and equipment, for example, to block a mile-wide river and prevent being encircled, so mobility was the tactic to use.
Tanks would have been very awkward and heavy. They would have sunk into anything but the firmest soil.
More widespread issue of Maynard rifled musket (at the outbreak of war) and the repeating rifle later. Better doctrine for the use of the Gatling gun and even organ guns. Disband the US Army in order to move the Regulars into the state regiments. Disband the Marine Brigade (Army of the Potomac) in favor of proper Marine regiments in the Marine role. (That will mess with the heads of the Rebels.) Adopt a Wisconsin-style replacement system. (Replacements go into existing regiments rather than into new regiments. That means all regiments are always at roughly full strength.) Early adoption of the Pullman-standard in the railroads. (Same gage, but with wider cars. As locomotives got more powerful they could haul more stuff in larger, wide, cars.)
A professional medical school for Army doctors. Understanding of germ theory. More widespread adoption of canned foods (in large cans to reduce cost).
They did not dig in for the exact same reason that you state, there was ability to manoeuvre and anyone who tried to do so would get flanked, see Lee at the beginnings of Petersberg. And although technology had marched on, it was still the case that large amounts of the weapons on both sides were single shot muzzle loaders and the best tactic for that is volley fire, repeaters showed up in significant numbers especially near the end though.
These are great answers, thanks. I have to keep in mind that these were mostly amateur armies and that battlefield communication was extremely limited. Complex maneuvers require good communication, coordination and practice. Having held a Civil War bullet in my hand I’m amazed at the courage of these men and what they did. The bullet was as big as the end of my thumb.
**Paul, **would a Wisconsin-style replacement system hinder later recruiting efforts in towns if the recruits couldn’t all go off to war together? It would avoid tragedies like the Sullivan brothers in WWII, but didn’t the Union already have many recruiting problems under the existing system? Maybe if the units were from the same state, if not the same region, there would be enough cohesion for them to perform well. I don’t know. Very interesting point.
It’s sad to hear about all this suffering without wondering if a shorter, more “humane” war through better tactics would have only led to another attempt at secession later. It’s hard to say it was “for the best”, but it’s also hard to accept that much of the suffering was unnecessary. Seems like the Union decided that the Confederates spirit needed to be crushed, hence Sherman’s march. That’s another thread, though.
Well, it worked for Wisconsin and was mentioned as a super idea in Sherman’s memoirs. Each county (or so) produced a regiment. Then that area also produced replacements for the regiments. Ideally, wounded soldiers from the regiment would run a “depot” company to marshal, train and stage the new recruits. They would go to the front under the care of NCOs and officers returning from leave.
One important point that needs to be made about Pickett’s Charge is that it probably would have worked in the last war. The only way they had of finding out that this sort of charge was no longer effective was to try it. It’s easy to look back and say they shouldn’t have done that, but they had no way of knowing that it was going to fail beforehand, and if it would have worked, they would have broken the Union line and would have had a straight shot at the capitol.
The lesson learned during the Revolutionary War was that you had to mass your troops, or else the British would advance in mass and overwhelm you. Generals during the Civil War were a bit reluctant to abandon these tactics because they knew how badly things could go if you didn’t use them.
That’s true to some degree, but people tend to think of muskets as being a lot like modern rifles since they look a lot like a modern rifle. In reality, they were not used much at all like a modern rifle. In modern warfare, a rifle is something that shoots. A musket is a combination distance weapon (the shooting part) and hand to hand weapon (the bayonet). Muskets replaced both archers (or crossbowmen) and the pikemen that surrounded them, and in all wars prior to the Civil War the bayonet played an extremely important role on the battlefield. During the Napoleonic Wars and the U.S. Revolutionary war, bayonets accounted for roughly a third of all battlefield casualties, and George Washington himself got his backside kicked up and down the battlefield until Valley Forge, when among other things (like starving to death) he got his troops properly trained in bayonet fighting.
During the Civil War, the changes in musket technology and tactics turned the bayonet from being one of your primary important infantry weapons to being the last ditch weapon that it is today. Instead of being responsible for a third of all battlefield casualties as they previously had been, they dropped to being responsible for less than 1 percent of battlefield casualties during the Civil War.
As for tactics, one thing that got Washington into a lot of trouble early on was not massing his troops against the British. You might think that it would be better to hide behind trees and cover instead of just standing in a big group like that where you can all be easily picked off, but that didn’t work out very well. The British would stand in mass and fire in mass, turning their inaccurate muskets into a huge shotgun type of blast that just obliterates anything in front of their army. Then the British would charge in a long line. Now you are hiding behind a tree, and there’s a huge line of British guys coming at you. What you see is a big unbroken line of guys with pointy things, and your side isn’t organized into a big long line to stop them. The British would quickly overwhelm the American positions and the American troops had little choice except to scatter and flee.
At Valley Forge, Washington (with some notable foreign help) got his troops properly trained in military discipline and up close and personal bayonet fighting. It was only after this that Washington’s troops could finally go toe to toe against the British.
This was the style of warfare that they were used to. You don’t abandon your big massive formations because if you do, their big massive formations will overwhelm you. This makes it easier to understand why they did things that in retrospect seem rather foolish, like Pickett’s devastating charge.
Individually though, you are correct. A smooth bore musket is painfully inaccurate. The round ball will randomly hit one side or another as it travels down the barrel, imparting a random spin on it, so a musket almost always fires a curve ball. It will go straight for maybe 50 to 75 yards. After that, which way it goes is anyone’s guess. It used to be said that you could stand 200 yards away from a single musketeer and not fear getting shot by him.
In mass, though, musket fire was quite deadly.
They had rifles around back then, but in order to be effective, a rifle round has to fit tightly in the barrel so that it grips the rifling and spins as it comes out. After a few shots, black powder fouls the barrel, and a rifle gets to be very difficult to load. As you pointed out, there was also a lot of smoke on the battlefield, which made the longer range of the rifle of little use. Some commanders (like Napoleon) considered rifles to be of so little value that they didn’t even use them. The British army used them, but only for specialized sharpshooting where the slow loading problem wasn’t an issue. Regular infantry didn’t get rifles until the Minie ball solved the barrel fouling problem. Minie style rifles got their start in the 1840s, and started getting widely issued through the 1850s, just prior to the Civil War.
You can make an argument that they should have concentrated on repeating rifles to take advantage of their faster rate of fire, but repeating rifles are more complex and arms shortages played a major role in the war as it was.
People these days tend to think of muskets as crude and weak weapons, but a Civil War era rifled musket actually compares fairly well against a modern rifle. I happen to own a reproduction 1853 Enfield (it’s an accurate enough reproduction that you could swap parts with it and a real antique Enfield), and it is a very accurate weapon. It shoots a big honkin piece of lead at about 1,000 fps. A modern rifle shoots a much lighter round at a higher velocity, so the Civil War Enfield will drop more at a distance than a modern rifle, but otherwise the Enfield is extremely accurate. There are plenty of stories of well trained marksmen being able to hit a man sized target at 600 yards (the Enfield’s sights actually go out to 900 yards, but realistically hitting anything past 600 yards is mostly luck).
The Minie ball had a fearsome reputation in its day, and if I had my choice, I would much rather be shot by a modern rifle than a Civil War rifle (well actually I’d rather not get shot at all, but you know what I mean). The wounds from a Minie ball are much worse.
I keep a Minie ball and a round ball in my desk at work. People are always amazed at how big and heavy they are compared to a modern round.
I agree. In addition to maintaining regiments at full strength, you’d have a huge advantage in having experienced veterans to train recruits.
This was one of the key advantages the Confederates had in the first year of the war. The Union army was an existing force - its regular regiments stayed intact and the army was build up to wartime strength by adding new regiments. This meant the Union army had a small number of all-professional regiments and a large number of all-recruit regiments.
The Confederates, on the other hand, were building an army from the ground up. They had a bunch of professional soldiers who had resigned from the United States Army with the secession. But these professionals weren’t placed in existing regiments - they were assigned to the new Confederate regiments being created alongside recruits. This meant that every Confederate regiment had a core of professional soldiers to show the new recruits what to do.
By and large the tactics used by both sides in the ACW meshed with the weapons and logistics of the time. The principal change in weapons from the Mexican War to the ACW was the introduction of rifled muskets and larger bore field artillery. Both were pretty well universal by the summer of 1863.
However, the rifled musket was simply a weapon that extended the effectiveness of infantry fire from 100 yards out to 250 or 300 yards. While the rifled musket had the potential to be much more deadly than it was, to take advantage of its potential required training ordinary infantrymen as marksmen. Under the circumstances of the time – raising, equipping and feeding mass armies of amateurs lead by amateurs – that was not possible. The training the men did get was primarily concerned with learning the mechanics of loading and firing. As a consequence rifle armed infantry was fought as if it were musket armed infantry with the ability to fight at a greater distance.
As others have noted, all sorts of things could have been done to make the Union troop raising operation more rational. However the “recruit a new regiment” system was established early in anticipation of a short cheap war. By the time it was realized that it was going to be a long expensive war the system was too deeply entrenched to change.
Two things to remember: First, that is not tactics. Second, the normal Union method had its problems but also helped build lots and lots of support. It added a lot of officers, some good and some bad, but this also ensured more political support. It can’t be dismissed as useless.
Now, while I do thinkkeeping the Union armies together was a mistake, it would have been foolish to disband them. Peppering state troops with experienced U.S. soldiers in Sergeants and the like would have been a huge advntagte and much easier to accomplish.
Tactically, by 1863 both sides had a very good understanding of what to do. Some generals were just too stupid or too damn contrary to learn, but any competent one got the message, often much earlier. Grant never ordered an assault unless he thought he had enough of an advantage to compensate for the defense, whether that was surprise, morale, or overwhelming firepower at the site. Without such an advantage present, he quick-marched whole armies to find one, or built seige lines to grind enemies down with limited risk and loss. Anything more complicated was almost impossible simply due to the time needed communication.
Now, the suggestions made are not exactly bad ones. The union had good rifles very quickly, and by the end of the war was rolling out repeaters - more repeaters earlier would have been a huge advantage. However, as engineer_comp_geek there seems to have been some trouble with the rifle makers actually producing the things, and they were never able to keep up with demand.
One result of this was to greatly reduce the role of artillery on the battlefield.
In the Napoleonic Wars, field artillery was a major factor in battles. (Napoleon himself was originally an artillery officer.) This was because the cannons of the period had a longer range than the muskets. So you could set up cannons outside of effective musket range and fire artillery at opposing infantry.
Civil War-era rifles had a much longer range than Napoleonic-era muskets. But there was no comparable increase in cannons - they were still pretty much the same as they had been sixty years earlier. So if you tried to set up cannons to fire at infantry, the infantry was now able to shoot back at the cannons.
The most effective propaganda leaflet the US has ever used, in any war was the “Surrender and you will get good treatment” thing. Remarkable it was not used in the ACW. Of course how to get them distributed was an issue. The poor treatment of captured rebels was a mistake. Better we should have promised them land in the West.
This was true at the start of the war, perhaps, but not by the time Pickett’s charge was made (July 1863). Fredericksburg (December 1862) had made that clear to anyone who’d missed the point in previous encounters. Not only did Longstreet know (and warn Lee) that Pickett’s charge had no chance (“It is my opinion that no 15000 men ever arrayed for battle can take that position,”) the common rank-and-file Union soldiers knew it too – as Pickett’s men began advancing across that mile of open ground, a great chant arose from the Union line: “Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg!”
One solution that was eventually tried with success was Emory Upton’s assault-by-column at Spotsylvania Court House.
Although much is made of the “not pausing to fire” issue, IMHO the real reasons Upton’s tactic worked were twofold – he chose a sector of the line that jutted out into a salient, where fewer riflemen would be directly facing his column, and the columnar formation exposed fewer men to fire because it was aimed at that salient (it would have been less effective against a straight section of line, but where only a few riflemen faced forward, the narrow column kept the advancing troops from straying into the fire of the regular perpendicular line).
The other possible approach would be simply to spread out the men into smaller, less massed formations and advance them as opportunity allowed – essentially similar to the “storm tactics” used by the Germans at the end of WWI, or modern “fire and movement” tactics.
Wow, that is fascinating, Sailboat. Looks like Grant was impressed. too
Assembling twelve regiments from the VI Corps, Colonel Emory Upton formed them in a tight assault column three wide by four deep. Striking a narrow front along the Mule Shoe, his new approach quickly breached the Confederate lines and opened a narrow but deep penetration. Battling valiantly, Upton’s men were forced to withdraw when reinforcements to exploit the breach failed to arrive. Recognizing the brilliance of Upton’s tactics, Grant immediately promoted him to brigadier general and began planning corps-size assault using the same approach.
The Civil War documentay series diagramed Chamberlain and the 20th Maine’s “swinging door” maneuver at Little Round Top and how critical and brilliant it was. I wonder if they’ll do the same for the Upton’s manuever.
Does anyone have any good links to animations that show these types of maneuvers using blue/red lines? They make so much more sense to me when I can see the battle lines evolve over time, rather than following the static arrows. I watched one once and it really impressed upon me how many factors, great and small a general officer must consider before and during batttle. I can’t even beat my nephew at checkers.
The better reason to line up a huge line of troops is for mutual support in hand-to-hand combat. Even in the Napoleonic era, relatively widely-spaced sharpshooters were much better per person when shooting than the densely-packed infantry formations, plus they could take advantage of individual cover that a densely-packed formation couldn’t. It’s just that they were vulnerable to cavalry and to a lesser extent those same infantry formations if they ever got caught in a melee with them.
However, hand-to-hand combat was much less important in the Civil War era than in the Napoleonic era (which isn’t to say it was totally irrelevant, heck, the last large cavalry hand-to-hand battle ever was in 1920 between Poland and the Soviet Union.)
So if I were a general, I’d have all of my rifle-equipped regiments fight as tiralleurs/voltiguers, with my musket-equipped troops behind them to support them if they got charged.
Of course, skirmishing tactics were pretty well developed during the ACW. That is why, for instance, the 8th Ohio was out in front of the Union line along the Emmetsburg Road on the third day at Gettysburg. As field fortification became standard in Grant’s Overland Campaign and Sherman’s advance on Atlanta the fighting front was covered by swarms of skirmishers. Even at Gettysburg where there was little entrenchment (mostly because the ground was so stony) the Federal and Rebel fronts were both well protected by skirmishers whose primary job was to break up attacking formations, force them to deploy into firing lines and generally slow and annoy an attacking force.
Aside from which, the marines kinda… sucked. As in, they weren’t very good at fighting on land. They were most definitely not the Marines we know and love today.
At the beginning of the war there were fewer than 2000 Marines, and some defected to the enemy.