Could happen. He did have a pretty good Van Dyke. I mean, nothing like Chamberlain’s most-righteous 'stache, but pretty good.
World War 1 trench warfare became that primarily due to advancements in artillery, specifically the development of the hydraulically stabilized breech loading gun in the 1890s. As others have said, Civil war artillery was essentially Napoleonic artillery. A well trained crew could get off maybe 1 round off per minute and they never hit anything because the silly gun flew off into the bushes after each shot and had to be painstakingly re-aimed. In that age infantry could still mass in dense formations for the attack. By the time WW1 came around your hydraulically stabilized gun could get off 15 rounds a minute, accurately, from far beyond visual range. The whole imagery and accoutrements of war changed. Battlefields became the cratered moonscapes that we recognize today. Soldiers began wearing steel helmets of the kind that we recognize today because shrapnel from air burst artillery became a major killer. Digging in became vital because artillery killed anything that wasn’t dug in as a matter of course.
When people talk about WW1 it’s always about machine guns and repeating rifles and airplanes, but they had machine guns (of sorts) and repeating rifles in the American Civil War. Most combat casualties in WW1 and 2 were caused by artillery. Modern artillery = modern warfare.
Thanks.
I sir, am a soldier. An old, retired soldier.
The ACW featured a great coastline open to raids. The vulnerability was so great that at least one state (Alabama) held back troops from the main war effort to protect its port cities.
Imagine the effect of three or so marine regiments dedicated to raiding on a regular (say monthly) basis? For a small application of force, a large amount of enemy power could have been denied him.
They did “dig in” during the civil war.
Check out the wiki entries for Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson (LA), Chancellorsville, and so on.
The times you don’t find trenches is when the armies were maneuvering/flanking (or had just maneuvered), and didn’t have much time for digging in.
I think that the mindset of the leadership of the time, though, was that sheer courage could overcome these obstacles. A lot of Generals died leading the charge, too, or trying to rally the men during the confusion of battle.
One of the things that I noticed about the battles I have read was the poor coordination, lack of scouting, slowness of communications hampered effective use of the forces at hand. There were battles where a sigificant portion of the army didn’t engage the enemy due to poor situational awareness, or lack of clarity in their orders.
Am I understanding that the WWI trench warefare was essentially along the French-German front, where it was a relatively short, heavily manned line with no opportunity for flanking since it was essentially 1 long line?
You don’t hear about WWI trench warfare in the east or Italy except when a specific big target was under siege - same as the civil war. IIRC Farewell to Arms talks about the Italian line moving back and forth all the time… Otherwise, the warfare was much like WWII where troops were mobile enough that nobody had time to dig in unless the front was geographically supported (I.e. flank guarded by river or mountain? )
The Western Front style trench system was repeated along the Austro-Italian front. With steep mountain terrain thrown in for good measure.
Snipped the quote for brevity, but I have to disagree on this point (and I agree with pretty much everything else you say here). If you look at the battle map, consider that the Confederate advance was in the direction of the stronger part of the Union line (entrenched on the Round Tops with more units). Had the Union line broken, there would have been plenty more fighting to be done, considering that would place both of the major portions of each army with their backs to enemy territory and separated from supply.