In a thread in IMHO, the following interesting comment appeared:
#7
04-17-2013, 08:01 AM
Martin Hyde
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Join Date: Mar 2004
As someone with an interest in military history I don’t know how Grant wouldn’t be famous across the Atlantic. I don’t know for the general public over there, but the American Civil War is historically significant enough just from a military perspective anyone student of that history would be well aware of it.
It was kind of a “watershed war” in that a lot of technologies that had previously existed but never been fully implemented in warfare all came together during the ACW. In between the Crimean War and the Franco-Prussian War, there were also no real major European conflicts. So the ACW at the time was heavily observed by foreign military professionals who wanted to keep up to date on what tactics were going to be effective with the mass availability of repeating rifles and other technological innovations…
I snarfed this and put it here, where it can receive a different focus than would be possible there.
What specifically on technology and tactics, might be involved? (I have a PM off to Martin Hyde.)
Yes, the American Civil War changed many aspects of war. For one thing, it began with a common notion that it was honorable to stand up in full view of the enemy when firing on them. As longer-range and more accurate rifled long guns came into use, that practice declined. Most of the other changes in tactics and weaponry followed the same pattern: as weapons became ever more powerful and deadly, tactics that kept troops out of sight or out of range became ever more common.
It wasn’t the first war that made use of the railroad and telegraphy…but it was the first war where these were of absolutely dominating strategic importance. This is (in part) why it is sometimes called the first “modern” war; it was the first war where horse-drawn transport wasn’t the beginning, middle, and end of logistics.
Well, first of all, it was the first war where troops and supplies traveled by railroad, and where orders and reports traveled by telegraph. Those two things alone made it the first real modern war.
[Edit: damn!]
To those you can add rifled muskets, rifled artillery, ironclads and sundry other tactical military innovations.
Trench warfare appeared, but it seems this “lesson” did not stick.
Ramming as a naval tactic seemed to be reconfirmed as a dominant and viable tactic to train for. Unfortunately, this turned out to be more or less not true. The Civil War naval fights generally occured in restricted waterways (harbor mouths and rivers), not on the open ocean.
The US Civil War did see major advances in the technology of war…however, most of the lessons learned were ignored-leading to the slaughter of WWI. For example, the late Civil War saw extensive trench warfare-the armies had learned that frontal assaults against well-dug in troops would likely be unsuccessful. But the WWI generals had to learn that all over again.
In naval warfare, the success of the USS Monitor meant the ned of wooden warships-but they kept being built for some time.
Not yet mentioned is the very manner in which a modern army’s command structure is organized.
Once Grant was promoted to Lieutenant General, Halleck became Chief of Staff. Hallack’s job thus was to be the organizer, answering to Lincoln and facilitating the job of Grant, who was superior operations commander, and the army commanders responded to Grant.
That manner of organization might seem obvious but it was the first formal rollout of such a system - the Confederacy did not have such a thing, at least until the very end of the war when it no longer mattered - and was quickly copied by most other industrialized/ing countries. It is the way virtually all armed forces are organized to this day.
Also, what were the ways to become a high ranked officer in the North? I know that in the South, you could go from nothing to Lieutenant General (Nathan Bedford Forrest - Wikipedia) which smacks of the old aristocratic system.
OP:
I’d only add that the Austro-Prussian war was in-between the US Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war and was important as well both in a technological and organizational sense. It had a higher number of casualties per day than the US Civil War.
Before Halleck there was generally a “Commanding General” or “Senior Officer”, these individuals could vary substantially in rank. Typically a Brigadier or Major General rank, but a few special individuals were Lieutenant Generals. Washington was the first person to have this role from 75-83 and with the rank of “General.” Later, after his Presidency he again held the role during the early part of Adams Presidency with the rank of Lieutenant General. No one held the rank of Lieutenant General again until Winfield Scott, who was rewarded for his service in the Mexican War. [Washington’s rank has since been retroactively raised literally by statute so that whatever the highest possible rank in the military is, that is assumed to be Washington’s rank, so Washington cannot be outranked.]
At one troubling point a Major was the Senior Office, when the U.S. Army had about 80 people in it early in the Articles of Confederation days after the Revolution ended.
Halleck was Commanding General until he was “fired” because Grant was seen as a far more effective battlefield commander. But Halleck was generally liked and it was felt he could contribute to the war effort, so he was “fired” by being “promoted” to Chief of Staff. This was a new position, and it was widely understood that while it was a technical promotion, it was a loss of command/prestige. But Grant insisted everyone treat Halleck with respect and generally they did. Halleck to his credit was an amazing logistics guy, some men would have handled the situation badly but Halleck went into it full bore and did an excellent job keeping the Union Army appropriately provisioned and supplied throughout the remainder of the war. This is not some small feat, as no one in American history to that point had been responsible for the logistics of a one million man Army.
Once the war ended our military shrunk back in size (as it always did until after WWII), and Halleck retired. You do not need a Chief of Staff role for a small military force and we went back to just having a “Commanding General” until 1903, and the Army Chief of Staff has continuously existed since that time. But Halleck’s example showed how important it could be to organize a military that way when it is large and logistics are a concern (which is basically all modern militaries of the great powers.)
I also failed to mention, generally in the U.S. Army prior to the Civil War you attained high rank in a few ways, mostly based on time span. Immediately after the Revolution, most of the highest ranking officers were people who had been generals or high ranking officers during the Revolution. They had varied backgrounds.
That was mostly the case up until the War of 1812. After the War of 1812, a lot of the higher ranking officers from the Revolutionary War were get on in years if they were still alive at all, so you saw a fresh crop of top officers being guys who had distinguished themselves in some way during the War of 1812.
That was the case up until the Mexican War (most of the Commanding Generals / Senior Officers of the Army were War of 1812 guys, Winfield Scott held the position for like 20 of these years) when you then had top officers from the Mexican War holding the top position in the years up until the Civil War.
However, around the 1810s and onward you did have the first crop of West Point graduates getting old enough that they had started to earn high rank, and by the Mexican War at least some of the top officers were West Point graduates. After the Civil War basically all of the highest ranking officers (holding the new “General of the Army” rank, and other top officers) were both Civil War veterans as well as graduates of West Point.
Prior to the Civil War, while we had made the intentional effort to establish a professional military academy the army was so small and you had a few old soldiers hang on so long that academy graduates didn’t move into those top spots until after the Civil War.
Going strictly by technology, off the top of my head there was:
Percussion caps replacing flint locks
Wide spread use of paper cartridges, leading to the
Introduction of metal cartridges, which led to
Repeating rifles
The mini-ball
Grapeshot
Gatling gun
The use of tethered hot air balloons for artillery spotting
Tactics were also effected by the new technologies, but that’s not in the OP.
It most certainly was not. The Indian mutiny saw heavy use of telegraph and railroad, one of if not the main reason the British were able to out it down.
Also submarines and aircraft (hot air balloons) mainly for reconnaissance. There is a reason why Civil War reenactments are so popular even in foreign countries like Japan. It was a primitive war in many ways but just on the cusp of showing what new technologies that we even use today can do.
Railroad and telegraph were also used – a little! – in the Crimean War. I believe I’ve read about a dinky little spur railroad being built by the British from the landing port to the siegeworks at Sevastopol. It wasn’t enough, as they were always short on supplies, and crowded with casualties. Also, war dispatches were telegraphed back across Europe to HQ at Paris and sent on to London. But far, far from serious strategic implementation. The ACW was the first where these were truly decisive.
OP here:
Please open up the floor to tactics, novel or notable, associated with the novel technologies. (Railways perhaps are of strategic interest, but I’m happy to be corrected.)
“Notable” including, I’m pretty sure, that some serious tactical errors were made by the offense with an inappropriate understanding of the effectiveness of technology.
Thank you to all. The amount I don’t know about the Civil War could fill the Pacific.
What is arguably the turning point engagement of the turning point battle in the ACW, Pickett’s Charge seems to have been predicated on defending artillery and muskets being as effective as they were in previous wars. Since artillery and muskets were more effective than before, the charge failed.