Five Things You Don't Know About Civil War Armies

As we remember the sacrifice of the American soldier on Memorial Day 2015, here's some insight into the world of the men who served in Civil War armies.

1. THEY FOUGHT LIKE CATS AND DOGS.

Tactically speaking, Civil War armies act more like cats than dogs. If you’ve ever tripped over a cat that chooses to sleep right in the middle of the family room floor, you know that cats feel safer in wide open spaces. Cats, big and small, want to size up enemies or eye prey from a distance. Likewise armies need open spaces to mass an attack, maneuver quickly or retreat if they are overmatched. A lion out on the savannah uses open spaces in much the same way. Dogs tend to hole up in a lair. At the time, Robert E. Lee considered his defensive position on the Sunken Road at Fredericksburg fatally flawed because if the Confederate line was overwhelmed, there was nowhere to retreat.

Union and Confederate armies fight the Battle of Nashville in December 1864.

 

2. THEY KNEW NAPOLEON COULDN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT

Though considered suicidal by modern observers, Civil War assaults were no more foolhardy than infantry attacks in any other war. If you’ve ever watched a Civil War movie, you’ve probably disgustedly asked: Why aren’t they hiding behind trees and picking off the enemy from one-thousand yards? Civil War armies used classic Napoleonic tactics necessitated by the limits of the weaponry of the time. Even rifled muskets had a short effective range and limited direct fire accuracy. Use of these single-shot, barrel-loaded shoulder arms meant that effective firepower must be massed firepower, fired in a volley and must get close to its target--fifty to one hundred yards, not one-thousand.

3. THEY DIDN’T KNOW WALTZING MATILDA. THAT WAS WWI!

Civil War formations did not waltz into battle or stand and fire on an open field. If you’ve ever watched a modern day reenactment you may think columns of men slow-stepped across a field or lines of infantry stood on a ridge and calmly fired away. In reality, the idea was to use speed and timing, along with overwhelming firepower, to carry the enemy line. An effective attacking commander looked for a weak spot in the other army’s line; a thinly held post or a unit that seemed untrained, ill-lead, or out of ammunition. A successful assault force kept close together and closed on the enemy using bluster, guile, speed, or cover. Once within the effective range of their muskets, the attackers might let the other line expend a volley, withstanding the fire briefly. But then they struck quickly while the enemy was reloading. Simply put, the plan was to come down on the front with the most men, still closely dressed, firing together into the face of the enemy. This was what these Civil War soldiers were drilled to do. A unit that seized the initiative and executed the evolution properly would carry the position. Believe it or not, this was often the case, but sometimes it did not carry the position because the enemy was strong in number, well supplied, well-drilled, battle tested and expertly commanded.

4. THEY SLAUGHTERED MILLIONS OF HORSES

Logistically, the most important “foot soldiers” in Civil War armies were the ones with four feet. Without horses and mules, the armies could not travel, eat, or shoot. There were about six million horses in the entire United States when war broke out. Estimates reckon that between one and three million horses were killed during the war. Even at the lower estimate, that means nearly two horses died for every soldier lost. Mules died too. Six-mule teams pulled the wagons that supplied both sides. Monstrous wagon trains transported troops, food, munitions, uniforms and other supplies across the continent. General Sherman’s force in Georgia traveled with 5,000 wagons and well over 30,000 horses and mules.

Union Telegraph Corps wagon train in Richmond 1865.

At Atlanta, the Union train stretched for sixty miles. Horses carried thousands of cavalrymen into battles. Mules muscled thousands of artillery pieces onto contested fields along with accompanying caissons rolling along with powder, shot and shell. Ambulance and Engineer Corps also utilized these beasts of burden. Horses carried each army’s officer corps, and a multitude of couriers and scouts. Army commanders knew how precious the equine resource was. In one action, a retreating General Phillip Sheridan slaughtered 2,000 of his own mounts rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the Confederates.

5. THEY DIDN’T TWEET OR HAVE 4G COVERAGE

Civil War armies didn’t have smart phones, texts or tweets. Communications in battle relied on couriers on horseback, unit flags, drums and bugles, semaphore signals and in rare instances hot air balloons and field telegraphs. Command and control is an army commander’s most important function in a fight, but Civil War communications were decidedly “analog.” Unit flags could help army HQ pinpoint where the battle line stood or faltered, but this was by no means foolproof along a smoky, chaotic battlefront that often ranged for miles. The soldier could not hear shouted orders once the thunder of the battle commenced and bugle calls to charge or retreat often were muffled as well. Couriers could be injured, captured or killed in the course of delivering important messages.

And technology was not ready to fill in these gaps. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, the trailing wires of incipient field telegraphs were trampled and destroyed making the electric gadgets all but useless. Aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe used hot air balloons tethered behind Union lines to monitor the action on battlefields across Virginia early in the war, but the army did not appreciate the innovation and the Balloon Corps as it was called was disbanded by 1863. Considering all this, it is a wonder that army commanders had any notion what went on during a battle involving fifty to two hundred thousand men. One can imagine Fighting Joe Hooker yelling, “Can you hear me now?” as Stonewall Jackson folded up the flank of his 120,000-man army at Chancellorsville.

Thaddeus Lowe demonstrates his balloon.

RETRO-TECHIES, THE 2^ND AMENDMENT AND BURNING RAGE

In the course of the war technological innovations changed the nature of Civil War armies and how they fought. Recently I had the pleasure of taking my son and a friend of his to the national competition of the North-South Skirmish Association. The group maintains the knowledge and use of the weapons of the Civil War. The men and women of the N-SSA are not re-enactors, though they do dress as the units did. They are competitive marksmen, historians, skilled mechanics and artful gunsmiths.

At their permanent base, Fort Shenandoah near Winchester, Virginia, you can watch this brain trust of “retro-techies” preserve, repair, maintain and shoot Civil War muskets, revolvers, carbines and artillery. Once you witness how much maintenance and practice goes into the effective use of these throwback weapons, you will not doubt what the authors of the Second Amendment meant by the right to keep and bear arms. The weapons the founders knew, only a bit removed from these Civil War guns, have to be kept handy, cleaned often, and practiced with regularly for them to be of any use when needed.

In my new book, Burning Rage, I try to accurately portray the realities of Civil War armies in battle. Specifically the book opens with Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry raid of Richmond in 1864 and his assault of Confederate batteries on Brook Hill north of the Confederate capital. The Union leader believed timing, speed, overwhelming force, and massed firepower would carry the heights there.

If you are one of those armchair generals who asks why Civil War armies charged well-defended positions, ponder these questions: What makes a football team think it can run the ball up the middle on an All-Pro defensive line?  Like a Civil War army, a team’s coaches believe proper execution of a good plan by the right personnel will open up a hole. Does that calculation always lead to victory for army or team? Is execution the only difference between success and failure on a football field? Or is a different kind of execution always the likely result for an army’s attacking force?

Immerse yourself in the life of Civil War armies. Read Burning Rage, a Civil War mystery featuring Confederate soldier-turned-detective Ced Buckley. Pick up a copy at Amazon.com.