Battle Tactics of the Civil War

What Paddy Griffth did here in 1989 was something no American historian on the Civil War ever had the courage to do. Griffith, not being an American, was able to take a dis-passionate, and objective look at our Civil War in order to discover many of its fallacies. This was something we have not been able to do because as Americans we have been so enthralled by our Civil War that it has become sacred to us. This was a pioneering book which dared to look at Civil War combat and compare it to other conflicts. Paddy Griifth poises the question was the Civil War truly a precursor to so called modern warfare, i.e. World War One? Or was it really just bad Napoleanics! This slender volume takes on that large and interesting question, and covers a lot of ground in just 200 odd pages. If we really look at how tactical combat was condcuted in the Civil war there is a lot that just does not make sense. Why were the battles so indicisive? Were the new rifled weapons really changing the battlefield? Griffith shows us that above all else staff work was really poor. Generals could barely manage their troops, and it is no wonder that battles became crude, head-on affairs. Even the so-called genuses of the war, the Lee's, Jackson's and Grant's start to look more like average generals trying to wrestle with crude armies when subjected to the kind of analysis that is applied here. The Civil War has been made into such hyberbole by past and present American historians that is has been difficult to stand back and really take an objective look at it. No doubt these very same people, as evidenced by some of the reviewers here, will take great offense at what Griffith is trying to get at here. The Civil War was a poorly fought conflict. The armies were hasily created out of nothing, and as a result could do little more than blaze away at each other. The infantry tended to be held back by an inate tendnecy to fire and dig in, the cavalry was religated to doing next to nothing for the first half of the war, and the artillery was never properly employed. When we look at the conflict subjectively, its diffiuclt not to agree with Von Moltkes' assessment that the Civil War was nothing more than armed mobs roving about the woodlands of North America! Infantry fire power has been greatly over-rated in this war. The new rifled muskets had potentially greater range, but the troops were rarely encouraged to employ it. Studies of firefights show ranges roughly similar to Napoleanic period with smoothbores! Yet the basic tendency of Americans was to stand and shot, rather than to maneauver and develope the battlefield, even though the French tactical doctrine that they based their training on emphisized battlefield movement. When advantages were gained, there was nothing to exploit success because there was no battlefield cavalry to do so. Even the famed JEB Staurt never used his 10,000 Confederate cavalry to acheive any kind of massed charge on the battlefiel

This is a well written by Paddy Griffith on the American Civil War. Griffith's main argument seems to be that the Civil War was waged in a manner closer to the Napoleonic Wars than to modern ones. Other arguments challenge the "for the first time in history" school of the Civil War noting that little of what occurred was unkown in the European experience. Trench warfare wasn't new; ask the Roman legions or the Brits, French and Russians of the Crimean war (read Tolstoy's "Sevastopol Sketches" for a view of trench warfare circa 1854). This is the sort of history long overdue for the CW era. Much of the field is overflowing with hyperbole and lack of analysis of the CW's place in world military history. Griffith does good work in pointing out the operational and training deficiencies that took place. The regular army, small in size, was never used as a training template to fill out the huge force that was to follow. The volunteer army that emerged because of that deficiency shaped the steep learning curve of officers and enlisted.The engineering branch of the army comes in for special criticism. West Point's basic education consisted of military engineering as the foundation for military training. It was this fortification mentality that Griffith holds responsible for the length and causality count of the CW. In a related vein, French military thought, so influencial at West Point, is given some fairly negative print. The book has several problems. The level of rigorous research seems suspect at times and for more the more technical aspects such as weaponry Griffith's analysis falters. His criticism of the cavalry's lack of participation as a fully effective combat arm is subject to much criticism itself, though he scores many points with a perceptive analysis of the artillery arm's subjugation to the infantry at the expense of tactical efficiency.Much of Griffith analysis on infantry battles, especially rifles and other weaponry, has been criticized fiercely by CW buffs. Be that as it may, there is a lot that is still worthwhile in this book and it deserves a fair reading.

Mr. Griffith extends several of the tactical themes he has developed in other works to this analysis of the American Civil War. While some of his conclusions are highly debatable, his analytical skill is best applied to his tactical insights regarding such things as shock verses skirmish warfare, and the temporal verses spacial effects of rifled weaponry. His arguments on these points are highly original and supported by fact. His conclusio that the Civil War was fought much like the wars of the Napoleonic period is somewhat suspect. The observation may be correct in terms of casualty rates, but ignores such things as the development of Union military logistics as practiced by Grant, and Sherman's devastatingly effective methods for bringing the war home to the southern populace. Niether of these strategic innovations have precidence in the Napoleonic venue (to my knowledge). Comparisons to the Napoleonic period are more to the mark with respect to southern tactics, which were effective due to aggressive application, but were otherwise not unusual or innovative from a europian perspective.These issues, and ruffled feathers aside, Mr. Griffith's book remains an excellent and thought provoking analysis on the tactical aspects of the Civil War, and is best viewed within the more general view of the trends and verities of military tactics over time (Much as presented in his other book: "Forward Into Battle").

Griffith agrues very persuasively that the Civil War was not the "first modern war," but rather a continuation of the Naploenic tradition. This book details his research and conclusions. If you wan a brief overview, I highly reccommend the 48 page 1986 "Battle in the Civil War: Generalship and Tactics in America" ISBN 1-869871-00-6. You will find many of the same conclusions very succinctly stated. I have found both books invaluable for designing realistic Civil War simulations.

The most original Civil War book I've read for a good while...and I read quite a few. Not simply a treatise on tactics, the author attempts to prove that the American Civil War was *not* the first "modern" war that most historians casually credit it as being. Rather, Mr. Griffith takes the stand that although technology had evolved in the 45 years since the Napoleonic age, battle tactics hadn't and wouldn't substantially until the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. His revisionist views on the effect of technology (How could the rifled musket be credited for a military revolution simply by the potential to hit aimed targets farther if its users insisted on closing to within 100 yards or less of each other?), tactical thinking in both armies and the role of the lesser recognised artillery and cavalry arms are backed by a substantial amount of primary-source data. He presents and attempts to prove a good case. Whether you agree with Mr. Griffith's thesis or not, his book gives the reader a new perspective to evaluate other Civil War historian's efforts that I appreciate immensely.