The American Civil War as the First Modern Military Conflict
The technological thrusts made previous to and during the years 1861-1865 and their impact on the American Civil War cannot be underestimated. In the words of Bruce Catton, from his book America Goes to War, “The Civil War was the first modern war in two ways, and the first of these ways has to do with the purely technical aspect of the manner in which men go out to kill one another” (14). Catton even mentions the fact in his book Mr. Lincoln’s Army that the weapons of the 1861 civil war soldier were essentially the same as those seen in World War One fifty years later (208). Advancements in all areas of technology influenced the civil war in numerous ways, but in the areas of hand-to-hand weaponry, artillery, sea warfare, and transportation, the impact of the industrial age was most strongly felt.
No single aspect tags the American Civil War as a modern conflict more than the advent of the rifle, and certainly no other invention influenced the performance and philosophy of the battle ground private more profoundly. Catton remarks in America Goes to War that the changes in firearms changed the tactics of infantry and cavalry forever (19). Other new weapons changed or shortened the life of the civil war soldier, but the change from a smooth bore musket to a grooved barrel changed battlefield tactics at their roots.
The modern world would be able to look back on the advent of the rifle and the new tactics it produced, but the rifling technology of the civil war called for drastic changes in battlefield thinking then and there. Catton remarks in America Goes to War that whereas enemy lines previously met at hundreds of yards apart, they now met at up to a quarter mile apart (18). Richard Preston writes in his book Men in Arms that the shovel and hatchet were now vital parts of a soldier’s equipment, since entrenchments and solid defenses were paramount against attackers that could shoot and kill, in mass, without ever being seen (246). Theodore Ropp, in his book War in the Modern World, notes that the old skirmish line, used to feel out the enemy line, quickly became the assault line, since with rifles, the enemy would hardly allow a skirmish line to get close enough to see anything (214). Ropp also writes of the necessity for trenches on the civil war battlefields, and even remarks that save for barbed wire, the entrenchments of the American Civil War were identical to the trenches of World War One (181). Fuller points out in his work that every battle between Lee and Grant from 1864 on was at least slightly entrenched (104). The modernizing effect of rifling and new arms technology did not stop in the mud of the trenches, however, it also forced new tactics onto the battlefield.
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Clausewitz writes in his Principles of War that offensive tactics should focus on selecting “one point of the enemy’s position and attacking it with great superiority” (21). Even if the “great superiority” is a numerical advantage of three to one, Fuller notes, the frontal assault is futile (104). Ropp points out that almost every frontal assault between 1862 and 1863 ended in failure (181). Catton writes of the end of the frontal assault in Mr. Lincoln’s Army and notes that bayonet wounds, the inevitable result of an infantry charge, were nearly unheard of (209). Catton proves this by writing that of the 245,000 wounds registered and treated in Union hospitals, less than 1,000 were bayonet wounds (210). Facing rifles, troops had no choice, in Catton’s words, other than to “fight behind something”, rather than charge against an entrenched, rifle defended line (215). Because rifles made frontal assaults too costly, every civil war general hoped for successful flanking maneuvers (215). With rifles and the tactics they produced ending the glory of the charge, it was inevitable that the other elements of the charge would change also, and the changes in the use of cavalry prove this.
Despite the cavaliers of the American Civil War Cavalry, the plumed Jeb Stuart, for example, the horseman in the civil war basically became the forerunners of today’s light infantry. Armed with repeating rifles, union cavalry were used as highly mobile infantry- moving to a needed position and then dismounting to attack. Ropp compares these cavalrymen to modern paratroopers, travelling behind enemy lines or operating removed from the main force, to seize and raid. For example, Ropp points out Lee’s deployment of cavalry to take the road junction at Spotsylvainia (182). Catton points out in America Goes to War that cavalry, rendered ineffective for frontal assaults by entrenchments and rifles, became less of a combat arm and more of scouting, screening, and raiding arm (19). Wilson’s raids in Alabama and Georgia exemplify this aspect of the cavalry’s changing roles due to changing battlefield tactics. Clearly, American Civil War cavalry had to rethink its role on the modern battlefield, and its new part foreshadowed the coming of paratroopers, commandoes, and perhaps even tank warfare.
Many other far-sighted technological advancements in small arms made their first appearances during the civil war, as Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, in his book The Conduct of War, points out. New gun technology, such as the appearance of breech loading, repeating Spencer rifles, and the predecessor of the modern machine gun, the Gatling gun (106), all took many lives in the war. Breech loading enabled troops to load without standing, letting them stay tucked away behind their defenses, the impact of a repeating rifle is obvious in a battle where the majority of the enemy must reload after each shot, and the killing power of a machine gun is witnessed in every conflict since the civil war. Fuller goes on to cite that the civil war was the first place mortars, “wooden and wire bound”, were used, in addition to large scale settings of booby traps, and he reports limited use of primitive hand grenades and rockets (106). Fuller also remarks that although the world would have to wait until World War I for the advent of chemical warfare, in June of 1864, confederate general W.N. Pendleton requisitioned “offensive gases” that would induce a “suffocating effect” (106).
Besides the implementing of rifles and other small arms in the civil war, other technological advancements occurred in other areas of warfare as well. Perhaps not as far reaching as rifling the individual weapons of the soldier, the rifling of artillery also changed tactics on the battlefield. Like the hand-held weapons, cannons were also rifled by the time of the civil war. Catton points out in Mr. Lincoln’s Army that most of the artillery deployed during the civil war was of the smooth bore, 12 pound shell or canister, “Napoleon” type cannon (212), but he also notes that new, smaller, rifled “Parrot” cannons were used extensively, and that these new rifled guns were capable of accurate shooting at twice the Napoleon’s range (213). Combining this new technology with the new tactics produced by the rifled musket, the tactics for engaging cannon had to be changed. Since gunners could be picked off at long range, artillery, unless entrenched, had to be moved behind the lines, and since troops were now too dug in and well defended to be struck by cannon fire, the cannon could no longer be employed as an effective assault weapon. Ropp writes that the role of the cannon changed to a modern role, a role of support for the infantry, used to pin the enemy and support attacks rather than simple bombardment (182).
As well as on land, the American Civil War also gave the world several significant advances in naval warfare. Ironclad gunboats ushered in the age of modern battleships, torpedoes were developed, and even more far reaching and unexpected changes clashed on the Mississippi and the Eastern coasts. On March 9, 1862, writes Fuller, the U.S.S. Merrimac and the Monitor (then renamed the C.S.S. Virginia) engaged, and “the wooden navies of the entire world were rendered obsolete” (107). According to Ropp, the Union ironclad consisted of large cannon mounted in a movable turret and shielded with light draft armor plates (188). The ironclad’s impact on naval warfare is immeasurable, wooden ships were basically helpless against their armor, and every maritime power, including France and England, had to completely revamp their naval strategies. Along with the first modern warships came the first modern torpedoes. Again, the torpedo’s modernizing impact on naval warfare was immense. Ropp writes that torpedoes were implemented by the South, perhaps for the sole purpose of enabling smaller ships to engage larger ships successfully, and for the first time since war galleys ships could be sunk from below the water line (191). In addition to torpedoes, Fuller notes that sea mines were deployed for the first time in the American waters during the civil war (106). And, Fuller writes of Horace L. Huntly, who gave the rebels the first submarine, the C.S.S. Mobile, twenty-five feet long and five feet deep, holding a crew of eight. This glimpse of the future sank the U.S.S. Housatonic off Charleston and went down with her.
Although not as visible on the battlefield as rifles, cavalry, and artillery, and certainly not as dramatic as ironclads, torpedoes and submarines, railroads were perhaps the most modernizing aspect of the civil war in the sense that rails changed the battlefield every bit as much as the grooved barrel, and they changed entire theaters by rendering old ideas of military logistics obsolete. Fuller calls the American Civil War the first conflict in the age of steam (95). He is most certainly correct, since the iron horse reached its full military capability during the civil war. Preston remarks extensively on the use of the railroad during the war, citing the emergence of a railroad corps for the Union, and the creation of a military department of railroads for the north, headed by Herman Haupt (247). Preston also points out the use of hospital and armored trains by the North, and cites the movement of 23,000 troops, with artillery, transported in seven days over 1,200 miles to save Rosencrans at Chickamauga (247). Cyril Falls, in his book The Art of War, notes that the rebels used their rails to transport troops which proved decisive in the First Manassass battle (67). Undoubtedly, the railroad signalled the coming of modern military logistics. Troops could be moved in days instead of weeks or months, with rations and equipment, over hundreds of miles. The railroad forced strategy makers to implement modern logistics into their plans.
Certainly, other technological advancements came into play on in the American Civil War. Burke Davis, in his book Sherman’s March, describes Sherman’s extensive use of telegraphs, pontoon bridges, and photographs (19), Falls writes of the advent of canned, preserved meat (68), and Fuller even mentions some sparse use of balloons used on both sides (The Confederates constructed one balloon, made from the cloth of many southern ladies’ dresses and gowns; the balloon burned on its “maiden” voyage.) (106). These smaller technologies, and many others like them, in addition to the impact of the rifle, the ironclad and the railroad by themselves prove that the American Civil War was indeed the first modern, twentieth century conflict. The weapons used on battlefields and high seas today are almost all the children of their civil war ancestors, and the strategies these new developments called for, so new and unique in the civil war, are also essentially unchanged today. As Preston writes, the civil war was the first conflict fought in the industrial revolution, influenced by factors of economy and technology (243). The American Civil War was the testing ground for modern military technologies.
Since the civil war was the first modern war in the technical aspects of combat, it follows that this would also be the case in the arena of strategy. It would not appear so at first, with Lee seeking a Napoleonic-style victory by manuver, and McClellan seeming to follow the Clausewitzian principle of limiting fighting to “a theater of war prepared for this purpose” (61).
However, as Ropp notes, the civil war was the first American war where the majority of its officers, on both sides, were West Point graduates, and one can begin to see the trappings of modern strategy in the war (176). Both sides mobilized their economies and resources more fully than had been done before in western warfare, and as Preston points out, it was also the first time two democracies waged war against each other (244). Harry T. Williams points out in his book, Lincoln and His Generals, that Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton were directly involved with much of the military strategy of the war, another precedent (305). Russell Weigley notes in his book The American Way of War, that the war was also the first to carry a highly moral, non-solely religious, goal: the freedom of the slaves (129). Scott’s original “Anaconda Plan”, as Falls notes, was more modern than it appeared, but the North’s need for quick victory rendered the blockade almost irrelevant (74). As Weigley points out, Lincoln’s first commanders: McClellan, Hooker, and the lot, all seemed to fail to grasp that the war was a new, modern conflict, and kept grasping at the belief that “the battle” was synonymous with “the war” (130). Such a philosophy, against a commander like Lee who had mastered the Napoleonic type of war, was doomed. However, when congress revived the position of Lieutenant General and Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant to the post, a new and modern strategy of warfare was not long in coming (Williams, 297).
As Grant assumed command of the Army of the Potomac in Spring of 1864, Williams remarks that Grant was indeed in charge of the first modern army, numbering 533,000 men under 17 different commands in scattered theaters (302). Williams also notes that as Halleck stepped down as General in Chief, he took over the new position as Lincoln’s Chief of Staff, modelling the modern chain of command, Halleck ensured the smooth operation of the “new command system” (302). Grant would prove to be, in the eyes of Williams, “the first of the great moderns” (314). Grant realized that the civil war was a struggle between societies, not armies. Williams writes,
“The modernity of Grant’s mind was most apparent in his grasp of the concept that war was becoming total and that the destruction of the enemy’s economic resources was as effective and legitimate a form of warfare as the destruction of his armies.” (314)
In the Western theater, Grant displayed a knack for modern strategy in a single theater. At Vicksburg, Weigley notes Grant’s ability to make any battle, victory, defeat, or draw part of a larger plan (139). Grant was no longer thinking in terms of single, decisive battles, but of winning the entire war through prolonged struggle. When Grant assumed command of the entire Union forces, he also realized that in addition to accepting setbacks and victories as part of a larger scheme, he had to fight a total war. Grant accepted that to win the war, according to Weigley, he would have to literally, rather than psychologically destroy the Confederate armies (145). Grant embarked on a “peace of exhaustion”, where as Weigley notes, he sustained 55,000 casualties at the Wilderness and Cold Harbor (144). However brutal, as Ropp points out, Grant’s strategy of constant engagement with the enemy has become “one of the most striking features of twentieth century warfare” (182). Grant embraced the concept of total war, and he passed his influence on to his subordinates.
When Grant in February of 1865 approved Wilson’s plan to raid Alabama and Georgia with cavalry, he outlined three distinct objectives for Wilson to follow. James Pickett Jones lists these objectives in his book Yankee Blitzkrieg. The first was to attack the enemy wherever he might be found, the second to destroy all lines of communication and resources, and finally, to engage the enemy whenever possible (13). Grant did not want Wilson simply to raid and wreak havoc, he wanted Wilson to destroy the enemy. According to Jones, Wilson followed Grant’s orders to the letter, destroying the iron works and naval foundry at Selma and fighting whenever possible (78).
Wilson was not Grant’s lone destroyer, however; Grant also sent Phil Sheridan with similar orders on a scorching raid through the Shenandoah Valley. According to Weigley, Sheridan wrote this to Grant when asked for results,
“I have destroyed over 2,000 barns filled with wheat, hay, and farming implements; over seventy mills, filled with flour and wheat; have driven in front of the army over 4,000 head of stock, and have killed and issued to the troops not less than 3,000 sheep…” (148).
Clausewitz wrote in 1812 that it was essential for an army “to remain faithful throughout to the principles we have laid down for ourselves” (61). Clearly, Sheridan’s raid exemplifies that Clausewitz’s statement had no place in a modern, total conflict.
There is one of Grant’s officers that understood the concept of total war perhaps better than Grant himself. When William T. Sherman marched across the South, he could not have known that his tactics and strategies would become textbook examples on modern warfare, but as Davis quotes him as saying “War is hell”, Sherman did understand that war was no longer an adventure in glory (299). B.H. Liddell Hart writes in his book Strategy, that Sherman felt Atlanta had to be taken since it was “full of foundries, arsenals, and machine shops”; if Grant was to destroy the enemy army, Sherman was to destroy their resources (149). Weigley remarks that the destruction of Atlanta’s war supplies was the first time such an event had occurred on such a grand scale (145). Sherman was to prove it was only a single piece of glass in a broken pane, for after Atlanta and the destruction of Hood, Sherman presented his plan to march to Grant, saying, according to Davis “I can make Georgia howl” (23). Sherman then embarked upon a “war on the minds of the people” (Weigley, 149). Weigley writes that Sherman employed “punishment as an element of military strategy” (138), quoting Sherman as saying “… we are not fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war as well as the organized armies” (149). Sherman understood the need for complete domination in the American Civil War, exactly as modern military commanders do today.
For example, as Marion Brunson Lucas writes in his book Sherman and the Burning of Columbia, when Sherman stormed into Columbia, South Carolina, he was engaging in psychological warfare by making the state suffer (11). Sherman intended to, and did, punish the South Carolinians for seceding. In addition to Sherman’s symbolic victory, he also succeeded in fulfilling the main reason for his march by destroying nineteen locomotives, twenty freight cars, sixty mule harnesses, 1,000 pounds of chain, forty barrels of nails, twenty five kegs of railroad spikes, five tons of repair equipment, and 650 wheels, plus every railroad track within fifteen miles of the South Carolina capitol was rendered unusable (122-124). Sherman’s march on Columbia clearly shows that Sherman was marching to break the enemy’s spirit and destroy their wares, both modern objectives in military conflict.
Sherman’s tactics in moving his army through the South also exemplify many modern military practices. According to Ropp, Sherman used an “offensive strategy with defensive maneuvers” (179). By moving his army in six columns, Sherman could simply move certain columns forward if others were blocked. As Hart writes, this type of movement would later be employed by the Panzer divisions of World War Two (152). In addition to his tactical maneuvering, Sherman also proved the value of light infantry in war. As Hart points out, Sherman cut his army loose from communications and lived off the land (151), Catton remarks in Mr. Lincoln’s Army that Sherman’s men most likely carried light “blanket rolls” rather than cumbersome knapsacks (217). Not only were Sherman’s strategic goals forerunners of today’s military objectives, his tactics were also advanced and modern.
Napoleon said after conquering Austria that he had “destroyed the enemy merely by marches” (Hart, 153). Such a statement would be more aptly said of Sherman, who conquered the Southern people’s will to fight by “simply marching.” As Grant destroyed the Confederate armies, Sherman destroyed the Confederates ability to field armies. This was the first example of a total war, which affected civilians as greatly as it did soldiers. Grant realized what kind of strategies the American Civil War called for, and these strategies are still used in military conflicts around the globe. The American Civil War was the laboratory where modern military thinking was developed.
The combination of technological advancements in firearms and cannon, naval capabilities, and transportation, coupled with the encompassing, devastating strategies employed by Grant and his subordinates, define the American Civil War as the first example of modern warfare. The war went far beyond the battlefield and the theater, sending aftershocks not only into military science, but also into social, moral, and governmental spheres. In hindsight, it is simple to conclude that only a modern, total war can have such far reaching effects.
