American Civil War Tactics

From the documentary series Civil War Battles (1987).

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• american
• civil
• war
• battle
• musket
• lee
• jackson
• tactics
• strategy

[DawnOfTheAcopalypse]

One of the most common ideas on stragetic positions was to behind a wall, or in a trench. This was "Stonewall" Jackson's favorite position, although he was not named for that. One example of the effectivness of this tactic was the Battle of Vicksburg, where the Confederates under Lee were outnumbered, but they still won over Burnside's forces and his carelessnes.

[Zappiss]

Fredericksburg, not Vicksburg.

[erikouwehand]

was this made in 1987?

[Zappiss]

Yes, you can find more info on imdb, the name of the documentary series is Civil War Battles.

[hartshornguy]

great vid mr.z, 5-5 stars

[Zappiss]

Thanks!

[capablemachine]

This is a very interesting film.

[JoeZeon100]

4:45 Could you imagine in real life, watching that come toward you?

[AUG351]

Lots of people think that they just fought in big long lines in the open but

actually they would used trenches even as early as 1862. I've been to many

battlefields and you can still see the trenches but they weren't as big as ww1

trenches untill around the time of the siege of petersburg.

[dweese30]

@Tananjoh Also, two other things: (A) Both sides were led by a small yet highly proficient cadre of West Point trained professional military officers; this led to a balance of professionalism on both sides. Generals like Lee, Bragg, Jackson, McClellan, Sherman, Grant and many, many others were all professional officers. Both sides were, to a point, equally led. (B) Both sides had barely trained armies of either vol, or conscripts. Not up to European standards of training.

[dweese30]

@Tananjoh I agree. The idea of a combined General Staff wasn't utilized by American forces till after the First World War, had there been such a thing (as in the Prussian model) during the American Civil War a commanders job of coordinating the movements of an army ranging from 40-130,000 men would have been far, far easier.

[schizoidboy]

It seems to me that tactics have to evolve with whatever war is being fought. Until a tactic is proven to work it is theoretical and the only way to prove it is to test it on the battlefield. At the time they were just using what they knew but they hadn't adjusted the tactics for the new kind of warfare, the same thing happened in WWI with their weapons.

[ImEternalWanderer]

@KayBeeEee1983 The real thing that broke the stalemate is the combined arms tactics: large-caliber, high trajectory, high-explosive howitzers provide covering fire for infantries to move up and keep defenders head down. infantries fight in small, independent units, not large battalions and move right behind the shells. The last few hundred meters were fought with automatic rifles, rifle grenade. Night attacks were common and increased.

[ImEternalWanderer]

@KayBeeEee1983 First, standard tactics in the opening months of WWI include lines of infantry march right up to the enemy trench, accepting no standard cover, concealment, fir and movements tactics for the reason that if a man takes cover, he will feel alone, will never want to rise up again and the engagement becomes fire but not movement. In the case, the defender will win. Casualties were accepted as price paid for miles gained.

Artillery were few and primarily flat-trajectory.

[KayBeeEee1983]

@ImEternalWanderer Britain and France had seen the damage that rifled muskets could inflict while fighting in the Crimean war of the 1850s. They understood "modern" weapons before Americans did. What kind of idiot ignores machine guns? The machine gun was the principal reason there were so many WW1 casualties. Machine guns were immobile and therefore only the defenders could use them. Tanks were in their infancy stage of development in WW1, but by WW2 the tank offset the machine gun advantage.

[ImEternalWanderer]

Sadly, even after the Civil War, Western Europeans didn't learn how effective modern weapons were, ignoring the development of machine guns, highly effective howitzers and then insisted that the soldiers should walk right up to the enemy trench in mass formation in order to take it.

The result were horrendous casualties in the opening months. It then took years for commanders to work out a workable tactics.

[Tananjoh]

I don't think that the size of the armies alone that prevented decisive battles. During the Napoleonic wars the armies where not so much smaller and quite decisive battles happened. The US armies had until ACW been small and no proper general staff had been developed as in Europe. That led to problems with coordinating the armies when the officers didn't have experience of commanding such large armies and no organisation to handle it either.