Attack and Die, by Grad McWhiney & Perry D. Jamieson, University of Alabama Press, University of Alabama, 1982, $17.95, hardcover, 209 pages. The subtitle of this book is "Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage". Although it has been around for awhile and I have often seen it in stores, it just never really caught my interest until recently. I came across a used copy and was glancing through it when I caught some references to the Mexican-American War, which I have some interest in. Upon closer inspection I discovered that quite a bit of the book deals with the Mex-Am. War as an example of early Civil War tactics. It is for this reason that I was finally prompted to read this book. The main idea behind the book is to show what type of tactics were used by both the North and the South at the beginning of the Civil War and how these were adapted to the new weapons in the ACW. At the beginning of the war, both sides were using tactics that had been successful in the Mexican War only 13 years before. The authors go into detail about deployment and use of troops during that time with accounts from some of the battles as well. The Civil War, with its rifled musket, made those tactics obsolete. The greater range and accuracy of the weapons favored the defense as never before. Standard tactics now became suicidal. Quite a bit of the book is used to show just how much the balance had shifted to the defensive. Several charts along with many personal accounts given of small unit actions illustrate the disparity in casualties between the attacker and defender in many major Civil War battles. The evidence is very convincing, and hard to argue with. It is shown that, although both sides started out with the same misconceptions of how the battles should be fought, the North adapted more quickly than the South. Although the North learned many a painful lesson while on the attack, eventually a greater number of Northern commanders found it advantageous to be on the tactical defensive. Southern commanders, in most cases, either never adapted, or were excruciatingly slow to do so. It is the contention of the authors that the military heritage of the South was the basic reason behind this inability to change tactics. Part of this lies in the commonly known differences between the cultures existing in the North and South at the outbreak of the war. The different lifestyle existing in the Old South, where most men owned guns and horses on their own and were familiar with them, even to the point of dueling, led to more aggressive behavior being encouraged. Another pertinent fact relating to the inability to change tactics was the fact that more of the higher ranking Southern Generals served in the Mexican War and had used and seen the tactics work there before. They were naturally reluctant to deviate from something that had been successful in the past. More Northern Generals had not seen service in that war and so were a bit more flexible when the situation called for something else. The fact remains that Southern Generals more often than not used the tactical offensive and literally bled the South white. While Union Generals either deliberately, or just by the circumstances, found themselves on the tactical defensive and able to use all of the advantages that their new weapons had to offer. The final argument given by the authors as to why this happened was a rather dubious one to me. They point out that the North was of transplanted English culture, while the South was more Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Cornish. This "Celtic Heritage" was what gave the South the aggressive spirit and also prevented them from letting go of it even thought it meant the difference between survival and death. The authors seem to add this as somewhat of an afterthought really, and I don't know how valid it really is, but it is food for thought. I can especially recommend this book to anyone interested in ACW or Mexican War. It has just been reprinted in paperback also. Back to MWAN #19 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1986 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com