On November 30, 1864 General John Schofield's Federal forces were entrenched in a position just to the south of the small middle Tennessee town of Franklin. The autumn day was "hazy with the golden light of an Indian summer, " wrote Brevet Colonel Henry Stone, as a line of Confederates could be seen the flags gayly fluttering and the muskets gleaming brightly...advancing steadily, in perfect order, dressed on the center, straight for the works. Where there was nothing to hinder the Union fire," he continued, "the muskets of Stiles' and Casement's Brigades made fearful havoc; while the batteries at the railroad cut plowed furrows through the ranks of the advancing foe. Time after time they came up to the very works, but they never crossed except as prisoners. More than one color-bearer was shot down on the parapet. It is impossible to exaggerate the fierce energy with which the Confederate soldiers, that short November afternoon, threw themselves against the works, fighting with what seemed the very madness of despair." After the firing ended, out of the 26,897 Confederates engaged 6,252 were lost. This figure includes the death of six and the wounding of five out of thirty-eight brigade and divisional commanders. General D. H. Hill, although writing about an earlier Confederate repulse, succinctly summed up the entire episode "It was not war, it was murder." Murder it may have been but the pattern illustrated by the tragic charges at Franklin of unsupported infantry advancing over fire-swept terrain against a prepared opponent, well supported by artillery, was to repeat itself time and time again throughout the course of the American Civil War. This article proposes to examine the background to the tactics of this conflict and also will attempt to impart some understanding of the internal logic of a Civil War battle. Napoleonic Use To begin to comprehend the tactics employed during the War Between the States, one must first look at the Napoleonic use of combined arms. David Chandler, in his CAMPAIGNS OF NAPOLEON presents a clear summation of these operations. After a preliminary bombardient there would be a series of heavy cavalry and infantry attacks. The secret of these was careful timing and coordination. The first cavalry charges were designed to defeat the hostile cavalry and compel the enemy infantry to form squares rather than achieve an imrrgedi.ate breakthrough. This task was left to the hurrying infantry columns which under ideal circumstances would have moved up to close range before the horsemen fell back, and before, therefore, the enemy could resume his linear formation. Clearly a unit drawn up in square or rectangular formation could only produce a greatly reduced output of fire in any one direction and thus the diminuation of firepower enabled the French columns to get to close grips without suffering phenominal casualties providing all went well. If the attack succeeded, the newly deployed French infantry would blaze a gap through the enemy lines; their accompanying batteries of horse artillery would unlimber and go straight into action at point blank range, and finally the French cavalry, after reforming, would sweep forward to exploit the breakthrough." Very neat and exact, providing everything went well. Yet this model for an attack, established a half a century before the Civil War, was never successfully utilized by either the North or the South. In spite of a solid grounding in Napoleonic tactical thought and a strong desire to emulate the decisive character of the battles of the Napoleonic era,(this emphasis on the Napoleonic prototype can be seen in the fact that Beauregard claimed to have modeled the Confederate deployment at Shiloh on Napoleon's instructions at Waterloo) tactical conditions had dramatically changed by the second half of the nineteenth century. Undoubtedly the most significant of these changes was the adoption of the rifle by the infantry. The rifle of the Civil War infantryman was predominately a muzzle loading weapon of .58 calibre. With this weapon an effective rate of fire of two or three rounds per minute could be maintained; this, however, was not significantly different from the performance obtained from earlier smoothbore muskets. More important was the fact that the rifle had an effective killing range of 400-500 yards; in contrast the smoothbore musket was largely ineffectual beyond a range of 150 yards. Thus at Fredericksburg in December of 1862, McLaws' Division repulsed upwards of ten separate assaults launched from a shallow ditch or ravine 300 yards distant. After the fighting had ended an observer described the open field from the ravine to about a hundred yards from McLaws' line as a blood-soaked blanket of blue. Nearer the stone wall, behind which the Confederates had been positioned, the bodies were less numerous; some were within 40 yards but only a few were within 25 yards. Nevertheless, the fact that the majority of the Union casualties were inflicted at a range of 200-300 yards gives testimony to the long range effectiveness of the rifle. If rifle armed troops could inflict such casualties on any assaulting enemy infantry in open terrain the lesson for cavalry and artillery was clear. No longer did infantry have to form square to protect itself from a cavalry charge. Instead they could rely on the increased firepower available to them and successfully halt a cavalry charge long before the saber became a threat. At Gaines Mill about 250 troopers of the 5th U. S. Cavalry charged Rebel infantry in a last ditch attempt to prevent a penetration of Union lines. As E. M. Law, Colonel of the 4th Alabama and temporarily assigned to command a brigade, related, the Southern ranks were "ragged and irregular" and only "partly reformed", yet Confederate rifle fire broke apart the cavalry charge in scarcely "more time than it takes to write about it." Thus deprived of an active mounted role on the battlefield, cavalrymen largely fought dismounted, using their horses to increase their mobility up to the point of contact. Only in cavalry versus cavalry actions, such as that of Brandy Station in 1863, was the horse soldier able to retain his traditional reliance on the mounted saber charge. Artillery also lost its original role as an offensive weapon. Cannister shot, the most deadly killer of infantry that the artillery possessed, had a range of about 400 yards and for the greatest effect was best used at even a lesser distance. However, even at 400 yards the artillery was still within range of infantry's rifle fire. Attempts to try to maneuver up close to enemy infantry in the fashion of Napoleon's horse artillery simply became a quick, albeit spectacular, form of suicide. Artillery nevertheless remained a deadly defensive weapon when the opportunity presented itself. As muzzle loading rifles could not be effectively reloaded on the move, infantry was at a severe disadvantage when advancing against artillery. Now artillery was able to use its cannister to full effect. On January 2, 1863 at Murfreesboro, 45 Union guns massed on a commanding ridge drove back General Breckenridge's assaulting division with 1700 casualties out of a total of 4500 men. This occurred after the Southerners had routed the Union infantry placed to the front of the aforementioned artillery. The equipping of infantry with rifles also had an important effect upon an army's tactical mobility. Civil War armies, subdivided into corps, divisions, and brigades, exhibited a high degree 04 command flexibility. More important was the new level of tactical articulation that this command flexibility could exploit. Because the rifle had negated the threat cavalry had formerly posed on the battlefield, the need for strictly aligned formations no longer existed. Thus a unit could be rapidly shifted about the battlefield to forestall any threatening enemy action. At the Second Battle of Manassas the Union Army, struck in the left flank by Longstreet's Corps, was able to disengage itself from an assault on Jackson's Corps and assume a defensive position. Although it was pushed back, the Federal Army was able to prevent itself from being destroyed. This tactical articulation tended to cause large battles to become bloody stalemates. Only smaller actions, where fresh units did not exist to be rapidly brought into battle, proved to be decisive. Examples of this can be seen in the battles of Richmond, Kentucky, Logan's Cross Roads and Olustee, all fought with less than 6000 combatants per side. This picture of the supremacy of rifle armed infantry must, however, be put into a chronological perspective. Until the end of 1862 the rifle was not as widespread as might be expected. The rapid creation of mass armies in the North and the South meant that many recruits in 1861 and 1862 had to make do with older weapons until sufficient rifles could be procured. The 10th Tennessee, part of the garrison of Fort Henry in 1862, was armed with flintlock muskets dating from the War of 1812, and the 10th Tennessee was described as the best armed regiment of this command. As late as July of 1863 Grant authorized his troops armed with old United States flintlock muskets converted into percussion to exchange these arms for the superior rifles captured after the Confederate surrender of Vicksburg. Ineffective? Why then were Napoleonic tactics not at least effective in the early part of the Civil War? The first part of the answer to this question lies in the time it took to create properly trained cavalry and artillery. Until the summer of 1862, over one year after the war began, both cavalry and to a lesser extent artillery, could only be considered to be green and probably unable to perform all of the complex evolutions required in a combined arms attack, especially at a divisional or higher level. Apart from the problems of training, a further impediment to the use of combined arms on the battlefield lay in the organizational structure of the armies themselves. Except for the Confederate cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of J.E.B. Stuart, the common tendency was to disperse cavalry amongst the various divisions or corps of an army. The Federal armies in both the east and the west only formed permanent cavalry units of divisional or greater size in the late fall of 1862. The same was true of the Confederate forces west of the Appalachians. Thus large scale cavalry actions on the battlefield were structurally difficult if not impossible to implement. Artillery likewise was not structurally concentrated in any of the armies until 1863. The most common form of organization parcelled out one battery to each brigade. Needless to say, this made concentrations of artillery, especially in an offensive situation, difficult to achieve. By 1863 though, the problems of training and organizing both cavalry and artillery had been dealt with. Cavalry corps and artillery battalions at the divisional or corps level became an accepted form of organizational structure. But, as mentioned before, 1863 saw the widespread use of the rifle by the infantry. Offensive actions involving all three arms, which might have been successful in 1862, had become impossible. The same year also saw the introduction of fieldworks. Although Halleck's advance on Corinth the previous summer had utilized fortifications to blunt any potential Southern counter—offensive in 1863, the practice of immediately entrenching any position which might be threatened by enemy assault became standard practice. The strong defensive position held by McLaws' Division at Fredericksburg has already been mentioned. When these natural defenses came to be enhanced by fieldworks, the defensive capabilities of the Civil War infantry, now commonly armed with a rifle, was greatly strengthened. The appalling casualty ratio of Cold Harbor, where 7000 Northerners were lost compared to 1500 Confederates in the space of one afternoon, even though the Federals had an overall two to one advantage in manpower, is a graphic example of the power of the entrenched defense. There remains one more determinant acting upon Civil War tactics -- terrain. The Napoleonic tactics described earlier depended upon a relatively open landscape. Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century was more densely populated and more intensely under agricultural cultivation than was the United States a half century later. Even today the battlefields of Shiloh, Chickamauga or the Seven Days, to name but several, are heavily wooded and cut up by numerous small streams. Because of this rough topography, again and again the historical record provides complaints that artillery was unable to keep up with the advancing infantry. Cavalry, not surprisingly, is not even mentioned in these complaints since any mounted action in such terrain was recognized as being impractical if not impossible. For infantry rough terrain was of a mixed benefit. The long range of rifles was reduced in forested country but the advantages this provided to assaulting infantry was countered by the attendent problems of cottunand control. Units could literally vanish in the thick woods. At Chickamauga, Wood's Division was told to withdraw from the front line and move to cover a perceived gap in the Union line a gap which in fact was covered by Brannan's Division. However, in the dense woods Brannan's Division was not seen in its position by the staff officer sent to find it. When Longstreet struck the gap created by Wood's withdrawal with five Confederate divisions the right flank of the Union Army collapsed. But because of the severe nature of the terrain, Longstreet's penetration was slowed down as units lost their cohesion and strayed from the proper line of advance. The Union Army of the Cumberland was able to take advantage of this delay and, making use of the high degree of tactical articulation previously discussed, redeployed its remaining troops to meet this new threat. Thus a small measure of victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat. Undoubtedly, a breakthrough of such a magnitude on a Napoleonic battlefield, when cavalry would have been able to exploit the situation to its fullest, could have been decisive. The Attack This article has so far outlined some of the reasons for the ascendancy of the defense and the primacy of infantry on the battlefield of the Civil War. Given these parameters, what then were the tactics that assaulting infantry employed? Tragically, the belief in the decisiveness of the bayonet was still as strong as ever. The main objective of an attack was to close with the enemy. The Napoleonic tactic of assault columns was employed many times with mixed results. At Spotsylvania on May 12, 1964 Hancock's II Corps launched a pre-dawn assault on a Confederate salient. Hancock put his corps in a deep column formation in order to maintain control in the dark and the fog and in order to get the greatest possible number of men into the Southerners' position in the first rush. His four divisions successfully carried the Rebel lines but the crowding of so many troops into such a small space resulted in confusion. A Confederate counter-attack pushed the Unionists back and fighting raged for the balance of the day in what was thereafter called the Bloody Angle. Federal casualties amounted to about twenty-five percent of the 20,000 men in the attack, which in the end could not be considered a success because it did not permanently breach the Southern lines. More typical were the attacks which used a compromise between the column and line formations. This compromise consisted of successive lines of infantry. These lines could cover a frontage as great as an entire corps. At Shiloh the Confederate Army of Mississippi was deployed 40,000 strong in four consecutive lines, each roughly the width of one corps. Jackson's flanking attack at Chancellorsville adopted a formation of three divisions in line one behind the other. Distances between such consecutive lines varied from 50 to 300 yards. The intervals between the lines helped to decrease the toll enemy fire took on attacking troops but the advantages of bringing a concentration of men to bear upon a point of the enemy's line were still retained. However, the danger existed that if problems developed, the successive lines would tend to run together and lose their cohesion. This is what happened to Jackson's assault at Chancellorsville. The degree of confusion that resulted is evident in that when Jackson went forward beyond his front to reconnoiter the enemy, upon his return he was mistakenly shot by his own troops. Nevertheless, the tactic of successive lines or waves was generally the most successful of all assault formations. Mention should also be made of the importance of skirmishers. Used to screen formed troops, skirmishers were generally unable to be used as assault troops. They did not provide the necessary concentration of manpower needed to carry a well manned enemy position. Also, command control was always a problem because of the greater frontages associated with a large body in skirmish order. Thus the brunt of most battlefield action fell upon the infantry. As has been pointed out, the infantry found itself in a very difficult position as it tried to defeat its enemy counterpart. Not surprisingly, the exploitation of a victory in the field was seldom successful. The harrying of a foe, such as was done after Jena and Auerstadt, was done only in the final campaign from Petersburg to Appomattox. Although there were strategic constraints that limited such efforts, tactical considerations also played a part. Most victories left the victor as exhausted as their defeated opponent. After Chickamauga the victorious Rebel army spent two and a half days on the field of battle before it moved to lay siege to the Union base at Chattanooga. Rosecrans refused to advance for six months after forcing Bragg to retreat from Murfreesboro. In LEE'S LIEUTENANTS, Douglas Freeman describes how after each major battle Lee's greatest concern was the reconstruction of his army's command structure. Infantry tactics which resulted in the death or wounding of brigade and division commanders on the scale seen in the previously described Battle of Franklin played a significant role in the disruption of further offensive action after a hard fight. Given the inability to engage in a decisive Napoleonic battle that could destroy the enemy's capacity for war, perhaps it was inevitable that the American civil War ended not in a climactic Austerlitz or Waterloo, but instead dragged out into a war of attrition and devastation which respectively destroyed the South's manpower and its economic capacity to carry on the war. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY As the sources for this article are quite numerous, the following selections are those which will directly enable the reader to further explore the issues discussed. Larry J. Daniel, CONNONEERS IN GRAY; THE FIELD ARTILLERY OF THE ARMY OF TENNESSEE, 1861-1865, 1984. Paddy Griffith, The 'Rifle Revolution' of the American Civil War -- An Alternative Interpretation", MINIATURE WARGAMES, No. 20 (January 1985), pp. 11-13. Edward Hagerman, "From Jomini To Dennis Hart Mahan: The Evolution of Trench Warfare and the American Civil War", CIVIL WAR HISTORY, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1962), pp. 197-220. Edward Hagerman, The Tactical Thought of R. E. Lee and the Origins of Trench Warfare in the American Civil War, 1861—62", THE HISTORIAN, Vol. 38, No. I (1975), pp. 21—38. Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, HOW THE NORTH WON: A MILITARY HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, 1983. John Mahon, "Civil War Infantry Assault Tactics", MILITARY AFFAIRS, Vol. 25 (1961), pp. 57—69. Grady McWhiney and Perry Jamieson, ATTACK AND DIE: CIVIL WAR MILITARY TACTICS AND THE SOUTHERN HERITAGE, 1982. Back to The Zouave Vol I No. 3 Table of Contents Back to The Zouave List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1987 The American Civil War Society 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