Civil War Infantry Tactics Training Combat and Small-unit Effectiveness Hesse Review
Civil War Infantry Tactics: Preparation, Gainsay, and Small-Unit Effectiveness by Earl J. Hess. Louisiana State University Press, 2015. Cloth, ISBN 978-0807159378. $45.00.
Of all the Union generals of the Ceremonious War, none surpassed Andrew A. Humphreys' reputation as a hidebound martinet, a human so obsessed with war machine pedantry that one of his subordinate officers published an 1864 expose on how Humphreys represented all that was narrow-minded about the Union war effort. The sensationalist account (whose "bearding" writer is identified by Frederick Arner as Col. William H. Armstrong, 129th Pennsylvania) relates how Humphreys upbraided a lieutenant in tardily 1862 for not knowing his concern in company drill, and so the general insisted on bringing his prey before a board of examination to prove (or, as Humphreys would take it, disprove) the lieutenant'southward competence. "In the course of it," Armstrong wrote, "the Lieutenant said that 'he'd be d---d if he came into the ground forces to study tactics; he came to fight.'" [1]
But fighting without training was suicide, and in Earl Hess'south landmark new handling we come to sympathize how professionals like Humphreys, aslope countless amateur officers, cultivated "the best training still to be seen in America's war machine history, applied to a far larger mass of armed men than ever before in North America" (61). Hess rewards readers with a thorough give-and-take of Ceremonious State of war tactics expertly contextualized within the wider western experience. He adds to topics such as the ascent of specialized skirmish techniques, a authentication of French Revolutionary armies described by John Lynn (Hess notes on page 102 that, "In fact, the Ceremonious War saw the all-time examples of effective skirmishing in Western military history," a fair statement that could still raise the ire of some who glorify Napoleon's tirailleur or Wellington'south 95th Rifles). Those interested in Civil War tactical formations volition find in Hess' book not only what a "right-bicycle" movement was, but what its roots were in early modern Europe and how Union and Confederate officers new to uniform instilled its execution into volunteer regiments. All the major considerations in battlefield tactics are here—rates of advance, oblique movements, passage of lines, and many others.
Most of Hess's sources come from a laudable saturation-reading of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, and a majority of those come up from the Western Theater, which is ever a welcome alter in Civil War armed forces history. But his report maintains a broad enough view that he effectively contrasts the Due west from the Virginia Theater at several points. He credits George B. McClellan, for instance, with instituting regular army-wide drill operations in early on 1862 that left Don Carlos Buell'southward Regular army of the Ohio "3 months behind" in tactical capabilities (64).
The most of import contribution Hess makes in Civil War Infantry Tactics is his chapter on preparation, that all-important period betwixt enlistment, with its dramatic rage militaire, and a regiment's first engagement, which holds a drama all its own. The literature on Ceremonious War training remains remarkably scant, despite copious accounts in soldiers' letters and diaries of "sham battles" and the annoying redundancies of drill. For those interested in the institutional history of the The states Army and how it turns recruits into soldiers capable of the sort of slaughter that the Ceremonious War produced, Hess' volume will remain a bookshelf staple for years to come up.
Boosted areas remain available for investigation, including the connections betwixt tactical training and manpower policy in the war. Hess notes that in late 1864, Union Fifth Corps commander Gouverneur Warren instituted review boards like Humphreys' to motivate "refresher courses" in tactical articulation. Simply these were necessary because of the unprecedented losses of the Overland and Petersburg Campaigns, coupled with the army's constant reenlistment issues from belatedly 1863 to mid-1864. Collectively, they had drained the Army of the Potomac of its pool of trained soldiers which, consequently, hampered its institutional retentivity and combat effectiveness. Also worth a closer glance is how white soldiers who earned new shoulder straps tackled the problems of small-unit of measurement command as line officers in the The states Colored Troops.
Civil War Infantry Tactics builds on a critical mass of literature and still still manages to transcend it. Paddy Griffith broke interpretive footing with Battle Tactics of the Civil War, which first exposed the rampant assumptions virtually rifle muskets that had injured Civil State of war literature for decades (a boxing flag picked upwards successively by Marker Grimsley, Brent Nosworthy, and to greatest issue by Hess himself). But an undercurrent in Griffith's work is that the Civil War was a Napoleonic conflict poorly waged by foolish amateurs who should have known their deadly craft amend. In dissimilarity, Hess shows usa that many Ceremonious State of war officers were neither Armstrong's martinets nor Griffith's simpletons. They were amateurs, yes, only critical-thinking amateurs who tackled the bachelor literature on their subject with exactly the sort of voracious enthusiasm one might wait from an American volunteer with a scrap on his shoulder.
Few Civil War historians accept ever given u.s. such insightful analysis of Civil War combat every bit Hess consistently does. Standing on a Civil State of war battleground today, it is often difficult to imagine what the frenzy looked similar every bit skirmish lines divisional over fences, brigades advanced over cornfields and cruel apart, and regiments struck out in double-rank battle line through woodlots roiling with smoke. Thanks to Earl Hess' mastery of Civil State of war tactics, that imagining is at present a little bit easier.
Zachery A. Fry is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at The Ohio State University.
[1] Frederick B. Arner, ed., Ruddy-Tape and Dove-Hole Generals: Andrew A. Humphreys in the Ground forces of the Potomac (Charlottesville, Virginia: Rockbridge Publishing, 1999), 202.
Source: https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/book-shelf/hess-civil-war-infantry-tactics-2015