1 Grimsley, Mark, “Modern War/Total War” in The American Civil War: a Handbook of Literature and Research, ed. Steven Woodworth, 1996 Westport, Conn. Greenwood Press p379
2 Neely, Mark, “Was the Civil War a Total War?” in On the Road to Total War: the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871, ed. Stig Forster and Jorg Nagler, 1997 Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press p29
3 Williams, T. Harry, Lincoln and His Generals, 1952 New York Knopf p.313
4 Neely p35
5 R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy; The Encyclopedia of Military History, 2d ed., 1986 New York Harper & Row p730 “in this period (1800-1850) military history crossed the second of its three great watersheds. The phenomenon would be repeated again in the 20th century.”
6 Dupuy and Dupuy p522 “In the 17th century the transition… to the modern era was completed insofar as military weapons, tactics, and organization were concerned.” “Infantry was fighting in the linear formations that would persist into the 20th century.”
7 Martin van Creveld; Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, 1977 Cambridge, UK, pp284 P109-111 massive expansion of European population and economy from 1871 to 1914 set the stage for the first truly “modern war” in 1914 in contrast to the pre-modern 1870 carnage.
8 Walter Millis; Arms and Men: A Study in American Military History; 1956 New York G.P. Putnam’s Sons p122 “The Civil War has often been considered the ‘first modern’ war because of the number of ‘firsts’ associated, not always accurately, with it.” “But in spite of all such innovations the great struggle was less ‘modern’ than transitional.”
9 Dupuy, T. N., Col.; Numbers Predictions and War; 1979 Indianapolis Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc. p8 “The costliness of frontal attacks against a combined arms team of infantry and artillery, or against infantry marksmen behind field fortifications, was clearly demonstrated in such battles as Bunker Hill and New Orleans. At the same time, it was amply demonstrated that well-trained, well-led, determined troops could overcome such defensive firepower if their commanders were willing to pay the cost. Bunker Hill was also an example of this, as were the Napoleonic victories of Wargram and Borodino, and our victory over the Mexicans at Monterey.”
10 Millis p73 “The armies which went to Mexico in 1846 or to the Crimea in 1854 were in some respects closer to those of 1775 than they were to the great hosts of 1814 and 1815.”
11 Dupuy, T. N., Col.; The Evolution Of Weapons and Warfare; 1980 Indianapolis Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc. p202 “Nothing in the organization or employment of the combined-arms division during this period (1845-1878) had any appreciable effect on the conduct of war, strategically or tactically.” Major revolution in weapons technology, “not organizational or tactical.” “Close order linear tactics persisted.”
12 Hans Delbruck, History of the Art of War: Vol. 4 The Dawn of Modern Warfare, 1985 Lincoln, Neb., Univ. of Neb. Press24 p297 field fortifications “The first truly modern battle, Cerignola (1503)… took place around a wall and ditch that the Spaniards had erected in great haste before their front. From that time on, until the end of the ancient regime, field fortifications played their role, often a decisive one.”
13 Wagner, Arthur L.; Organization and Tactics; 1897 2d ed. Kansas City Hudson-Kimberly p177 “Great as the use of entrenchments will be in the future, they must not be invariably relied upon. The morale of the men will inevitably suffer if they be allowed to entrench at every step and under all circumstances, and entrenchment may thus prove a curse rather than a blessing.”
14 van Creveld, Martin; Technology and War: from 2000 B.C. to Present, 1987 New York Macmillan p158 “first recorded military railroad movement 1846 Prussian troops moved to suppress uprising in Baden.” and Byron Farwell, The Encyclopedia of 19th Century Land Warfare, 2001 New York, W.W. Norton & Co. p677 1848 Austrians were able to move a corps of 12,000 men with horses, guns etc. 156 miles to Cracow, Poland.
15 Tuchman, Barbara; The Guns of August, 1962 New York Macmillan p75 “one army corps alone – out of the total of 40 in the German forces – required a total of 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies.”
16 Dupuy and Dupuy p9 “calculated policy of terror against civilians dates from Assyrian era in 700 BC.” and Victor Davis Hanson; The Western Way of War, 1989 New York Knopf p3 “nearly all of our ancient literary sources make it clear that the Greeks themselves believed that ravaging of grain fields, orchards and vineyards was a serious affair.” (650-338 BC)
17 Dupuy and Dupuy p522 “In the 17th century the transition… to the modern era was completed insofar as military weapons, tactics, and organization were concerned.” “Infantry was fighting in the linear formations that would persist into the 20th century.”
18 Trevor Royle; Crimea: The Great Crimean War 1854-1856, 2000 New York Palgrave Macmillan p514 “its tactics were little different from those employed in the Napoleonic wars, the fronts were small and manageable and senior commanders fought in the same claustrophobic front lines as their men, just as Wellington and his generals had done. And yet, with its technological innovations and the changing pace of warfare, it also foreshadowed the trenches and high velocity weapons of the First World War.”
19 Royle p356 “however, in most respects little had changed from the wars fought by Wellington.”
20 Michael Howard; the Franco-Prussian War; 1961 London Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd.1961 London Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. p118 “At Froeschwiller, when Ducrot’s and Raoult’s divisions eventually collapsed after nearly eight hours of fighting, they were broken not by German infantry but by German guns.”
21 Howard p7 “in the Prussian army the tendency shown in 1866 for the supporting columns to melt altogether in to the skirmishing line was considered to be a grave error, and at subsequent maneuvers close formations were again restored. In the French army, the battalion column remained the rule until 1869. Field and general officers could not accept it as inevitable that in the age of rifled weapons the conduct of a battle devolved on the subaltern and the non-commissioned officers. The twentieth century was to be well advanced before they did.”
22 Howard P335 “None the less the Guard counter attacked on the early morning of 30th October, after a day of shellfire; and their attack is a small landmark in military history in that for the first time the problems of infantry advancing against a position defended with breech-loading rifles had been carefully and successfully work out. The company columns breaking up into a skirmishing line had given way to loose lines of widely spaced men, making all possible use of cover, offering small targets and advancing by bounds, supporting on another by fire – tactics which the British army was to learn expensively from the Boers thirty years later, and the German and French armies were to have entirely forgotten before 1914.”