INTRODUCTION
After the Second World War, many American Civil War historians came to argue that the Civil War was the first modern/total war. As summarized by Mark Grimsley, in The American Civil War: a Handbook of Literature and Research this theme includes a number of contentions. Troops armed with breech-loading infantry arms and artillery, primitive machine guns, and ironclad ships, early balloons, and trench warfare in the Civil War are cited as evidence. The use of railroads, steam ships and riverboats, and telegraph are said to have affected strategy. New mass armies of volunteers and emphasis on industrial capacity influenced battles and campaigns. The status of civilians as legitimate targets of armies and strategy may be the most significant aspect making the American Civil War the first modern and total of the new period of war, so the argument goes.1
Although a common theme in American Civil War historiography, recent scholarship has begun to question this interpretation. The idea of modern war is an imprecise term. Any war is modern for its own time. The reference to “modern war” is more reasonably meant to distinguish twentieth-century industrial-age war from previous periods. The question should be at what point was truly “modern” industrial war achieved as opposed to simply partial development. The term “Total War” is properly and clearly a twentieth-century term and phenomena that is not applicable to campaign conditions prior to 1900.2
This is truly no mere semantic exercise when actual military practice and economic and social conditions are objectively considered. Not only does such an appraisal have importance for the status of the American Civil War in military history but also for analysis of the war itself. Many writers have pronounced one commander as superior over another based on a perceived greater or lesser adaptation to so called “modern” principles as opposed to traditional ones.3 Should it prove that the Civil War was in fact a traditional or at best a transitional war, not modern or total, first or not; then such evaluations and in fact any analysis based on the Modern/Total war thesis are largely invalidated. Much beyond a mere difference in terminology, to establish the context of the war in terms of military history would seem to be a prerequisite for any sound treatment of the war itself either in part or in whole.4
According to the Modern/Total war thesis, the American Civil War represents an important milestone in Military History. What is more, the American Civil War exhibited marked differences with previous wars making it subject to new principles and conditions as opposed to warfare as practiced in previous periods.5 An alternative interpretation finds that new conditions were realized with the Napoleonic wars and any basic change occurred well before the American Civil War.6 Another view is that real Modern/Total war conditions can not be found prior to 1900.7
One interpretation is that the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars represent a major change in warfare because of the rise in mass armies and modern nationalism as a political force. This interpretation sees the American Civil War as a continuation of a trend already established. The Civil War advanced the trend through progress in technology and economy. However, it took further advances in the decades after the Civil War to complete the full change from pre-modern to Modern/Total war. This places the American Civil War in the context of a transition between two established periods of warfare.8
Two important points made by Modern/Total war historians are that development of the rifled musket in the mid-1800’s and increased reliance on hasty field entrenchments made by Civil War troops set a new tone in warfare.9 Other points are that new steam powered trains and ships created logistical changes resulting in larger armies and organizational adaptations.10 Indeed, the effects of the rifled musket represent probably the most powerful and common argument to support the Modern/Total war theme. The much longer range of the new rifled musket in the hands of trained soldiers is said to have created wholly new battlefield conditions making frontal attacks by large bodies of troops in close formations almost suicidal. According to this interpretation, the mere use of the new weapon made the Civil War modern. However, evidence that there was any corresponding change in tactics or other aspects of organization and strategy seems lacking and largely conflicts with the Modern/Total war thesis.11 Many of the other points frequently cited by Modern/Total war proponents seem to be made in ignorance of history outside the United States. The reliance on entrenchments is compared to the trench warfare of World War One to establish the modern context of the Civil War. However, this is done with out reference to the use of field entrenchments in other wars like the Thirty-Years War and the Italian Wars of the 16th century.12 It also seems to be made in ignorance of the fact that German, British and French doctrine prior to World War One rejected substantial reliance on entrenchments.13
The Civil war is frequently cited as the first use of railroads in war. Here again we find ignorance or at least careless scholarship when writers fail to recognize several important applications of rail transport in actual military operations that predate the campaigns of 1861-65.14 Some writers modify this claim as the “first important” or “first significant” use of railroads. This raises the prospect that Civil War railroads exhibited some substantial and qualitative advance in logistical application. Yet, its apparent that the real leap in logistical rail application came after the Civil War during the Franco-Prussian War, and again in the First World War, where both the scale and precision of operations made quantum leaps forward.15 Here again we can only find that the applications of railroads in the Civil War represented an incremental transition and not a legitimate milestone.
Another critical element in the Modern/Total war theme is that violence against civilians, industry, and agriculture was first raised to the level of a Modern/Total war. This seems as perhaps the most careless point and most difficult to accept; yet among the most common and apparently sincere. A broad and objective history of war has clearly established that violence against civilians, industry, and agriculture has been a frequent and profound aspect of warfare since the earliest of times. Further, that during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in Europe the scale and brutality of war on civilians was at least as great and often more systematic than that found in the Civil War. Thus, it’s difficult to see how a serious argument is made that violence against civilians ranks the Civil War as a watershed, first Modern/Total war event.16
In the following analysis we will discuss several of the major points cited by Modern/Total war writers as evidence supporting Modern war thesis.
By the 1600’s weapons, tactics and organization had been established on modern lines that continued with modifications well into the 1900’s.17 The watershed of modern military doctrine was nearer 1600 than 1850 While the Crimean War showed some of the trends of the 1900’s, its character was far closer to the blackpowder art of war of the Napoleonic era. Battles were manageable by a commander who could control the whole battlefield. Combat had not changed much from earlier times. The American Civil War shared this same dual feature of old style battles laced with a few improved weapons and first generation machines. Through the 1860’s, warfare continued with the tactics, weapons, troops, training, and equipment that had been used fifty years earlier at Waterloo.18 Gunners from Napoleon’s Imperial Guard would have been quite comfortable handling the artillery at the battle of Solerfino or Gettysburg. One of les grognards of the Guard would have handled the Springfield or Enfield rifled muskets as easily as Billie Yank or Johnny Reb. In contrast Union or Confederate infantry men would have found the Mausers, Maxims, trench mortar and rapid fire 75’s a novel mixture of deadly instruments.19
In the Franco-Prussian war it was the firepower of the new artillery that was most effective, rifles were only secondary in effectiveness. Both Prussian and French guns were the decisive element in many combats.20 The experience in the Prussian-Austrian war of 1866 taught commanders that close formations were still needed to control and maintain the momentum of an attack. Allowing columns to mingle with open formations was recognized as a serious mistake because the columns either became disrupted or lost the impetus to continue forward. Following the war Prussian tactical doctrine was again based on the close column formation. In the same period the French army also continued with the battalion column as the basic tactical formation. In spite of the effectiveness of new weapons, commanders could not accept the need for a tactical system where junior officers would become the critical combat actors. Not until the Hutier tactics of 1917 were the facts accepted.21 The success of these new tactics, where open formations were combined with fire and movement at the lowest tactical level, required changes far beyond weapons technology. Commanders and their armies were simply not capable of these changes consistently and on a large scale without basic social and institutional development. What may appear to historians to be a subtle modification in fact required substantial and fundamental changes in doctrine and training of company officers and general staffs.22
NOTES PART 1
PART 2 - TACTICS
PART 3 - ENTRENCHMENTS
PART 4 - BOER TACTICS
PART 5 - RAILROADS
PART 6 - CIVILIAN VIOLENCE
PART 7 - DRAFT
List of figures and tables
WORKS CITED
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