attending. let's think our speaker one more time. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] you're watching american history tv. 40 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span three. orlow us on twitter information on the schedule and to keep up with the latest his readers. -- latest history news. other david howell talks about civil war era battle type sand formations. he describes what military manuals were used and what changes were adopted over the course of the war.

this was part of the symposium hosted by the emerging civil war log. there is another x or -- expert book magnum opus. those of you who have read the book you know the first two volumes are exhaustive and fantastic. they are so popular that the at lactate or civil war chronicle made him the recipient of the book of the year award. the only author to be select it for that award twice. his third book comes out later year.heer -- this

he is a graduate of the virginia military institute. re-evaluating readers . lots of fantastic things to come . he is here tonight. he will talk about the tax but in order to do that we need to understand how the attacks took place. how does an army operate? to talk a little bit about civil please give him a hearty welcome. thank you for having me. in the next 15 minutes i hope to turn your all into competent division. commanders.

10,000 men from an armed. that is organization and control. you probably heard a lot about civil war attack. you go to battlefield maybe you have seen maria not rude i suspect that most of you have at least witnessed what a civil regiment looked like. men walking shoulder to shoulder walking across the field. i want to get one point that i think is important. in any war in any time weapons dictate tactics. you probably heard that the civil or was fought with modern weapons and antiquated tax or that is not quite true. the civil war is an evolutionary

war in both weapons and the man who employed the weapons learn different methods to fight with. to1861 when the armies went war many of them carried muscle loading muskets at the rate of fire of a muscle loading musket is three rounds a minute the same as it was in the american revolution. it order to mass firepower the armies had to mass men. and controlling the masses became a difficult proposition. in 1861 the united states army of to war a manual called

the -- our revision of the 1830's manual known as parties tack the --hardy's tactics. this was adopted from -- some of the things from the french end up dated some things to make formations move more quickly on but the 1830's, u.s. army manual was a three volume manual. general hearty, soon to be he updated the first two volumes of the manual. war the army went to brigade and divisional commanders were left to rely on the tactics written by winfield

scott. his manual of tactics was from third volume of this three by himself. that is what dictated how he would handle any formations above a regimen. in 1862, the u.s. army revised those tactics. generalow a confederate , always a bad say to be training under the enemies field manual. and also with some experimentation the u.s. army wanted to update hire-level tactics. what today we would call the grand technical level of warfare or perhaps in the 19th century would be called the operational one. the level above the minor tactical level.

let's see. did i do that right? definitely human. here we go. one -- what the difference was. division andr's johnson's division at the top. those are union divisions. this is a modified view of an engagement during the battle of tick among the. devalued --ham's dadtham's division had six five -- five brigades. notice that the union formations are what the military would now call square formations, a brigade of four regiments whatever to regiments in front and two in behind.

the confederates are going into battle using scott's tactics, standard automation which envisioned all the regiments of brigadey all -- of a all lined up. of ader the frontages brigade using the two different formations. this confederate brigade down , his jackson's brigade , is of regiments here facing off against baldwins regiments there. but notice that baldwins frontage, if baldwin was alone, jackson's or gate would extend both his flanks. that is the difference. one johnson's people

would only be able to bring half of the fire hour to bear against jackson's brigade. baldwins formation presents certain advantages that don't necessarily leap out at you. the other factor we are considering when a civil war division goes into battle is control. jackson's line is. this is a line of roughly 400 and 50 yards heard. if you rp waldman -- pete baldwin, you should be perhaps act here but mostly here. if one of your regiments get have a distance of

no more than 100 yards to go to your point of contact. you are in the center of your brigade and you get in gauged out here, you come over here to see what you are going to do, it will be almost 400 yards to the other end of the line. it is young voice control and beyond immediate site. so this is the primary reason why the union are -- army adopts casey's tactics. he can respond more quickly to a crisis. he doesn't have to fight with those for brigades or regiments in that formation. 33rd upe -- bring the here, he could even turn those regiments and turn a flank if he needs to.

it is designed to be a flexible formation. as long as you are not outnumbered and as long as your flanks are some ordered by other states down the line, it's a relatively should hear -- secure foundation -- formation. without that's a more the enemy brings to bear more fire power on you. the differences that a brigade commander has to decide. an interesting note about casey's tack, even though the u.s. army officially adopts this january first 1862, most federal brigades through the war won't really uses formation. first 1862, mostthe army of the cumberland rosecrans and later george thomases army adopts it almost universally.

this is dictated that they would uses foundation -- formation through the war. unlike perhaps today when doctrine filters down more quick 1863, 1860 two and officers who were used to the old ways of writing -- fighting didn't change. it is used intermittent and the other two armies, the army of the potomac and the army of the tennessee. it is the official doctrine, it doesn't mean it gets used that way. talk take a step up and about how division commanders are going to form for battle. this is an early war example and a mid-war example.

to those two formations that i talked about that are primarily brigade level the commander decisions, we have some formations -- to divisional commanders who have to make decisions. trainingived almost no , no instruction and no theory about how to conduct a military operation. job.learned on the they use what they knew. -- will regard is reputed to have created this confederate formation by putting one of his core in the front line. johnsonably know that commanded the army and beaure gard was the command.

he drew up the formation. he put one core in line there and want directly behind it and then the other two core file in in what is known as column brigade. the definitions of column are varied depending on what level of command we are talking about. in a military sense, a column is a series of formation stacked one behind the other. a column of her gate would mean a brigade of infantry in line, all of the brigades in line. and then they would be stacked one behind the other, just like this. me interesting thing to about these two formations, and

this one is harder to see. stonewall jackson did something very similar. blank marchs --flank march. he moved up three divisions and he with them all in line and said what did i do. here we go there with me with my technological skills. deployed aside the road in three divisions. criticized forg this formation. the brigades became intermingled , so badly confused that the dropped the standard formation and each just basically took a sector of the line. a great deal of that confusion has to do with the fact that

this is april 19 -- 1862 on both sides of the line many of the men barely knew how to fire their weapons let alone maneuver and control large formations of troops on the battlefield. in may 1863,ater formations are going to take a long time to deploy. they become intermingled. the attack loses momentum. rearon's last division the division doesn't even get into the fight. they run out of daylight before they can become engaged. these kinds of formations are cumbersome. scotts the way winfield fightingd them to be

when he wrote the manuals in 1830. he envisioned an army of 15000 and. he did not envision armies of 40,000 or 15,000 -- 50,000. country.was a small we had no standing army to speak of your military commanders throughout the war are going to experiment with different formations, how to achieve the maximum degree of control and mass. if youlook at the maps, look at that critical eye towards how they are doing things in begin to the how to pick things out.

antietam, he at adopts a formation where he is going to attack. he brings his divisions onto the battlefield, he has three divisions. he is bringing them onto the battlefield in line first with .edgwick's division is division is supposed to be following. man,umner is an old army to a certain extent he is having trouble visualizing the idea that he commands as many men as he does. he accompanies sedgwick's division in battle and he forgets about his other two divisions. sedgwick's people are heading this way across the map, french is division going this way and

attacking south. and then later his third division under richardson is coming from the sway. sumner has attempted of formation of what we were called but, becauseision, he is too far forward or to involve in what becomes sedgwick battle, he loses control over the other two divisions. so his combat power dissipates. necessarily hurt because israel's division hits the road. it would have been better if all three of sedgwick divisions -- sumners divisions would have been able to act in concert.

this is a variation, but not fully effective. here is another man, daniel he is at cucamonga. men and each .ivision is up three brigades instead of attacking in a column division's first division under breckenridge is lined up here and his second division is up here. they go in side-by-side. thisis the flaw in problem. birthdates go into -- brigades go into action. do they have anybody to help? .hey are supposed to

i have spent most of my time studying braxton and the confederate army of tennessee. you will know that cooperation are largely theoretical in that army. absence might be a better way to put it. hills six or dates have a frontage of more than one mile in width and no reserve. here you will notice the federals are all double lined. cases, the union troops that claiborne's people are attacking our four and six lines deep. they have plenty of reserves and can rotate the troops out when they run out of ammunition and have fresh troops to meet any

attack. failureattack is a through no fault of his own. achieves some local success of the lack of reserves means he cannot exploit the success. , goesnridge is attacked into this open area, turns and goes south about the area that is bear. he is not able to make any further headway. he is ejected by many of those union reserves. this is the fundamental problem , making sure that you have control over your formations as they go into battle, making sure you have

adequate reserves that you can push them forward when it is needed, making sure you have the communications nasa's are two establish when they are needed, if a front-line commander calls for reserves like records did, your upper us on commanders close enough to be able to control the battle and bring the reserves into the fight, it is a constant struggle for all civil war armies. example --e my last what? that map that i just showed you was september 20, the morning of september 20. the last example i think is very interesting, this is the union second core in the wilderness. -- the dawnattack attack.

look at how many adult lines and how much depth. the second core has four divisions. two divisions north of the road and two divisions so of the road one behind the other. troops inrge mass of theory it is well concentrated and some ordered with reserves. but of course they are attacking into the wilderness and even this attack will achieve considerable success against hills core with the chaos of battle and attrition of the terrain will disorder all of the second core divisions. there is more on that story, i'm sure. variations that i ofted to give you some sense how much variation there was in the civil war battle, what the

divisional and core commanders were thinking about as they deployed their troops to how they would use their firepower, how will they maximize. problem that largely frankly,solution and for those of you who are european wars of the 1870's and 1890's, they will experience many of the same problems right on up through world war i. world war i is another interesting war of evolution. we have this popular concept of mens led by donkeys, brave and dull-witted and ineffective commanders. it's the same problem of trying to mass firepower and control

formations in the face of increasing deadly weapons. the world war i it was in has changed because now we have , incrediblyapons more powerful artillery. that will give you a little bit of a taste of what civil or divisional commanders thought about. now you are ready to command a division. any russians? any questions? were there any confederates -- >> not on any formal level that i found. they have their own tactical innovations. but those i merrily come from

the creation and use of the sharpshooter battalions, which is a whole different topic, a fascinating one. it is something that a couple of union commanders want to try but are not allowed to. in 1864, i think the sharpshooter battalions -- not just in northern virginia, they are in the western armies to. they are becoming more and more effective on the battlefield. >> what was the effect of artillery on these formations d?at you outlined caller firing on alery

scott's outlined with all the hasments in a single line half as many targets in terms of penetration. close to civil war artillery within the last couple hundred yards, artillery's effect was largely one of morale and disruption, unless you have something like a mile of open ground to costs -- crossed and you are attempting parade formation. under ideal conditions, artillery dominates the battlefield. most of it is not an ideal conditions. most of what i've shown you is heavily wooded terrain. artillery at close quarters can be deadly. i'm sure we all understand and are familiar with the effect of

canisters and double canister. but most of what artillery fires is show --shell. and you need to get the range ready precise. it can be difficult. >> i've been fascinated by the location issue. also the battles were general --ike to exhaust the troops , can youd of the war have good replacements without giving up land? are describing passage of

lines. i do think that certain armies are better than others. i think the army and cumberland, because they used casey's formation and regularly drilled the location of regiments in and out of formations is very good. they do it all the time in the battles of stone river , and almost never have tactical problems fall into disarray or lose ground. there are exceptions. if they get sick or get flanked it is a problem, but then it would be a problem anyway. -- it all depends on the drill. and how realistic the drills are. pick too much on the army of the potomac, or the confederate armies, but i don't

-- in the summer of 1862, the union and confederate armies in the east are fighting all the time. they don't have the luxury of time the same way that the army in 1863 andd had june when they kick up their 1863,major offensive of they have almost six months where they do nothing but drill. they learn the new drill manuals and the steps from the bottom up and become proficient at it. some armies do it better than others. >> thank you. [applause]