we can never forget that. >> thank you, general. please join me in thanking him. [ applause ] coming up -- programs from the emerging civil war blogs conference on great attacks of the civil war. next, a look at civil war battle tactics. then historians examine key battles. the 1863 battle of chickamauga. after that, the battle of the wilderness in northern virginia. and later, the battle of spotsylvania courthouse. next author david powell talks about civil war battle tactics and formations.

he describes the military manuals used and changes adopted over the course of the war. this 30-minute program was part of an event hosted by the emerging civil war blog. >> i'm pleased to begin this evening with my friend dave powell. dave is another expert on chickamauga. in fact, he's just putting on the finishing touches of his three-volume magnum opusabout the battle of chickamauga. the definitive work on the battle. for those of you who have read the books, you know those first two volumes are exhaustive and fantastic. they are a must for every single civil war library. in fact, they are so popular the atlanta civil war roundtable has chosen dave not once but twice as the recipient of their book of the year award. the only author to be selected for that award twice. his third book coming out later

this year and then he's turning his attention to the battle of chattanooga for, the merging civil war series and then going to the battle of newmark. dave is a graduate of the virginia military institute and events at new market hold a near and dear place in his heart. he'll be challenging readers to rethink what it was all about. so lots of fantastic things to come from my friend dave. he's here tonight to set the table. we're talking about the great attacks. but in order to do that, we really need to understand how attacks take place. how does the infantry move and maneuver? how do these attacks get set up? how does an army operate? so to talk a little bit about civil war tactics, i'm pleased to present by friend dave powell. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you for having me. in the next 15 minutes, i hope

to turn you all into competent brigade and division commanders. you will have had more instruction than many of the actual men did. so great attacks. what separates 10,000 men from an armed mob. and that is organization and control. now you probably heard a lot about civil war tactics. people write about it when you go to battlefields. maybe you've seen re-enactments. i suspect most of you have at least witnessed what a civil war regiment looks like. two ranks, close shoulder to shoulder marching across the field. i won't spend too much time on regimental tactics but want to hit one point that is important. in any war in any time, weapons dictate tactics. you've probably heard that the civil war was fought with modern

weapons and antiquated tactics. and that's not quite true. the civil war is actually an evolutionary war as both weapons and the men who employ those weapons learn different methods to fight with. in 1861, when the armies went to war, many of them carried muzzle loading muskets. the rate of fifr a muzzle loading musket is three rounds a minute. the same as it was roughly in the american revolution or the napoleonic wars. some variation of that, but that's a good average. so in order to mass firepower, the armies had to mass men. and controlling those masses of men was -- became a difficult proposition on the civil war battlefield, just as in earlier times. in 1861, the united states army

went to war with a manual called, well, a revision of their 1830s manual. it was commonly known as hardy's tactics. william j. hardy revised the standard u.s. army infantry tactics in the 1850s. adopted some things from the french and updated some things to make formations move more quickly on the battlefield primarily. but the 1830s u.s. army manual was a three-volume manual and general hardy, soon to be general hardy in 1861, anyway. hardy only updated the first two volumes of that manual. when the army went to war

brigade and divisional commanders were left to rely on the tactics written by wynnefield scott. scott's tactic was the third volume of this three-volume set and that's what dictated how you would handle any formations above a regimen ment. the u.s. army revised those tactics. hardy was now a confederate general. always a bad thing to have -- to be training under the enemy's field manual and also with some experimentation, the u.s. army wanted to update higher level tactics. what today we would call the grand tactic level of warfare or perhaps in the 19th century what would be considered the operational mark. the level above the regimental

or minor tactical level. let's see. did i do that right? it's definitely on. there we go. so this is what the primary difference was. this is two union infantry divisions. those are union divisions. this is a modified view of an engagement during the battle of chickamauga. and down below that, cheatham's division of confederate soldiers with five brigades. this is six union brigades facing off against five confederate brigades. but notice that the union formations are what the military would now call square formations

with a brigade of four regiments would have two regiments in front and two regiments behind. the confederates are going into battle using scott's tactics. scott's fairly standard formation, which envisioned all the reg im iments of a briggade lined up in a single front line. consider for a minute the frontages of a brigade using the two different formations. this confederate brigade down here, jackson's brigade, has -- is a line of regiments here from the first georgia to the second georgia sharpshooters. he's facing off against baldwin's four regiments there. but notice that baldwin's frontage, if baldwin were just alone here, jackson's brigade would extend past both his

flanks. that's the key difference. one on one, johnson's people would only be able to bring half the firepower to bear against jackson's brigade. but as the -- but baldwin's formation, casey's formation possesses certain advantages that don't necessarily leap out at you at first glance. the other factor that we have to consider when a civil war brigade or civil war division goes into battle is control. look at where -- look at where jackson's line is. this is a line of roughly 450 yards. this line, the first ohio and fifth kentucky is approximately 200 yards. so if you're filing with p. baldwin, you are supposed to be where that red dot is with that

brigade, back here but mostly here and that way if one of your regiments gets engaged you have a distance of no more than 100 yards to go to your point of contact. suppose you're jackson in the center of your brigade. you get engaged out here. you come over here to see what you're going to do. it will be almost 400 yards to the other end of your line. it's beyond voice control. and it's beyond immediate sight. so this is the primary reason why the union army adopts casey's tactics because it gives the brigade commander greater control and flexibility. he can respond more quickly to a crisis. he doesn't have to fight with those four brigades or those four regiments in this formation. he can bring the 33rd ohio up here. he can bring the 6th indiana up here. he can even turn those two

regiments and form a flank if he needs to. it's designed to be a quick response flexible formation. and as long as you are not outnumbered or -- as long as your flanks are reported by other brigades down the line, it's a relatively secure formation. without the support, of course, the enemy brings to bear more firepower on you. those are essentially the differences that a brigade commander has to decide. and an interesting note about casey's tactics, even though the u.s. army officially adopts this formation on january 1st, 1863 -- or 1862, most federal brigades through the war won't really use this formation. the army of the cumberland, r e

adopts it almost universally. an order issued by the original dictates they'll use this formation and fight this formation pretty much through the war. but unlike perhaps today when doctrine filters down more quickly, in 1862, 1863, officers who were used to the old ways of fighting didn't necessarily change very easily. and so its use is very intermittent in the other two armies. the army potomac and the army of the tennessee. so even though it's the official doctrine, that doesn't mean it gets used that way. so let's take a step up and talk about how division commanders are going to form for battle.

this is an early war example and a mid-war example. in addition to those two formations that are primarily brigade commander level decisions, we have some formations -- we have some divisional commanders who now have to make some decisions. divisional and corps commanders received almost no training, no instruction, no theory about how to conduct military operations. they learned on the job. they used what they knew. beaurega beauregard, the battle of shiloh, is reputed to have created this confederate formation by putting one of his corps in the front line. i should -- you probably no

albert sydney johnson commanded the army at shiloh. beauregard in second command. beauregard devised the battle order and drew up the formation. he put one corps in line there. one corps in line directly behind it and the other two corps filed in in what is known as column of brigade. the definition of column vary depending on what level of command we're talking about. and the military sense, a column is a series of formations stacked one behind the other, whether they are packed tight or spread out, what was considered a deployable difference so they could move more flexibly. so a column of brigade, for instance, would mean infantry in line. all the regiments in line and each brigade in that division would be stacked one behind the other just like this depth of

column. the interesting thing to me about these two formations sort of, and this one admittedly is harder to see, but stonewall jackson did something very similar. on his famous march that unleashed his attack on the confessed r-- confessed ra confederates may 2nd. bear with me with my technological skills. he moved up the center road and deployed astride the road and basically three divisional lines. beauregard ends up being heavily criticized after the battle of shiloh for this formation as the lines advanced, the brigades became intermingled. ultimately so badly confused that the commanders didn't -- they dropped the standard formation of commanding corps

and divisions and each took a sector of the line. now a great deal of that confusion has to deal with the fact this is april of 1862 and on both sides of the line, the union and confederate, many of the men involved in this battle barely knew how to fire their weapons, let alone maneuver and control large formations of troops on the battlefield. but even a year later, in may of 1863, jackson's formations are going to take a long time to deploy. he's moving through wooded terrain. they become intermingled. they become the attack loses momentum as the commands lose organization. so much so that jackson's last division, the rear most division doesn't even really get into the fight. they run out of daylight before they can become engaged. these kinds of formations are extremely cumbersome.

this is the way wynnefield scott envisioned these people to be fighting when writing those manuals in 1829, 1830. but winfield scott envisioned an army of 15,000 men, not 40,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 men. the united states was a small country. we had no standing army to really speak of. n the idea of a large scale mass army was sort of incomprehensible to the war department of the time. so military commanders throughout the war, especially at the division and corps level are going to experiment with different formations how to achieve the maximum degree of control and mass. and it's going to be -- if you look at the maps, if you look with that critical eye towards

how they're doing things, you begin to see this and see how to pick things out. look at sumner's corps at antidem. he he adopts a corps where he's going to attack. brings his divisions on to the battle field. he's going to bring them on the field first was sedgwick's. first was sedgwick's division. and then french's division is supposed to be following. but sumner -- i think to a certain extent, he's also having trouble visualizing the idea he commands as many men as he does. he forgets about his other two

division divisions. so sedgwick's people go this way across this map. they end up attacking south and later, i don't show this on the map but third division under israel richardson is going to come from this way. sumner has attempted a formation of what we would call column of division or what the textbooks call column of division, but because perhaps because he's too far forward, perhaps because he's too involved in what becomes sedgwick's battle, he loses control of the other two divisions and so his striking power, his combat power dissipates across a broad confederate front. now that doesn't necessarily hurt the federals, especially because israel richardson's division hits the sunken road and ultimately will take that position. but it would have been much better had all three of

sedgwick's divisions -- or sumner's divisions been able to act in concert. so this is a variation, but it's still not fully effective. here's another map. daniel harvey hill who you probably are more familiar with from his antietam experience. here he is at chickamauga. a corps of roughly 10,000 men and each division is of three brigades. instead of attacking in a column formation, his first division under breckenridge is lined up here and his second division under claiborne is lined up here. they go in side by side. here's the fundamental flaw in this problem or this formation is that all six brigades go into action. and do they have any reserves?

anybody who can come help them if they get into trouble? to a certain extent they're supposed to, but i have spent most of my time studying braxton bragg and the confessed rat army of tennessee. and you'll know that cooperation and coordination are largely theoretical in that army. noted more by their absence might be the way to put it. so d.h. hill's six brigades have a frontage of more than a mile in width and no reserves and they're hitting a heavily defended. and here you'll notice the federals are all double lines. fighting the army of the cumberland. fight with casey's tactics. in some cases the union troops that claiborne's people are attacking are four and six lines deep. so they have plenty of reserves.

plenty of ability to rotate troops into the front or out of the front when they run out of ammunition. claiborne's attack is a failure, through no real fault of his own. he's attacking a well-defended, fortified position. breckenridge achieves some local success but that lack of reserves means he's never able to exploit that success. and so breckenridge's attack -- if you'll follow the pointer. breckenridge's attack goes into this open area. turns and goes south somewhat into the union rear down about the area where it says baird. but what happens? he's not able to make any further headway. he's ejected by many of those union reserves. this is the fundamental problem of attacking. making sure that you have

control over your formations as they go into battle. making sure you have adequate reserves close enough that you can push them forward when they're needed. making sure that you have the communications necessary to establish when they're needed. if a front line commander calls for reserves like breckenridge did, is your upper echelon commander the next man up the food chain close enough to be able to control the battle and bring those reserves into the fight? it's a constant struggle for all civil war armies. we'll move to probably my last example. what? that particular map that i just showed you was september 20th. the morning of september 20th. the last example i think is very interesting. this is the union second corps on in the wilderness.

this is the attack on the second day in the battle of the wilderness. the dawn attack. look at how many battle lines. look how much depth. second corps has four divisions. it has two divisions north of the road. one behind the other and two divisions south of the road. one behind the other. so it's a large mass of troops. in theory, it's well concentrated, well supported with reserves. but, of course, they are attacking into the wilderness. and even this attack, it will achieve considerable success against a.p. hill's corps but the chaos of battle and attrition of the terrain will ultimately disorder all of the second corps divisions. there's more on that story, i'm sure. so these are variations that i

wanted to show you, give you some sense of how much variation there wiz in a civil war battle. what the divisional and brigade and corps commanders were thinking about as they deployed their troops. how were they going to use their firepower. how were they going to maximize results. it's a solution that -- or it's a problem that largely eludes solution and, frankly, for those of you familiar with european -- the european wars of the 1870s and 1890s, 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 concept, this popular concept of lions led by donkeys. brave men and incredibly dul

dull-witted and ineffective commanders, but it's the same problem of trying to amass firepower and control formations in the face of increasing -- or increasingly deadly weapons. the world war i equation has changed radically because now we have automatic weapons, magazine-fed rifles and an incredibly more powerful artillery. but that will give you a little bit of a taste of what civil war divisional commanders are about. now you're all ready to command, i assume. >> if you have some questions for dave? anybody have some questions? i'm going to ask, speak directly into the microphone because they are -- >> were there any confederates who tried to adopt something like --

>> not on any formal level that i found. the confederates have their own interesting tactical innovations but those primarily come from the creation and use of the sharpshooter battalions which is a whole different topic. it's a fascinating one. but -- and it's something that a couple of union commanders want to try but aren't allowed to. by 1864, i think the confederate sharpshooter battalions, and they're not just in the army of northern virginia. in the western armies, too, but they are becoming more and more effective on the battlefield, sometimes startlingly so. >> what would the artillery have on these two full [ inaudible ] that you described?

>> the artillery firing at a traditional battle line, a scott's battle line with all the regiments in a single line, of course, it has half as many targets in terms of penetration. but until you got very close to civil war artillery within the last couple of hundred yards, artillery's effect was largely one of morale and disruption unless you've got something like a mile of open ground to cross and attempt to move in parade formation. under ideal conditions, artillery will dominate the battlefield. most civil war battlefields are not in ideal conditions. virtually everything i've shown you, for instance is all heavily wooded terrain, just to give you an example.

artillery close quarters can be deadly. i'm pretty sure we all understand or are familiar with the effects of canister and even double canister. but most of what artillery fires is shell and you need to get the range pretty precise with shell in order for it to maximize effectiveness. it can be difficult. >> one more question. >> dave, i've always been fascinated with the rotation issue with tactics. you have battles where generals try to pull out exhausted troop troops. jackson tries it on his first and second line. even at first manassas. by the end of the war, could you really have good replacement without giving up ground?

>> the -- essentially the problem you're talking about is described as passage of lines. actually, i do think that certain armies are much better at it than others. i think the army of the cumberland, because they use this casey's formation and regularly drild in the formation of regiments in and out of formations was very good at it. they did it all the time in the battles at stone's river, chickamauga. they do it very frequently. and almost never have tactical problems. never fall into disarray or lose ground. there are exceptions. if they get hit right in the middle of a passage of lines, get flarchg nked, it's a proble. then it would be a problem anyway. other armies, it all depends on the drill and the real -- how realistic