he also discusses how weaponry impacted the soldier experience and compares it to later wars. this is one hour, 15 minutes. speaker is not a stranger to the historical park. earl j. hess has been with us before. i thought that maybe with rob's presentation i would agree earl's books up to show them, but i would need an army of assistance to do that. earl j. hess is not only one of the best historians working today and one of the most prolific. i'm not sure how he does it, it seems he is able to give us a months andery 12-18 they are all good ones. and he does have a real job in

addition to writing books. stewart w. mccelland chair at his university. techs also taught at texas university after receiving his phd at purdue university. he is a midwesterner, but has worked in the south for many years. i cannot go through the long list of books he has produced. i was trying to characterize high i would describe his work as a wonderful historian of the western theater of the civil war, in my view, he has written the best overall book on the petersburg campaign ever produced. onhas done work fortifications in the eastern theater, he has a fantastic book

on the overview of the civil war in the west, it is a great book. and he has written several books on individual battles of the atlantic campaign. his most recent work, it came out just a few months ago, i highly recommend to you. it is a military biography. if i had been thinking, i would've invited him to come next year to talk about generals we love to hate. to come i invited earl and talk about a book on civil that one ay tactics prestigious $50,000 tom watson brown award on the best book on civil war history written that year. it is with pleasure, and thanks for his help on our own work on

petersburg, dr. earl j. hess. [applause] earl: thank you. thank you for that kind introduction. there we go. hopefully, you can hear me. microphones on me. if you cannot hear me, raise your hand. will asked me to talk about infantry tactics. in organizing my thoughts it came to me that it is impossible to do this without talking about weapons, also. hysteroscopy.nto --this is referring to other historians have written about a particular topic. we need to understand weapons, tactics, etc. we will try to do that as we go along. you need to understand all of

these things, the biggest story in terms of weapons is the story of the rifle musket, introduced in the 1850's with a longer-range -- 500 yards, compared to the smoothbore musket which was previously used and had about a range of 100 yards. forief overview of tactics you. northern and southern armies used the same formations and maneuvers, inherited from europe, it called the linear tactical system, because it organize the men in linear formations. meaning one line behind the other and each line was actually called a rank in the manuals. and 2 rings formed a battle line. this is a nice photograph of company e. and this obviously means that infantrythin and long formations, a regimen of 500 men

for example would have 200 and 50 of them -- 250 of them in the first rank and in the second-ranked. it would be 125 yards wide and three feet deep. by the way,ssing, one level of the history of infantry tactics. what historians have called small unit tactics, and have called it lower tactics or minor tactics. i prefer to call them binary tactics, i think they are well expressed on what they are, they are the foundation of the tactical story. you might have heard the phrase grand tactics, that is a higher level. it revolves around the question, should i attack or act on defense, that is a higher level rather than the lower level. the lower level is maneuvers and formation. you can express it this way. the basic formations in the

primary, linear tactics are based on a combination of lines and columns. you remember that two ranks constitute a battle line. and more than two ranks would make it difficult for the men in the third, fourth and fifth ranks to fire weapons without endangering the men in raising number one and two. in the old days, the 1600s, you do see european armies with 4, 5 ranks in them. in americans preferred to ranks. it is a relatively recent development by the time of the civil war. civil war armies normally did fight on the battlefield in lines in order to maximize firepower. but sometimes columns were used. in the infantry tactical manuals, which we will talk about later, went through space and time and effort to describe what a column is in the civil

war and they basically evolved into two major categories, simple and double columns. remember, whether it is simple or double, a column is defined as being consistent of battle lines that are stacked one behind the other. and the length and width of those columns can be altered, according to a different formula. a simple column, which is an illustration, a simple column in age of 10 companies, one behind the other. they could be at either closed distance or full distance or half distance. it would take me 20 minutes to explain those terms, but i will not do it unless somebody asks me at the end of the presentation. i am happy to do it, but you cannot do it in one sentence. that is my point. a simple column basically is one companywide, as you can see.

and it can battle lines deep. and you can see the illustrations of the distances there. double column, before we do that, this is a nice photograph of the simple column earlier in the civil war. if you can see that my hope everybody can, you can see it is a simple column, one behind the other. it is not closed distance, this is half distance. if anybody's interested in that. and double column, it is basically with a two company front instead of a one company front. five battle lines in the deep. and closed the distance. a nice photograph of the second rhode island in a double column in the early civil war. if you can understand that, it looks more formidable if you are on the receiving end.

and less is wider deep. these people look been, as close as they can be. now, you may wonder, what is the difference between these two things? columns were rarely used to attack the enemy, even though in literature you can often see descriptions like the columns advanced, but nine times out of 10 they were not in column formation but in line formation. you can easily see it i think, that the guys in the back ranks cannot use their weapons without hurting their own people in front. if you have a column, you cannot maximize firepower, only those first two ranks can fire. and that puts them at a disadvantage. normally speaking, the column was easier to manage by the officers. they could march the guys with greater control until the column

hit an obstruction, a ditch, a fence, or it got a lot of fire. what happened, the first two ranks stopped and everybody shoved over them. what happened was, when a column hit something, it went into chaos pretty quickly. another reason not to use them for tactical formations. i found an illustration of this, and somebody said after the attack on june 20 7, 8064, attacked in a column and it did not work. it has the appearance of strength and power without the substance. it looks good and threatening, but it does not work terribly well. the lines were more resilient. it making difficult to understand, because a line as wind, but they tend to be more resilient and they tend to be more difficult for the defender to hit with fire.

look at this column, if you deliver fire on this column, you are liable to hit somebody in that formation. all of it means that the tactical manuals new this, they said it is dangerous to use columns on attack, you should use lines whenever possible. mean the does not columns were useless, they were actually used a lot during the civil war, not for attacking, but for holding units near the point of attack. because if you need to move the guys at half-mile this way or that way, collins are the best way -- columns are the best way to do that. in the civiln used war, but when you get to the point of attack, you use the lines nine times out of 10. sometimes you see a mix of the columns and lines in battle. that is common. these are three examples, the brigade at cold harbor on june

1, 1864. interesting, the formations where the columns are in front and the line is behind. on the top, the 54th massachusetts, the brigade on july 18, 1963. ,his is in a column of wings actually, and the rest of the brigade is behind. and in the middle, november 23, 1863. it is a complex formation of lines in front and columns behind it, and those skirmishes in front of the lines. you can see a lot of illustrations of this for the civil war. abouters -- i talked formations, so why don't we talk about maneuvers that it takes the soldier from one formation to another. and it moves the unit from one place to another on the battlefield. and you know, if you are interested in the details, please read my book. i spent a lot of time digging

into this and explaining it, so if you're interested that i can only do a very brief little thing for you. i think some of the more common maneuvers would be by the flank. briefly, you are in the battle line and you want to move it a quarter of a mile to the right. the easiest way to do it is by the flank. each soldier turns to the right and they form a very long column of two abreast. and you move it that way. you can move it forward or backward pretty readily. i looked at about 400 different examples, tactical examples, from battle reports and personal accounts. this was the most common maneuvers found. very widely done and it is easy to do. wheeling, the whole

battle line moving on exhibit. -- on a pivot. sometimes the visit -- pivot is fixed and sometimes it is moving. can you imagine doing that while the pivot is moving. many soldiers said it was the most difficult to do in the civil war. it was easy to do badly, but difficult to do well. [laughter] linestactical lines, long that can be 10 miles long. what if one regiment want to go in front of the other? the tactical manuals give you a prescription on how to do it well. basically by creating gaps in the front lines so that the back line to go through it. sometimes that happened, but i found that more than not, the commander of the regiment that was supposed to go through did not do it properly and many examples of one regiment unexpectedly busting through the

line of the other without warning. and just bullying through, because the commander thought, i need to get there no matter the cost. and the commander of the regiment being affected is angry and irritated, but there is nothing he can do. aboutlot of complaints this, when the commanders are not doing the tactic maneuver properly. and when they do do it properly, everybody appreciates it. oblique, moving at a 45 degree angle, instead of straightforward. 45 degree angle to the left or the right. it may seem easy to move it forward or backward in any way, yes. i want to point out, if you take 500 guys and tell them to go forward, within a few yards they will separate and be all over the place. you have to guide them. every regiment must guide. if you guys on the center -- guide on the center, those on

the right need to push to the west -- left. and on the left, they need to push to the right, so they are compacting together and that way they can be kept in order. they can go to the right, to the left, anytime you have two regiments cooperating with one another, one of them must be the battalion of direction and the other half to guide on it. otherwise you have chaos. now, when i go to civil war reenactments, i would one wants and i was fascinated -- once in a was fascinated with watching the maneuvers. and somebody said, look, isn't that a column? i had to tell them no, that is moving by the flank. and he did not know what i was talking about. i thought, what i should do is try to illustrate that.

that on the left is a regiment moving by the right flank to the north. it looks like a two-man column, but is not as defined by the manuals. on the right is a real column. you understand the difference? they look very different when you are in an airplane looking at it. on the ground, you could easily imagine that what is on the left is a column, but the manuals are clear on that. it is not. there is an illustration of wheeling. the tactical manuals talk about a wheel, but they do not describe what a full wheel is. i have to look and think and examine and read between the lines. this is my conclusion. a full wheel is defined as going from this to that. that you are facing to the rear from the direction you started. and a half wheel is going 45

degrees. , excusery, a full wheel me, it is this. 90 degrees. it is confusing even to me. [laughter] manualshad to read the to happen three times before i finally got a handle on it. i will tell you a story about this. the fascinating thing about this is the manuals talk about when you are training your recruits and he put them into a squad of eight, make them do a 360 degree wheel. just to get the hang of it, so they know how to do it. on the auto filled, you would never -- battlefield, you would never do that, because what is the point of doing a maneuver where you are right in the same place when you are done. you would think that would be a full wheel, but it isn't.

i'm sorry? >> that is something that general -- might do. earl: yes, or somebody else. but they are not clear on this issue. i kind of had to look at official reports, i found official reports where these guys are given enough information so i can deduce that this is what they mean by all that. comparing a multiple line formation with a simple column -- mrs. the point of this -- this is the point of this. and i call this one multiple lines, one big battle line is -- a longong distant in front. it was recommended when you deployed the army for battle, you do not just have one battle line, you have at least two lines, so the second one can support it. but it must be a long-distance

away. it is not a column. on the right, that is an example of a real column. on the left, this is a successive line. many people are confused about this and it is in the long street on september 20 had a column. he did not, it was successive line. and this might seem tenable, yes it is. it might seem petty, i would disagree with that. [laughter] earl: i think it is important. professor inis the the that wants to be clear about this stuff. this is one of my favorites. this is when you have to have guys who know what they are doing to do something like this. the regiment is originally facing to the west, to your left, but you want them to face north in a way that you can -- you can wheel, but there are more ways to skin a cat. ,ou can go forward on a subunit

one company at a time, independently, basically w heels. or you just move anyway you can in general concert with each other one at a time, beginning with the right and extending to the left. another point i want to make. obviously, you know that modern armies do not fight like this anymore. linear tactical formations and maneuvers went out of fashion at some point after the civil war. a brief thing about this, they went out of fashion slowly, incrementally, over decades. the interesting thing is that they have not gone away completely, even though linear tactical systems are no longer used in the modern era, they still exist. close order drill they call it.

lines and collins are alive and well in the modern military of 2016. they are very valuable for training. they are valuable for an awful lot of things and you can find them all over the place. this is a photograph of the 84th division in world war i, in a column of companies at full distance, given how far apart they are. that means each line in the column must be far enough away from the one in front, so that if they needed to go to the wheel left, -- they had room to do so. it is determined by how many men you have in line. a half distance means between distance,d that full close on moss so close to the

line in front of you that there is no difference in the distance -- you are close enough so that you are the same distance from the line in front of you that the race are distant -- rankns art -- ranks are distant from each other within lines. aspectre is an emotional , touch of the elbow is the concept. that is a wonderful phrase. tactical manuals talk about the need to address right or left -- dress right or left. it is for cohesion, but also creates emotional benefit for the soldiers, they are touching their comrades and they have physical contact with them. have you ever seen where you are disbursed from each other, it is a different world in terms of emotions and combat around. --

morale. you know that guy is there because you can touch him. if you are taking them to the right, you are pressing together in a very unified block, if you can put it that way. i think it is an important component of combat in the civil war. a lot of people talk about what motivated the soldier to enter combat in the civil war. when people ask that question about 20th-century warfare, they talk about the buddy system. they talk about group cohesion, small groups gathering together within the army. i will protect your ear if you protect my reader and we will take care of each other. historians have a tendency to assume that was true of the civil war and to a degree i think it probably was, but tactical formations were completely different from what they are today. you do not have to rely so much on one or two buddies. you know the regiment is behind

you when you have the touch of elbow going on and everybody is together in the open. in contrast to modern tactics where it is easy enough to hide behind a rock and not doing anything, the least according to marshall, saying that 25% of infantrymen in world war ii actually fired a gun. you cannot say that about the civil war. it is because of different tactical formations used. weapons, you know the story, the smoothbore musket used by the u.s. army before 1855 is replaced in the latter part of , it1850's by a rifle musket is a single shot musket. the only difference is the group inside the barrel to get into the bullet. the rifle musket, if there is faster to loads and people say it was more

accurate. the only advantage is the longer range, 500 yards compared to 100 mars -- yards are the smoothbore musket. many were in love with it and predicted it would revolutionize warfare. these men continued to believe after the war that it had revolutionized warfare and most historians have a tendency to take that viewpoint for granted. the standard peace among historians about the rifle musket, it is exemplified by jamison's book, attack and died. civil war military tactics, published in 1982, in which they argued that the rifle musket changed combat because of the increased range, that it created a different killing zone, that it made civil war battles not only more costly than before

with unprecedented losses, but made them indecisive, neither side being able to win a quick victory. and it prolonged the civil war to four years of bloodshed and rendered artillery powerless on the battlefield, because infantrymen could pick off others at long range. and it rendered cavalry ineffective as well. proponents of the old rifle see the civil war as the first modern conflict in history, as unique in world affairs as a prelude to world war i and they also tend to see civil war officers as foolish for not understanding these things and continuing to use old, outdated tactics that are criminally obsolete. by 1851. they seem to think that using old linear tactics is little more than setting up innocent soldiers to be slaughtered like

a cheap. -- sheep. it held sway for a long time, but then many started to question it. before i talk about that, i have some quotes from some well-known historians, exemplifying the old rifles. looking at well-positioned defenders with a frontal attack and mcpherson saying, that the civil war battlefields -- as those in world war i. those were widely accepted interpretations of the impact of the weapon on civil war military operations. 1980'sy started in the with how to, in english military historian who raise the question, after he found some evidence of that civil war soldiers fired at their muskets not at 500 yards but more like 100 yards. he was discredited by civil war

historians, i thought unfairly, who looked on him as an outsider meddling with civil war history. in the 1990's, a couple of american civil war scholars began to look at his evidence and agreed with him. if you want to look at their writings on their issues, they concluded, along with griffith, that most civil war contact took place at short range, less than 100 yards. i would be interesting that i was interested in this issue -- issueinterested in this and i took a look at the information in a conference of way. looking at the range of fire and a lot of other things. i published my findings, there we go, if you are interested in looking at what they say. mark grimsley, and patty

griffin, and breath nouns were nosworthy.t i did other things to justify my findings. [laughter] earl: and i do not need to duplicate what they were doing. i published my findings in this book, "the rifle musket - reality and myth." i found that those three were absolutely right. and not only did most of civil war soldiers fire their weapons at short range, they wanted to do so, they did it on purpose. officers and enlisted men, union and confederate believed that short range would be more effective than long-range and i think there is no doubt that they were right. the next time you go onto a

battlefield, tell a friend to pace 500 yards from where you are standing and then look at them. or try to look at them. do you see them, they are about that call, if you can see them, because the lay of the land could get in the way. that is one thing. there is also another thing to keep in mind, we all know that the rifle musket did not have a flat trajectory, that it had a parabolic trajectory, the path of the bullet did not go flat. illustration from , book published in the 1960's showing the trajectory of the typical rifle musket, the flight path to the air. yards away,get 350 to kill zones appear. one extending 75 yards out from the shooter then it sales over the head of anybody beyond that until it begins to descend, creating a second kill zone 110

yards long before it hits 350 yards. that is the second of the last half of the trajectory. those way, the 1850's, folks were well aware of that. wilcox, who wrote the best american book, published 1857, vividly trumpeted the value of the rifle musket, but had a long section of the book giving a exists.- in this thing ans, an awful me lot of the trajectory of the bullet will not hit anybody and the farther the target more difficult it is to try to hit it. there was an elevated side of the rifle musket that soldiers had to be trained to use and they were not, for various reasons.

they were normally not given that training. true that if you are a natural gun person, i call them gun and depth -- adept people, you can compensate for this on your own and you can hit targets far away. but the truth is, the overwhelming majority of civil war soldiers, union, confederate, were not going ad -- gun adept. they were at best fare with a rifle musket and many were done .n at -- gun in at. -- inept most were not part of the gun culture and most soldiers did not know how to use the weapon very well. words, for the vast majority of soldiers, it is far easier to use the rifle musket at short range where you do not need to set a site and it is easier to see the target and aim at it and far more likely to hit

it. and the majority of soldiers did just that. you can find so many cases of dire is of combat taking place 20 yards apart. those are not unusual to find in battle reports. if most civil war combat took place that, 100 yards or less, then the rifle musket was used in pretty much the same way that the smoothbore musket was. it was not more effective than the smoothbore musket. let me give you this. this is a petty of mine. -- pet peeve of mine. we love technology and we have a knee-jerk reaction to assume that every need -- new piece of technology is fantastic and it should be used. every new gadget that comes up and turns a cell phone into a smartphone and a smartphone into

i do not know what the term is fun because i cannot keep up, but you are an old fuddy-duddy if you do not have the newest thing and using it. we love technology and i think we automatically assume it does nothing but good for us. every new piece of technology, there are bad things too. a newst because it is piece of technology, we need to understand how it is used or if it is used to understand the impact of it on society. that is the point i was trying to make on the rifle musket. we need to understand how technology is employed before we assume that it is earth shattering. it is so ironic to me that civil war soldiers wanted a rifle musket, they pleaded for it and they hated it when they were issued smoothbore musket. they do not want to use it to take advantage of its

technological advances. it is an interesting story of cognitive dissonance, i guess you could call it. [laughter] earl: that is typical of civil war soldiers. another point, i was curious to know what was happening in other areas. i looked at world war ii and korea, vietnam, i do not find a lot of information about the range at which a small arms fire took place, but what i found confirmed that even in the 20th century, when you have magazines that weapons, some i automatic and automatic weapons had a range of 300 yards, typical firefights occurred at 100 yards or less. in all of the conflicts. it is remarkable, a stunning fact to me that infantry contact that combat has always been short range, whether you are talking about the civil war, or vietnam, or the wars of the

roman empire. that is truly short range, when you are stabbing each other with swords. missingge rifle fire is in military history and death has failed to alter that. and another thing, new weapons do not necessarily produce more casualties either, with rapid firing small arms in the 20th century, you have an increase of the number of bullets, but no corresponding increase in the losses. historians have seen consistently that in combat losses across nations and across centuries, from the renaissance , this the 20th century guy found it to be a fascinating facts. -- this. i found that to be a fascinating fact. more bullets flying around --

spreading out in formations. when i give talks about this topic, the roundtables, they always start with, i can see it in their face, they do not believe me. [laughter] point, with each point they are weakening a little bit and a little bit. but they still say, yes, despite all of this -- the civil war was so bloody. we have an image of a destructive war, a savage war, the losses, that is easy enough to do. let's compare battlefield losses in battles that took place in the 1700s, where the smoothbore muskets were used in europe and america. look at confederate losses in civil war battles for a starting

point. i took this from. jamison -- perry jamison's book. gettysburg, 30.2%. it seems awful. wait a minute, french oppression early in battles in the 1800s, 61% at waterloo. for goodness sake. and the peninsula campaign, 44%. well, does that strike anybody as important? s were deadly.ket it was a very effective weapon, and the matter what africa the rifle muskets had about it. onnk about punk rachel, 47% june 17, 1775. there is not a single rifle musket available.

it puts it into perspective. back to they get civil war and what people said about infantry tactics. remember, they argue that civil war battlefields were turned into slaughter fields and the site statistics about losses. but they always fail to insight casualties from other words -- wars. and shoulder to shoulder, linear tactics, they say are outdated, giving innocent soldiers as sitting ducks for long-range muskets. the historians argue that civil war officers should have understood this and try to get his first merrimac, urging them to take cover behind trees or on the ground and they argue the officers were foolish to conduct frontal attacks on the enemy, because of those tactics, they were doomed for failure.

obviously, we proved that the rifle musket did not revolutionize combat and it opens the door for other tactics. combat and small unit effectiveness, and briefly, the purpose was to study primary level as opposed to grand tactics. in the study, i read manuals available for the civil war soldiers and they were written by general winfield scott in 1835. the three manuals were used by union and confederate officers and they all came from a seminal drill manual published by the french government in 1791 as the revolutionary war started in france. that was used in the western world for the next half century or so. winfield scott basically translated in 1830's version of the 1791 french infantry manual

in a book called, rules for maneuvers of the united states infantry, published in three volumes. it lasted for 20 years. when william j harvey, an officer, modified the manual to impart a faster rate of march for infantry and published a one volume book, rifle and infantry tactics adopted in 1855. you know that general hardy was fighting for the confederacy and the government was not interested in the manual, so they assigned silas casey to modify the book and produce another three volume publication infantry tactics for the instruction and exercise and maneuvers of the soldier. manual ind hardee's 1862 and casey's was the

official until 1867 until upton took a look at it. in addition to reading these books, very difficult, if you want to do it, you have my blessing. [laughter] earl: i say that only because it is written in a technical jargon that i think is deliberately obtuse, so that only dedicated people who are willing to punish themselves will do it. [laughter] earl: you know that happens all the time. it is a gatekeeping mechanism. only the truly blessed can go through that portal into the world of a tactician and you have to suffer like crazy to get there. [laughter] earl: i read these things three times before i halfway understood them. [laughter] then in addition to that, i read an awful lot of reports, personal accounts, about 400

different tactical examples and my conclusion, the overwhelming majority of union and a southern officers learned the complicated maneuvers very well and use them effectively to attack and defend positions. some officers failed to master them, but others became experts of their use. the conclusion of my book is that linear tactics are still relevant to the battlefield where the rifle musket was employed, but they were absolutely the right kind to use with that weapon. after all, it was a single shot loading weapon. it was used essentially the same way that the old weapon had been used for 150 years. but linear tactical formations did of course change. world war i is the true, as i said, the cauldron of tactical change in modern history.

of fare the introduction better and more powerful long-range artillery, the introduction of magazines for small arms and you have the introduction of heavy fortifications, the introduction of machine guns, etc. world war i is a fascinating subject of study. if you are interested in world military history. because it is the most interesting and dynamic changes in tactics you will see in world history. we are in the middle of the centennial of world war i and there are many good books being published about it. i am fascinated by reading the stuff. happened you know what during the course of world war i, getting away from formations of lines and down to the evolving responsibility to smaller units. by the time you get to the post-world war ii era, the modern fire team concept is accepted by most modern armies.

small squads of 4-6 men operating and moving and maneuvering in dispersed formation, but within supporting range of each other. one fascinating thing i found on reading the current tactical manuals for the u.s. army and trying to understand the modern idea, is that even with this, there are formations and maneuvers, line formations for the fighting, a wedge formation, a triangular formation, about half a dozen of them. they do not just run around, they need to train in terms of formations. mimic the of them formations of the civil war era. and of course, you have to arm them with automatic weapons, so the firepower is increased. and that is a primary change in tactics and making this kind of dispersed formation possible. let me sum up, let me sum up for

two minutes and then i will open it for questions. the bottom line is, i argue the civil war was not a revolution in firearms or tactics. that is basically an old-fashioned war. i look at it this way, five years after appomattox, a war broke out in europe in which both the french and depression werearmed -- prussians armed with a small on superior to the rifle musket. it only had a 10 year episode before it was grossly outdated. far from being revolutionary, it was a little blip on the radar. i argued that the tactics used were still effective. 143 larger conclusions wostorians-- one or t conclusions, i came away from

this with more respect for the concept of the american soldier. many soldiers knew nothing about the tactics before they joined up, but through hard work, the vast majority became super experts in them and it paid off in success or failure on the battlefield. if you want to think that the citizen soldier is ideal in america, you must admit in the war of 1812 and spanish-american war, they did not do well. and in the civil war, they not toy did well, they decided -- america. and a larger conclusion was that the civil war -- a resounding no, it is as old-fashioned as you can get. they are using linear tactical systems that have been around for at least 50 years and if you want to push it further, 150 years. finally, was in the civil war

unusual? this is what i tell students. it depends on your perspective. if you think about the u.s. civil war from the perspective of international world history, no, it is not unusual. it is one small episode in a huge story. if you think about the perspective of american history, yes, it was incredibly unusual. in terms of loss and everything else. in terms of other things, from an international perspective, it made me feel how small america can be, if you place it within the true context of world history. thanks. i would be happy to -- [applause] earl: i would be happy to respond to questions. yes? >> a lot has been made of the column attack at spotsylvania

courthouse, so how was that different from tactics before and after? earl: the question was about at spotsylvania on may 10, 1864. it was not unusual in terms of, i should not go that far, i think his attack was unusual in the sense that he planned it better and he organized it better and he executed better. the problem with that attack as it was with all attacks in the civil war, you had initial success breaking through. but what he did to follow up, that is only the problem in the civil war. how far does the next line have to be or how close does it have to be in the first one to be effective? nobody figured out an answer to the problem. and oftentimes it was too far back and it went in too late, or

if it is too close, it is hit by the same fire hitting the first line. i think that upton probably did it better than most other people, but that is a matter of comparison. good question. >> you mentioned automatic weapons, machine guns in world war i. i know that the president was offered the gatlin gun fairly early in the civil war and yet he seemed to reject it, thought it was a unique idea, but it goes counter to the idea of all the new technology. why didn't lincoln grabbed on to that idea of the gatling gun and push it? earl: why not adopt the gatling gun? i do not know the full story behind it. maybe the take on the gatling doctor it was made by a in indiana around 1862, and he

thought it would end the war by making it so terrible. wait until nuclear bombs before reaching that stage. if you make it easier for people to kill, it will make them easier to kill them, not stop them. but i do not know the details on why it was offered and how and why it was refused. >> you mentioned that there was no difference between the musket and the rifle musket, how about the breech loaders and repeaters that came later in the war? there are a number of instances where groups like the walters brigade and the sharpshooters, they seem to have more impact against larger forces. earl: the question is around the next stage, the magazine weapons, seven around for the dispenser and 15 for the henry.

you would think it would have a dramatic impact, and i do argue that magazine fed weapons are a significant factor in changing tactics, because the volume of the fire is more important man the range, but in the civil war you have only a relatively few troops armed with them and we do not have enough research done on the issue. i looked into it in my rifle musket book and what i found is any place the magazine fed weapons are used, anybody who saw them were terribly impressed with them and they assumed, this is a wonderful weapon and it must be really talking it to the -- socking it to the enemy. it is impressionistic evidence, we need data. we should look at the casualty thatat the rescinding receiving end -- receiving end and we have little evidence of that.

i found to have every examples of it and the casualty rate was no higher than typical during the civil war for the rifle musket. the reason i think is, it is very easy to put in a lot of bullets into the air, but if you are not aiming properly and everything else, it is wild fire. the majority will not hit anything. but more research needs to be done on that angle, i think. yes? can you wait for the microphone? >> you showed a slide showing 30% casualty for the confederates at gettysburg. is it known how many were caused by artillery and how many by small arms? earl: good question about the differential on artillery and small arms.

at gettysburg, i am not sure people have found data about that. i would love to find that out, it is an important issue. is thatral scuttlebutt 20% of casualties in general are caused by artillery and 80% by the rifle musket, and it may be relatively accurate as a generic measure. i would really love to find more hard data about that. for example, on january 2, as stones river, where everybody says 50 artillery pieces malled the attacking division and a shutdown one third of breckenridge's confederate -- of and resulted in the the division, many assume that artillery played a dominant role. i would love to find at least one regiment in that division were all the casualties are counted as per what the projectile -- which projectile

caused it. we had some of that information for the 15th tennessee court. and the data i looked at is that artillery caused 90%. much lower than you anticipate. rifle muskets to make up for the vast majority -- and do make up for the vast majority. looking on maneuvers in terms of retreat, the generals try to orchestrate it to minimize losses or, or by that time, was it every man for himself? earl: the question is, when an army needs to retreat, how is it organized? manuals dealt with the issue and they are oriented to do so in order to keep the formation together as much as possible, or at least keep cohesion. most of the maneuvers,

especially those that deal with moving the line forward, always have a section right after saying that this is how you do it in reverse. you have to. now that you are anticipating the worst or anything like that. yes? will? >> you make a strong case that the rifle musket had minimal impact on infantry tactics and casualties, but it is my understanding that the rifle musket did revolutionize the use of calvary and artillery in that artillery no longer was an weapon,of -- offensive and calvary was neutralized by the longer-range weapons. would you agree? just tostory of the -- repeat, with their impact on artillery and calvary in combat. jemison's argument

that it can neutralize the use of artillery as a close offensive weapon, you cannot get close. it is a fascinating question. my own interpretation and i'm not prepared to fully defend it yet because i am working on a book on artillery for the civil war and then after that, i will have a book about calvary. my take on it is, i am not certain that artillery was used in that way before the civil war. some european historians who deal with napoleonic warfare had argued that you rarely see in napoleonic warfare, the field artillery coming close to the military at close range. it was not typical of the tactics to use artillery like that. i wonder if we are suffering from a lack of perspective in terms of how the civil war fits

into the longer sweep of how artillery is used on the battlefield. and i think the same is relevant for understanding the casualty -- calvary's role. i'm not sure it was effective in attacking well-placed infantry. i think more times than not, when the calvary attacked infantryman in good position, they were trumped more often than not, during the napoleonic wars. and if that is the case, the civil war is not that revolutionary elite different. >> [inaudible]

when did french warfare become a major factor? earl: that is true. the widespread and deep use of trenches is a huge factor of the ofpaign of 19 60 -- campaign 64. did you have a follow-up thought about that? >> that was such an effective petersburg. i would say that had a lasting effect through later wars, such as world war i, where you saw so much trench warfare. earl: you touched on interesting topic for me, as you all know. one of the arguments i made in my trilogy on the use of fortifications in the eastern campaigns is something i want to do in more works on fortifications in the civil war generally, is to discuss this

issue of how effective fortifications were, but keep in mind something -- even though lee used fortifications very grant in one place after another, who won those campaigns? it was grant. the use of field fortifications had limits in the course of larger strategy and operational procedure. think of the-- gigantic earthworks in the atlantic campaign. army of tennessee constructed 18 or 19 fortified lines and everyone of them were either taken or outmaneuvered by sherman. so we have to think about that and not get bogged down in the thought that the mere use of heavy earthworks necessarily is always going to give the advantage to the defender. it does not necessarily do that. the primarily reason is as long as that line has finite limits,

the attacker has lots of opportunities to pry them out without losing too many men. the difference with world war i -- by the way, my argument is that oberlin, petersburg, atlanta had nothing to do with what were one -- you are talking about apples and oranges. is on a planet by itself in terms of understanding field fortifications. i would argue that warfield fortifications were constructed along the western front of world 1918 then had4 to ever been previously done before or after 1914 and 1918 in the whole world. i don't understand how anybody can say that one led to the other. that is just my personal opinion, which i hope to develop in a supposedly persuasive argument someday. [laughter] it is a good question, i'm glad you brought it up.

i think an awful lot more needs to be done with field fortification in the civil war. yes there, in the back. thank you for waiting. >> worthy canone -- were the trained well enough in rifle technology to make a difference? earl: about half or so of the field artillery used his rifles. that is pretty new, development in the 1850's. yes, i will tell you what happened. a tremendously different training regimen for artillery then infantry. artillery crews were trained to nth degree to handle and understand the weapon. in looking at diaries and letters, they were not only trained about how to load and aim, they were taught every position. it is a crew of eight or nine

guys, everyone had to learn everybody else's position. they had to rotate. they had to know the names of every part of that gun in the carriage. most thoroughly trained soldiers in american history until that time. i think they did a very good job ,f handling the rifle artillery as much as they could be expected to do. there were a lot of technical limitations with the field artillery, especially the rifle, in terms of projectile, in terms of adequate fuses, etc.. but whatever fault you see in civil war field artillery nine times out of 10 is not the fault of the personnel of the fault of the technology, which is added since he and evolving. but a good point to -- which is at its infancy and evolving. but a good point to bring up.

>> you showed a graphic about the revolutionary and napoleonic era's, were casualties were greater than the civil war. had you factor in the fact that in that era, the killing zone one hundredn 100 or 25, more like 50 yards, and the caliber of the projectile was greater than civil war era? how do you take that into account? earl: i think what you are aiming at is -- i don't want to be putting words into your mouth -- but i think what you are aiming at is that even though civil war rifle battles may be fought with opposing sides at close range, the bullet many times is going to go farther than that range and maybe hit people in the back. is that what you are getting at? >> that also and the fact that in the revolutionary area, if the general killing range was 50 yards, it was much closer and the caliber of those weapons was 75 a lot of times.

a much heavier projectile that might have been a factor in causing those greater percentage casualties than even the civil war. earl: i'm not entirely certain how heavy a caliber would necessarily create more wounded and killed. the nature of the caliber is not necessarily going to affect that. all of these figures are total casualties rather than dividing them between killed and wounded and severity of wounds and that sort of thing. so i did not factor that into it, i was looking at gross casualties. that all iize that can go 500 yards, it may hit people well behind the front lines and cause a different environment for combat in the 1860's then with smoothbore battles. i recognize that, too. >> can you comment on the effectiveness of sharpshooters who were trained to take advantage of superior capabilities of the rifle? earl: a good question about

sniping, start shooting -- sharpshooting. i do recognize that the rifle musket had a significant impact in that regard. i have a chapter on sniping. i think it is the first chapter ever written as civil war historian on that subject, maybe. that subject is very interesting to a lot of people, and since then, some other people have written about it. but ais no doubt about it certain percentage of union and confederate soldiers were gone a adept, who took -- were gun at ept and couldad achieve remarkable accuracy at long range. i found examples of snipers reportedly hitting their target at 800 yards in some cases, 500, 600, no doubt that happened. my argument is we are only talking about what percentage of the whole army? 10%, 20%?

i don't know. the majority of average people adeptot done adept -- gun and could not accomplish this. comradesr went on and begin to understand, this guy is good at using rifles, and in the next battle, two or three guys not good at it would load their weapons and pass it to this fellow so he could fire one musket after another because they knew he knew what he was doing. there is lots of examples of that by the latter point of the civil war in both armies. to me, that is a clear indication that these guys understood that there were gun adept and others who could not be called that. i also found wonderful examples of gun inept people who provided a lot of fun for their comrades when they called them, hey joe, give me the shot, and the guy

would be nervous and afraid and shoot the rifle in the air and everybody would applaud and have some fun with them. ineptwere completely gun people, a small proportion, but they exist. we need to stop thinking of the civil war soldier as a soldier. he was many different kinds of soldiers. >> you talk a lot about the rifle musket. of course, they had existed long before the civil war but they were not effective military weapons. would you give a tip of the hat to claude monet and the invention of the many ball -- ball as what brought the musket into the military arena? earl: you're absolutely right, rifles and been around since at least the 1400s as handcrafted weapons, somewhat temperamental. you need to be patient and know how to use it properly, oftentimes used for hunting etc.

, and maybe a little bit you could see some evidence in the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, of the soldiers who use it for what we would call sniping. ,bviously it is claude monet the frenchman, who developed a technical process for doing this on a commercial basis to mass-produce rivals and a projectile so it was easy enough to load to make it feasible for general issue. that is the real innovation that brings in rifles as a general issue weapon. hasmore question if anybody one. >> you have not mentioned a weapon which has privilege of place in any french infantry manual, the ban at.

-- the bayonet. what do you consider to be the use or usefulness of that in these battles? earl: you bring up a good point. everybody who gained us and experience in the civil war recognize that it was very good for camp duties, very good if you're guarding prisoners, very good if you want to play mumbl ypeg, i don't know. but everybody realized its use on the battlefield was quite limited. this is an argument among some historians. someone to say there were more bayonet than you realize, and i agree with you. if you look at the sources about bayonet charges, that does not mean they actually fought with the bayonet. there were quite a few charges with the bayonet that never came to blows with enemy. historians who study the bayonet

, their primary theme is it is an important tool for morale purposes. the spirit of the bayonet. but the practical benefits on the battlefield are less so. the interesting thing is, honestly, if you talk about hand-to-hand combat in modern wars like vietnam, world war ii, korea, you see the use of the bayonet. it does not go completely out. linear tactical formations, you have fewer examples of hand-to-hand combat than you do in modern warfare. that is a thesis that should be studied by somebody, i think. thank you very much. appreciate it. [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] announcer: you are watching american history tv, all weekend

every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. blum talks howard about the life of betty pack, a washington, dc debutante who worked as a spy for the british and americans during world war ii. howard blum describes her ability to seduce diplomats and officials in order to learn secrets and provide information to her handlers. this talk is part of a multi-day conference at the world war ii museum in new orleans. it is about 45 minutes. >> our next speaker is howard , who brought the story you are about to hear to our local audience earlier this year while he was on his book tour. we thought so much of it and of howard that we wanted to bring him back for you all here today. one of his previous books that i'm sure you all know of is the brigade: