How to Command a Civil War Battlefield
By Mark Grimsley
Edited by WRG
Commanding a battlefield has six components:
First, you must have a firm grasp of the organization of Civil War armies. Second, you must be familiar with the basic battlefield functions of Civil War leaders. Third, you must have a working knowledge of Civil War tactics. Fourth--and critically--you must develop a good eye for terrain and see the ground as Civil War commanders would have seen it. Fifth, you need to be able to estimate distance and know the typical ranges at which Civil War weapons were employed. Finally, you need to have done some previous reading about battles and, if possible, you should bring along, or draw when you’ve arrived, plenty of good maps.
The Organization of Civil War Armies
Each army (40,000-100,000 men) typically consisted of two or more corps (10,000-25,000 men). An army was usually commanded by a full General on the Confederate side and a Major General on the Union side.
Each corps typically consisted of two to four divisions (3,000-5,000 men). A corps was usually commanded by a Lieutenant General on the Confederate side and a Major General on the Union side.
Each division consisted of two to four brigades, usually three (1,200-2,500 men). Divisions were usually commanded by major generals.
Each brigade consisted of three to five regiments (300-800 men). A brigade was usually commanded by a Brigadier General.
The authorized strength of each regiment was about 1,000 men, but in practice they rarely maintained their full strength for very long. Regiments were usually commanded by colonels.
The Basic Battlefield Functions of Civil War Commanders
In combat environments, the duties of Civil War leaders divided into two main parts: decision-making and moral suasion. Although the scope of their decisions varied according to rank and responsibilities, they generally dealt with the movement and deployment of troops, artillery, and logistical support (signal detachments, wagon trains, and so on). Most of the decisions were made by the leader himself. While his staff assisted with administrative paperwork, in combat they functioned essentially as glorified clerks who did almost nothing in the way of sifting intelligence or planning operations.
Once made, decisions were transmitted to subordinates either by direct exchange or by courier, with the courier either carrying a written order or conveying the order verbally. More rarely, signal flags were used to send instructions. Except in siege operations, when the battle lines were fairly static, the telegraph was almost never used in tactical situations.
Moral suasion, simply put, was the art of persuading troops to perform their duties and dissuading them from a failure to perform them. This was often done by personal example, and conspicuous bravery was a vital attribute of any good leader. It is therefore not surprising that 8 percent of Union generals--and 18 percent of their Confederate counterparts--were killed or mortally wounded in action. (By contrast, only about 3 percent of Union enlisted men were killed or mortally wounded in action.)
Although any commander might be called upon to intervene directly on the firing line, army, corps, and division commanders tended to lead from behind the battle line, and their duties were mainly supervisory.
In all three cases, their main ability to influence the fighting, once it was underway, was by the husbanding and judicious commitment of troops held in reserve.
Army Commanders principally decided the broad questions--whether to attack or defend, where the army's main effort(s) should be made, and when to retreat (or pursue). In effect, they made most of their key choices before and after an engagement rather than during it. Once battle was actually joined their ability to influence the outcome diminished considerably. They might choose to wait it out or they might choose, temporarily and informally, to exercise the function of a subordinate leader. In various Civil War battles army commanders conducted themselves in all sorts of ways: as detached observers, "super" corps commanders, division commanders, and so on, all the way down to de facto colonels trying to lead through personal example.
Corps Commanders chiefly directed main attacks or supervised the defense of large, usually well-defined sectors. It was their function to carry out the broad (or occasionally quite specific) wishes of the army commander. They coordinated all the elements of their corps (typically infantry divisions and artillery battalions) in order to maximize its offensive or defensive strength. Once battle was actually joined, they influenced the outcome by "feeding" additional troops into the fight--sometimes by preserving a reserve force (usually a division) and committing it at the appropriate moment, sometimes by requesting additional supports from adjacent corps or from the army commander.
Division Commanders essentially had the same functions as corps commanders, but on a smaller scale. When attacking, however, their emphasis was less on "feeding" a fight than husbanding the striking power of their divisions as much as possible. The idea was to strike one hard blow rather than a series of lesser ones.
The commanders below were expected to conduct actual combat; to close with and destroy the enemy.
Brigade Commanders principally conducted the actual business of attacking or defending. They accompanied the attacking force in person or stayed on the firing line with the defense. If they had five regiments at their disposal, they typically placed three abreast of one another with the other two in immediate support. Their job was basically to maximize the fighting power of their brigades by ensuring that these regiments had unobstructed fields of fire and did not overlap. During an attack it often became necessary to expand, contract, or otherwise modify the brigade frontage to conform with the vagaries of terrain, the movements of adjacent friendly brigades, and/or the behavior of enemy forces. It was the brigade commander's responsibility to shift his regiments as needed while preserving, as far as possible, the unified striking power of the brigade.
Regiment Commanders were chiefly responsible for making their men do as the brigade commanders wished, and their independent authority on the battlefield was quite limited. For example, if defending they might order a limited counterattack, but they usually could not order a retreat without approval from higher authority. Assisted by company commanders, they directly supervised the soldiers, giving specific, highly concrete commands: move this way or that, hold your ground, fire by volley, forward, and so on. Commanders at this level were expected to lead by personal example and to display as well as demand strict adherence to duty.
Civil War Tactics
Civil War armies basically had three kinds of combat troops: infantry, cavalry and artillery. Infantrymen fought on foot, each with his own weapon. Cavalrymen were trained to fight on horseback or dismounted, also with their own individual weapons. Artillerists fought with cannon.
Infantry
Infantry were by far the most numerous part of a Civil War army and were chiefly responsible for seizing and holding ground. The basic Civil War tactic was to put a lot of men next to one another in a line and have them move and shoot together. By present-day standards the notion of placing troops shoulder-to-shoulder seems insane, but it still made good sense in the mid-19th century.
There were two reasons for this: First, it allowed soldiers to concentrate the fire of what were still rather limited weapons. Second, it was almost the only way to move troops effectively under fire. Most Civil War infantrymen used muzzle-loading muskets capable of being loaded and fired a maximum of about three times a minute.
Individually, therefore, a soldier was nothing. He could affect the battlefield only by combining his fire with that of other infantrymen. Although spreading out made them less vulnerable, infantrymen very quickly lost the ability to combine their fire effectively if they did so. Even more critically, their officers rapidly lost the ability to control them.
For most purposes, the smallest tactical unit on a Civil War battlefield was the regiment. Although theoretically composed of about 1,000 officers and men, in reality the average Civil War regiment went into battle with about 300-600 men. Whatever its size, however, all members of the regiment had to be able to understand and carry out the orders of their colonel and subordinate officers, who generally could communicate only through voice command.
Since in the din and confusion of battle only a few soldiers could actually hear any given command, most got the message chiefly by conforming to the movements of the men immediately around them. Maintaining "touch of elbows"--the prescribed close interval--was indispensable for this crude but vital system to work. In addition, infantrymen were trained to "follow the flag"--the unit and national colors were always conspicuously placed in the front and center of each regiment.
Thus, when in doubt as to what maneuver the regiment was trying to carry out, soldiers could look to see the direction in which the colors were moving. That is one major reason why the post of color bearer was habitually given to the bravest men in the unit. It was not just an honor; it was insurance that the colors would always move in the direction desired by the colonel.
En route to a battle area, regiments typically moved in a column formation, four men abreast. There was a simple maneuver whereby regiments could very rapidly change from column to line once in the battle area; i.e., from a formation designed for ease of movement to a formation designed to maximize firepower. Regiments normally moved and fought in line of battle--a close-order formation actually composed of two lines, front and rear.
Attacking units rarely "charged" in the sense of running full-tilt toward the enemy; such a maneuver would promptly destroy the formation as faster men outstripped slower ones and everyone spread out. Instead a regiment using orthodox tactics would typically step off on an attack moving at a "quick time" rate of 110 steps per minute (at which rate it would cover about 85 yards per minute). Once under serious fire the rate of advance might be increased to a so-called "double-quick time" of 165 steps per minute (about 150 yards per minute).
Only when the regiment was within a few dozen yards of the defending line would the regiment be ordered to advance at a "run" (a very rapid pace but still not a sprint). Thus a regiment might easily take about ten minutes to "charge" 1,000 yards, even if it did not pause for re-alignment or execute any further maneuvers en route. In theory an attacking unit would not stop until it reached the enemy line, if then.
The idea was to force back the defenders through the size, momentum, and shock effect of the attacking column. (Fixed bayonets were considered indispensable for maximizing the desired shock effect).
In reality, however, the firepower of the defense eventually led most Civil War regiments to stop and return the fire--often at ranges of less than 100 yards. And very often the "charge" would turn into a stand-up fire fight at murderously short range, until one side or the other gave way.
It is important to bear in mind that the above represents a simplified idea of Civil War infantry combat. As you will see when you visit specific battlefields, the reality could vary significantly.
Artillery Second in importance to infantry on most Civil War battlefields, was the artillery. Not yet the "killing arm" it would become during World War One, when 70 percent of all casualties would be inflicted by shellfire, artillery nevertheless played an important role, particularly on the defense. Cannon fire could break up an infantry attack or dissuade enemy infantry from attacking in the first place. Its mere presence could also reassure friendly infantry and so exert a moral effect that might be as important as its physical effect on the enemy. The basic artillery unit was the battery, a group of between 4 and 6 fieldpieces commanded by a captain. Early in the war, batteries tended to be attached to infantry brigades. But over time it was found that they worked best when massed together, and both the Union and Confederate armies presently reorganized their artillery to facilitate this. Eventually both sides maintained extensive concentrations of artillery at corps-level or higher. Coordinating the fire of twenty or thirty guns on a single target was not unusual, and occasionally (as in the bombardment that preceded Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg) concentrations of well over hundred guns might be achieved. Practically all Civil War fieldpieces were muzzle-loaded and superficially appeared little changed from their counterparts in the 17th and 18th centuries. In fact, however, Civil War artillery was quite modern in two respects. First, advances in metallurgy had resulted in cannon barrels that were much lighter than their predecessors but strong enough to contain more powerful charges. Thus, whereas the typical fieldpiece of the Napoleonic era fired a 6-pound round, the typical Civil War era fieldpiece fired a round double that size, with no loss in ease of handling. Second, recent improvements had resulted in the development of practical rifled fieldpieces that had significantly greater range and accuracy than their smoothbore counterparts. Civil War fieldpieces could fire a variety of shell types, each with its own preferred usage. Solid shot was considered best for battering down structures and for use against massed troops (a single round could sometimes knock down several men like ten pins). Shell--rounds that contained an explosive charge and burst into fragments when touched off by a time fuse--were used to set buildings afire or to attack troops behind earthworks or under cover. Spherical case was similar to shell except that each round contained musket balls (78 in the case of a 12-pound shot, 38 for a 6-pound shot); it was used against bodies of troops moving in the open at ranges of from 500 to 1,500 yards. At ranges of below 500 yards, the round of choice was canister, essentially a metal can containing about 27 cast-iron balls, each 1.5 inches in diameter. As soon as a canister round was fired, the sides of the can would rip away and the cast-iron balls would fly directly into the attacking infantry. In desperate situations double and sometimes even triple charges of canister were used. As recently as the Mexican War, artillery had been used effectively on the offensive, with fieldpieces rolling forward to advanced positions from which they could blast a hole in the enemy line. The advent of the rifled musket, however, made this tactic dangerous--defending infantry could now pick off artillerists who dared to come so close--and so the artillery had to remain farther back. In theory the greater range and accuracy of rifled cannon might have offset this a bit, but rifled cannon fired comparatively small shells of limited effectiveness against infantry at a distance. The preferred use of artillery on the offensive was therefore not against infantry but against other artillery--what was termed "counter battery work." The idea was to mass one's own cannon against a few of the enemy's cannon and systematically fire so as to kill the enemy's artillerists and dismount his fieldpieces. Cavalry "Whoever saw a dead cavalryman?" was a byword among Civil War soldiers, a pointed allusion to the fact that the battlefield role played by the mounted arm was often negligible. For example, at the Battle of Antietam--the single bloodiest day of the entire war--the Union cavalry suffered exactly 5 men killed and 23 wounded. This was in sharp contrast to the role played by cavalry during the Napoleonic era, when a well-timed cavalry charge could exploit an infantry breakthrough, overrun the enemy's retreating foot soldiers, and convert a temporary advantage into a complete battlefield triumph. Why the failure to use cavalry to better tactical advantage? The best single explanation might be the fact that for much of the war there was simply not enough of it to achieve significant results. Whereas cavalry had comprised 20 to 25 percent of Napoleonic armies, in Civil War armies it generally averaged 8 to 10 percent or even less. The paucity of cavalry may be explained, in turn, by its much greater expense compared with infantry. A single horse might easily cost ten times the monthly pay of a Civil War private and necessitated the purchase of saddles, bridles, stirrups, and other gear as well as specialized clothing and equipment for the rider. Moreover, horses required about 26 pounds of feed and forage per day, many times the requirement of an infantryman. One might add to this the continual need for remounts to replace worn-out horses and the fact that it took far more training to make an effective cavalryman than an effective infantryman, as well as the widespread belief that the heavily-wooded terrain of America would limit opportunities to use cavalry on the battlefield. All in all, it is perhaps no wonder that Civil War armies were late in creating really powerful mounted arms. Instead, cavalry tended to be used mainly for scouting and raiding, duties that took place away from the battlefields. During major engagements their mission was principally to screen the flanks or to control the rear areas. By 1863, however, the North was beginning to create cavalry forces sufficiently numerous and well-armed to play a significant role on the battlefield. At Gettysburg, for example, Union cavalrymen armed with rapid-fire, breach-loading carbines were able to hold a Confederate infantry division at bay for several hours. At Cedar Creek in 1864 a massed cavalry charge late in the day completed the ruin of the Confederate army, and during the Appomattox Campaign in 1865 Federal cavalry played a decisive role in bringing Lee's retreating army to bay and forcing its surrender. Terrain Understanding the terrain is basic to understanding almost every aspect of a battle. Terrain helps to explain why commanders deploy their troops where they do, why attacks occur in certain areas and not in others, why some attacks succeeded and others do not. When defending, Civil War leaders often looked for positions with as many of the following characteristics as possible: First, the position obviously had to be ground from which they could keep the enemy from getting at whatever it was they were ordered to defend. Second, it should be elevated enough so as to provide good observation and good fields of fire--they wanted to see as far as possible and sometimes (though not always) to shoot as far as possible. The highest ground was not necessarily the best, however, for it often afforded an attacker defilade (areas of ground which the defenders' weapons could not reach). For that reason leaders seldom placed their troops at the very top of a ridge or hill (the "geographical crest"). Instead they placed them a bit forward of the geographical crest at a point from which they had the best field of fire (the "military crest). Alternatively, they might even choose to place their troops behind the crest. This concealed the size and exact deployment of the defenders from the enemy and offered protection from long-range fire. It also meant that an attacker, upon reaching the crest, would be silhouetted against the sky and susceptible to a sudden, potentially quite destructive fire at close range. Third, the ground adjacent to the chosen position should present a potential attacker with obstacles. Streams and ravines made good obstacles because they required an attacker to halt temporarily while trying to cross them. Fences and boulder fields could also slow an attacker. Dense woodlands could do this too, but they offered concealment for potential attackers and were therefore less desirable. In addition to its other virtues, elevated ground was prized because attackers moving uphill had to exert themselves more and got tired faster. Obstacles were especially critical at the end of a unit's position--the flank--if there were no other units beyond to protect it. That is why commanders "anchored" their flanks, whenever possible, on hills or the banks of large streams. Fourth, a good position had to offer ease of access for reinforcements to arrive and, if necessary, for the defenders to retreat. Fifth, a source of drinkable water--the more the better--had to be immediately behind the position if possible. This was especially important for cavalry and artillery units, which had horses to think about as well as men. When attacking, the concerns of Civil War commanders were different: First, they looked for weaknesses in the enemy's position, especially "unanchored" flanks. If there were no obvious weaknesses they looked for a key point in the enemy's position--often a piece of elevated ground whose loss would undermine the rest of the enemy's defensive line. Second, they searched for ways to get close to the enemy position without being observed. Using woodlands and ridgelines to screen their movements was a common tactic. Third, they looked for open, elevated ground on which they could deploy artillery to "soften up" the point to be attacked. Fourth, once the attack was underway they tried, when possible, to find areas of defilade in which their troops could gain relief from exposure to enemy fire. Obviously it was almost never possible to find defilade that offered protection all the way to the enemy line, but leaders could often find some point en route where they could pause briefly to "dress" their lines. Making the best use of terrain was an art that almost always involved trade-offs among these various factors--and also required consideration of the number of troops available. Even a very strong position was vulnerable if there were not enough troops to defend it. A common error among Civil War generals, for example, was to stretch their line too thin in order to hold an otherwise desirable piece of ground. Estimating Distance Estimating distance can help you estimate how long it takes troops to get from Point A to Point B or to visualize the points at which they would have become vulnerable to different kinds of artillery fire. There are several easy tricks to bear in mind. 1. Use reference points for which the exact distance is known. Locate such a reference point, then try to divide the intervening terrain into equal parts. For instance, say the reference point is 800 yards away. The ground about halfway in between will be 400 yards; the ground halfway between yourself and the midway point will be 200 yards, and so on. 2. Use the football field method. Visualize the length of a football field, which of course is 100 yards. Then estimate the number of football fields you could put between yourself and the distant point in which you're interested. 3. Use cars, houses, and other common objects that tend to be roughly the same size. Most cars are about the same size and so are many houses. Become familiar with how large or small such objects appear at various distances--300 yards, 1000 yards, 2000 yards, etc. This is a less accurate way of estimating distance, but can be helpful if the lay of the land makes it otherwise hard to tell whether a point is near or far. Look for such objects that seem a bit in front of the point. Their relative size can give you a useful clue. Maximum Effective Ranges of Common Civil War Weapons Smoothbore musket: 150 yds. Rifled musket: 400 yds. (but in practice, seldom used in battle beyond 250 yds.) Breech-loading carbine: 300 yds. Napoleon 12-pounder smoothbore: Solid shot: 1,700 yds. Shell: 1,300 yds. Spherical case: 500-1,500 yds. Canister: 400 yds. Parrott 10-pounder rifle: Solid shot: 6,000 yds. 3-inch ordnance rifle: Solid shot: 4,000 yds.