Discipline in American Civil War Armies

[Valmy]

A defence based on making the Union assault prepared defences while their rear was harassed would have been optimal, but that's not what the Confederacy did.

They tried this, in the west anyway, and had some success but it was too little too late.

But yeah I think this was how the South wins the war.

[Threviel]

Yeah, that's what I meant with the Johns(t)on comment.

[derspiess]

Interesting stuff.

Not getting the bayonet tossing though. A way of making it so their commanders couldn't order bayonet charges?

Supposedly there was a pattern where soldiers who were making a bayonet attack tended to stop short and just start firing into the opposing force at point blank range. For whatever reason (psychology?) they very rarely managed to actually get into that sort of contact.

Early in the war Texas had a force of lancers, complete with little Texas flags on their lances. When they were ordered to charge the enemy they did something similar, coming very close to the Union line but ultimately stopping short and falling back (because, being lancers, they had no guns).

The soldiers had almost suicidal bravery when it came to fire fights but for whatever reason they had a hard time applying shock tactics.

My guess is that the soldiers had a much better understanding of the effectiveness of the rifled musket than their senior leadership did, and acted accordingly.

[Razgovory]

One of the advantages the South had, really what could have been its decisive advantage, was its vast size and the fact its infrastructure was all pointed seawards. It was a pretty difficult area to invade. The South needed to aggressively raid nearby northern territory and hold strong points and threaten supply lines. They had a series of costly failures in 1861 and 1862 in the west that hindered their ability to do those things. I think if they had not lost so badly in Missouri and Kentucky and on the Mississippi early on they might have had a pretty good chance of winning. But who knows?

Early on the southern strategy was defensive and passive (granted they had an army to train and organize so that was mostly by necessity) and they stretched their armies out in a thin line to guard the border, which was absolutely not what they should have done and it cost them.

I'm not sure anything would have helped much in the end.  At no point was the South ever winning the war.  The best that could be said about lee, despite all the claims of his strategic brilliance, was that he was losing slower than anyone else.

[Valmy]

At no point was the South ever winning the war.

Well I totally agree but I think this was because they did so badly in the early stages. If they had been able to keep the war in Kentucky and Missouri in 1862 things might have turned in their favor.

[The Brain]

They could have created more slave regiments. Slave soldiers have been used successfully by many. The Ottomen, Skaven...

[Malthus]

Interesting stuff.

Not getting the bayonet tossing though. A way of making it so their commanders couldn't order bayonet charges?

Supposedly there was a pattern where soldiers who were making a bayonet attack tended to stop short and just start firing into the opposing force at point blank range. For whatever reason (psychology?) they very rarely managed to actually get into that sort of contact.

Early in the war Texas had a force of lancers, complete with little Texas flags on their lances. When they were ordered to charge the enemy they did something similar, coming very close to the Union line but ultimately stopping short and falling back (because, being lancers, they had no guns).

The soldiers had almost suicidal bravery when it came to fire fights but for whatever reason they had a hard time applying shock tactics.

Needed to import some Swedish Caroleans. 

[Razgovory]

Bayonet charges require a lot of discipline and training.  Most people would rather not get into a brawl armed with a very poor spear.  I know that many soldiers carried pistols which were a much, much better weapon for close combat.  They probably prefer to use those if they could.

A lot of ink has been spilled about the importance of rifled muskets, but I'm not convinced they preformed much better than the previous muskets.  Soldiers didn't have much training in marksmanship, and after a few minutes of combat, smoke was so dense they couldn't even see the enemy clearly.

[derspiess]

They were still more accurate than smoothbore muskets, and had a much greater effective range. 

[Admiral Yi]

Keagan, in The Face of Battle, says that during the Napoleonic Wars bayonets very rarely touched bayonets.  Either the defender ran in fear or the attacker got shot up and ran back.

[Berkut]

Lee didn't exactly lose--tactically, the battle was a draw.

Whatever the actual numbers of men present, though, McClellan deserves a lot of criticism for how he conducted the battle.  He basically drew up a battle plan the night before, then stood back and watched his corps commanders try to carry it out.  He didn't do anything to help them coordinate there attacks, or much of anything else, either.  He pretty much just acted as a spectator during the battel, not a commander.

There actually isn't even much evidence that Mac had any such plan to begin with - the only "plan" produced was shown after the fact.

Certainly the unfolding of the battle didn't seem to indicate much of a plan on his part.

[Berkut]

Interesting stuff.

Not getting the bayonet tossing though. A way of making it so their commanders couldn't order bayonet charges?

The number of wounds suffered by bayonet during the war was basically zero - maybe 1% or something like that. They were completely psychological weapons, and by the middle part of the war, everyone understood that charges were resolved, one way or the other, long before anyone actually gt into bayonet range.

[derspiess]

If the Union had just coordinated their assaults at roughly the same time-- or even just the same part of the day

[Berkut]

They were still more accurate than smoothbore muskets, and had a much greater effective range. 

They were pretty incredible weapons compared to what came before, no doubt.

They changed the way battles were fought, and changed what defined the decisive elements of victory, from morale and espirit to discipline and fire control.

Hell, in the Nappy Wars, one of the most effective French tactical formations was the attack in column, where you basically just march your bad ass troops up to close range ignoring the defenders fire, then deployed at short ranged and smashed the defender with concentrated musket fire. This required incredible esprit and a offensive mindset. Your troops had to be able to basically just ignore medium and long range musket fire, but once they got to effective range, they could deliver their own fire that was just as effective as the defenders.

This was a non-starter in the ACW, because you could not just ignore medium and long range rifled musket fire, to say nothing of the vastly better artillery available. No matter how brave your men are, they are going to be shot down trying to attack in column.

So instead an attack had to be made in line, and even that was pretty damn hard, but it could be done, at least in theory.

Once the lines got close enough for muskets to actually be effective, the superiority of the rifled musket over the smoothbore is obviously considerably less, but only a small number of engagements would that be the decisive moment.

Let's just imagine Pickets charge where everyone has muskets instead of rifles. And where the artillery is all smoothbore. That kind of thing might actually work, if the defenders break under the attack that can actually get close enough cohesively to deliver their own counter fire. ACW? Nope, no chance. By the time any of Picketts men were in musket range, the attack had already failed, and failed badly.

There was a reason that it was pretty clear pretty quickly that men armed with muskets were at a considerable disadvantage.

Hell, that doesn't even begin to discuss how much more effective skirmishing was with rifles, where by the mid and late wars it was not uncommon for the armies to be deploying 25% of their men on picket lines. This, of course, would eventually foreshadow infantry combat where the "skirmish" line is no longer ancillary to the main battle line, but rather IS the main battle line.

[Berkut]

If the Union had just coordinated their assaults at roughly the same time-- or even just the same part of the day

Come on, how could they though? I mean, the Confederates outnumbered them like 2-1!