Customer Reviews

Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The book contains valuable sources, is well documented, and presents some good information, but it has some unpleasantly conspicuous problems. This book presents a mono-causal reason at the tactical level of war for why the Confederacy lost which is overly simplistic. Analysis of conflicts and their resolutions can rarely by tied to one cause - causes are normally woven together and to analyze one thread without the others creates an artificiality which negates any sincere analysis. This book conducts a sterile study of war at the tactical level without the influence of strategy, operational plans, politics, or economics which gives questionable results.
In the beginning of the book, the authors clearly state their thesis which is the only time that it is clear. They begin to present data in several different tables that are skewed. In presenting a case that the Confederacy suffered more casualties because they attacked more often, the authors include the 29,396 southern soldiers who surrendered at Vickburg (these soldiers were entrenched and never attacked). There is sufficient evidence to support their case without skewing figures - this only lessens their credibility.
After the first section, the thesis of the book seems to wander. Facts are presented but analysis is missing. Various issues of the war are well presented while others are biased and fail to present all of the evidence - some of the evidence does not support the thesis and some negates it. The combination of the rifle and fieldworks are proclaimed to be practically invincible. This becomes the primary thesis for most of the second section and the authors are more interested in proving this new thesis than supporting their original one. The South is accused of failing to learn from its attacks on entrenched positions while Gen Grant proceeded to charge them through the end of the war. Their logic is questionable, and they fail to ask if there were other reasons for these attacks. Did political pressure drive these attacks? What was the strategic objectives of both sides? None of these questions were addressed which all influenced the generals' decisions.
Some of the topics presented in the book are never woven back into the theme of the book. In discussing artillery, the authors were more interested in proving that the rifle was the sole cause of the Confederate losses rather than showing how the devastation caused by smoothbore artillery against attacking infantry supported their original thesis. Cavalry was discussed but only in terms of its ineffectiveness as shock troops against the rifle. The book did not discuss the effective uses of the cavalry (reconnaissance or raids) and it did not develop how the change in roles for the cavalry supported their original thesis.
The most glaring problem with this book is in the last chapter. This is where the true (hidden) thesis is presented - the Celtic heritage being the reason the South lost the war. The evidence presented is circumstantial and weak. The second to last chapter presented an excellent argument for why the Civil War generals' preferred to attack - they were young officers during the Mexican War where offensive action was decisive.
The original thesis does present a factor in why the south lost - they lost in attrition warfare. With a smaller population, the South had less men available and the cost of attrition warfare was greater. They did sacrifice too many men in charges but was there a valid alternative? The authors did not explore other options but locked themselves into hidden agendas which diverted them from fully exploring, supporting, and developing their original thesis.

Attack and Die : Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage by Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson is a good compliment to other more complete histories of the Civil War. In and of itself the book is too focused on its central thesis - that the South lost due to the compulsion of its generals to be on the offensive and the resulting high casualty rate. While these tactics certainly had a dramatic effect on the outcome, the authors fail to put them in to the proper context of other causes.

The strength of the book is in its description of the reasons for the Confederate strategy, and the failure of almost all Civil War generals to come to grips with the effect that the introduction of the rifle had on the upcoming battles. The authors trace the introduction of the rifle and the displacement of the musket as well as how the tactics that were used being generally premised on the musket. What was missing was any refrence to General Longstreet's plan for the strategic offense combined with tactical defense. This is exactly what Longstreet suggested to Lee before the second day of Gettysburg.

The most interesting part of the book is the last two chapters. The second to last discusses how the Mexican War experiences of the generals predisposed the participants to take the offensive, since that is how the Mexican War was won. The increased accuracy and killing power of the rifle made those tactics obsolete.

The last chapter is the most interesting, although the authors may have taken their conclusions too far. Their conclusion is that given the Celtic roots of the Confederate Generals that they were culturally programmed to take the offensive. While the cultural antecedents of the generals cannot be dismissed as a factor, the Celtic battles that the authors discuss took place generations before the Civil War.

This is a worthwhile read for someone who already has a good Civil War background.

McWhiney and Jamieson use Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage to effectively stage a war between the American Englishman of the North and the American Celts of the South. The authors engulf themselves in the heritage and culture of the South and its ties to its Celtic ancestry. Their viewpoints on how and why the Confederacy lost so many men are saturated throughout the book. Their exposition on Civil War tactics and how they were altered or rendered ineffective by technology allows the reader to examine the challenges faced by the Confederate commanders and soldiers in a war being fought solely with spirit and ambition.

McWhiney's thesis is much more of a stretch. He examines the disastrous Southern military tactics which cost the Confederacy its independence and argues that the reason the South stuck to these tactics for so long had to do with the Celtic ancestry and folkways of Southerners and of Southern culture. He contends that "the Confederates bled themselves nearly to death in the first three years of the war making costly attacks more often than did the Federals. Offensive tactics, which had been used so successfully by Americans in the Mexican War, were much less effective in the 1860's because an improved weapon, the rifle, had vastly increased the strength of defenders. The Confederates could have offset their numerical disadvantage by remaining on the defensive and forcing the Federals to attack; one man in a trench armed with a rifle was equal to several outside it. But Southerners, imprisoned in a culture that rejected careful calculation and patience, often refused to learn from their mistakes. They continued to fight, despite mounting casualties, with the same courageous dash and reckless abandon that had characterized their Celtic ancestors for two thousand years. The Confederates favored offensive warfare because the Celtic charge was and integral part of their heritage....There was no glory to be gained from fighting out of a hole in the ground."

I would like to give this 2.5 stars, but 3 is too much.

As a tactical discussion this is probably preferable to Paddy Griffith's work favoring vigorous frontal assault and discounting the new firepower. However, Attack and Die has some glaring omissions that hurt it, and it also makes some assertions that don't help. There are too many technological phases and differing terrain, strategic, and logistical situations in the American Civil War to support the simple tactical absolutes that authors too often apply.

The authors' thesis is two fold: Southern armies were too aggressive; and that this was the result of Celtic heritage. On the first point it is true that the improvements in the rifle and percussion firing systems greatly improved the odds for the force on the tactical defensive. As the war progressed, earthworks further increased lethality of rifles while shielding the defender and concealing his numbers. However, this completely misses the strategic fact that it's rather hard for two opposing armies to simultaneously and indefinitely remain on the defensive since it results in stalemate. Unfortunately, as Joe Johnston proved both at Vicksburg (by failing to support Pemberton) and before Atlanta, if one cannot find an opportunity to repel the invader, the enemy can pin one's force and subdue it through siege operations. So remaining on the defensive can result in an even more demoralizing defeat without ever yielding an opportunity for victory. Preserving one's force is irrelevant if it cannot be fed or equipped because of destruction of one's territory, industry and logistical hubs. Lee, Davis, and even Bragg understood that. "Use it or lose it" applies.

As for blaming the tactical offensive of Southern armies on Celtic roots, it fails on several levels. First, one wonders what that means for Grant's armies who lost far more men in offensives...and in the end captured three separate CSA field armies for their trouble, and broke the siege of Chattanooga. Second the ethnic theory illustrates a huge flaw in the authors' (and many others') approach to comparing North and South, a simplistic New England vs. Old South view. Both North and South were heterogeneous, the North far more so. New England was far different than the Old Northwest, or the western states of the time. The differences can be seen clearly in census data for churches.

The discussion of ancient Celts, the *strategic* reasons for their defeats, the quality of their weapons and battles is very flawed and Telamon in particularly was erroneously interpreted.

Ignoring the speculative ethnic theory, what is missing in the discussion is the recognition of initiative and that when defending one's territory one must either compel the invading army to attack so that it can be defeated, or find a way to gain sufficient advantage to attack and defeat it. This was the impetus behind Lee's actions to repeatedly repel Union armies in Virginia. While the cost was high, it was probably necessary to prevent the immobilization and eventual defeat of his army. When Lee could no longer do this in 1864 he was forced to settle into a prolonged but eventually fatal siege defense.

Another important factor the authors neglected is that armies on the strategic offensive in hostile territory are at a considerable disadvantage in terms of intelligence, communications, and supply. Most of the decisive defeats North and South occurred as much for these strategic considerations as for tactical ones. Often forcing one major battle was sufficient to deplete the enemy's supplies or manpower sufficiently to end the offensive campaign even if victorious tactically.

The authors are careful to point out the general adoption of major entrenchments as a standard practice by 1864, and how this greatly changed Civil War fighting. They also illustrate how these (along with further entrenchments in the rear) became nearly impregnable to assault. Upton and other commanders had partial successes of using heavy assault columns to overwhelm sections, but the inherent resulting disorganization prevented capture of parallels to the rear. Local successes had become too difficult to exploit with large armies.

The best aspect of the book is the continual referencing of Mexican War actions and how these shaped the tactical thinking of the ACW commanders. Also useful is the lengthy discussions of period tactical manuals for the various arms.

The artillery discussion is generally correct, but the authors conspicuously fail to note the *wartime* transition from inaccurate and short ranged 6 pounder smoothbores and 12 pounder howitzers to the more accurate and longer ranged Napoleons and rifled pieces.

I was shocked at the lack of attention paid to Nathan Bedford Forrest's superb tactical skills. In fact the authors go so far as to suggest he added nothing! Perhaps they should have studied Brice's Cross Roads---a very relevant action that they entirely neglected to mention. Forrest understood initiative, momentum and concentration. Initiative and momentum are not things the authors seem to appreciate. With regard to weaponry, Forrest, like Mosby preferred two pistols for his men. This was an acknowledgement of the melee style of combat that frequently occurred in the thicketed country he operated in. He also at times effectively advanced his cannon in a more Napoleonic support because rifle range was not a factor in the dense growth. But perhaps Forrest's effective closer fighting style is in fact why they ignored his contributions.

Another irritating oversight was ignoring the decisive battle of the Vicksburg campaign, Champion Hill, and instead focusing on assaults vs. the entrenchments around the city. Champion Hill was an example of fixing an army in position and then hammering at a wing until it broke. The whole Vicksburg campaign up until the siege is one of continuous motion (initiative and momentum) never allowing the defenders to face the attacker with parity. Furthermore, after Champion Hill, at the Big Black River Grant's forces easily overran the entrenchments and forced Pemberton's army back into the city's works. Other lesser-known examples are Piedmont, Droop Mountain, Cloyd's Mountain.

Where Johnston failed is in giving up all the ground before Atlanta without once finding a point to effectively turn the Federal position or destroy a section of the army when it was most vulnerable. This is something the authors overlooked: the vulnerability of armies on the move to momentum based attacks. The defensive tactical advantage existed when positions were fixed and the defenders forces could support one another. When an army was moving it could be struck without such advantages as interior lines and defensive entrenchments. It also had less sense of where the enemy was and how strong while moving. Some famous examples of striking armies on the move include Brice's Crossroads, Mansfield, New Market, and Olustee. Each of these were Confederate victories seizing the tactical offensive from the enemy and effectively halting a Federal campaign.

Grant and Lee understood the initiative at both strategic and tactical levels. The authors (as well as McClellan and Joe Johnston) apparently do/did not. The tactical offensive could be extremely costly and against entrenched defenders it was nearly suicidal unless there were special considerations. However, it could also achieve the strategic objective and produce outsized results in various other situations. I can't recommend this work to most readers as I think it will lead them to an erroneous view of offensive operations because its conclusions are too broad and absolute.

Probably better suited for more serious students of the Civil War, "Attack and Die" by Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson, provides an excellent expose' about how the Confederates "bled themselves nearly to death..." by attacking with greater frequency than their Northern counterparts. The book also presents a very compelling argument about how the use of outdated offensive tactics, learned during the Mexican War, and antiquated in the face of major technological improvements to muskets and cannon, had a devastating effect on the South.

Another interesting, and controversial, aspect of the book is the authors' conclusion that the tendency for offensive warfare was deeply rooted in Southern culture, and Celtic heritage. While the authors lacked sufficient evidence to be convincing on this point, they were far more convincing about how the advent of the rifle made bayonet attacks obsolete, the offensive use of cavalry ineffective, and entrenchments and fieldworks highly prized by Northern commanders.

Although, as the authors point out that there were good reasons for the South to adopt a defensive strategy, they elected to pursue the offensive to the detriment of their cause. Certainly, it is difficult to argue with the fact that the South lost 175,000 men during the first 27 months of the war due to their propensity for offensive action, or how they lost 97,000 men vs. 77,000 men for the North during the first twelve major battles of the war, or how Pickett's famous charge resulted in the loss of 62% of his command at Gettysburg.

It's no wonder that these tactics prompted D.H. Hill to respond with, "it was not war, it was murder," in reference to the losses the Confederates took after repeated attacks against heavily entrenched Union troops on Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.

This book is an insightful and worthy addition to the study of Civil War strategy and tactics.

McWhiney and Jamieson argue that the South lost the Civil War because it lost too many men through frontal assaults, and that the frontal assaults were actuated by the South's aggression-prone Celtic culture.

I thought the book established effectively that the defender had the advantage in the Civil War and discussed cogently the role of current tactical thought and Mexican War experience in encouraging offensive tactics despite the changes wrought by the rifled musket.

The authors claim that when Confederate soldiers attacked they suffered more casualties than Federals did when they attacked, but do not seem to give an explanation. If this is true, and the problematic nature of exact numbers and losses in the Civil War should be acknowledged, I suspect it has to do with artillery fuses.

A major claim, that Confederate troops attacked more often than Federals did, is never, in my view, substantiated. The evidence offered, which includes accounts of Grant's attacks in 1864, actually supports the idea that neither side really learned the dangers of the tactical offensive.

I am, in particular, not convinced by any aspect of the "Celtic" theory. The evidence of a Southern preference for the offensive seems shaky, and the evidence for Southern cultural aggressiveness comes mostly from anecdotal and/or unfriendly sources. A newspaper editor ranting about war to the knife, or similar sources, shouldn't be taken as representing a culture as a whole.

Nor am I convinced that the South was "Celtic", and the argument put forward by the authors is circular -- the South fought aggressively and that proves they were Celtic because Celts are aggressive. Actually, a quick look at the surnames of Northern and Southern generals and politicians doesn't give me any sense that the North, with its Sheridan and Grant, was any less Celtic in ancestry than the South with its Davis and Stuart. Irish immigrants were more common in Northern than Southern armies, though both sides had their Irish Brigades.

The idea that the Celts were aggressive convinces me least of all. To support this claim, the authors mix primary sources and literary references, often from unfriendly and not necessarily expert authors (Caesar) and skip wildly from one cultural and historical setting to the next, giving a deep analysis of none and appearing to choose evidence tendentiously. Bannockburn, for example, appears, but Scots defensive schiltron formations do not.

The authors use overgeneralized and stereotypical "racial" arguments -- Romans, Englishmen and Yankees were "practical, materialistic, tenacious, machine-like", and Celts and Confederates were "emotional, foolhardy, romantic, undisciplined". Substitute "white" and "black" for those ethnicities and it becomes clear that this argument is oversimplified at best. The idea that the American Civil War represented "a continuation of the centuries-old conflict between Celts and Englishmen..." not only strikes me as specious, but underemphasizes slavery as a cause to a degree with which I am uncomfortable.

The idea that there's some meaningful tactical or cultural link between Pickett's Charge, say, and Vercingetorix, or for that matter Bonnie Prince Charlie, beggars my belief -- the popularity of Scott's novels notwithstanding. The book descends to its silliest level when it attempts to draw a serious parallel between a Union soldier's quite possibly wild claim of having found Union skulls in a Confederate camp and the beheading activities of the medieval Irish literary/mythological hero Cu Chulainn.

I can't recommend this as serious scholarship.

McWhiney and Jamieson offer their perspective on the South's stratagems during the Civil War with emphasis on two main points: the efficacy of the rifled musket and the lessons (oft times the "wrong" ones) learned during the Mexican War. The role of infantry, artillery and cavalry are outlined, with, as a nice touch, a summarizing/concluding paragraph at the end of each chapter. The final chapter, which logics the South's "Celtic" war-like traditions, I found a bit of a stretch.

The focus of this book is boldly stated on page xv: "How and why the Confederates lost so many men is the burden of this book. We contend that the Confederates bled themselves nearly to death in the first three years of the war by making costly attacks more often than did the Federals."

One theme of the book is that warfare had been changed by the outset of the Civil War, with the development of rifled guns. Masses of troops firing at one another at close range made some sense with the inaccurate muskets of the Revolutionary War or the Napoleonic Wars. However, such formations made much less sense as rifles increased accuracy and range.

Among specific arguments that the book makes is that the romance of the bayonet was pretty much done; evidence suggests that rather few casualties came from bayonet thrusts? Why not? It was difficult for attacking soldiers to get close enough to defenders because of the rifle fire and the use of defensive positioning. Fieldworks thwarted many massed charges; soldiers on the defensive were ordinarily better placed for victory than those who attacked. Just so, the value of cavalry with sabers bared, charging. The bulk of cavalry combat came with troopers fighting as infantry did, not fighting from atop their horses.

Doctrine lagged behind facts-on-the-ground. Only a few officers began to redefine how to carry out an offensive against entrenchments (e.g., Emory Upton). And, according to the authors, Confederates appeared less willing to give up the tactical offensive. Why? Here comes the rather bizarre part of the book. The authors content that southerners were more Celtic and Northern troops more English. And, the contention goes, Celtic warriors fought on the offensive (there is even an effort to tie the Rebel yell to Celtic warriors). At this point, the argument, to me, falls to pieces.

Nonetheless, up to that point, the analysis makes some sense. Other books have explored this thesis, too, but--until the end--this book compares well.

In Attack and Die the authors attempt to explain the reason for the southern preference for the attack over defense and inject into the discussion the relevance of Celtic heritage as part of the penchant for aggression. It appears the problem many reviewers have is describing the heritage as "Celtic." It proves too much of a stretch in the attempt to find a cultural continuum all the way back to the era of Julius Caesar and his Gallic foes described in his commentaries.

Instead of Celtic it may have been better to label the cultural influence as Scots-Irish. This is the culture described in detail by David Hackett Fischer in part four of his outstanding history Albion's Seed. Also, Jim Webb's Born Fighting is an excellent popular history on the Scots-Irish. These are the people who came to America from Ulster and low country Scotland and moved into the colonial frontier. The rank-and-file of the Confederate army was largely a product of this culture.

Southern aggression may have had some cultural origins but it resulted from political expedience as well. The back-pedaling Joe Johnston would have been a favorite with Czar Alexander I, but with Jeff Davis as his boss he ranks low in the pantheon of southern generals. Oddly, for all their attempt to demonstrate southern aggressiveness, the authors conclude that "no other Civil War general--not even Lee--was more aggressive than Grant."

There is much in Attack and Die to entertain and inform, if you don't get too caught up in the whole Celtic debate.

Attempts to explain why the South lost the Civil War have been a crowded cottage industry since the war ended. Northern industrial might, excessive Southern democracy, poor political leadership, faulty economic support, have all had their advocates and periods of popularity. Attack and Die is a fresh appraoch to the question. The analysis of McWhiney and Jamieson combines a shrewd analysis of southern culture, changes in military technology between 1846 and 1861, with an impressive array of statistics to explain the Southern defeat as springing from their dependence on outmoded tactics that worked in the Mexican War but did not work fifteen years later. The reason: the change in that fifteen years from the musket to the rifle as the basic infantry weapon. Studies like this demonstrate that there is still a vast amount of material to be collected, analysed, and theorized upon about our Civil War.