Stardate 20020204.1812

(On Screen): Well, well, well; it seems to be "History of Warfare" day, here at USS Clueless. For our first installment we have a commentary by BruceR over at Flit, who comments on the historical inaccuracies of a posting by Alistair Cooke posted on the BBC. The subject in question is the American Civil War, and its effect on military technology and strategy. So, let's dive right in, shall we?

In some cases, a difference of degree becomes so significant as to become a difference in kind. But that's a judgment call, and that may be where some of the differences of opinion come from. For example, the use of the railroad; Bruce points out that the French had used the railroad in 1859 but that "Americans utilized the rails more than anyone up to that point." But there are several critical differences. Here's a case where I think that a matter of degree truly is a matter of kind; the difference in degree is radical. Second is that I believe that the Civil War was the first war in which the railroad was used tactically and not merely strategically. At the siege of Petersburg, the Union built a railroad around the outside of the siege lines, and used it to move supplies and troops. So far as I know, that is the first tactical use of powered machinery in the history of land warfare.

Second is steamships. Bruce points out the use of such ships in 1853; but I think he means something different than Cooke did. I think Cooke is referring to the use of steam gunboats on the Mississippi river, and I know of no comparable use before that point in the history of warfare. And Cooke is unquestionably correct that the ironclads changed naval warfare forever. (I've written about how revolutionary USS Monitor was.)

Third is torpedoes. Cooke blew this one. Spar bombs were not new, and mechanized torpedoes came later.

Fourth is entrenching. The problem here is deciding what is meant. Entrenching is as old as siege warfare; the Romans entrenched, for instance, and entrenchments were a standard part of medieval siege warfare. The last battle of the American Revolution (Yorktown) was won in a beautifully executed trench siege. And in the Napoleonic wars, if there was time it was quite common to create field fortifications.

But there had never been anything like entrenchments at Petersburg before, where two armies dug in and faced stalemate and attrition over a period of months. They were a lot more than just deep ditches in the ground. The entrenchments extended more than ten miles, which was small by the standard of World War I, but the general battle there presaged the WWI trench war in many ways. No previous trench usage I know of was anything like that.

Neither Cooke nor Bruce mention the single most important change: the use of the electric telegraph. The American Civil War was the first war where it was possible to monitor and control an entire continent from a central location. Napoleon usually had only a vague knowledge of what his local commanders were doing, and any knowledge he had of what they were doing in other theaters was usually weeks out of date because it had to be carried to him by couriers on horseback. Grant, on the other hand, operated with the Army of the Potomac but has current reports of what Sherman was doing out to the west and what was going on in the Shenandoah when Sheridan operated there. This was radical. (And it had a radical effect on cryptography, because it was ridiculously easy to intercept someone else's telegraph communications.) The Civil war was the first telecommunications war.

Every major war significantly changes warfare. In that, the Civil war was no different. But as the first telecommunications war and the first naval war to use what we think of as modern warships (steel-hulled ships with guns in turrets and no sails) the Civil War perhaps was more revolutionary than most. It is rightly called the first industrial war.