Walking out onto a Civil War battlefield, one can become bogged down by maps and monuments – regimental, State, and others.  Most of the major battlefields lie preserved within the National Park Service today, though there are a few important exceptions – Perryville, Resaca, Atlanta, Bentonville, are some of those not within the federal system. And how and why did the actions occur on those battlefields. Here, we dive a bit into the actual tactics used during the Civil War. 

TALKING STONES

But first, before going into more detail regarding the actual tactics used during the Civil War, there seem to be two schools of thought concerning monuments on the battlefields.  One is to simply let the stones stand and tell their stories.  Some of those stories can be skewed by the scale, artistic quality, or quantity of monuments.  The other school of thought is to exclude and-or remove the monuments, letting the terrain simply tell the story.  I am one of those falling into the first category.  The monuments are a great way, in my opinion, for a visitor – most times ignorant of the actions transpiring at a particular battlefield – to gain a basic understanding of what actually happened. 

And while monuments can give some understanding of where fighting occurred, they offer nothing to an understanding of how it occurred.  Even for many amateur students of the war and the battles, the how’s and why’s remain elusive.  Here, an understanding of Civil War tactics plays a large role.

Armies on both sides – North and South – fought in very similar tactics, it was a Civil War, after all.  Generals on both sides, especially at the upper levels, came from very similar backgrounds, whether that was a West Point education, service in antebellum militia groups or experiences gained fighting in the Mexican War.

STRUCTURE

So, how did the units of the armies actually work on the battlefield.  First, one needs to understand the basic structure of those armies – army-corps-division-regiment-battalion-company.  The basic unit was a company.  These 100 men usually ended up recruited from a geographical area such as a county or city.  A company fell under the command of a captain.  Two or more companies made up a battalion – there could be up to eight companies within a battalion.  Battalion command lay with a major. 

the regiment

Two to three battalions made up a regiment – commanded by a full colonel.  Battalions were used within the US Regular Army. But within the volunteer state units which made up the vast majority of the Federal army, regiments were the basic units of maneuver during the war. 

When a regiment was first organized, they had 1,000 men allotted, though time – combat, disease, desertion – reduced the number significantly.  A problem regiments faced on both sides came from not being able to replace losses.  The colonel and others would have to, at times, go back to wherever the regiment originated, trying to recruit more men.  That became much more difficult as the war dragged on.  They also competed with other units trying to attract newcomers with bonuses and other incentives.  Many times, it was just simpler to raise an entirely new regiment.

brigades and divisions

Brigades were the next level up in the army hierarchy.  Comprising a brigade were two or more regiments.  Brigades commonly included between three and five regiments with more fusing together as regimental strengths decreased as the war progressed.  Command lay with a brigadier general, though many times they were led by a colonel. 

Divisions mixed two or more brigades – Federal divisions tended on the smaller size with two to three while Confederate divisions brought as many as five or six brigades.  Again, the numbers tended to go up as time went on.  Command here technically lay with a major general, but sometimes a brigadier was in charge.  Put two or more divisions together and you have a corps.  At the corps level, artillery, cavalry, and infantry all became mixed enabling a corps to take part in independent operations if needed.

the corps and armies

The corps level (actually, anything above a brigade) did not exist in the antebellum Army, since it was too small and spread out over the frontiers.   Corps were commanded by a major general, though on the Confederate side, you could have a lieutenant general in charge.  Corps within the armies developed as the war went along.  On the Federal side, the idea started with the organization of the Army of the Potomac during the command era of Major General George McClellan.  With fifteen divisions, the army became unwieldy and difficult for the army commander to control, thus for the same reasons European armies switched to the idea during the Napoleonic Wars, the corps became introduced with five original corps commanded by the five highest-ranking commanders in the army, a feature imposed by President Lincoln leaving McClellan miffed – he wanted to appoint his own people to lead his various corps.

Corps became added as time went along – two more during the Peninsular Campaign of 1862.  The idea of a corps extended into the western theaters as time went along, also.  Various corps normally served with a specific army, but again, since the unit could act on their own, they could and did move to other armies or served in independent areas.  Corps could also encompass primarily cavalry units, as well.

confederate corps

General Robert E. Lee established a more formal corps-level organization in November 1862 when the Confederate government passed a law to allow corps groupings.  Before, groups of divisions were commanded by senior major generals – Thomas Jackson and James Longstreet in the case of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia – and these groupings formalized into corps.  A third corps would be added with time, and the idea of a corps would also move into their western armies with time, though the organization never became as organized as on the Federal side.

Two or more corps made up an army with multiple armies in the field on both sides.  Command of both corps and armies could lay with the senior major generals – lieutenant generals in the case of the Confederacy – but the presidents on both sides also had last say.  There were another two levels of command above the armies – theater command and overall command.  These levels were in place early in the war as opposed to the development of the corps.

HOW LARGE WERE UNIT FRONTS?

Regiments supposedly numbered 1,000 men, though as noted, they rarely numbered that large on the battlefield putting maybe three to four hundred men forward.  They deployed normally in a two-rank line, shoulder-to-shoulder across a front of about 250 yards in a thousand-man unit – 75 to 100 yards for the 300-400 units.  Brigade commanders then had to deal with a 400-yard front while divisional commanders managed fronts of 1,000 yards or more.  Here, the difference in size of divisions with Federal versus Confederate came into play.  Federal divisions tended to be triangular – three brigades.  Confederate divisions comprised four to five brigades meaning the front of a Confederate division could go for almost a mile wide.  These widths made command very difficult during battles.

command solution?

A solution to the command problem was provided by an update to Scott’s official tactical manual in 1862 by Silas Casey.  He decided upon a square formation within brigades – two regiments forward and two back about 100 yards in reserve.  This reduced the front of a brigade to about 200 yards with the brigadier general in the middle now only having to traverse 100 yards in any direction to control his various regiments.  The “two up and two back” system remained an integral part of US Army tactics long after the Civil War.  A problem with the system was initially, Federal brigades brought only a third of its firepower to the front.  Confederate brigades, with more manpower to the front, could overlap the Federals if the Federal brigadier was not flexible enough to extend his flanks as needed.

LINEAR TACTICS

Now we return to the “how” on moving units around either on a march or the battlefield.  The tactics used by both sides in the Civil War all based themselves upon late 18^th century French texts.  General Winfield Scott wrote the original drill book adopted by the US Army in the 1830s taking drills and tactical movements directly from French drill books of the late 18^th century.  Masses of men concentrated both on the march and on the battlefield bringing massed firepower to bear making up for inaccurate firepower.

Those tactics slowly changed.  The thought, especially with the mass production of rifled – as opposed to smoothbore – muskets, tactics of old needed evolution.  The range of the rifle musket improved dramatically.  Scott chose Brevet Lieutenant Colonel William J. Hardee to draw up an updated manual.  Like his superior, Hardee used the French as his mentor.  Taking their 1841 drill book, augmenting it with his experiences in Texas and Mexico, he finished his manual in 1854 – published one year later. 

The goal of the manual was to make infantry faster – quick steps of 110 steps per minute became the norm and double-quick time – 165 steps per minute – also extensively used.  The faster speed used to accentuate the longer range of the new weapon.  Speed enabled men to pass through the extended range of the new rifled muskets quicker. That speed proved difficult for soldiers to maintain for any extended periods of time, however.

NEED FOR A NEW MANUAL

Hardee, a Georgian, went South at the start of the war.  By that time, his manual or versions closely based upon it – he failed to get a copyright until 1864 – became the basis for training units on both sides.  For the North, Hardee’s Tactics was still used at first.  But Hardee was a traitor. 

So, Major General Silas Casey, after a spell as a divisional commander with the Army of the Potomac, wrote a three-volume work System of Infantry Tactics. He went on to write Infantry Tactics for Colored Troops in 1863.  The first two volumes were basically Hardee’s writings.  His third volume brought up to date Scott’s works regarding units above the regiment-sized unit.

Casey’s works would change after the war with the publication of Emory Upton’s A New System of Infantry Tactics, but that was 1867.  Casey and Hardee basically wrote the book – tactics for all the neophytes coming into the armies during the Civil War.  One big thing neglected by those works was how to use those movements and formations on the actual battlefield.  Columns and lines are one thing, but when to use one and the other.  This, a question Upton hoped to remedy with his work.

TACTICS SEEN IN THE FIELD

The Company

On various visits with the David Powell (Civil War historian and author) – James Ogden (National Park historian) leading discourses on actions happening in and around Chickamauga, our group also gained first-hand experience with some of the basic formations with which and how regiments functioned on those battlefields.  First off, how much space did regiments spread out over?  The answer already revealed being around 75 to 100 yards for the average regiment whittled down to the 300–400-man range. 

flags demonstrate lessons in the field

Mr. Ogden visually demonstrated that to us by placing flags in Winfrey Field.  These flags set out the right and left flanks of the regiments of Brigadier General Edward Walthall.  These men launched an attack catching the flank of the Federal brigade of Colonel Benjamin Scribner late in the morning of 19 September 1863.  The regiments represented on the field hailed from Mississippi:  the 34^th, 30^th, and 29^th – if my memory is correct.  The latter two regiments reported a little over 360 men meaning about a frontage of about 80-85 yards, while the 34^th had about 300 men or a 75-yard front.

Scribner’s men would be confronted directly by Walthall but the other brigade of Walthall’s division – led by Brigadier General St. John R. Liddell – the brigade of Colonel Daniel C. Govan came in on the left of Walthall.  His brigade overlapped the line of Scribner routing the Federals sending them back into the woods to the north of Winfrey Field.  In those woods, the two brigades of Liddell would become separated and routed in turn when new Federal brigades – Colonels John T. Croxton and John T. Connell – hit them on the flanks sending them back to where they had attacked from.  The battle on 19 September at Chickamauga swirled about in just such a back-and-forth manner.

The Skirmish Line

An earlier visit went over the area attacked earlier than Liddell’s division on the morning of 19 September. Those events happened in the same basic area though a little further to the east with the brigades of Colonel Claudius Wilson – mostly Georgian regiments with a battalion of Louisiana Sharp Shooters thrown in – and Brigadier General Matthew D. Ector – predominantly Texan regiments – halting a Federal reconnaissance in force by the brigade of Croxton.  Croxton’s men would withdraw to draw more ammunition as more Federal troops came up through the woods behind to replace them.

Our visit began in the woods south and east of Winfrey Field where Wilson’s brigade formed for battle.  Here, Mr. Ogden organized seminar participants into a company line of two ranks.  Further showing how companies advanced through the woods, he sent out members to show how a skirmish line formed.

SKIRMISHERS IN ACTION

Skirmish lines on a regimental level normally consisted of two companies sent out three hundred yards in front of the main battle line.  The men placed themselves five paces from each other moving in groups of four with twenty to forty paces between each group.  While they maintained a line moving forward, the skirmishers could seek cover as needed.  The goal of the skirmish line was to protect and support the battle line. 

They acted as defensive screens for the main regiment or brigade, or when used offensively, they reached out to determine where an enemy was positioned while also determining some idea of the approximate enemy facing them.  After finding an enemy to the front, skirmishers would fire off a couple of volleys before retiring to the main battle line to report on the enemy in front.  On a brigade level, many times an entire regiment would go out as skirmishers screening the front of the brigade.

On this occasion you can see the skirmish line formed by the group is only a few yards out in front of the “main battle line” for purposes of seeing the formation easier.  Here, at Chickamauga, the dense forests of today were not quite the same as found in 1863.  At that time, much of the underbrush was not there – pigs wandering freely about the woods took care of that.  Several invasive plant species have covered the former battlefields in the succeeding century. 

OBSTACLES

The National Park Service has experimented with limited understory burns to more accurately recreate the terrain at the time of the battle.  While the density of the vegetation exceeds that of 1863, you can still gain an approximation of what faced Civil War soldiers on many other battlefields, Chancellorsville and the Wilderness come to mind.  On those fields – and at Chickamauga, to an extent, as well – skirmishers and the main battle lines had to plow their way through dense forests.  At Chancellorsville, the vegetation was so thick, men had to push single file through the dense forests.

The Regiment

This year, we traipsed through the wet forests to the north of Brock Field retracing the steps of the Federal division of Brigadier General Richard W. Johnson on the early afternoon of 19 September. We stopped for awhile to further understand how regiments formed on the battlefield.  Regiments formed their battlelines by company.  The company alignments sometimes varied but for the most part evolved from the old French place of honor where the companies aligned according to the seniority of the rank commanding them. 

So, the senior-most officer’s company held the farthest point to the right progressing to the junior-most officer’s company on the left.  That arrangement changed such that by the 1720s, experience being important on both of the battleline’s flanks, the pattern was alternated.  The senior captain still held the right flank, but now the second-most senior captain held the left flank.  That pattern continued so the junior captains were in the middle within the close eye of the regimental colonel.

cIVIL WAR REGIMENTAL ALIGNMENTS

In the ideal Civil War regiment, there were ten companies each given an alphabetical designation – A through J without a company I because that letter looked too much like the J.  The typical alignment from left-to-right was A-C-E-G-J-H-F-D-B.  That would vary a lot within different regiments, however, as captains enlisted in the regiments as members of their companies.  Unlike the regular army, those captains were not interchangeable. 

That meant the senior captains did not always command Company A.  Complications arose as many officers shared the same date of rank – especially among senior captains who enlisted at the time a regiment was formed.  Different methods were worked out to determine exactly where companies formed.  Date of election to captain as opposed to date of commission was Wisconsin’s answer.  Drawing of lots and even drill competitions to see which company drilled the best were other methods used to place companies at the honored flank positions.

REGIMENTAL RANKS

Battlelines consisted of two ranks – the French used to utilize three – of men thirteen inches between the two with soldiers standing shoulder-to-shoulder.  Again, the main purpose for linear battlelines was to maximize firepower in the pre-magazine, muzzle-loading weapon era.  Magazines and breech-loading guns would finally end linear tactics used during the Civil War but not on large scales until World War 1.  And while rifled muskets theoretically ranged out to 300-400 yards versus 100 or less with smoothbore muskets, most firefights occurred within 100 yards – as even today.  The reason was with a rifle you still needed to see what you were shooting at.  There were also problems with arching trajectories of the rifled muskets beyond 100 yards which took a long time to master while aiming.

Directly in the middle of the regiment were the regimental colors – the national and regimental flags.  Being in the middle of the line, the flags offered a visible pivot point for many of the tactical maneuvers the regiment – and larger units – would move from.  Alignment of the ranks made it much easier to manage the regiment.  To guard the colors, a group of corporals flanked the flag bearers.  On the flanks of each regiment, file closers kept the lines of both ranks straight with sergeants acting as guides, as well.

Columns into Lines and Vice Versa

Regiments, brigades, and all larger units marched and fought in either lines or columns.  Columns were normally used to move units along roads, onto battlefields and around battlefields, though the men could move in lines, as well.  In our demonstration, the members of our group which had lined up in a regimental front – eleven group members had a placard representing their company plus the color guard – proceeded to be given instructions on a basic maneuver to change from line to column.  Movement from one formation to another was carried out by company – though there were other methods described in Casey’s tactical manual, as well.

Columns could either be single columns or double columns.  Single columns had a frontage of one company while double columns showed a front two companies wide.  In our exercise, our “troops” formed a double column, the more popular formation used in the war.  The two companies on either side of the color guard became the column front units.  They marched forward and the next two companies would fall in behind maintaining their respective sides – right flank units would march on the right side of the column.  This left the senior captained companies in the rear with the junior companies up front.  To deploy from a column to a line, the companies in the van of the column would obliquely march out to their normal positions to form a battleline.

PROBLEMS WITH COLUMNS

Battlelines were normally used to fight by giving the enemy a smaller target to shoot at while massing more firepower.  Columns moved troops around the battlefield quicker and sometimes were used to assault enemy positions.  The problem with a column was one slip by a man in the ranks could disrupt many.  As well, one artillery round could impact many more men in a column than in a line.

CIVIL WAR TACTICS BEYOND THE BASICS

There was plenty more involved in moving about and fighting in the linear units involved with warfare of the time.  The men and the officers became very knowledgeable in whichever tactical manual they used – Scott, Hardee, or Casey.   Beyond being able to choose the correct formations – lines, multiple lines, columns, or mixed order (columns and lines together) – officers needed to know when to use the different formations either for situations on the battlefield whether how to engage the enemy or simply to avoid obstacles why maintaining group formation.  Things as simple as the proper cadence to move the men at were important in pushing attacks forward or moving men through dangerous areas quickly.

Those lessons our group has yet to learn, but over the years re-visiting the battlefields of Chickamauga gives time for more tutorials to experience on the grounds.

FURTHER KNOWLEDGE

For more on Civil War tactics, I recommend starting with Dave Powell’s basic quick article on the subject.  To delve deeper into the matter, there is Paddy Griffith’s Battle Tactics of the Civil War from 1987 – 1989 in the US.  Griffith was a senior lecturer at The Royal Academy at Sandhurst in the UK.  His book included infantry linear tactics along with those used by artillery and cavalry units, as well.

A more recent effort comes from Earl J. Hess – Civil War Infantry Tactics:  Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness published in 2015.  He has also written separate volumes concerning artillery, infantry and logistics (an area glossed over by many students of the war).  Hess is a professor of history at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee not far from the Cumberland Gap, a school started in part with the help of former US Army Civil War general Oliver O. Howard.