Conference smurf::civil_war

    
    I think it WAS a different breed ... European observers commented
    on the lack of march discipline among the troops, for example,
    compared to European armies like the French or British. However
    the men did march when they had too, consider the march mentioned in
    note -1, or AP Hill's epic march to Sharpsburg with the LIght
    Division.
    
    The troops of both sides were highly motivated, and were in
    general more committed to the causes they fought for than any
    previous armies in history. The troops were also volunteers or
    conscripts so probably took a fairly realistic view of their
    chances in battle. If they ran, it was generally with the intention
    of fighting another day. 
    
    In hte volunteer army, the officers usually had the same values 
    as the men so they worked with what they had .... however nothing
    as serious as the 1917 mutiny of the French army took place on 
    either side. The Army of Tennessee after MIssionary Ridge was
    in a real state of stricken morale, yet a new commander (Johnston),
    liberal furloughs and a return to a disciplined routine had the
    army ready to face Sherman 6 months later.
    
    Desertion seeemed to be the most serious problem on the Southern
    side, particuarly late in the war. I don't think any special means
    of combatting it were considered.
    
    Toby

    A letter written by Corporal Edward Mahogeny to his Mother in 
    Sunderland, Mass. on July 9th, 1863.  Edd was in the 37th Mass.
    
    ".....We arrived at Gettysburg the 2nd about night, having marched
    over 40 miles since dark the night before.  We formed a line of
    battle amediately and followed the Johnys that were being drove by
    our troops about a mile.  Most of the fighting was done the third.
    The Rebs fought desparate, but our men would not flinch till the
    last man was killed.  Some of our regiments were most all killed.
    (he's describing Pickett's Charge here).  The 15th Mass Regiment
    had only 58 men with guns left.  The 4th of July our Brigade went
    to the front expecting some hard fighting but saw no Johnys except
    dead ones, which covered the ground as the oak has leaves.  I
    suppose the Rebs were retreating about that time......."
    
    Then goes on to describe several more days of hard marching chasing
    Lee starting the 5th of July.  The 37th had been on the march since
    the 6th of June.  In describing the march to Gettysburg he comments
    "we have men drop dead on the way, and sometimes march both day and
    night".  These guys really were different!!

    
    ...don't forget Jackson's Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862.  They 
    went so hard and fast they got the nickname "foot cavalry".
    
    Scott

    There were two incredible marches in the New Mexico campaign -
    one on each side.
    
    The 1st Colorado Vol. Infantry, US, had gone into camp at Raton
    summit just before dark.  (This was in early March.)  About 10:00
    pm it started to snow.  The commanders realized that to stay on
    the summit in a storm would devastate their command, so they 
    ordered the men to strike camp and hit the road.  About noon
    the next day (one diarist said about dawn) the 1st arrived at
    Cimmarron Ranch, almost 20 miles from Raton summit.  They had
    carried out all their gear, and by the end of the march were
    cutting through 3' of snow!  They rested one day and continued
    on to Ft. Union, covering around 150 miles in [BRAIN FADE] I
    think 6 days.
    
    Among the Confederates, there stands the feat of Lt. Col. Scurry's
    battalions of the 4th, 5th, and 7th Texas Mtd. Volunteers.  The 4th
    and 7th regiments had been dismounted at Socorro, more than 100 miles
    to the south of Glorieta Pass.  These two regiments were infantry
    in every sense.  They had marched about 15 miles during the day of
    the 26th of March.  The lead battalions of the 4th had been in camp
    at Galisteo a few hours, and had cooked and eaten a meal, such as
    it was.  They were on half-rations, and had been for more than two 
    weeks.  The trailing battalions, mostly of the 7th regiment, had just
    come into camp about 8:00pm.
    
    A rider came thundering into camp with news of Maj. Pyron's fight at
    Apache Canyon earlier in the day.  Pyron had been very roughly treated
    by a larger force of Colorado cavalry, and needed help.  Scurry
    had his force on the road to Apache Canyon within an hour.  They
    marched all night, and dawn found them deploying into line with
    Pyron's men, 17 miles from Galisteo.  I have hiked that ground, 
    tracing their very route, leaving Galisteo at 9:00pm.  I'm here to
    tell you, it is one more hell of a hump!  About 2/3 of the way to
    Apache Canyon there is a very steep hill to be climbed.  The jaded
    draft animals of the artillery could not get the guns up it, so the
    men dragged the cannons and artillery chests up the hill.  It is
    about a 90% grade, and right at 300 yards from foot to crest.
    
    The supply wagons caught up with the Texans about noon, and they
    cooked and ate two meals - at half rations, that makes one skimpy
    meal - while waiting in line of battle for a Federal assault.  Co.
    C of the 4th buried 18 year-old Jacob Shultz, who had died of pneu-
    monia during the night's march.  His comrades had carried his corpse
    more than 5 miles.  Neither his grave nor the grave of the Confederates
    killed on the 26th have ever been found.
    
    Scurry tired of waiting for a Federal attack and ordered an advance up
    the canyon at 8:00am on the 28th.  The Texans were issued one day's
    rations, which they cooked and ate immediately.  They moved up the
    canyon about 5 miles and struck the Federal skimrishers near where the
    present day Baptist conference center is.  They fought a pitched
    battle, uphill, for six hours, against a very determined and well-
    equipped foe.  The night of the 28th they slept on the battlefield -
    this is above 7,000 feet, and there was snow on the ground - with no
    blankets or fires.  They had no rations because their supply train had
    been destroyed by Chivington at Johnson's Ranch, in Apache Canyon.
    
    During the day of the 29th they buried their dead with shovels they
    borrowed from Federal burial parties.  Just after dark, Scurry ordered
    a movement to Santa Fe, almost 20 miles to the west.  The column strung
    out more than 5 miles, but all the men arrived in Santa Fe by a little
    after dawn on the 30th.
    
    In all, Scurry's men marched at least 48 miles in 4 1/2 days, with a
    day of something like rest in the middle, and fought a very gruelling
    battle.  They made two overnight marches in temperatures in the low
    20's.  The one night they did not march, they slept on a battlefield
    with no shelter whatsoever.  They did all this on three meals, at the
    most, and the men of the 7th only had two!
    
    Yes, they were, indeed, a different breed of men.
    
    
    Wess

    
    Yeah, they were pretty tough all right. But then again they had to be.
    People did not live long back then. Starvation, exposure, and disease
    were very real facts of life. There was no such thing a medical care
    to speak of and if you got injured you suffered through it or died.
    Esoteric discussions on the meaning of life was not a common campfire
    pastime back then. How to stay warm and have a full belly were.
    
    I think people are what conditions make them. My grandparents were all
    Irish immigrants and to me they seemed awfully tough (especially my
    grandma's!) I'll bet they thought their grandparents were tougher
    still.  I'll also bet the guys in blue and grey did not consider
    themselves near as tough as those grunts at Valley Forge.
    
    Still, try to imagine crossing a open field with a couple of thousand
    guys trying to blow you away, along with artillery blasting away and
    knowing that IF you got to their lines in one piece there'd be
    some very scared and tough dudes with bayonets ready to make you into
    a human shish-ka-bob. Makes me want to curl up with a good CW book under 
    a warm blanket and thank my lucky stars I was born a hundred years too
    late for that particular altercation. But it sure is great to read about
    it.  
    
    TD
    
                                               
    

    RE -1 .... I hear you...I went to the battlefield at Fredericksburg
    and tried to imagine what guts it took to file in, brigade by brigade,
    for eight hours, and then storm the Stone Wall.  It must have been
    really something towards the end when the whole damned field was
    covered with blue bodies.  Yet, I read an account written by someone
    who took part in one of this brigade assaults.....just as cool and
    detached as you can imagine.  There must be a protective mechanism.
    There must be something that shuts off in the mind and says "I'm
    probably dead meat....so I might as well go out looking good."

    One day I stood on the Emmistburg Road and looked at the white
    monuments on the Round Tops.  Then I went up on the Round Tops and
    looked at the monuments along the Road.  Good Lord!  There is a lot of
    open ground between.  It made my blood run cold to think about having
    to take that hill, but then I thought about what it must have looked
    like from up there:  seeing the 5th Corps rolled back - seeing the Rebs
    take such a terrible pounding but still coming on - seeing Rebs on the
    top of Devil's Den and swarming up the slopes of Little Round Top...
    
    I think I'd have been sorely tempted - no matter which side I'd been on
    - to say, "Hey!  Y'all want this hill that bad, by golly you can have
    it!"  I really can only guess at or try to imagine what goes through
    the  mind of an intelligent man in such a situation.  If one ever
    really *FEELS*  the aura of such places, one will have only contempt
    for the theories that the Yanks were fighting for money and the Rebs
    were fighting to keep someone below them in the social order.  There
    ain't enough money or social standing in the bloody universe to
    motivate men to do things like those fellows did!
    
    
    
    Wess

r. last few.

I don't think they were all different than most people today. The only major
difference is that we as a race are getting 'soft'. Talk to the army nowadays
and some of the marchs that they do. The men in the 19th centurary lived very
physical compared to most of us nowadays. So comparing them to ourselves is not
a like comparison. Comparing them to the army personel especialy the infantry 
is much more likely and fair.

If you want to see some modern marches just look at the Falklands War. The 
British army had to put up with mines, aircraft and frezzing temps. Not quite 
the same circumstances but we can still do it. They yomped the whole distance
only slowed by the fact that mines were all over the country side (and still 
are). When cleared troops were moving to Port Stanly/Goose Green in impressive
times.

As to doing insane things (war is insane anyway) what I've read seems to show
a use of the regiment system ( although not in formal manner) in the civil war.
This creates a great deal of pride and group pressure, a very powerful and 
effective force against adversity. Most people who do re-enactments I'm sure 
will agree with me in saying that the atmosphere of a battle makes
you forget EVERYTHING and you just do it.

I re-enact the English Civil War ( C17th) where we have regements of aprox 100
and actual physical contact (fist/sword fights and pike presses which are as 
good as real) and we get aprox a 10% actual causalty rate each event (from 
broken bones, ripped muscels etc to spains) and unfortuantely this last year 
one perm disablity and three dead horses. However, on the field you don't feel 
fear of getting hurt etc.. just sticking it to the other side. The charges into
the royalist lines is just an indescibeable feeling.    

What I'm trying to show is that these two factors ( the regiment of comardes/
friends and the power of battle ) make men do what seems like and are amazing 
acts. This does not take away anything that they did, infact it show the power
and stamina that they had.

Mark (usualy a read only brought out into the open by this discussion)
   

    
    re .8
    
    I'll bet you play rugby just to wind down:^)
    
    I still find it hard to understand how soldiers (especially veterans)
    could calmly pin their names and units to their jackets in expectation
    of dying and still try to push as far as they could when they knew it
    was just another blunder. Seems more prudent to go just as far as you
    had to to keep from being shot by your own officers and just "dig in."
    After all, most savvy veterans were a far sight better at tactics than
    the men who led them and could spot a disaster in the making.  
     
    I can't understand how the splendid II Corps, the veteran Corps of the
    AOP who never lost a flag or gun until well into 1864, could be
    sacrificed in a suicidal charge at Cold Harbor after the lessons of
    Fredericksburg and Pickett's charge.
    
    On the other hand, I read once that during the Revolutionary War the 
    Americans gained a distinct advantage over the Brits after Bunker
    Hill because no officer who survived the assault ever again ordered a
    frontal attack on entrenchments during the remainder of the war.
    
    What was it Tennyson said, "Ours not to reason why..."
    
    TD
                                                                

r .9
   
>    I'll bet you play rugby just to wind down:^)
 
It sounds alot worse than it is ;=) most people pull blows (ish) and we have
armour, most injuries are accidents caused by the person that gets injured being
too tried to react quickly. The rule is if your tried you 'die' for a while. ;=)

Apart from the people on the field and veterans maybe not knowing the whole 
picture as we can know and each time hoping for a better command /plan it is 
amazing what they did.

I think your right with the Tennyson and the attitude behind the quote. If they 
got to that situation if you run away they chase and get you. If you stand the 
officers get you, if you go forward theres a chance (slight but there) that
you may win, and thus survive. Theres also the factors of honor and pride.

But who knows what really made them do those things. Theres a thin line
between a fool and a hero.

Mark

 

Believe it or not, one reason troops would pin their names and units to
their blouses and then go off in a futile effort was that they were well
aware of the alternative.

Under the laws of both the Federal and Confederate armies, a soldier
guilty of desertion in the face of the enemy was subject to summary
execution - in combat, this could be done by the officer on the spot
without trial.  If you went into combat, you might survive.  If you
refused, you were guaranteed to die quickly.  By Hobson's choice, they
went into battle.

-dick

    A lot of those officers knew, though, that if they tried it they too
    would have a amazingly short life span.
    
    Soldiers do what they do very often out of a strong sense of esprit
    de corps and "belonging".  There is also the knowledge that if you
    fail to do your job, you fail your unit....but more important can
    actually cause others to die.
    
    I've been in a couple infantry assaults, one company-sized daylight
    raid, and numerous night patrols in Korea.  The time before the actual
    event is ten thousand times worse than actually doing it.  Once
    committed to an action (at least in my case), fear virtually disappears
    and there is an actual sense of elation.  I used to shit-a-brick during
    the couple hours we would spend behind the line preparing to go out on
    patrol....but in my case, the instant we crossed through the wire and
    were essentially in no-man's-land, I was cool as hell.  There was even
    a tendency to fool around and be a little silly.  The next scariest
    time was when we came back in from patrol, and had to pass through our
    own lines.  Good change of getting shot then.

r. -1

Thats exactly what I was trying (without much luck) to show with my poor 
examples. I had no better examples than playing silly games, although in the new
year I'll be getting the real experiences.

Mark

    There are also instances when an officer can see that the men have
    chosen the poorer of two courses.  For example, (excuse my departure of 
    the WBTS)  on Omaha Beach in June, 1944, when the men refused to breach
    the seawall because of the storm of iron "outbound" over it.  A general
    saw the casualty rate, and said, "Only two kinds of soldiers will stay
    on this beach:  those who have died on it and those who are going to
    die on it."  Smith did the same thing at Tarawa.
    
    
    Wess