Information on the strategies and tactics used by both the North and South.
 

"Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War" Editor, Patricia L. Faust
 

    Strategy
 

In this military art, troops are maneuvered outside the battlefield to achieve success in a large geographic area. That geographic
expanse can be a "front" (in the Civil War, part or all of one state) or a "theater" (several contiguous states possessing geographical,
geopolitical, or military unity). When the expanse encompasses an entire country, the corresponding waging of war on the largest scale
to secure national objectives is called "grand strategy."

"Offensive strategy" carries war to the enemy, either directly by challenging his strength or indirectly by penetrating his
weakness." Defensive strategy" protects against enemy strategic offensives. And "defensive-offensive strategy" (which Confederates
often practiced) uses offensive maneuvers for defensive strategic results (e.g., Gen. R. E. Lee and Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall"
Jackson took the offensive May-June 1862 to defend Richmond and Virginia).

Strategic objectives include defeating, destroying, or forcing enemy armies to retreat; seizing enemy strategic sites (supply lines,
depots, arsenals, communications centers, and industry) crucial to his military effort; capturing the enemy capital; disrupting his
economy; and demoralizing his will to wage war. While seeking such goals, the strategist must correspondingly protect his own army,
strategic sites, capital, economy, and populace. He must strike proper balance between securing his rear and campaigning in his front.
Supply lines and homelands must be guarded; especially in war between 2 republics, which the Civil War really was, the compelling
necessity of protecting the political base cannot be ignored. Yet if too many troops are left in the rear, too few remain to attack or even
defend against enemy armies at the front.

Of these objectives, European experience, from which Civil War strategic doctrine derived, emphasized 3 strategies: destroying the
enemy's army in 1 battle, seizing strategic sites, and capturing the enemy's capital. In the Civil War, attacking and defending Richmond
and Washington consumed much effort, but their actual strategic importance, though great, was more symbolic than substantial, since
neither was its country's nerve center, as European capitals were. Also illusory were quests for victory through seizing strategic sites
and cutting "lines of communication" (supply lines); only a few Civil War campaigns, such as Holly Springs and Second Bull Run, were
decided or even significantly affected by such captures. Most chimerical of all were hopes of annihilating the enemy's army in 1 great
Napoleonic victory.

Rather, Civil War strategists used a series of battles--each of them indecisive but cumulatively effective--to cripple the enemy,
drive him back, and overrun or protect territory. Some strategies aimed directly at such battles. Other strategies sought first to
maneuver so as to gain advantage of ground or numbers and only then to give battle under such favorable conditions. Whatever the
overall numbers in the theater, strategy strove to assure numerical superiority on the battlefield; this principle was called "concentrating
masses against fractions." Both sides practiced it, but it was especially important to the overall weaker Secessionists, as when Jackson
performed it so effectively in the Shenandoah Valley.

Again, each side, particularly the Confederates, used "interior lines" to move forces from quiet fronts through the interior to
threatened fronts more quickly than the enemy could move around the military border. But, in practice, Southern supply lines were so
primitive and Federal supply lines were so good that, despite longer distance, Northerners often moved in shorter time due to their
"superior lateral communications." Even more effective against Confederate reliance on interior lines was Ulysses S. Grants grand
strategy of concentrating the armed might of the Union for simultaneous advances to pin and defeat Confederate troops on all major fronts.
Besides these approaches, Civil War strategists, especially Union commanders such as William T. Sherman and Philip H. Sheridan,
usually reluctantly but increasingly came to make the enemies economy and populace suffer. For the first time since the Thirty Years
War, those 2 targets regained legitimacy. While free from the brutality of 1618-48, Federal strategy eventually crippled Southern
capability and will to wage war though, to be effective, such strategy could only complement Northern success in maneuver and battle.
Long-range strategic cavalry raids -- in brigade to corps strength -- played some role in such crippling, but those raids rarely had
much military effect before collapse became imminent in 1865. Instead, the principal unit of strategic maneuver was the infantry corps,
and the basic element of strategic control was the army. And in theaters where I side had several armies, those armies themselves
became maneuver units, and control resided at military division headquarters or with the general-in-chief himself.

Whatever the elements and whatever the means, the fundamental goal of strategy remains the same: the overall use of force to
accomplish broad military and political objectives.
 

    Tactics
 

Tactics is the military art of maneuvering troops on the field of battle to achieve victory in combat. "Offensive tactics" seek success
through attacking; "defensive tactics" aim at defeating enemy attacks.

In Civil War tactics, the principal combat arm was infantry. Its most common deployment was a long "line of battle," 2 ranks deep.
More massed was the "column," varying from 1 to 10 or more companies wide and from 8 to 20 or more ranks deep. Less compact than
column or line was "open order" deployment: a strung out, irregular single line.

Battle lines delivered the most firepower defensively and offensively. Offensive firepower alone would not ensure success.
Attackers had to charge, and massed columns, with their greater depth, were often preferable to battle lines for making frontal assaults.
Better yet were flank attacks, to "roll up" thin battle lines lengthwise. Offensive tacticians sought opportunity for such effective flank
attacks; defensive tacticians countered by "refusing" these flanks on impassable barriers. In either posture, tacticians attempted to
coordinate all their troops to deliver maximum force and firepower and to avoid being beaten "in detail" (piecemeal). Throughout, they
relied on open order deployment to cover their front and flanks with skirmishers, who developed the enemy position and screened their
own troops.

Open order, moreover, was best suited for moving through the wooded countryside of America. That wooded terrain, so different
from Europe's open fields, for which tactical doctrine was aimed, also affected tactical control. Army commanders, even corps
commanders, could not control large, far-flung forces. Instead, army commanders concentrated on strategy. And corps commanders
handled "grand tactics": the medium for translating theater strategy into battlefield tactics, the art of maneuvering large forces just
outside the battlefield and bringing them onto that field. Once on the field, corps commanders provided overall tactical direction, but
their largest practical units of tactical maneuver were divisions. More often, brigades, even regiments, formed those maneuver
elements. Essentially, brigades did the fighting in the Civil War.

Besides affecting organization, difficult terrain helped relegate cavalry and artillery to lesser tactical roles. More influential there
was the widespread use of long-range rifled shoulder arms. As recently as the Mexican War, when most infantry fired smoothbore
muskets, cavalry and artillery had been key attacking arms. Attempting to continue such tactics in the Civil War proved disastrous, as
infantry rifle power soon drove horsemen virtually off the battlefield and relegated artillery to defensive support. Rifle power devastated
offensive infantry assaults, too, but senior commanders, who were so quick to understand its. impact on cannon and cavalry, rarely
grasped its effect on infantry. By 1864, infantry customarily did erect light field fortifications to strengthen its defensive battlefield
positions and protect itself from enemy rifle power; but when attacking, whether against battle lines or fortifications, infantry continued
suffering heavy casualties through clinging to tactical formations outmoded by technology.

But if infantry was slow to learn, other arms swiftly found new tactical roles. The new mission of the artillery was to bolster the
defensive, sometimes with 1 battery assigned to each infantry brigade, but more often with I battalion assigned to a Confederate infantry
division and 1 brigade to a Federal infantry corps. With long-range shells and close in canister, artillery became crucial in repulsing
enemy attacks. But long-range shelling to support ones own attack had minimal effect, and artillery assaults were soon abandoned as
suicidal. Throughout, artillery depended almost entirely on direct fire against visible targets.

Cavalry, in the meantime, served most usefully in scouting for tactical intelligence and in screening such intelligence from the foe.
By mid war, moreover, cavalry was using its mobility to seize key spots, where it dismounted and fought afoot. Armed with
breech loading carbines, including Federal repeaters by 1864-65, these foot cavalry fought well even against infantry. Only rarely did
mounted cavalry battle with saber and pistol. Rarer still were mounted pursuits of routed enemies.

Cavalry so infrequently undertook such pursuits chiefly because defeated armies were rarely routed. Size of armies, commitment to
their respective causes by individual citizen soldiers, difficult terrain, and impact of fortifications and technology all militated against the
Napoleonic triumph, which could destroy an enemy army--and an enemy country--in just 1 battle. Raised in the aura of Napoleon, most
Civil War commanders sought the Napoleonic victory, but few came close to achieving it. 60 years after Marengo and Austerlitz,
warfare had so changed that victory in the Civil War would instead come through strategy. Yet within that domain of strategy, not just 1
battle but series of them--and the tactics through which they were fought--were the crucial elements in deciding the outcome of the Civil
War.
 

Paddy Griffith, Rally Once Again: Battle Tactics of the American Civil War (1989);
T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (1952).
 

In military terminology, tactics is the handling of troops on the battlefield. The definition of strategy is usually
divided into two parts: national strategy, which is the shaping of a nation''s political goals in time of war, and
military strategy, which is the use of armed forces to achieve those goals.

The Confederacy''s national strategy in the Civil War was to defend its political independence and territorial
borders. This goal remained constant throughout four years of war, but the military strategies devised to
achieve the goal fluctuated. The initial Southern military strategy consisted of what might be described as a
"dispersed defensive." Numerous small contingents of troops were dispersed around the circumference of six
thousand miles of land and water borders of the Confederacy in the hope of blocking enemy invasions at any
and all points. Some of these troops were stationed in forts along the seacoast and on rivers; others were
organized in small mobile armies that defended key rail junctions, mountain passes, or river crossings on or
near the Confederate border. This proved to be an unwise use of the South''s limited military manpower (which
was only one third of the Union potential), for by fragmenting its forces the Confederacy risked a breakthrough
at one or more crucial points by larger enemy forces. This was precisely what happened in the winter and spring
of 1862, when Northern armies and river navies breached Southern defenses dispersed along a
four-hundred-mile line in Tennessee and Kentucky with breakthroughs at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and
Island No. Ten on the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi rivers.

Yet though militarily unsound, the dispersed defensive was politically necessary. Confederate regiments were
recruited and organized by the states, whose governors retained some control over them even after they were
incorporated into the Confederate army. The governors of, say, South Carolina and Arkansas were unwilling to
send most of their regiments to crucial points in Virginia or Tennessee if this would leave their own states
unprotected. The political allegiance of states was almost as important to Confederate national survival as the
military defense of the Southern heartland. Thus Jefferson Davis and his military leaders could never wholly
abandon the dispersed defensive. Substantial numbers of troops remained scattered in several quiet sectors
instead of concentrated in the most active and threatened theaters (mainly Virginia and Tennessee) until 1864,
when Union conquests had shrunk Confederate territory to the point where most Southern troops were perforce
concentrated into the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee.

But even earlier, Southern strategists had used interior lines of communication to combine scattered forces into
a larger army that could meet an invading Union army on even or nearly even terms. Joseph Johnston brought
most of his small army from Winchester to Manassas Junction to combine with P. G. T. Beauregard's force in
July 1861 to win the Battle of Manassas. Robert E. Lee likewise brought Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson''s
army from the Shenandoah Valley in June 1862 to join with the Army of Northern Virginia to drive George B.
McClellan's besieging force away from Richmond. After the losses of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee,
Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ordered Confederate detachments from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama as
well as those driven from Kentucky and Tennessee to concentrate at Corinth, Mississippi, where they launched
the counteroffensive that almost won the bloody Battle of Shiloh.

These modifications of the dispersed defensive became known in the Confederate lexicon as an
"offensive defensive" strategy. What this meant was that although the Confederate national strategy remained
defensive, it could sometimes best be achieved by an offensive military strategy - by attacking the enemy in
Confederate territory, as Lee did in the Seven Days Battles and as Johnston did at Shiloh, or by invading
enemy territory, as Braxton Bragg and Lee did in September 1862 and Lee did again in June 1863.

Large risks inhered in this offensive defensive strategy. One was the danger that Union forces would move into
the vacuum created by the departure of troops from one place to concentrate in another. The transfer of
first-line Confederate regiments from Louisiana to Corinth in March 1862, for example, left New Orleans
defended by only two forts, a makeshift navy, and raw militia. These were no match for the Union army-navy
task force that fought its way up the Mississippi to Vicksburg during April and May, capturing New Orleans
and gaining control of most of the vital Mississippi Valley. Another risk of the offensive defensive strategy was
the possibility of defeat and destruction of an army far from its home base. This danger was especially acute for
Confederate armies, which did not have the logistical capacity to operate in enemy territory for an extended
period. Thus Lee risked the loss or crippling of his army after the Battles of Antietam and Gettysburg.

The timidity and caution of opposing commanders enabled Lee to bring his battered army back to Virginia on
these occasions. But thereafter, Confederate armies were too weak for effective employment of an
offensive defensive strategy, though John B. Hood tried it once more with the Army of Tennessee in November
1864 - with disastrous results. The virtual destruction of Hood''s army in the Battles of Franklin and Nashville
seemed to confirm the necessity for a less aggressive strategy that would minimize one''s own casualties and
maximize the enemy''s. This was a strategy of attrition, which became the principal Confederate strategy in
1864. In Virginia and Georgia, Lee and Joseph Johnston stood on the entrenched defensive, forcing enemy
armies to attack or carry out difficult flanking maneuvers, trading space for time in the hope that high Union
casualties and prolonged stalemate would convince the Northern people to give up the attempt to conquer the
South because the human and material cost was too high. It almost worked, owing to tactical changes introduced
by rifled weapons and trenches.

The Confederate strategy of attrition was a matter of tactics as well. In the military campaigns of 1864 the
opposing armies seldom lost contact with each other. Fighting or maneuvering in the presence of the enemy was
almost continuous, merging battlefield operations (tactics) with campaign maneuvers (strategy). The Napoleonic
tactics taught in American military schools and employed in the Mexican War were becoming obsolete in the
age of rifled muskets and artillery. These tactics involved close-order assaults by troops bunched in lines of two
or three ranks or in dense columns in order to mass firepower and impact. This worked reasonably well in the
era of the muzzle loading, smoothbore musket and bayonet. The effective (i.e., accurate) range of the
smoothbore musket was at most a hundred yards, and a good soldier could get off two shots a minute. Heavy
close-order assaults often succeeded because of the short range of defensive fire before attackers reached the
defenders'' line. But the development of rifled muskets in the 1850s increased the effective firing range of an
infantryman to four or five hundred yards, and the range of an expert sharpshooter to nearly twice as far. This
vastly strengthened the defense against close-order assaults. Civil War soldiers by 1863 also learned to
entrench whenever they came into contact with the enemy because of the added protection this provided against
long-range rifled muskets and rifled artillery. Old-fashioned cavalry charges became suicidal because enemy
fire could cut down men and horses long before the shock of their charge could break a defensive line. The Civil
War thus produced the evolution of dismounted cavalry tactics, as well as looser infantry assault tactics, which
amounted to large-scale skirmishing, flank attacks, and the like. Although commanders on both sides continued
to order close-order assaults until virtually the end of the war, thus providing an example of how tactics lagged
behind technology, these assaults became increasingly suicidal, especially for Union attackers running up
against Confederate trenches, which by 1864 were almost as elaborate as those on the western front in World
War I.

What kind of Union strategy could overcome the vastly increased strength of defensive warfare? The Northern
national strategy was to preserve the territorial and governmental integrity of the United States. At first this
meant restoring the Union as it had existed before 1861 by suppressing the insurrection that had gained control
of eleven states. This seemed to require a military strategy of limited war: defeat the armies of the
insurrectionists and arrest their leaders, in order to enable the Unionists (whom Northerners in 1861 assumed
to be the silent majority in most Southern states) to regain control and bring the states back into the Union. This
strategy worked well in the border states of Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, which were kept in the Union
with the aid of military force despite the Confederate allegiance of a substantial minority of their citizens. It
worked also in Virginia west of the Alleghenies, where Northern troops helped the Unionist majority form the
new state of West Virginia.

But elsewhere the silent majority of Unionists remained largely a myth. By 1862, therefore, Union strategy
evolved to a second stage: conquest of Confederate territory. This too seemed to result in great success. In
Tennessee and the lower Mississippi Valley, Union arms conquered and occupied fifty thousand square miles of
territory in the spring of 1862 while McClellan's Army of the Potomac swept up the Virginia peninsula and
stood poised to capture Richmond. But then the Confederate offensive defensive onslaught recaptured some of
this territory and knocked Union armies back on their heels.

It became clear that so long as Southern armies retained striking power, the Confederacy would remain a viable
state. Thus in 1863 Northern military strategy evolved to a third phase: destruction of Confederate armies.
Ulysses S. Grant captured one whole army at Vicksburg and badly crippled another at Chattanooga; Lee''s
army limped home to Virginia badly hurt after Gettysburg.

But the Confederacy still lived, its armies sustained by the will of the population to resist and to continue
producing the sinews of war. By 1864 Union strategists recognized that it was not enough to conquer territory
and cripple enemy armies; they must destroy the resources and capacity of the Southern people to wage war.
Gen. William T. Sherman saw this most clearly. "We are not only fighting hostile armies," he wrote, "but a
hostile people." In Sherman's march through Georgia and South Carolina in 1864-1865 and in the campaigns of
other Union armies elsewhere, Northern forces burned and destroyed railroads, factories, farms - anything that
could feed and supply Confederate armies as well as the civilian population, to break their will and ability to
continue the war.

This worked. It had been foreshadowed in 1861 by the Union naval blockade to restrict Confederate imports of
war material and by the Lincoln administration''s adoption of an emancipation policy in 1862 to uproot the
South''s labor force and convert it to a Union labor and fighting force. By 1863 several hundred thousand former
slaves had become free people within Union lines, and the Union army had begun the process that ultimately
recruited 180,000 of them to fight for the Union - and freedom. This crippled a crucial Southern resource for
waging war and added a powerful resource to the Northern strategic effort. Sherman's destruction of all
Southern resources was a logical extension of these policies. It was a strategy of total war that by 1865
overcame the South''s defensive tactics and strategy of attrition by totally destroying the Confederacy''s
capacity to continue fighting. In several respects, therefore, the tactics and strategy of the American Civil War
foreshadowed those of the two world wars in the twentieth century.
 
 
 
 

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