150 years ago today...
 

april 12, 1861.

Confederate batteries open up on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour marking the beginning of the U.S. Civil War.

This morning also marks the first official commemoration ceremonies:

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011...1302616654&s=3

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...war-ceremonies

Wow...

Not to detract from such a monumental event, but I can't help but think just how far military hardware has come in the last 150 years. Imagine how much higher the death toll would have been with modern weapons. As tragic and painful as the war was, (if it had to happen), best it happened then rather than now.

Wow, 150 years.

I've gained a lot of respect for the Civil War as of lately, I recently found a small battlefield not a 10 minute drive from my house that I have driven past almost every day and didn't even know it.

Since I'm close to Independence (where Louis and Clark took off from) I figured the large marble plaques were to commemorate their adventure. So one nice sunny day I was driving home from a dentist's appointment, I decided that after 22 years, I wanted to read these plaques and stop my curiosity.

Imagine my surprise when I found at that the two plaques were giving a history and battle map of the area! I'd like to walk through the field and just see what it was like on the field.

By the standards of ANY time, casualties were horrific: more Americans died in the Civil War (or War of Northern Aggression) than in all other American wars combined. Almost as many Americans died in three days in July, 1863 at Gettysburg as did in the (officially) twenty years of the Vietnam War (~53,000 at Gettysburg, ~59,000 in Vietnam).

The American Civil War is considered by many to be the beginning of what we today call "modern" warfare - the weapons improved ahead of the tactics, which is why you had massed formations crossing open ground to meet massed formations behind defensive breastworks, and the ensuing bloodbath is inevitable. Canister fire from cannon, more accurate riflery with a higher rate of fire and over longer ranges, all fired into massed crowds of men approaching shoulder-to-shoulder. The carnage must have been unimaginable.

The war saw the development of what would become the Gatling gun, the submarine, steam-powered steel ships with movable gun turrets, aerial reconnaissance... while men still marching shoulder to shoulder and ships still turned broadside to fire effectively. Technology advanced our ability to deal damage to each other very effectively indeed.

Indeed, but just imagine if ALL the rifles had a much higher rate of fire. A very chilling prospect...

yes, you get WW1.

There is a reason the armies fight in 1861 as if it was 1815 and by 1864 are all digging in as if it is 1914.

Up until the Napoleonic war, the main firearm was the smoothbore musket with a maximum effective range of 100 meters. In 1861, rifled firearms with an effective range of 500 meters were standard.

Soldiers very quickly found out that to survive, they had to adopt modern tactics, moving in small groups, using the terrain as protection and later in the war, digging in as soon as they stopped marching.

The most direct example of such a thing is probably the Austro-Prussian War, in which the Austrian Army, using muzzle loading rifles and tactics designed to counter similarly equipped armies, suffered massive casualties at the hands of the needle gun-equipped Prussians.

By the time the Franco-Prussian War saw the first battles between opposing armies with breech-loading rifles, artillery and early machine guns, tactics have changed on both sides, though casualties were still proportionally much greater than previous wars.

Indeed, no less a personage as Robert E. Lee knew this to be the case - he was digging trenches and fortifying the areas around Richmond, earning him the nickname "King of Spades" early in the Civil War, prior to his assuming overall command of the ANV. But digging trenches and preparing defenses was, in many circles, defeatist and cowardly, so the war would go on in the classic Napoleonic style, and pile up bodies on the fields of America in the process.

Huzzah to the gallant Pelham's Flying Horse Artilley.

First MN:woot:

The Iron Brigade from Cheezheadlandia.

4th Texas
...and Stonewall Brigade.

http://a1.l3-images.myspacecdn.com/i...d8db4af8/m.jpg



Whupin' yankees since 1861.
http://www.honorthyheritage.com/wp-c...american23.png

Last Full Measure:
http://www.ng.mil/resources/photo_ga...tminnesota.jpg

http://www.farwest.it/FOTOxSITO/2010...nto_1.JPG.jpeg

http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/im...%20troiani.jpg

What I find astonishing about the Civil War was the medical field in it's infancy. The wound care and pain suffered is unimaginable. Really, taking a swing of whiskey and biting a spoon as the doc amputated an appendage must have been absolutely painful.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...000/k17106.jpg

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...00/h84512k.jpg