Attack and Die

Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage. By Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982. Pp. xv, 209.

In this intriguing and controversial book, McWhiney and Jamieson offer a new interpretation to the severe loss of life suffered by the Confederacy during the Civil War. The authors pull social and cultural elements together with military history to create their central thesis: the Confederacy’s military leadership failed to recognize new tactics and technological advances and willingly threw away men’s lives due to their Celtic heritage. If the Confederacy had adopted a more defensive posture, it very well could have weathered the storm of assaults by the Union, but the character of leaders such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee prevented this because they desired to wage an aggressive war.

Broken down into three sections, the work begins by comparing Union and Confederate losses in battles where major assaults took place and field works. The numbers are very telling, as Confederate forces time and again take heavy losses by waging an aggressive war. Union commanders more easily recognized the change in warfare due to technology and more readily adapted. This leads into the part of the book, which discusses at length the reasons for the belief in aggressive tactics. The Mexican war had a profound effect on the thinking of the soldiers who fought in it, and these lessons were remembered and reinforced in the period leading up to the Civil War. The final section of the work discusses the cultural dimension of the Confederacy’s aggressiveness, owing to their Celtic heritage.

During the Mexican War, the smoothbore musket was the staple weapon of the infantry, but some units were equipped with new rifles, so they could be used as skirmishers. The officers who would grow to command the Union and Confederate armies earned their spurs during this war and witnessed the effectiveness of aggressive tactics and bayonet charges. However, by the start of the Civil War, military technology had made long strides; the main weapon of the infantry became the rifle, which more than doubled the effective range of bullets when compared to smoothbore muskets. Because a large majority of officers gained their experience through the Mexican war, they continued the lessons learned there instead of adapting to new advancements in technology, and many officers no longer even studied tactics once they graduated from West Point. McWhiney and Jamieson deftly discuss the consequences of the lessons learned in the Mexican War and the challenges placed on those lessons by technological advancements. New strategies had to be developed during the war to account for new technology, and the authors do a good job with this material. However, the section of the work discussing the Celtic nature of the South takes away from the rest of the work.

Southerners “favored an offensive warfare because the Celtic charge was an integral part of their heritage” (xv). Unlike Northerners who were mainly English, Southerners were culturally inclined to wage an aggressive warfare which wantonly threw away soldiers’ lives. The authors draw upon Celtic history, such as the battles of Culloden and Telamon, to support their argument. Unfortunately, a large portion of the authors’ arguments are not supported by evidence, and much of the evidence they do supply is circumstantial at best. No real figures are given as to the extent to which the Confederacy was actually Celtic, and many of the correlations made by the authors do not stand up to scrutiny.

McWhiney and Jamieson have produced a thought-provoking work. The exploration of the influence of the Mexican War on the leaders of the Civil War is well-researched and deftly argued, as is the influence of technology. Soldiers who did not see action in the Mexican War were less affected by it and more easily adapted to the new conditions of the Civil War. However, the authors’ insistence that Celtic heritage created the aggressiveness found in Confederate forces weakens the argument. A lack of supporting evidence makes the postulation a problem, but overall, the authors have produced a work which will continue to illicit thought and controversy.

Texas Christian University Blake Hill

Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage. By Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982. Pp xvii + 209. Maps. Tables. Bibliographic Essay. Index.

Attack and Die feels like a military history. It has the hallmarks of books written since the Civil War about war; the word tactics is, after all, in the title. And yet this work is also indicative of a classical intellectual history. McWhiney and Perry preface their book by recounting battles from time immemorial. This is also a U.S. social history. The authors address the causes for the Civil War and the causes of Confederate defeat. Southerners lost the U.S. Civil War because they “rushed confidently and courageously against the more numerous Yankees but failed to defeat them.” Southern culture’s ultimate responsibility for failed Confederate battle tactics might seem a dubious thesis, but scholars of the South wrote basically the same thing at the same time as McWhiney and Perry wrote Attack and Die. Bert Wyatt-Brown’s Southern Honor and William Taylor’s Cavalier and Yankee both include illusions to an implicit violence (and even recklessness) in antebellum southern culture. Wyatt-Brown believes classical Greco-roman republicanism influenced southerners, while Taylor believes that the South emulated the English gentry. McWhiney, true to form, believes that the Celtic fighting spirit motivated the southern armies in the U.S. Civil War. The South was “imprisoned in a culture rejected careful calculation and patience,” leading them to render “the heaviest sacrifice in lives…ever made by Americans.”

The violence of the Civil War forms a significant part of McWhiney’s thesis. The “Celtic” charge that claimed so many lives shocked observers on both sides. One exemplary charge was made by boys from the Deep South-mostly from Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina.” Included among this group of neo-Celtic fighting men were “regiments from North Carolina and Virginia,” almost an afterthought; interestingly, Virginia and North Carolina held the largest genuine Celtic populations in the South. Tar Heel general Daniel H. Hill’s observation that the war was “not war-it was murder.” The brutality of the Civil War was in many ways unavoidable; McWhiney argues that the reliance on the percussion system smoothbore musket and the bayonet, two weapons that were favored my military men in the years preceding the Civil War (among them Colonel Jefferson Davis, U.S. Army).

The usefulness of the violent Confederate charges, muskets, and bayonets became less overwhelming by the middle of the Civil War. The introduction of the rifle into the theaters of the Civil War severly limited the effectiveness of Confederate tactics and weapons. McWhiney asserts (correctly) that “little bayonet fighting was done in the Virginia campaign” in 1864 and 1865. Confederate charges did not simply quit using the bayonet; Confederate charges turned into Confederate fleeing.

McWhiney uses the second half of his book as a critique of certain military assumptions. McWhiney and Perry argue that Civil War artillery was largely ineffective offensively but aided a defender greatly. McWhiney’s dismissive attitude can be explained by his thesis; if it doesn’t help us attack better, why should we use it? Cavalry was even more prestigious that artillery and both the Union and Confederate armies expected much out of their cavalry commanders and horsemen. But the cavalry of the Civil War would prove more useful in raid and in defensive actions. Cavalry charges (which of course would have been favorable to the offensive Confederate spirit) were “exceptional.” Although a few successful charges were mounted the vast majority of cavalry charges met with disaster, especially when directed against massed infantry (which the Union army had a lot of).

McWhiney and Perry’s greatest (not necessarily most accurate, but greatest) chapter is their final one. They give scholarly evidence for why the Confederate fighting spirit was a Celtic fighting spirit. The authors look through the long “continuum” of Celtic warrior tradition and offer a cogent argument for why the south was Celtic, with all of Celtic vices and virtues. Disciples of McWhiney’s early neo-Confederate political beliefs (he recanted those associations during the mid-1990s) would be disappointed to find that McWhiney does not attribute Christian virtues to the South. Yankees were “cleaner, neater, more orderly and progressive, worked harder, and kept the Sabbath better than southerners. Attack and Die, for all of its faults, is a great book because it is an influential book. Many may disagree with McWhiney, Perry, McWhiney’s politics, and the reasons for Confederate defeat, but none can argue that McWhiney’s scholarship has left a lasting impact.

Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage. By McWhiney, Grady and Perry D. Jamieson. University of Alabama Press, 1982.

Did the South lose the Civil War merely because they acted in accordance with their cultural heritage, engaging in repeated charges at strong positions? This classic work presents this argument among others in an attempt to example the high Southern casualty count in the Civil War. This work successfully demonstrates that Civil War battle tactics failed to account for improvements in technology, but the authors’ final chapter devoted to the Celtic thesis detracts from the remainder of the book. This chapter is not justified by the remainder of the work.

The authors present three arguments for Southern defeat in the Civil War: first, unwillingness to change in respond to weapon and tactic modernization; second, leadership which received its training in the Mexican War and did not understand the impact of new technology, clinging to previous notions of the necessity of aggression on the battlefield; and finally, Celtic heritage as the source of Southern suicidal charges into fortified positions. Most of the book is devoted to the discussion of the first two arguments, especially the role new technology.

Between the time of the Mexican War and the Civil War, a revolution had occurred in military technology. The smoothbore musket fell out of use as the rifle in conjunction with the Minie bullet entered wide-scale service. As such, these new weapons enabled soldiers to fire faster and farther than before possible. This gave the defenders, especially those behind fortifications, a strong advantage over the attacker. An attacking force advancing in old-fashioned close order was slaughtered in most of the engagements. The attacker suffered substantially more casualties than the defender, especially the entrenched defender. In attacks such as Gettysburg or Cold Harbor, thousands died in impossible attacks, demonstrating the benefited to defending.

The authors demonstrate the role which the Mexican War played in the Civil War. The Mexican War provided most of the training and experience for the officers and generals of the Civil War. As such, the officers, whether Lee or Grant, used their experience to place an inordinate confidence in the value of the attack. These generals did not sufficiently recognize the consequences of new technology on the battlefield, which made a rifle company more dangerous than an artillery battery. Most generals did not even study the effect of the new weapons, thereby treating rifle troops as if they were still smoothbore soldiers. While the effective range of the new rifles increased to eight hundred or a thousand yards, officers would still have the soldiers wait until the troops were at smoothbore range to fire. Likewise, officers discontent entrenchments and fortifications, believing that such could be overcome with successful charges by energetic troops. Being a successful defensive general, such as Johnston or Thomas, did not gain promotion or rewards.

The book ends with its classic argument that Southern heritage prevented the Southern armies to do anything except attack and die. Celtic heritage required that Southern armies attacked against impossible odds while yelling, much of their ancestors did in fighting the Romans or English. Celtics only know how to attack and so the Southerners must copy their supposed ancestors. For this section, the authors set up an artificial structural difference between Southerners and Northerners. Northerners become monolithic, with the New England industrialist becoming the same as the Western farmer, even the Western farmer came from Celtic background. This work adds to the Lost Cause mythology, relating Southern Celtic defeat to Scottish Lost Cause battles against the English.

The great weakness of this work is that while it sets forth a well-reasoned view of battle tactics and the failure to understand modern technology, it then places the attack and die thesis upon only Southerners. The authors freely admit that Grant was the most aggressive general in the war and likely symbolizes the aggressive post-Mexican army the best of any civil war leader outside of Jefferson Davis. Yet they fail to establish any substantial difference between Grant’s aggression and Lee’s aggression. Likewise, the authors fail to place in context the Civil War battles where the attacker won overwhelmingly with minor loss of life in attacking fortified positions such as Missionary Ridge.

Ultimately, the book works best when discussing the failure to adapt to modern technology, especially the new rifles. The leadership on both sides merely fought in the manner which they had done in the previous war, where they had gained their experience. As such, Southern leadership failed because of its Mexican War experience and West Point training as much as anything else.

Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage. By Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson. (University: University of Alabama Press, 1982. Pp. xv, 209.)

In this controversial but well documented work, Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson put forth the conclusion that, “it was the rifle that won the war for the North—the rifle along with the refusal of Southerners to admit until they had bled themselves nearly to death that the rifle’s killing power could check even the most courageous charges” (p. 146). The reason for such seemingly counterintuitive aggressiveness on behalf of the Rebels was their war mongering Celtic heritage, by which they were preconditioned to “attack and die” regardless of the slim chances of victory. While many readers may take issue with some of the duo’s conclusions, Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage remains an influential and thought-provoking work.

The authors divide their book into three sections, each addressing an important aspect of the South’s military tactics during the Civil War. First, they briefly examine “What Happened,” and put forth many compelling casualty statistics showing the near-annihilation of the Confederate Army. They then compare them to equivalent Federal statistics, revealing a striking disparity of Confederate casualties when compared to their Northern counterparts. These statistics also demonstrate the disparate numbers in manpower available to each side, and emphasize the South’s disadvantage. The second section, “How it Happened” discusses in detail the numerous examples of battles wherein Southern offensive tactics faced off with Northern defensive tactics, complete with analysis of the results. A key factor in the success of the North’s often-defensive positions was its use of the technologically nascent rifle, which produced much more efficient firepower and range than its less-effective predecessor, the smoothbore musket. The authors emphasize the impact of the successful offensive tactics used in the Mexican American War of 1846-1848 on the Southerners (and some Northerners) who survived it to participate in the Civil War a little over a decade later. While the aggressive tactics utilized in the 1840s went hand in hand with the arcadian technology of the day, the onset of the rifle age, ushered in during the 1860s and adopted by the Federal army, rendered the Confederates’ rigid formations and charges opportunities for gross Rebel slaughter.

Perhaps the most controversial section of the book is the final portion, which purports to explain, “Why it Happened,” or why the Confederates perpetuated failing tactics. The authors reasonably claim that many officers had “learned the wrong lessons” from their past experiences—whether they be from success in the Mexican-American War, their professors at West Point, or the books they read (p. 144). While the authors’ argument here proves convincing, their reasons explaining why the Southerners never learned from their oft-failed assault tactics during the Civil War is less compelling. McWhiney and Jamieson conclude that Southern aggressiveness can be traced back to their belligerent Celtic heritage—which, when placed in opposition to the North’s disciplined Anglo-Saxon heritage, produced a “cultural dichotomy” that “explains why the war was fought the way it was” (p. 178). The cool-headed North was able to entice the emotional South to attack them in defensible positions because Southerners were predisposed to war mongering and saw glory only in overt attack.

While Attack and Die perhaps will not appeal to all readers, its controversial arguments are at minimum thought provoking and intriguing. The book is well documented (the pages are littered with invaluable footnotes) and supplies an excellent history of military tactics from the late 1840s through the Civil War. In addition, it provides numerous valuable tables and statistics that elucidate the authors’ points. Civil War enthusiasts and lay readers as well as scholars will benefit from Grady McWhiney and Perry Jamieson’s unique approach to the outcome of the Civil War.