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???What would have been the outcome of the Civil War had we not fought using Napoleonic style Battle formations?
What other styles would we have used?
Agreed... WWI would be a different story (and obviously trench warfare was birthed during the Civil War) but ultimately Napoleonic style of warfare was the defacto standard. The only other possibilty would have been both sides embracing guerilla warfare as many of the partisans did, but on a large scale I dodn't see how that could have been effective. Small scale such as with Mosby and Quantrill it was highly effective.
I would argue that “battle styles”, I don't think I like the term, are a consequence of technology, culture, and doctrine and are largely decided on at the outside of the war. It is during a war that this usually changes as both sides seek to defeat their opponent by being innovative. “battle styles” evolve in every war and they certainly evolved in the Civil War, the soldiers fighting in 1865 would have hardly recognized the tactical methods used 4 years earlier. The Union turned to economic and attritional warfare to achieve victory while the South turned to the spade and in some places a war of movement.
ok, if we had use hit and run, or less man on man tatics would the south won or still lost?
The South did use hit and run tactics. Quantrell and Hunt Morgan are prime examples of irregular forces used to harass and interdict from behind enemy lines. They were not very effective in the greater outcome of the war so the South would still have lost if they employed more guerrilla tactics. Southern culture though, made it very difficult to fight in such a way because of the perception of fighting dirty without honor.
The South lost because the North had more of Napoleon's big battalions, not because of deficient tactical doctrine. That is the bottom line, the North could easily sustain 4 or 5 times the losses of the South and continue to fight. The South was scraping the bottom of the manpower barrell by the spring of 1864 while the North was not.The North enlisted blacks because it was convenient, not because they needed them as soldiers.
The south Lost man power, did not have the ability make arme like the north did, if they had use more hit run tatics they could have drug the war out till the north would have sued for peace, and mostly the south would have not incured raft the of the north…
The south Lost man power, did have the ability make arme like the north did, if they had use hit run tatics they could have drug to out till the would have sued for peace, and mostly the south would have not incured the of the north...
Or they could have angered the north to the point where Sherman's path would not have been 60 miles wide but several hundred. By 1864, the North definitely had the ability to turn most of the South into a scorched wasteland.Beyond that, hit and run, or raiding as it is more commonly called is generally a tactic of the weak. Despite what the histories say about Northern war weariness, I am reasonably certain that a Southern raiding strategy would have been counterproductive by angering the northern population. The North got war weary because except along the border, most northerners were not touched by the war except for the casualty lists. deep raids would have changed that. I do not see how the South could have won without significant foriegn intervention. Do not forget that it was Lincoln's stated policy to declare war on any nation that recognized the Confederacy. After 1862, this was no idle threat with the huge increase in the navy and army occasioned by the war. This alone, almost guaranteed the South's defeat beause the Confederacy simply did not have the resources to win in a long war.
Thought “What if Mosby's raiders had gone deep in the north” how could that effected Northen feeling about the war?”
Thought "What if Mosby's raiders had gone deep in the north" how could that effected Northen feeling about the war?"
I would guess it woud have caused outrage and calls for retribution, not increased war-weariness. As I said above, raiding is a strategy/tactic of the weak and by itself cannot win a war. Clausewitz was correct when he said destruction of the enemy army either materially or morally is the only way to decisively win a war.Raiding is not much different from strategic bombing in that it inflicts damage on civilians. There is no eveidence that either significant raiding or strategic bombing reduces a people's will to fight. In fact, the evidence shows that the opposite is true, raiding/bombing increases a people's will to fight. War-weariness only happnes when the fighting is far away and does not materially affect the home population. This was avoided in WWII by the government imposition fo rationing and use of massive propaganda to keep the war and reason's for war in the front of Americna's minds.
