The Civil War was different from any other war as it confirms evidence that it may have been the first ‘total’ and ‘modern’ war, namely in its technology and its tactics. This research paper will show that the Civil War was different from other wars prior to it; although, continuities undoubtedly existed and differences were not total; the rationale behind it’s undoubtedly position within the annotations on other wars.
One of the approaches the Civil War may be argued as different from any other war prior to it may be through the claim that, it was first ‘modern’ war, pre-modern war and the last Napoleonic war. Janda concurs in reference to technology, “They appear to be accurate, as the Civil War symbolizes the first mass conflict and difference of the industrialized age.” The manner in which technology and modernity permeated the Civil War and smudged it as dissimilar from the other wars prior to it was predominantly significant in terms of two items, supplying weaponry and the armies. Clark articulates that a war like the Civil War could not have been fought earlier since the means to clothe and feed more than 3 million soldiers never existed. The mechanization of agriculture to produce an adequate amount of food, the advancement of canning and refrigeration to store the food and also the invention of mass-production factories to produce standardized goods and clothes, were noteworthy new advancements that facilitated the war exertion to keep going. It was so significant that it may have participated in the result of the war, where by the ending of the war, the Northerners had abundance of food provided through the mechanization of agriculture; however, the Southerners suffered a severe food shortage. Despite the fact that these innovations were innovative in this perspective, there may be still an aspect of stability in that, as with the majority of wars there may be technological innovations demands so as to meet the requirements of that kind of a war, apparent in the progression of war-time technology up to the present day; for instance the development of bombs and tanks to act in response to demands of aerial warfare and the terrain.
Civil War weaponry may be another gauge of the manner in which the Civil War was dissimilar to preceding wars; however, the element of permanence was held in that war by the demands of the technology development. Janda articulates that “The total warfare weaponry of never initiated in the Civil War; but, came to mature in 1914, merely on the Western Front” . The change from the four feet smooth ‘bore-musket’ that was used in the ‘American Revolution’ to the ‘rifled-musket’ with a channeled barrel that ensured the bullet to fire faster and straighter and over a greatly elongated range had the meaning that the guns employed in the Civil War must have been more deadly than those of the preceding era. These discoveries took place before the Civil War, and for all intents and purposes marked advancements in technology in the Civil War as a field with advancements in technological, taking place in due course and their implementation in other wars both prior to and during the war. Accordingly, whilst it was the primary war to make use of this ‘modern’ weaponry which had the consequences of much higher rates of death, it still had the continuity element.
The impact of this kind of weaponry on battle tactics may be another quarter in which there were fundamental differences and similarities with previous wars. Clark articulates that the advantages of accuracy and speed of this newly invented weaponry ought to have meant a desertion of classic ‘Napoleonic tactics’ that included mass and frontal infantry assaults; however, they never did so, and that principally, the earlier fraction of the war merely combined the new weaponry with the older modes of war. Clark declares that this was based on cultural grounds, in that there was a clear-cut element of intrepidness attached to mass cavalry accusations in the American thoughts, and that it stayed put that the solitary way a general could perhaps move his men on the field, was on horseback. This signifies that on a very imperative level of experience in the battlefield was not entirely unlike other wars prior to the Civil War.
This weaponry as well had implications for the improvement of new warfare styles that have been of immense significance in successive wars. The Commanders in the Civil War recognized that they can entrench themselves at the back of objects, and the range upon which the new weaponry would fire, positioned defenders at a considerable advantage. This warfare style was embraced and clenched for the initial time by the Grant’s army who were entrenching themselves just about the Vicksburg city, with the soldiers revolving inside and outside of these trenches. However, at the end of the war, soldiers lived in the trenches for longer durations of time, to a large extent resembling the trench warfare style employed in World War I, thereby demonstrating that it was different from other wars prior to it. The revolution of the belief that the war would be won in a single climatic encounter; and the change from intermittent encounters, to relentless fighting and campaigning on manifold fronts, echoes as well in previous wars, predominantly both in World War I and World War II. One practice that has been characteristic in wars prior to the Civil War, extensively in the Vietnam war and also in previous wars prior to the Civil War like the of ‘Guerrilla warfare’. Clark makes a note of the South in particular having a long practice of ‘Guerrilla warfare’, dating back to the radical era, and due to this, at the start of the war, both the South and the North had the expectation that they would call for war and hence prepare for adherent warfare.
An additional approach that has been used to argue that the Civil War was different from any war prior to it may be through the assertion that it was the primary “total war.” Grimsley, has the argument that it was not unparalleled for soldiers to aim at civilians with the objective of attacking purposely the morale of civilians; however, the indication that there was a distinction between non-combatants and combatants became immaterial, “we may not be only fighting aggressive armies, but also a proportion of antagonistic people, and we have got to make the poor and rich, young and old and young, experience the hard-hand of war, in addition to the systematized armies,” mainly in Sherman’s March to the Sea signifies a quantitatively different kind of ‘total war’. Grimsley reveals that Sherman’s ‘new-fangled chevauchee’ had its derivation in a unique chevauchee that dated ‘back to the War of Hundred Years, and were colossal raiding voyages wherein the English methodically destroyed and pillaged everything in their course,” in so doing discovering continuities with practice in wartime prior to the Civil War.
It may be certainly not a disagreement point that the ‘total war’ strategies in the Civil War made it different from any war prior to it. Janda’s argues that this kind of warfare was made use of especially, soon after, in the war in opposition to the Native Americans. On the other hand, Grimsley ascertains that it has manifestations in Europe, in the accuracy bombing by the U. S. forces during World War II, in addition to noting that “no less than two writers have drained direct correlation connecting the 1968 My Lai massacre and Sherman’s march.”
Another characteristic that point out to the Civil War as having echoes in wars prior to it, may be planning of troops and its implication, as a war that was ideological. The Civil War was probably the primary war in the U. S. to introduce a plan, and Clark affirms that the U. S. had by no means had the ‘Federal Bureaus’ been accountable for shaping the figure of troops to be hoisted before. Its consequence was in the rising government centralization and the mounting fear at its authority above the people, manifested in the ‘New York Draft’ demonstrations. Such disputes and fears regarding mobilization have evidenced themselves in wars prior to the Civil War; for instance, in Australia in the World War I. The Civil War, as an ideological war was also important as one of the first wars with the key feature being “the resemblance of white Northerners to their Southern counterparts,” with only different ideological differences, a characteristic that has been inherent, predominantly to the Vietnam War.
In conclusion, the Civil War was different from any war prior to it and may be overlooked as having numerous continuities of time exhibited in a record of warfare. Undoubtedly it can be argued to be the first kind of war in a number of its features; however, its differences totally isolate it from this record and abscond out its very imperative features of it.
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Grimsley, Mark. The hard hand of war: Union military policy toward Southern
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Janda, Lance., Shutting the Gates of Mercy: The American Origins of Total War, 1860-1880.
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