History Of Warfare: The American Civil War

Part of the Cassell 'History Of Warfare' series, a multi-volume history of war and warfare from ancient to modern times.

An account of the bloodiest war in America's history by a leading expert on the American Civil War, who also covers the other crucial wars of the nineteenth century in this single volume, the Crimean War and Prussia's wars with Austria and France.

Arguably the bloodiest war of its century, the Civil War was certainly the bloodiest in America's history. Brian Holden Reid takes this great conflict as an example of the powerful and destructive impact of industrialisation on war in the nineteenth century - manifested first in the Crimea, then in Prussia's wars with Austria and France, and most dramatically in the American Civil War, the central subject of this volume.

The author challenges the notion that the North fought a modern war while the South fought according to old-fashioned ideas, arguing that while the North's response to the war was obviously determined by its industrial strength, the South, faced with material scarcity, overcame its shortages with shrewd expedients - most obviously in manpower policy (although the Civil War soldier on both sides was remarkable for his indiscipline and penchant for desertion).

In this book the author focuses on the strategic and operational dimensions of the campaigns, showing how such factors as generalship, staff work, organisation, intelligence and logistics affected the shape and decisions of the battlefield. He also looks at the effect of new weapons on tactics and the increasing importance of the powerful weaponry that developed as a result of the new methods of mass production, steam power, large-scale coal and ore extraction that were previously untried in any military confrontation.