Big fan of Napoleonic and revolutionary history here, gotten interested in the American Civil War recently because my sister wants me to play War of Rights with her.
Can anyone point me to some good reads about that war? Any interesting people and personalities i should read about? Interesting battles?
Also general civil war thread i guess.
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Pic related is a good book on one of the strangest men of the war. Reading it you can kind of tell the author is a Forrest fanboy though.
sounds interesting thx
Mosby is a pretty interesting part of the war, one of the first to totally abandon arm blanche in favour of revolvers and repeating rifles
Baise la
Not books.
But these movies
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The American Civil War by John Keegan
a question about the battles in these:
The battles seem to have simple masses thrown at each other in varying sizes of masses. Was there any company/batttalion/regiment formations and tactics? Also, there are so god damn many flags like the ration of flags per man is like 1 for every 100. Is there really a need for so many flags and did they carry that many historically?
>War of Rights
Where my Campfire Games niggas at?! Brigadier General donor reporting in.
Also, check out Company Aytch, Sam Watkins' memoir about his time in the Confederate Army
>Any interesting people and personalities i should read about?
Nathan Bedford Forest, Sherman, Grant, Stonewall Jackson...also read up on anything having to do with Jeffersonian vs Federalist tensions that created the sectional issues leading to war over a hundred years ago. States rights was the main point of the war in the South and even though slavery was one of the major conflicts of the war it was not the only or even main conflict. It was mostly about states rights and independence, there was an intergenerational conflict in South between the young and old where the young were either indifferent or opposed to slavery
Declaration of Secession: South Carolina
>And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.
In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, "that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."
civilwar.org
>Was there any company/batttalion/regiment formations and tactics?
The modern Order of Battle (company, battalion regiment, brigade etc.) has remained basically unchanged since the 17th Century.
>Also, there are so god damn many flags like the ration of flags per man is like 1 for every 100.
Generally, the standard was one battle flag and one national flag per regiment (1,000 men), although a lot of individual companies also carried customized flags (ex. Company E of the 33rd Virginia had a green flag marked "Emerald Guards" because it was composed of Irish volunteers).
>Is there really a need for so many flags and did they carry that many historically?
Yes, because the flag was the only way a commander could keep track of his units in an era before radios. They also served for identifying friend from foe (this is where the Confederate battle flag gets its distinct X-shape from) and as a means of communicating with the chain of command.
The US Army's primary communication and intelligence branch still calls itself the Signal Corps as a reference to its original role in the Civil War of using flags to pass on information.
Regiments were the smallest organizational unit with somewhere less than a thousand men taking various forms of attrition into account, but several would be organized would be organized into brigades which were the main battlefield maneuver unit. However in large battles like those depicted in these movies most maneuvers were made on the division scale, which each consisted of several brigades; so basically yes especially in large battles it was just large masses of men being thrown at each other
>Company Aytch
This right here. One of the best first hand accounts of a war I've ever read
> States rights was the main point of the war in the South
> It was mostly about states rights and independence
Not this shit again. The south didn't care about "state rights" when it demanded the Northen states to repeal fugitive slaves laws before the war. It didn't care about state rights when it specifically denied the states rights to secede and to ban slavery in its constitution, it didn't care about states rights when it introduced draft, taxation in kind or appropriation of slaves for military use. Confederacy was the most centralized government in the history of North America.
> even though slavery was one of the major conflicts of the war it was not the only or even main conflict
All you have to do is the read the declaration you've posted in its entirety to see that slavery, and specifically, the threat of emancipation was the main reason why the southern states seceded. I'm not saying that slavery was the cause of the war, the secession was the cause of the war: the North fought to restore the Union. But the slavery was, in turn, the main reason for secession.
>The modern Order of Battle (company, battalion regiment, brigade etc.) has remained basically unchanged since the 17th Century.
The order of battle itself is not exactly what i'm asking for but for the formations on the field in either column, line, square formations, their drilling for gettign in these formations and inter-battalon formations that would create lines, boxes or whatever the commander set his battalions in. During the Napoleonic era it was widely experimented to place men in varying places, sometimes with formations having dozens of battalions line behind themselves to create "a flanking line". Did the americans do this too?
>although a lot of individual companies also carried customized flags
But i don't see the need for this, a single force of 1,000 men could have a flag but 100? way too small. The only counter to this i could think of is that the american civil war seems so much grittier and "slacking" with uniforms basically being extremelly random which would give the high amount of flags a good reason.
>Yes, because the flag was the only way a commander could keep track of his units
In many wars prior, the uniforms of the soldiers were exactly what made commanders identify if they were friendly or not. With large coloured pompons, tall shakos of all shapes and sizes, and very bright uniforms to be able to identify in the thick smoke who was who. Why did the americans not use these things instead of flags? (pic related)
having a hard time picking a side and unit, i kind of like the randomness of confed uniforms but idk
The American civil war was crazy because of how rapidly the war evolved. It started with muskets and Napoleonic tactics to rifles and practically trench style warfare. Shame about the butthurt and autism around it.
Oh boy not this autism again. When will you morons actually learn how to historical context at all? The Sources defended slavery but it defended slavery only as part of the grand neo-jeffersonian narrative that southerners believed in. The amount of autism Yankees have over this is just astounding...
The CSA is probably more popular nowadays then it ever was back in the civil war days. There was an army worth of men whose main task was to find and reconscript soldiers who had fled from battle. Desertion was rife in the confederate armies and the other states in the confederacy were dysfunctional in political cooperation.
>The CSA is probably more popular nowadays then it ever was back in the civil war days.
>Because there were deserters
Compared to Union it really wasn't much. Union hanged their deserters as well
>The amount of autism Yankees have over this is just astounding
This is some supreme projection considering how a lot of confedaboos try to spin the North forcing the south to flee the slaves or something as a reason for seceding.
Gee, I wonder what would Jefferson have said about a confederacy that ignores state authority, enforces taxation in kind after its currency has collapsed, introduces draft, retain men under arms indefinitely, forces states to keep slavery and had had no elections. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been "Well, at least they kept the slaves".
>North forcing the south to flee the slaves or something as a reason for seceding.
It is a reason for seceding. The South didn't want to North to dictate what happened in the South.
>Force
Is the word you should focus on
Probably the tree of liberty must be fed with blood of patriots and tyrants from time to time. In other words centralized authority during times of war was condoned by him.
>had had no elections
Yeah, uhhh about that...
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Also, the United States did not hold regular elections for the duration of the Revolutionary War. It didn't even have a Constitution for the first year years of its existence.
Yet they chimped out when Abraham Lincoln got in. The whole goal of the North was to limit slavery to its current states and leave it at that. The South got into this major conspiracy theory that the North was going to abolish slavery and thus we have all the autism behind the newer states' status on slavery. Meanwhile, most people in the North didn't give a shit about abolishing slavery.
>Yet they chimped out when Abraham Lincoln got in
Wut that would support my assertion that the South didn't want to ruled by Yankee interest
>Meanwhile, most people in the North didn't give a shit about abolishing slavery.
All it takes is a vocal minority , but the abolition of slavery wasn't the main point. Secession and states rights we're otherwise the South would've agreed with the Corwin Amendment
Covers the lead-up to the war itself in a way that is rarely matched.
If you have a free summer go read all of Shelby Foote's books on the war as well, it's a less historical, more folky perspective, but if you can read it in the man's voice you're golden.
> The South didn't want to North to dictate what happened in the South.
But it's perfectly ok for the South to dictate what happened in the North ala the Fugitive Slave Act.
Came here to post Shelby Foote. I just finished the first book
these seem very nice thx