Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage

Rating:
Summary: Not credible
Review: As many other reviewers have pointed out, the "Celtic" premise is ridiculously overblown. The Army of Northern Virginia can not be compared to the Scots at Culloden in 1745.
Also, as other reviewers have pointed out, the book ignores many "big picture" issues that played into the outcome of the war. Better alternative reading would be "Two Great Rebel Armies" by McMurry or "Why the South Lost" by Hattaway and company.

Rating:
Summary: GOOD READ FOR SOMEONE WHO ALREADY HAS A GOOD BACKGROUND
Review: Attack and Die : Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage by Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson is a good compliment to other more complete histories of the Civil War. In and of itself the book is too focused on its central thesis - that the South lost due to the compulsion of its generals to be on the offensive and the resulting high casualty rate. While these tactics certainly had a dramatic effect on the outcome, the authors fail to put them in to the proper context of other causes.

The strength of the book is in its description of the reasons for the Confederate strategy, and the failure of almost all Civil War generals to come to grips with the effect that the introduction of the rifle had on the upcoming battles. The authors trace the introduction of the rifle and the displacement of the musket as well as how the tactics that were used being generally premised on the musket. What was missing was any refrence to General Longstreet's plan for the strategic offense combined with tactical defense. This is exactly what Longstreet suggested to Lee before the second day of Gettysburg.

The most interesting part of the book is the last two chapters. The second to last discusses how the Mexican War experiences of the generals predisposed the participants to take the offensive, since that is how the Mexican War was won. The increased accuracy and killing power of the rifle made those tactics obsolete.

The last chapter is the most interesting, although the authors may have taken their conclusions too far. Their conclusion is that given the Celtic roots of the Confederate Generals that they were culturally programmed to take the offensive. While the cultural antecedents of the generals cannot be dismissed as a factor, the Celtic battles that the authors discuss took place generations before the Civil War.

This is a worthwhile read for someone who already has a good Civil War background.

Rating:
Summary: A Supremely Scholarly Analysis
Review: Attempts to explain why the South lost the Civil War have been a crowded cottage industry since the war ended. Northern industrial might, excessive Southern democracy, poor political leadership, faulty economic support, have all had their advocates and periods of popularity. Attack and Die is a fresh appraoch to the question. The analysis of McWhiney and Jamieson combines a shrewd analysis of southern culture, changes in military technology between 1846 and 1861, with an impressive array of statistics to explain the Southern defeat as springing from their dependence on outmoded tactics that worked in the Mexican War but did not work fifteen years later. The reason: the change in that fifteen years from the musket to the rifle as the basic infantry weapon. Studies like this demonstrate that there is still a vast amount of material to be collected, analysed, and theorized upon about our Civil War.

Rating:
Summary: Not convincing.
Review: I'd write much more if I had the space (and I might eventually write the authors in any event), but I see three errors in the authors' assertion that the South was uselessly aggressive early in the war and could have won through a more defensive strategy:

1. It is based on the enemy being obliging enough to attack frontally. In the First Manassas campaign, however, the Union commander elected to turn the flank rather than attack the Confederate entrenchments, and nearly won the battle as a result.
If the Union commanders had all followed this example, all the Southern armies' defensive positions wouldn't have done them any good; they would have been outflanked all the way to surrender.

2. It assumes that a Revolutionary War-type strategy, wherein the defender almost always has space and time to manuever, and isn't concerned with defending big cities filled with military industry or large areas of cropland necessary to feed the army, would have worked with a South that was dependent on these industries and crops for survival and, because of Napoleonic innovations in the art of pursuing and overtaking an enemy army, would not have had as much space and time to manuever. It is worth noting that not one war has been one solely by means of attrition since the Revolution (not counting Vietnam, where attrition won only because the American armies were handicapped by political considerations).

3. It makes the mistake of emphasizing war solely as mathematical equation rather than human endeavor. If success in war depended solely on bringing the numbers of the enemy's armies down to zero, no war would be won, since there has not been such a war of total destruction since ancient times. Victory, rather, is dependent on the psychological element---that is, what a nation thinks of it's chances for winning versus the situation. Regardless of Lee's "unacceptable" rate of casualties, he came very close to winning through the psychology of victory---that is, by driving the Northern peoples' morale down to the breaking point through battles lost. Nor would Southern armies standing permanently on the defense have satisfied their own people, particularly as large areas of land were lost to the enemy through manuvering (assuming #1 above).
This is how wars are fought and won: with hearts and minds, not calculators; and through attack, not defense.

Rating:
Summary: Fun read, with some caution...
Review: McWhiney and Jamieson offer their perspective on the South's stratagems during the Civil War with emphasis on two main points: the efficacy of the rifled musket and the lessons (oft times the "wrong" ones) learned during the Mexican War. The role of infantry, artillery and cavalry are outlined, with, as a nice touch, a summarizing/concluding paragraph at the end of each chapter. The final chapter, which logics the South's "Celtic" war-like traditions, I found a bit of a stretch.

Rating:
Summary: Stretching Celtic Ancestory into the Confederacy
Review: McWhiney and Jamieson use Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage to effectively stage a war between the American Englishman of the North and the American Celts of the South. The authors engulf themselves in the heritage and culture of the South and its ties to its Celtic ancestry. Their viewpoints on how and why the Confederacy lost so many men are saturated throughout the book. Their exposition on Civil War tactics and how they were altered or rendered ineffective by technology allows the reader to examine the challenges faced by the Confederate commanders and soldiers in a war being fought solely with spirit and ambition.

McWhiney's thesis is much more of a stretch. He examines the disastrous Southern military tactics which cost the Confederacy its independence and argues that the reason the South stuck to these tactics for so long had to do with the Celtic ancestry and folkways of Southerners and of Southern culture. He contends that "the Confederates bled themselves nearly to death in the first three years of the war making costly attacks more often than did the Federals. Offensive tactics, which had been used so successfully by Americans in the Mexican War, were much less effective in the 1860's because an improved weapon, the rifle, had vastly increased the strength of defenders. The Confederates could have offset their numerical disadvantage by remaining on the defensive and forcing the Federals to attack; one man in a trench armed with a rifle was equal to several outside it. But Southerners, imprisoned in a culture that rejected careful calculation and patience, often refused to learn from their mistakes. They continued to fight, despite mounting casualties, with the same courageous dash and reckless abandon that had characterized their Celtic ancestors for two thousand years. The Confederates favored offensive warfare because the Celtic charge was and integral part of their heritage....There was no glory to be gained from fighting out of a hole in the ground."

Rating:
Summary: ¿It was not war, it was murder¿
Review: Probably better suited for more serious students of the Civil War, "Attack and Die" by Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson, provides an excellent expose' about how the Confederates "bled themselves nearly to death..." by attacking with greater frequency than their Northern counterparts. The book also presents a very compelling argument about how the use of outdated offensive tactics, learned during the Mexican War, and antiquated in the face of major technological improvements to muskets and cannon, had a devastating effect on the South.

Another interesting, and controversial, aspect of the book is the authors' conclusion that the tendency for offensive warfare was deeply rooted in Southern culture, and Celtic heritage. While the authors lacked sufficient evidence to be convincing on this point, they were far more convincing about how the advent of the rifle made bayonet attacks obsolete, the offensive use of cavalry ineffective, and entrenchments and fieldworks highly prized by Northern commanders.

Although, as the authors point out that there were good reasons for the South to adopt a defensive strategy, they elected to pursue the offensive to the detriment of their cause. Certainly, it is difficult to argue with the fact that the South lost 175,000 men during the first 27 months of the war due to their propensity for offensive action, or how they lost 97,000 men vs. 77,000 men for the North during the first twelve major battles of the war, or how Pickett's famous charge resulted in the loss of 62% of his command at Gettysburg.

It's no wonder that these tactics prompted D.H. Hill to respond with, "it was not war, it was murder," in reference to the losses the Confederates took after repeated attacks against heavily entrenched Union troops on Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.

This book is an insightful and worthy addition to the study of Civil War strategy and tactics.

Rating:
Summary: The most interesting book yet published on the Civil War
Review: The book contains valuable sources, is well documented, and presents some good information, but it has some unpleasantly conspicuous problems. This book presents a mono-causal reason at the tactical level of war for why the Confederacy lost which is overly simplistic. Analysis of conflicts and their resolutions can rarely by tied to one cause - causes are normally woven together and to analyze one thread without the others creates an artificiality which negates any sincere analysis. This book conducts a sterile study of war at the tactical level without the influence of strategy, operational plans, politics, or economics which gives questionable results.
In the beginning of the book, the authors clearly state their thesis which is the only time that it is clear. They begin to present data in several different tables that are skewed. In presenting a case that the Confederacy suffered more casualties because they attacked more often, the authors include the 29,396 southern soldiers who surrendered at Vickburg (these soldiers were entrenched and never attacked). There is sufficient evidence to support their case without skewing figures - this only lessens their credibility.
After the first section, the thesis of the book seems to wander. Facts are presented but analysis is missing. Various issues of the war are well presented while others are biased and fail to present all of the evidence - some of the evidence does not support the thesis and some negates it. The combination of the rifle and fieldworks are proclaimed to be practically invincible. This becomes the primary thesis for most of the second section and the authors are more interested in proving this new thesis than supporting their original one. The South is accused of failing to learn from its attacks on entrenched positions while Gen Grant proceeded to charge them through the end of the war. Their logic is questionable, and they fail to ask if there were other reasons for these attacks. Did political pressure drive these attacks? What was the strategic objectives of both sides? None of these questions were addressed which all influenced the generals' decisions.
Some of the topics presented in the book are never woven back into the theme of the book. In discussing artillery, the authors were more interested in proving that the rifle was the sole cause of the Confederate losses rather than showing how the devastation caused by smoothbore artillery against attacking infantry supported their original thesis. Cavalry was discussed but only in terms of its ineffectiveness as shock troops against the rifle. The book did not discuss the effective uses of the cavalry (reconnaissance or raids) and it did not develop how the change in roles for the cavalry supported their original thesis.
The most glaring problem with this book is in the last chapter. This is where the true (hidden) thesis is presented - the Celtic heritage being the reason the South lost the war. The evidence presented is circumstantial and weak. The second to last chapter presented an excellent argument for why the Civil War generals' preferred to attack - they were young officers during the Mexican War where offensive action was decisive.
The original thesis does present a factor in why the south lost - they lost in attrition warfare. With a smaller population, the South had less men available and the cost of attrition warfare was greater. They did sacrifice too many men in charges but was there a valid alternative? The authors did not explore other options but locked themselves into hidden agendas which diverted them from fully exploring, supporting, and developing their original thesis.

Rating:
Summary: If it isn't one form of racism it's another
Review: This is among the most unique perspectives on the the Confederate Army that has ever been written; which leaves one wondering whether the authors started off writing about the American Civil War and via some mystery of histography wound up with Caesar fighting the Germanic/Celtic hordes in the American South.

They obviously forgot that there wasn't that much difference in the basic demographic structure of the two armies as far as ancestry is concerned. And the argument is not even coherently expressed and absolutely no "hard" evidence presented that the Confederate Army was composed of suicidal maniac "Huns" intent upon blood and death. It is indeed dangerous when historians delve into the dangerous ground of genetics - it has to do with using "numbers" I think - and come with the idea that red hair and blue eyes spells doom and madness upon the battlefield. Is it any wonder the "hard" scientists really don't take the "social" sciences seriously after one has read a book like this. I pick it up every now and again hoping that I discover it was just a parody afterall.

But nay, it indeed attributes the aggressive and impetious attacks of the Confederates to their Celtic inheritance, and thus dumbly were driven to their doom because they had no choice - it was in the "blood".

As King Lear would say, who truly was a Celt - "That way lies madness!"

Get it for fifty cents and then think no more upon the matter.