Been playing the game Halls of Montezuma over the weekend. Coming out on May 20, I purchased an advance copy. The first computer strategic level simulation of the Mexican War, it gives a good feel for the actual conflict, with the center piece being Scott’s march up county from Veracuz to the war winning seizure of Mexico City. It struck me as I was playing the game how ill prepared this conflict left the West Pointers who participated in it for the Civil War. This was the type of War that West Point had trained them for: short and sharp with the Regular Army leading the way and volunteer regiments playing a distinctly secondary role. The War ending with the seizure of the capital of Mexico and the US dictating peace, had a Napoleonic feel to it, and the campaigns of Napoleon were what the West Pointers tended to study during the brief period in their four years when any attention, and it wasn’t much, was paid to how to conduct a military campaign. The Mexican War would have seemed to West Pointers to confirm what they would have been taught at the Point.
Then thirteen years passed swiftly, as the years of a man’s life tend to pass, and the junior officers of the Mexican War found themselves to be senior officers in a vast new conflict. They had to unlearn much that they had learned in the Mexican War. The tiny Regular Army was dwarfed by the volunteer regiments of this conflict, all of which had to be trained in the basics before they would be of any use in the conflict. The vast armies of this conflict presented logistical problems undreamed of compared to keeping the relatively small armies of the Mexican War supplied. Mexican War casualties would seem insignificant compared to the casualties of the Civil War, where in the Battle of Shiloh more battle deaths occurred than in all the previous wars of the US combined. The tactics learned in the Mexican War were all wrong, with rifled muskets making bayonet charges suicidal instead of the decisive instrument they were in the Mexican War, ditto the use of “flying” horse drawn light artillery batteries which had been so effective in the Mexican war and relegating cavalry charges largely to the history books. Instead of a short and decisive conflict, the Civil War was a bloody war of attrition in which 640,000-750,000 men would perish and leave an indelible impact on the Republic.
The education received by the graduates of West Point left them ill-prepared for the Civil War, and the experiences of the Mexican War taught the wrong lessons to the officers who fought in it for the Civil War. The combat experience benefited them to be used to a field of battle where men died, but that is about all that can be said for their experiences in a conflict often erroneously described as a crucible for the Civil War. The great exception to this was Captain Lee, who carried out reconnoitering missions behind enemy lines for General Winfield Scott and who learned how valuable maneuver could be for an army confronting a numerically superior foe.
The great exception to this was Captain Lee…
There was another exception: Lt. William Tecumseh Sherman. While he never saw combat in the Mexican War, the high death rate of American troops from disease (the most of any U.S. war) was a factor in his later generalship. During the Civil War the avoidance of disease was always a motive behind his preference for keeping troops moving, and probably ranked as the 3rd or 4th most important motive for the March through Georgia. Don, you would know more about this than me, is it true?
Does this game contain an attrition by disease algorithm?
Don, you would know more about this than me, is it true?
Never heard it before. Seems unlikely. The main problem with illness was usually after the troops were first enlisted and placed in camps, especially for Western troops often coming from isolated farms. By the time of the Georgia campaign the troops were veterans. Now since the troops were living off the land in the March to the Sea keeping them moving was important and caused Sherman to spread him army out. This is reflected in the song Sherman hated:
So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train
60 miles in latitude, 300 to the main
A stationary army would quickly exhaust the supplies in an area and begin to starve.
I read this disease assertion from Victor Davis Hanson, if I recall correctly.
A stationary army would quickly exhaust the supplies in an area and begin to starve.
Which is why the Union Army was so dependent on rail and maritime or ravine resupply. I recall Hansen’s vivid description of Sherman at the Atlanta rail depot as the last train left for Chattanooga with the men deemed unfit for the March. “Cutting loose” meant severing the rail resupplies: there would be no more trains, and everyone understood how great a gamble this was.
One of the U.S. Naval Institute publications a number of years ago also hit on the disease aspects of various U.S. conflicts. It also mentioned the high rate of disease among Rommel’s Afrika Corp due to their lack of discipline regarding sanitation. I can’t find the original article, but here is a link to a source document (my apologies for the really bad formatting of the article):
http://armymedical.tpub.com/MD0152/Lesson-1-General-Concepts-Diseases-of-Military-Importance-9.htm
It also mentioned the high rate of disease among Rommel’s Afrika Corp due to their lack of discipline regarding sanitation.
The Italians. In the movie Patton, Patton notes that the Italian POWs did not know what a latrine was until he showed them. In both World Wars it was noted that some Italian troops had poor latrine discipline and would answer calls of nature without going to the latrine.
To be fair, most fields of battle are nauseating, not least because the troops fighting over them have no access to latrines and make do when and where they can.
Cutting loose” meant severing the rail resupplies: there would be no more trains, and everyone understood how great a gamble this was.
It was on his Meridian expedition of early 1864 that Sherman learned that it was possible for a large force to live off the land so long as it kept moving and it did not have to fear attack from substantial enemy forces.