For the first 5 years of our marriage, my wife and I would watch Ken Burn's The Civil War each year. We didn't plan to the first couple times, it just sort of happened. Then, we decided to keep in going another few years.
If you've not watched it, please do. It's a treasure in my opinion, if nothing else to watch the ever passionate Shelby Foote..
Anyone else out there a fan?
And on the same note, the soundtrack is absolutely magnificent. It contains one of my all time favorite songs as well, Ashokan Farewell
Its a lovely song, i was surprised when i found out it was recorded in the 80s as it seems to fit so well with the show. It has a sense of loss. There is a scene in the documentary where the camera travels over a forest and a tune is playing, i think its on a banjo. I have searched the sound track but could never find it.
Love it. Considering I'm not american and have no skin in that particular fight I have still watched it several times. Its such a rich telling of the war and it took longer to produce than the actual war took to fight. To the bewilderment of my companions I got very excited last year when I travelled to Chattanooga. While the others went shopping for discount clothes I went to see some of the battle sites. While the others giggled about the name of "missionary ridge", I kept pointing out how important it was as a turning point in a battle long ago. I bought the audiobooks of Shelby Footes epic, and spent a long time studying other sources. Enough to consider myself a very amateur historian on the subject. It's one of those endlessly fascinating eras where so much change seemed to happen at once. What seem like clear motives of the virtuous are in fact pragmatic choices to assure victory. And Ken Burns documentary tells it in a way that almost transports you to that time. The use of music is especially effective. I have since moved on to WW1 but the US civil war holds a certain level of fascination for so many. It was the first modern war and the last romantic war. It was a time when honour and courage were talked about as the essential elements of a good soldier. It was also a war where the power of the rifle and a defensive position ended those romantic notions. On our side of the atlantic we should have learned a lot from the US struggle but we didn't, and many died because of it. From battle tactics improving enough to prevent the mass slaughter that was full frontal assaults against a defended position. Or an even more important lesson we Europeans failed to learn was that war had changed due to modern economics. Before the US civil war, wars were usually small regional events where the loser was the one who ran out of funds and could not continue. The US civil war showed that modern states could fund a war on a large scale for several years. Even the south with its lack industry and trade, once the blockades were put in place, was able to put up a good fight. It changed a lot of things.
Well, as our resident Civil War aficionado, I shall look forward to some posts on the subject in the future from you. From what I understand both North and South used some tactics gathered from the Native Americans. Is this right?On our side of the atlantic we should have learned a lot from the US struggle but we didn't, and many died because of it. From battle tactics improving enough to prevent the mass slaughter that was full frontal assaults against a defended position.
-True, old habits die hard.
In Napoleons time the bayonet charge was used to try and route the enemy from their position, to turn them making them an easier target. Napoleans army would have fought with Muskets, In the US civil war the introduction of the rifled barrel, like this Springfield, would have improved the accuracy of the shooter and meant that the charging force was at a distinct disadvantage as the stationary defender could pick them off much more effectively. The chance of using a bayonet was limited as you were probably dead before you got close enough to swing. You can see how the men were lined up in long lines in some of the surviving pictures such as the dead at antietam: Once the generals figured this out you began to see troops taking defensive positions behind trees, hills, walls etc.From what I understand both North and South used some tactics gathered from the Native Americans. Is this right?
I haven't heard of this but it could well be true. I think most of the tactics used were pretty close to those of the Napoleonic wars which saw lines of infantry (dressed in bright colours of course, no allowance for camouflage to protect the troops ) firing at one another at short distances. 
Yeah, I could be mistaking what I thought was a Native American strategy with Sherman's "Scorched Earth" strategy in the south. Pretty brutal stuff.
It was, I always drew some similarity between Sherman and Hannibal Barca in the fact that they both operated so far into enemy territory with no supply lines and any loss would have been catastrophic to the entire army. Although I think Sherman had the easier task given that most of the confederate armies were held up elsewhere when he began his march.
Not to mention the introduction of the Gatling gun. It's been written many times that the general staffs of the European militaries would have been well served to study the US civil war in much greater detail than they apparently did. A bayonet charge at Gettysburg? Disaster. A bayonet charge at the Marne? Fucking suicide. Yet they still tried. I guess they felt they had to do something, and the tank wasn't deployed until the latter years of the war.
Yep and WW1 increased the strength of the defense yet again with the introduction of cordite which was a smokeless powder, before that you had all these guys firing and the thick smoke would drop visibility to only a few meters very quickly. In WW1 they could fire repeated volleys with good visibility, the only reasonable response for the attacking army was to burrow below the hail of accurate fire into shallow foxholes that expanded and expanded to become the miles of trenches. That in itself was interesting as in the very early stages the trenches were straight which meant that a small force that managed to take part of the trench could use enfilading fire along the trench and wipeout huge numbers of enemy troops. So after a while they started building these zig zag ones:
Added it to my Netflix queue to watch again. I just wanted to throw a shout out to North and South (mostly the books, but did enjoy the show). Does anyone know of any other books or shows that are fictional but historically accurate that are worth discovering? edit: about the civil war in particular