Did the Civil War Affect European Military Culture?

This is the latest installment in the Civil War Classics series written by students in Professor Peter Carmichael’s graduate level readings course at West Virginia University. The following brief review of Jay Luvaas’s book, The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance, was written by Kati Singel. Click here for other reviews in the series.

There is an extensive literature related to the evolution of war between 1861 and 1865, but few of these studies are specific to what this evolution meant for the modern soldier. How did this evolution affect future wars? What was the military legacy of the Civil War in Europe? In The Military Legacy of the American Civil War: The European Inheritance, Jay Luvaas investigates what the Prussian, French and British military observers learned from what they saw, and how their experiences potentially influenced military theory. The American Civil War was distinguished from previous wars by new technological advances, the departure from European tactics, and the first extensive use of rifled field artillery. European observers recognized these distinctive characteristics, but they did not believe that it was possible to emulate these new tactics in Europe. Contrary to popular belief, Luvaas argues that the American Civil War “never exerted a direct influence upon military doctrine in Europe” (226).

Prior to this publication, few historians have studied the writings of European military observers with the exception of Ella Lonn, author of Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy (1951) and Foreigners in the Confederacy (1940). Evaluating newspapers, published accounts, and official government reports, Luvaas determines that military observers from England, France and Prussia (Germany) were impressed by what they saw, but they did not apply what they learned. They underestimated the value of the volunteer soldier, and therefore they were more concerned with organization and equipment rather than tactics.

After 1865, Luvaas finds that the continued neglect of the lessons of the American Civil War in Europe can be attributed to Prussian ingenuity in 1866-1870. It was not until World War I that Germany and France began to incorporate what they learned, but he does give England credit for the 1886 publication of “The Campaign of Fredericksburg” by an English officer, Capt. George F.R. Henderson. He devotes an entire chapter to Henderson and his legacy for being the first English officer after 1870 to undertake a serious study of the American Civil War. In the aftermath of World War I, Luvaas identifies how this war has been recognized as major turning point in modern warfare in J.F.C. Fuller’s Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship (1932) and Capt. B. H. Liddell Hart’s Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (1929). It suddenly seemed obvious that the use of entrenchments during World War I was foreshadowed by the trenches at Petersburg, and the belief that the purpose of strategy is “‘to diminish the possibility of resistance’” was directly utilized by Union General William T. Sherman as he marched to the sea. Luvaas offers little criticism of Henderson, Fuller or Hart, but he recognizes that their studies are part of an effort to “confirm accepted principles rather than to discover new information that might lead to a change in doctrine” (233). Although he believes their studies to be important to the historiography of this subject, they were too late to revolutionize the military doctrine of Europe.

This book is more than a study of the effectiveness of European military observers in the American Civil War. It is a guide to understanding how the American Civil War has been understood in Europe from 1861 through World War I. Although his study is limited to military affairs, Luvaas does make an important connection between the events occurring in Europe and the advancement of military theory.