The Civil War, and the military in general, produced such a set of specialized terminology and phrases that it almost constitutes a separate language. While we attempted to write this book in as clear and ordinary a style as possible, on many occasions there was simply no way to avoid the use of specialized terms. Here is a selection of terms used in the book.
Abatis or abattis: A defensive “wall” made of cut trees, usually arrayed in a thick, interconnected tangle, which would not completely stop a charging enemy attack but would slow it, giving the defenders additional time to bring heavy fire to bear on the points affected.
Amphibious: An attack launched from transports at sea or on a river; implies a coordinated army-navy attack, although this was not always the case.
Assault: A concentrated attack on a specific target or area; implies the maximum use of force that will fit into a given quadrant of the battlefield. It also implies an all-out attack that does not stop until the objective is taken or the attacking force is destroyed, but the term is used frequently as a synonym for any attack.
Battle flag: The flag used by each regiment on both sides for unit identification and signaling. Most battles during this period tended to break down into mass chaos and confusion unless the commander kept firm control of his men, and the battlefield was far too noisy to hear a spoken order or even a bugle call. Soldiers were trained to recognize their regimental flag and to always follow it wherever it went. The flag bearer was given both a high honor and a great responsibility: He had to stay right by his commander at all times, he was usually not armed, and he could not break and run no matter how bad the situation was, as his whole regiment would then follow him to the rear. The casualty rate among flag bearers was appalling.
Bayonet: A long spike or thick knife blade with mountings to attach to the muzzle end of a rifle, enabling the soldier to stab his enemy at more than an arm’s length away. Both the Enfield and Springfield bayonets were 18 inches long and triangular in section, which would cause a ghastly wound that usually would not heal properly and frequently caused a fatal infection in those who lived through the initial event. The “spirit of the bayonet” is a hallowed tradition for even modern infantrymen, although its use in battle has been greatly exaggerated. Most “hand-to-hand” combat actually involved the use of the butt end of the rifle, swung like a club, or even just fists, rocks, and heavy sticks. The bayonet-equipped rifle is a lethal and intimidating-looking weapon, but it took great skill and discipline to effectively employ it in the heat of combat. Soldiers usually used their issued bayonets for other purposes, as skewers to cook their meat or rammed into trees or walls to serve as coat hooks. Quite often they were heated and bent into hook shapes to drag the dead bodies of their comrades off the battlefield.
Blockade: To cut off and isolate a position or area from any resupply or reinforcement. During the Civil War this almost always referred to the Union Navy’s blockade of the entire southern Atlantic and Gulf coastlines, preventing most supplies from England and France from coming into the Confederacy.
Blockade-runners: Civil War–era privateers, almost always civilians, who earned huge profits through great risk in sneaking their ships loaded with cargo through the Union Navy’s coastal blockade. Although usually from the ranks of the lower classes and ordinary seamen before the war, they were the toast of Southern society as well as a major source of critical supplies for the embattled Southern armies. Northern newspapers universally decried them as the utter scourge of mankind.
Bomb-proof: A heavily reinforced, usually underground structure designed and built to protect the occupants—either civilians in an area under siege or troops in a combat area—from nearby artillery fire. Rarely would these structures protect from a direct hit by a large-caliber weapon.
Break contact: To pull back from a combat engagement, either to retreat or to shift the direction of a given assault. This is sometimes used as a polite way of saying that the men involved simply ran away.
Breastworks: A defensive barricade wall made of whatever materials were immediately available, usually logs, rocks, or fence rails. When placed in front of trench lines, they usually were covered with the excavated earth itself, piled up, and formed into steep-faced walls. By the second year of the war, “spades is trumps” as Private Sam Watkins said, and nearly every time troops on either side stopped for more than a few minutes, their officers would put them to work constructing defensive works. On most battlefields today, these works are the only remaining evidence of the war.
Casements: Refers to the lower areas in a masonry fort where the main artillery is mounted. These are usually some of the strongest parts of the fort’s walls, built-up areas of stone or brick surrounding a narrow port or slit through which the cannon would fire.
Casualties: The losses for a unit, including deaths, injuries, captured or “missing” (usually from desertion), as well as losses from sickness or disease, by far the biggest killer of all during the war. On occasion the reports include losses resulting from discharge.
Chevaux-de-frise: Somewhat like an early version of barbed wire, these barricades were in effect and construction very similar to abatis, with the exception of being somewhat portable. These were constructed by taking a log or (more rarely) a piece of iron post 9 to 15 feet long, drilling holes through it every 6 to 12 inches and through both angles, and inserting sharpened stakes about 4 to 6 feet long through the post. From an end view they looked like a crude cross, while from a frontal view they vaguely resembled a large version of an aerator used today on lawns. Many of these would be constructed and placed in front of other static defenses, sometimes fastened together, and always in the direct line of fire from the defenders. Although they could be moved by a squad or less of men, they slowed down infantry attacks long enough to provide an effective “kill zone” where they were placed.
Color bearer: The man assigned to carry the colors of the regiment. As the flag was usually large and unwieldy, he would most usually be unarmed, and as the rest of the regiment followed his actions to the letter (at least in theory), he must be a very brave and trustworthy man, unlikely to bolt and run from the battlefield. He would always be found standing very close to the regimental commander. Casualties were very high among color bearers; at Shiloh six color bearers from three Wisconsin regiments were all shot and killed in the first few hours of battle on the first day.
Colors: The distinctive flag unique to each regiment. As most of the soldiers of this time were illiterate, and the smoke and noise of battle precluded effective use of shouted orders, the men were taught to recognize their own colors (in a formal ceremony, still done in today’s army, called “parading the colors”) and to follow them wherever they went on the battlefield.
Column: A road march formation of troops, usually in company or regimental order and as long as 3 to 9 miles. When these columns were ambushed or otherwise surprised by an enemy force, it took quite some time to get the force arrayed into a combat formation, allowing plenty of time for “hit and run” attacks to succeed in delaying the column and inflicting casualties with relatively little risk to the attacker.
Counterattack: To aggressively assault an attacking force, to try to turn the momentum from the offensive to the defensive side.
Deploy: To move into either an offensive assault formation or to man defensive positions. Occasionally used to indicate simply being sent somewhere.
Doctrine: The established way of doing a particular mission or task; doing it “by the book.” Most of both the Confederate and Union general officer staffs had trained at West Point, and early in the war it was clear who had done their homework better, as tactics and strategies used were nearly identical. Later in the war the doctrine of the Confederate armies was to maintain their forces intact even at the cost of positions and territory, while Union doctrine was to bring the heaviest mass possible of men and supplies into every given situation.
Earthwork/sand-work: A fort with outer defense walls made from earth or sand rather than some sort of masonry. Ironically, although these forts were made of local materials due to supply or cost problems, they turned out to be much better at handling incoming artillery fire than the massive, expensive masonry forts.
En barbette: Guns or cannon mounted on a low platform on the top floor of a fort, able then to fire over the top of the parapet without any firing slit or cutout needed. This was a very exposed and dangerous position for the artillerymen.
Enfilade: Attacking an enemy force from a sharp angle, the side, or the rear. This usually implies the direction of fire, rather than an assault or such action.
Envelopment: To attack the sides and/or rear at the same time, usually requiring a high level of command coordination. Many well-planned attacks of this nature turned into disasters when the attack went in piecemeal, allowing the defenders to concentrate their forces as needed rather than spread them out to face multiple attacks.
Flanks: The sides or rear of a formation or position, usually one of the weakest points for an attacker to hit given the “line of battle” tactics of the day. The emphasis throughout most of the war was for an attacking force to maneuver into a position where they could hit the enemy’s flanks; Grant and Lee in Virginia and Sherman and Johnston in Georgia provided classic examples of this.
Fleet: A group of warships and/or transports under a single commander, usually detailed for a general mission or task. A “flotilla” is generally a smaller grouping of the same sort, used for a single specific action or task.
Garrison: The body of troops assigned to a single fixed position, usually for a prolonged length of time and normally used only for guard duty or action from that one position. Just as the war began, many U.S. forts along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in the South had a garrison of just one man (an ordnance sergeant), while by the fall of 1864 Atlanta had a Union Army garrison consisting of a full corps.
Gun deck: On a ship, the main deck where cannon or guns are mounted; in a fixed fortification, any of the positions where artillery is mounted.
Ironclads: Special warships armored with iron plating, usually enough to deflect both rifle and smaller cannon fire. Early in the war these were just standard wooden naval vessels hastily outfitted with crude armor, but by the second year of the war, ships were being designed from the hull up to be steam-powered armored warships. The USS Monitor is the most familiar example of this genre, a low-freeboard hull mounting a single movable turret housing two large guns.
Lunette: A special type of earthwork fort consisting of an angled, L-shaped wall, with the rear completely exposed. These were used primarily as outlying artillery positions.
Militia: Prewar local defense groups organized originally in colonial days for protection from Indian attacks. Later used as the core of the Continental Army and organized extensively in the South after the Revolutionary War to guard against slave insurrections. As the United States had only a tiny “professional” standing army well into the 20th century, the militias were relied upon to provide a trained cadre of fighting men that could be called up quickly in times of war (this is the “well-regulated militia” spoken of in the Second Amendment to the Constitution). By the 1840s the militias had become a sort of social culture, with many units dressing in all sorts of outlandish uniforms and drilling primarily for show in parades and such. These militias were quickly absorbed into the regular Union and Confederate armies after the start of the war and their stylish uniforms soon packed away.
Palisade: The steep outer walls of an earthwork or masonry fort.
Parapets: A low wall or fence along the top of a fort’s ramparts, to provide some protection for the gunners manning en barbette positions. It now serves in existing forts to help keep the tourists from falling off the upper gun decks and ramparts.
Picket: A guard or sentry for either a fixed position or mobile force, these were usually placed well outside friendly lines or the head of the column, where they could best look for or hear any enemy movement. They were almost always the first to fight in any engagement and suffered appallingly high casualties. This duty would usually rotate from company to company in a regiment. During times of battle, they would work in conjunction with skirmishers and vedettes.
Quick-time: To walk in step at 120 steps per minute—the standard pace for infantry on the march. “Double-quick time” is 180 steps per minute, which means you are moving at a sort of jog, but still in step with the men around you in a formation. “Charge” means to run flat out at whatever lies ahead; obviously, calling for a faster pace or to run should only be done when nearly in contact with the enemy, as otherwise you have a bunch of worn-out infantrymen able to do little but gasp for breath.
Rampart: The top of a position’s palisade, usually flattened so that artillery may be mounted and men may move about for guard and combat duties. To “take the ramparts” means the position has been breached by an enemy force that now holds the high ground and thus the tactical advantage.
Redoubt: Another term for a reinforced protective shelter, usually made of logs covered with earthwork, but implies that this is a fighting position as well, as opposed to the bomb-proof, which implies simply a hideout or isolated shelter. This term is also used frequently as a reference to any defensive trench work or earthwork.
Refuse: A line of battle or wall of fortifications that is angled sharply back from the main enemy advance or attack. This helps prevent the enemy force from attacking the flank of a formation or position.
Reinforcements: Troops brought into the battle either from an already-established reserve force or from other commands moved into the area.
Reserve: Troops kept back away from the main battle area to use to exploit any breach in the opponent’s line, to replace casualties in the main battle force, or to use as the last line of defense. The rule of thumb is 2:1, keeping two parts of your command on the line of battle and one back as a reserve. There were some Civil War commanders who prided themselves on never using their reserves, no matter the situation, and others who would plug them in at the slightest sign of trouble.
Salient: A part of a defensive line or fortification that juts out from the rest of the line toward the enemy. Before the war this was taught to be something desirable, as it would naturally break up any enemy line of attack (and in theory allow the defender to fire straight into the flanks of an attacker on either side), but during the war most attacks focused on this feature to the distress of the defender. The “Dead Angle” at Cheatham’s Hill (Kennesaw Mountain Campaign in Georgia, 1864) is an excellent example of what can go wrong with a feature in the line of this sort.
Sapper or Sappier: A specially assigned soldier, charged with the construction of mines and associated structures, usually aimed at the destruction of an enemy’s works.
“See the elephant”: An expression used to refer to engaging in combat. A soldier who has just lived through his first battle has “seen the elephant.” While it is debatable (and fiercely argued over in some circles) where this expression came from, the most plausible explanation is that it refers to the circus. During a time when the vast majority of the population was cloistered on farms, rarely going more than 20 miles from home in their entire lifetime, seeing the exotic animals in a circus was one of the highlights of their lives.
Shrapnel: Listed under Artillery section (see p. 434).
Siege: To surround and cut off an enemy position from resupply or reinforcement and then “starve them out.” The earliest known military histories (Homer’s The Iliad, for one) mention this kind of warfare, which is brutally effective if one is facing an enemy position without hope of a strong relief effort and if one is very patient. During the Civil War a siege was usually accompanied by bombardment from heavy artillery manufactured and brought in for this specific situation. Vicksburg, Atlanta, and Petersburg are the three most often-cited examples of this during the war.
Skirmishers: Troops, usually of company strength or less, assigned to protect the head and flanks of a main battle formation. These infantrymen fought very much as modern infantrymen do, using cover, concealment, and individual maneuvers to “pick away” as much as possible from the main enemy force before withdrawing into their own lines. During times of battle, they would work in conjunction with pickets.
Squadron: A naval formation, usually consisting mostly of gunboats and other armed vessels, and usually assigned to a given geographic area. Sometimes used as an alternative term for fleets or flotillas.
Staging bases: Main bases usually well removed from the battle areas where men and supplies are funneled out to the necessary commands. This is where the main supply depots would be located, as well as training camps for the men.
Strategy: The overall plan for conducting the war, or even just a single battle. A good example is the “Anaconda Plan,” the grand overall plan for conducting the war against the Confederacy. Army commands and above would deal with plans on this level, leaving the specifics of exactly how to carry out these objectives to the lower commands.
Tactics: The specifics of how a particular strategy will be carried out on the battlefield. For example, Sherman’s strategy was to drive southeast from Chattanooga and take Atlanta, but his tactical plans included details on which specific commands would move where and when. There are some sources in military science and theory circles that claim a distinction between strategy and tactics is ridiculous, as both talk about more or less the same thing, but we believe it is a useful distinction to mean you are talking about the grand strategies of politicians and top generals versus the battle tactics of field commanders and soldiers.
Theater: The general area of combat or a large area covered by a single command. For example, “theater armies” means all the combatant forces in a given major geographic area. The “theater armies” referred to at Resaca (during the Atlanta Campaign) meant all four armies commanded by Sherman as well as the three corps commanded by Johnston—all the troops they had immediately available to them. A “theater” can also mean something such as the “Western Theater,” which included everything in the South from the Carolinas to the Mississippi. This book concentrates on this theater of the war.
Transports: Unarmed ships attached to fleets or flotillas, carrying army troops to use in assaults or amphibious invasions.
Trench work: A line of dug-out ditches, providing both cover and concealment for infantrymen who fought from inside them. Depending on how long the troops had been in their position before being attacked, these could be as crude as a shallow, scratched-out series of “foxholes” or a deep and elaborate series of interconnected ditches, bomb-proofs, and redoubts.
Vanguard: The forward-most elements of a command or column. In modern military parlance, this is the “point element,” the troops most vulnerable to a sudden ambush or attack.
Vedette or vidette: A mounted guard or sentry, who otherwise did the same duty as a picket. During times of battle, vedettes would work in conjunction with pickets and skirmishers.
Volley fire: A line of infantry all firing at the same time on command. A central element of the Napoleonic tactics used throughout the war, massed infantry firing volleys was the only way that smoothbore muskets of limited range could gain a real advantage on a fluid battlefield; the infantrymen would form three lines slightly offset one behind another, and each would fire in turn on the order of their officer. By the time the third line fired, the first would be reloaded, so a near-continuous volume of outgoing fire could be maintained so long as the ammunition held out. As Civil War–era rifles had ranges 3 to 10 times longer than Revolutionary War–era muskets, could be reloaded a bit faster, and had a much more lethal ammunition load, the same close-in volley fire tactics resulted in appalling casualties.
Artillery had its own specialized language; the following list is a sampling of the most commonly used terms.
Barrage: To use multiple guns firing on a single target or to saturate an area with as heavy a rate of fire as possible.
Battery: The basic organization of artillery units, which contained four, five, or six guns of single or multiple type, which usually worked together in a combat action. Occasionally batteries were broken up into two-gun sections for use in special circumstances.
Bombardment: The use of artillery to reduce either a military or civilian target to rubble. Atlanta withstood nearly six weeks of a high rate of fire from some of the heaviest guns the Union possessed; some sources claim that it is the “heaviest bombarded” city in North America. Other sources claim the same for Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Charleston, Petersburg, etc.
Caisson: The ammunition wagon and container for an artillery piece. Usually the piece and the caisson were hauled together by a single team of horses, called the caisson team. As these wagons were very sturdily built and had flat tops, they were often used as ambulances and even as hearses. The U.S. Army still uses caissons in formal military funerals; the 3rd Infantry, the “Old Guard” at Arlington National Cemetery, is often seen using caissons to haul the coffins of the honored dead to their final rest.
Canister/grapeshot: A tin can similar to a coffee can filled with either 27 or 48 iron balls, designed to burst open right after it left the muzzle and spray the area in front of the piece like a giant shotgun. Grapeshot is a slight variation that uses nine larger iron balls either sewn together in a cloth sleeve or held together in a light iron frame. The size of these balls varied with the caliber of the gun. This round was useful out to about 300 yards but was more usually employed at much closer range, including at point-blank range. When things were really bleak for the artillery crews, they would load up with “double canister,” knocking the powder bag off the rear of the second round and ramming it in on top of the first. This cut the range roughly in half, but doubled the effectiveness up close. This was a deadly weapon to use against closely packed infantry charges and would result in the lines being literally blown apart, creating huge gaps.
Cannon: A generic term for a piece of artillery, not specific as to the type or size.
Columbiad: A very heavy-barreled, smoothbore weapon originally introduced in 1811, which could fire either shot or shell from either flat or high trajectories, giving it the combined characteristics of guns, howitzers, and mortars. For many years these were the backbone weapon of coastline defense, and nearly every coastal fort featured them at the outbreak of war. Early Columbiads could fire a 50-pound solid round shot about 1,800 feet. A variation of this gun, known as a Rodman, was manufactured in a way that created an exceptionally strong barrel, giving the improved guns the ability to fire shells that weighed up to 320 pounds out to nearly 3 miles away.
Counter-battery: To use artillery fire against an enemy artillery position to try to knock their guns out of the fight.
Dahlgren: A very heavy-barreled weapon, very similar in look to a Columbiad. These were used primarily on board naval vessels (the USS Monitor mounted two 11-inch Dahlgrens in its turret) and came in both smoothbore and rifled varieties. They were built in sizes ranging from 12-pounders to 150-pounders, as well as 9-inch to 20-inch calibers, with the 15-inch smoothbores being the most popular.
Friction primer: The “match” that was used to set off a cannon. It consisted of two short pieces of copper tubing soldered together at right angles, with one tube filled with mercury fulminate and the other, slightly longer tube filled with gunpowder. After the charge had been loaded and the gunpowder-filled charge bag torn open by a vent prick, the friction primer was inserted into the vent hole, directly over the now-opened charge bag, and attached to a lanyard. The mercury-filled tube had a short, twisted wire inserted that, when pulled out rapidly, created a friction spark with the mercury fulminate. This caused the gunpowder in the other tube to flash and, in turn, caused the pricked charge bag inside the tube to detonate, expelling the round from the tube.
Fuse: A length of flammable cording inside a plug that burned at a known rate and that was used to cause an explosive shell to go off at a given time after firing. A gun crewman cut the fuse to the length (time) desired and then inserted the fuse and plug assembly into a shell before handing it off to be loaded into the piece. The firing of the piece ignited the fuse, and artillery officers were well trained in the mathematics of figuring out exactly when a shell would arrive over a given target at a given range. The advantage of this was the ability to do “air bursts,” which spread the lethal shrapnel over a much wider arc than if the shell had hit the ground before bursting.
Gun: A generic term for any artillery piece, although, to be precise, it really refers only to rifled cannon.
Hot-shot: Solid shot heated to red-hot in special ovens and then quickly loaded and fired at flammable targets: ships and their rigging, wagons and caissons, wooden palisades, abatis, etc.
Lanyard: A 12-foot-long rope with a wooden handle on one end and a hook on the other that was attached to a small loop in the wire of a friction primer. Used to fire the artillery piece.
Mortar: A short, very heavy-barreled artillery piece that used exceptionally heavy powder charges in order to loft solid shot or shell nearly vertically. These were extremely useful in lobbing charges over a walled enemy position or trench work that was resistant to direct fire.
Parrott rifle: A rifled, muzzle-loading cannon, ranging in size from a 3-inch (or 10-pounder) to a 10-inch (300-pounder). These are some of the easiest cannons to identify, having a thick band attached around the rear of the barrel, used to help withstand the tremendous pressures rifled cannons build up during firing. These rifled guns fired oblong “bolts,” cucumber-shaped solid shot and explosive shells, that had brass rings attached to the base that “grabbed” the rifling during firing. Many accounts of soldiers on the wrong end of Parrott rifles firing talk about the particular “whiffling” shrill noise these bolts made when flying overhead. A deadly accurate weapon found in both armies in every theater of the war.
Piece: Another generic term for a cannon, although usually used to indicate a specific or singular gun.
Shell: A hollow round filled with gunpowder, which would burst either from striking a target or by the action of a timed fuse.
Shot: Solid round balls or oblong “bolts,” usually used against masonry structures or other such heavy, solid objects. However, cannoneers had absolutely no qualms about using solid shot against infantry formations; one of author John McKay’s great-grandfathers lost a leg to just such a round at South Mountain, Maryland.
Shrapnel: Red-hot, jagged bits of metal flying about at high rates of speed, produced by the exploding casing of a bursting shell. A shell bursting in the air above an infantry formation could produce many times the casualties of a solid shot blasting through the line.
Spike: To render a cannon unable to fire, usually by driving a soft iron nail through the vent hole and cutting off the protruding end. This would be done, if possible, when an enemy force was about to overrun an artillery position and the guns could not be withdrawn. There were frequent occasions, especially late in the war, when Union gunners simply shot all their caisson horses when on the verge of being overrun and left the guns intact, knowing that the Confederates would lack the horses needed to take the guns when they retreated. Then the Union gunners could simply move back in and resume their firing with little fuss.
Trails: The rear “legs” of the gun carriage, which had a short pole (called a trail handspike) attached for ease of aiming by moving the gun left and right. This is also where the cannon was attached to the rear of the caisson, being hauled tube pointed backward.
Tube: Sometimes used as a generic term for cannon, it is the heavy iron or bronze casting that is the barrel of the gun. It is attached to the gun carriage by means of two trunnions cast on either side, near the barrel’s center of gravity, and raised up and down by means of various attachments to the knob and neck cast on the rear of the barrel.