The Last Full Measure (59 page)

  
1.
At the beginning of its war of liberation, America struggled to acquire significant quantities of saltpeter from the British-controlled West Indies. Figuring out how to manufacture enough domestically was a priority that John Adams, for one, felt acutely. To James Warren in October 1775, he writes: “We must bend our attention to salt petre. We must make it. While Britain is Mistress of the Sea and has so much influence with foreign courts we cannot depend upon a supply from abroad. It is certain it can be made here.… A gentleman in Maryland made some last June from tobacco house earth … the process is so simple a child can make it.” Quoted in Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds.,
The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six: The Story of the Revolution as Told by Participants
(Harper, 1958), 776. When George Washington discovered, at the war’s outset, how little powder was in store, Brigadier General John Sullivan recorded that “he did not utter a word for half an hour.” Erna Risch,
Supplying Washington’s Army
(Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1981), 341.

  
2.
Bert S. Hall,
Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 76.

  
3.
Ibid., 75–76.

  
4.
Quoted in ibid., 67.

  
5.
Ibid.

  
6.
Ibid., 101.

  
7.
Victor Davis Hanson,
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
(New York: Anchor, 2002).

  
8.
Stephen Turnbull,
The Samurai Sourcebook
(London: Arms and Armour, 1998), 227.

  
9.
Quoted in Hall,
Weapons and Warfare
, 183.

10.
Quoted in ibid., 199.

11.
Quoted in Christopher Duffy,
The Military Experience in the Age of Reason
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), 222.

12.
Quoted in W. H. Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
(London: Smith, Elder, 1900), 363.

13.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 116.

14.
John Keegan,
The Face of Battle
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1976), 123.

15.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 134.

16.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 257.

17.
Donald R. Morris,
The Washing of the Spears: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 571.

18.
Duffy,
Military Experience
, 224.

19.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 380.

20.
Quoted in Rory Muir,
Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 124.

21.
Quoted in ibid., 125.

22.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 226.

23.
Quoted in Commager and Morris,
The Spirit of Seventy-Six
, 1111–12.

24.
Quoted in John Keegan,
The Face of Battle
, 124.

25.
Philip Haythornthwaite,
The English Civil War
(London: Brockhampton, 1998), 30.

26.
Arcadi Gluckman,
United States Muskets, Rifles, and Carbines
(Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1959), 33.

27.
Richard Holmes,
Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket
(New York: Norton, 2001), 195.

28.
Hall,
Weapons and Warfare
, 135.

29.
Charles Knowles Bolton,
The Private Soldier Under Washington
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902), 115.

30.
Gunther E. Rothenberg,
The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon
(London: Batsford, 1977), 64.

31.
Quoted in David Hackett Fischer,
Washington’s Crossing
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 305.

32.
Quoted in ibid., 65.

33.
Hall,
Weapons and Warfare
, 140.

34.
Gluckman,
United States Muskets
, 37.

35.
Rothenberg,
Art of Warfare
, 65.

36.
Hall,
Weapons and Warfare
, 139.

37.
Rothenberg,
Art of Warfare
, 65. Paddy Griffith, in
Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to the Near Future
(Novato, CA: Presidio, 1997), 38, claims 800 rounds per casualty.

38.
Quoted in David Chandler,
The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough
(London: Batsford, 1976), 131.

39.
Griffith,
Forward into Battle
, 28.

40.
Major General B. P. Hughes,
Firepower: Weapons Effectiveness on the Battlefield, 1630–1850
(London: Arms and Armour, 1974), 165.

41.
John J. Gallagher,
The Battle of Brooklyn, 1776
(Cambridge, Mass.: De Capo, 1995), 130.

42.
Muir,
Tactics
, 102.

43.
Ibid., 165.

44.
Captain Mercer, quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 370.

45.
Muir,
Tactics
, 135.

46.
Quoted in Jay Luvaas, ed. and trans.,
Frederick the Great on the Art of War
(New York: Free Press, 1966), 78.

47.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 246.

48.
Hall,
Weapons and Warfare
, 136.

49.
Duffy,
Military Experience
, 247.

50.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 158.

51.
Quoted in Holmes,
Redcoat
, 254.

52.
Quoted in Hall,
Weapons and Warfare
, 207.

53.
Quoted in Griffith,
Forward into Battle
, 25.

54.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 205.

55.
Howard H. Peckham,
The Toll of Independence: Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 41, 62.

56.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 86.

57.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman,
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
(Boston: Back Bay, 1995), 123.

58.
Quoted in Earl J. Hess,
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 51.

59.
Quoted in Gallagher,
Battle of Brooklyn
, 119.

60.
John Rhodehamel, ed.,
The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence
(New York: Library of America, 2001), 269.

61.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 234.

62.
Quoted in ibid., 217.

63.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 386.

64.
James Thatcher,
Military Journal of the American Revolution, 1775–1783
(Corner House Historical, 1998), 284.

65.
Hall,
Weapons and Warfare
, 152.

66.
Anonymous,
Memoirs of a Sergeant: The 43rd Light Infantry During the Peninsular War
(Stroud, UK: Nonsuch, 2005), 60.

67.
Joseph Plumb Martin,
A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier
(New York: Signet, 2001), 206.

68.
George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin,
Rebels & Redcoats: The American Revolution Through the Eyes of Those Who Fought and Lived It
(Cleveland, OH: World, 1957), 56.

69.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 95.

70.
Quoted in Commager and Morris,
The Spirit of Seventy-Six
, 1105.

71.
Quoted in ibid., 387.

72.
Haythornthwaite,
English Civil War
, 53.

73.
Quoted in Muir,
Tactics
, 47.

74.
Duffy,
Military Experience
, 245; and Muir,
Tactics
, 46.

75.
Muir,
Tactics
, 46–47.

76.
Philip Haythornthwaite,
Weapons & Equipment of the Napoleonic Wars
(London: Arms and Armour, 1979), 67.

77.
Quoted in Griffith,
Forward into Battle
, 31.

78.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 76.

79.
Quoted in Robert L. O’Connell,
Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 118–19.

80.
Quoted in Muir,
Tactics
, 262.

81.
Quoted in Commager and Morris,
The Spirit of Seventy-Six
, 1233.

82.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 388–89.

83.
Haythornthwaite,
English Civil War
, 121.

84.
Quoted in Rhodehamel,
American Revolution
, 607.

85.
Cardinal John Henry Newman in
The Idea of a University
(1852), quoted in Gary Mead,
The Good Soldier: The Biography of Douglas Haig
(London: Atlantic, 2007), 41.

86.
Quoted in Muir,
Tactics
, 219.

87.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 219.

88.
Quoted in Muir,
Tactics
, 191.

89.
Philip Haythornthwaite,
The Armies of Wellington
(London: Arms and Armour, 1994), picture caption between 224 and 225.

90.
Quoted in Muir,
Tactics
, 66.

91.
Quoted in ibid., 178.

92.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 220.

93.
Richard Holmes,
Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle
(New York: Free Press, 1985), 348.

94.
Quoted in Muir,
Tactics
, 221.

95.
Quoted in ibid., and Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 159.

96.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 163.

97.
George Robert Gleig,
The Subaltern: A Chronicle of the Peninsular War
(1825; repr., Leo Cooper/Pen and Sword, 2001), 114.

98.
Sylvia R. Frey,
The British Soldier in America: A Social History of Military Life in the Revolutionary Period
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 135.

99.
Quoted in John W. Shy, “Hearts and Minds: The Case of ‘Long Bill Scott,’ ” in
Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760–1791
, ed. Richard D. Brown (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1992), 209.

100.
Quoted in Duffy,
Military Experience
, 171.

101.
Quoted in Holmes,
Redcoat
, 164.

102.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 98.

103.
Quoted in ibid., 91.

104.
Luvaas,
Frederick the Great
, 77.

105.
John C. Dann, ed.,
The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War of Independence
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 183.

106.
Quoted in Fitchett,
Wellington’s Men
, 146.

107.
Martin,
Narrative
, 143.

  
1.
Drew Gilpin Faust,
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
(New York: Knopf, 2008), 253.

  
2.
Ambrose Bierce, “The Coup de Grâce,” in
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories
(New York: Penguin, 2000), 57.

  
3.
Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 252.

  
4.
Ibid., 256.

  
5.
George Worthington Adams,
Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 194.

  
6.
Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 3.

  
7.
William F. Fox,
Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1861–1865
(Albany, 1889) Reprint, Gulf Breeze, FL:
eBooksonDisk.com
, 2002, 24. See also Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 255, and Gerald F. Linderman,
Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War
(New York: Free Press, 1987), 115.

  
8.
Adams,
Doctors in Blue
, 3.

  
9.
Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 3, 147.

10.
Thomas L. Livermore,
Numbers & Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861–65
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957), 6.

11.
Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 260.

12.
Fox,
Regimental Losses
, 46.

13.
Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 47.

14.
Paddy Griffith,
Battle Tactics of the Civil War
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 174.

15.
Fox,
Regimental Losses
, 27.

16.
Richard Moe,
The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers
(St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1993), 275.

17.
Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 62.

18.
Griffith,
Battle Tactics
, 174.

19.
Fox,
Regimental Losses
, 27.

20.
Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson,
Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982).

21.
Quoted in ibid., 108.

22.
Brent Nosworthy,
The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 2003), 186. Also see Brent Nosworthy,
Roll Call to Destiny: The Soldier’s Eye View of Civil War Battles
(New York: Basic Books, 2008), 25.

23.
Griffith,
Battle Tactics
, 80.

24.
Jack Coggins,
Arms and Equipment of the Civil War
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 38.

25.
Ibid., 38–39.

26.
Ibid., 39.

27.
For example, see Nosworthy,
Bloody Crucible
, 588.

28.
Fox,
Regimental Losses
, 62.

29.
Griffith,
Battle Tactics
, 87.

30.
Quoted in Rod Gragg,
Covered with Glory: The 26th North Carolina Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg
(New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 120.

31.
Quoted in Earl J. Hess,
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 80.

32.
Ibid., 74.

33.
Paddy Griffith,
Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to the Near Future
(Novato, CA: Presidio, 1981), 78.

34.
Hess,
Union Soldier
, 84.

35.
Coggins,
Arms and Equipment
, 32.

36.
Quoted in Nosworthy,
Bloody Crucible
, 616–17.

37.
Quoted in Griffith,
Battle Tactics
, 142.

38.
Henry Steele Commager, ed.,
The Blue and the Gray: The Story of the Civil War as Told by Participants
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950), 355–56.

39.
Griffith,
Battle Tactics
, 110.

40.
Quoted in Hess,
Union Soldier
, 94.

41.
Quoted in Coggins,
Arms and Equipment
, 29.

42.
Quoted in Commager,
Blue and the Gray
, 306.

43.
Quoted in ibid., 367.

44.
Quoted in McWhiney and Jamieson,
Attack and Die
, 45.

45.
Quoted in Commager,
Blue and the Gray
, 306.

46.
Don Congdon, ed.,
Combat: The Civil War
(New York: Mallard Press, 1967), 239.

47.
Cited in Nosworthy,
Bloody Crucible
, 583.

48.
Quoted in ibid., 579.

49.
Quoted in ibid., 578.

50.
John W. Busey and David C. Martin,
Regimental Strengths and Losses of Gettysburg
(Hightstown, NJ: Longstreet House, 1986), 238, 280.

51.
“The Regimental Hospital,” Shotgun’s Home of the American Civil War,
http://www.civilwarhome.com/regimentalhospital.htm
.

52.
David J. Eicher,
The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 791.

53.
“Regimental Hospital.”

54.
Cited in Eicher,
Longest Night
, 790.

55.
Quoted in Hess,
Union Soldier
, 29.

56.
Quoted in ibid., 28.

57.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 138.

58.
Quoted in ibid., 139.

59.
Griffith,
Battle Tactics
, 155.

60.
Quoted in Eicher,
Longest Night
, 100.

61.
Both quoted in Hess,
Union Soldier
, 26.

62.
Griffith,
Battle Tactics
, 171.

63.
Nosworthy,
Bloody Crucible
, 435.

64.
Coggins,
Arms and Equipment
, 76–77.

65.
Quoted in Commager,
Blue and the Gray
, 636.

66.
Quoted in Gragg,
Covered with Glory
, 174.

67.
Quoted in ibid., 632.

68.
Quoted in Eicher,
Longest Night
, 146.

69.
Quoted in McWhiney and Jamieson,
Attack and Die
, 115.

70.
Livermore,
Numbers & Losses
, 69–70.

71.
Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 15.

72.
Quoted in McWhiney and Jamieson,
Attack and Die
, 171.

73.
Quoted in ibid., 172.

74.
Fox,
Regimental Losses
, 38.

75.
McWhiney and Jamieson,
Attack and Die
, 14.

76.
Eicher,
Longest Night
, 774–75.

77.
Ibid., 571.

78.
McWhiney and Jamieson,
Attack and Die
, 189.

79.
Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 142.

80.
Quoted in Commager,
Blue and the Gray
, 363.

81.
Quoted in ibid., 46.

82.
Cited in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 46.

83.
Quoted in ibid., 24–25.

84.
Quoted in Eicher,
Longest Night
, 678.

85.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 27.

86.
Bell Irvin Wiley,
The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952), 81.

87.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 206.

88.
Quoted in ibid., 207.

89.
Ulysses S. Grant,
Personal Memoirs
(1885; repr., New York: Penguin, 1999), 285.

90.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 178.

91.
Quoted in ibid., 178.

92.
Quoted in ibid.

93.
Quoted in ibid., 203.

94.
Quoted in ibid.

95.
Quoted in Hess,
Union Soldier
, 8.

96.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 124.

97.
Quoted in ibid., 128.

98.
Quoted in Hess,
Union Soldier
, 140.

99.
Quoted in Eicher,
Longest Night
, 488.

100.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 65.

101.
Quoted in Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 20.

102.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 101.

103.
Quoted in Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 59.

104.
Quoted in Reid Mitchell,
Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences
(New York: Viking, 1988), 64.

105.
Quoted in Wiley,
Billy Yank
, 79.

106.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 244.

107.
Quoted in ibid., 254.

108.
Quoted in ibid., 217.

109.
Bell Irvin Wiley,
The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), 88.

110.
Quoted in Hess,
Union Soldier
, 24.

111.
Quoted in Commager,
Blue and the Gray
, 307.

112.
Quoted in Hess,
Union Soldier
, 93.

113.
Quoted in ibid., 149.

114.
Quoted in Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 36–37.

115.
Cited in ibid., 45.

116.
Mitchell,
Civil War Soldiers
, 193.

117.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 237.

118.
Quoted in Wiley,
Billy Yank
, 352.

119.
Scott Walker,
Hell’s Broke Loose in Georgia: Survival in a Civil War Regiment
(Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 84.

120.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 238.

121.
Quoted in ibid., 72.

122.
Quoted in ibid., 148.

123.
Quoted in Commager,
Blue and the Gray
, 248.

124.
Nosworthy,
Bloody Crucible
, 229–30.

125.
Faust,
Republic of Suffering
, 117.

126.
Ibid., 92.

127.
Quoted in ibid., 71.

128.
Quoted in Linderman,
Embattled Courage
, 127.

129.
Quoted in ibid., 127, 159.

130.
Ibid., 282.