Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865-1899 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Crossing theDeadly Ground: UnitedStatesArmy Tactics, 1865-1899. By Perry D. Jamieson. (Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press, 1994. Pp. xvi, 232, $29.95.) Perry Jamieson fills a gap in the tactical history of the U.S. Army from the end of the Civil War through the Spanish-American War. He unfolds how an army spread out on frontier posts, largely preoccupied with warfare against the native peoples, Reconstruction, and daily routine nevertheless made progress toward a system of tactics to take it into the twentieth century. Jamieson pays passing respectto the history ofwarfare against the native peoples with auseful synthesis of existing scholarship. But the focus ofhis original research and analysis is not unconventional frontier warfare but conventional tactical doctrine relative to the balance between the offense and the defense. In this respect, Crossing the Deadly Ground is a sequel to his earlier work with Grady McWhiney, Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (1982). Jamieson relates how an army with no permanent process to revise and institutionalize doctrine began to develop an "American School" of tactical doctrine that reflected both the American and especially Civil War experience and the introduction of the new generation of rapid-firing weaponry. While on the one hand an army with an ad hoc do-it-yourself organizational process was a refuge for conservatives, on the other it provided room for more reformminded thinkers to bring forward ideas and to have them accepted by reflective members ofthe high command like William Tecumseh Sherman. Jamieson traces the gradual development of a modern tactical system mixed with remnants ofthe old beginning with the army's adoption in 1867 of Emory Upton's famous revised system of infantry tactics and Upton's leading role in the further development of the army's first system of "assimilated tactics" adopted in 1874. The assimilated tactics, advising each arm how to best cooperate with the other, were supplemented in 1887 by a battalion drill and skirmish system based on them and by War Department directives answering subsequent questions. As questions began to outpace answers, the army brought out a revised system of tactics in 1891 that for the first time went beyond drills and gave instructions for maneuvering and fighting troops in battle. These reforms all weighted the impact of American conditions and the new technology on the offense versus the defense and concluded, according to Jamieson, that, while the entrenched defense was predominant, offensive solu- BOOK REVIEWS65 tions must be sought. Jamieson emphasizes how one of the most important offensive reforms with the new rapid-firing weapons was extended-order battlefield formations built around small units, first around Upton's sets of four and then, in the 1891 reforms, around squads of eight combining two sets of four. Also important was the emphasis on attack by short rushes, taking advantage of available cover. On the other side of the balance, extended order with small units heightened concern about command and control until the introduction ofthe field telephone, which first appeared on rifle ranges during the 1880s but had not reached the battlefield at the battalion level or below by the Spanish-American War. Jamieson develops how even the 1891 manuals and supplementary literature for all arms remained an ambivalent mix ofnew ideas sometimes running ahead and of old ideas not keeping apace of technological change. He concludes that the Spanish-American War reinforced the views of reformers who emphasized both the continuing strength ofthe entrenched defense and the offensive potential of small units advancing by rushes or by continuous advance with sustained fire. The war gave some support to reformers who advocated the offensive potential of the Gatling gun. Otherwise lack of technological development, shortcomings in tactical thought, or lack of opportunity postponed the verdict on American tactical development into the twentieth century. Edward Hagerman York University The Life and Military Career ofGeorgeA. Forsyth. By David Dixon. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. xviii, 257. $32.50.) This is the story of the life and military career of a veteran of the Civil War and Indian wars who served twenty-nine years in the army. Dixon examines Forsyth's military career, using the army...