Civil War Field Artillery: Promise and Performance on the Battlefield by Earl J. Hess (review)

Abstract

The ever-productive Earl J. Hess has once again authored a worthy monograph on a notable lacuna in the military history of the American Civil War—field artillery. Despite being the second most important combat arm of Civil War field armies, as measured by its ubiquity on the battlefield, the so-called “King of Battle” has received relatively little attention. While operational military historians continue to produce campaign and unit studies and biographies of generals, Hess has written the first major operational study in decades that places field artillery in the larger historical context of Western military history and American military practice. Hess argues that while Civil War field artillery saw an evolutionary improvement in range and effectiveness after its inception in the Napoleonic era due to innovations like rifling, such advances did not represent a sharp break from prior military practice because of persistent problems with reliable fuses and fire control. Much of the prior literature on Civil War artillery has focused on equipment and material. Hess’ work is the first attempt at covering the material, employment, and administration field artillery as a whole, in both the Union and Confederate armies. While all competent battle studies include coverage of the use of artillery at that specific engagement, the distinctive equipment, organization, and administration of artillery requires the sort of examination provided by Hess. The fruits of Hess’ research also highlights that our understanding of cavalry would benefit from such a comparable study—at present, there only exists an extensive scholarly overview of Union cavalry—a magisterial multi-volume study by Stephen Z. Starr titled The Union Cavalry in the Civil War (1979–1985). Hess’ study of artillery makes particularly important contributions to larger historiographical debates about the American Civil War’s modernity and the relationship between nineteenth and twentieth