Booknotes: Civil War Field Artillery

New Arrival:
• Civil War Field Artillery: Promise and Performance on the Battlefield by Earl J. Hess (LSU Press, 2022).

Long respected for producing some of the field's best modern Civil War campaign and battle histories, military historian Earl Hess has maintained a prolific output that continues to amaze in both its quality and its ever widening breadth and diversity. A vocal proponent of broadening the parameters of Civil War military history scholarship, Hess has authored a number of specialized studies of significant yet understudied topics. Added to his host of recent monographs addressing the impact of rifled muskets on the battlefield, army logistical transport, field fortifications, the intersection of supply and strategy, and infantry tactics is Hess's latest book, Civil War Field Artillery: Promise and Performance on the Battlefield. It "is the first comprehensive general history of the artillery arm that supported infantry and cavalry in the conflict. Based on deep and expansive research, it serves as an exhaustive examination with abundant new interpretations that reenvision the Civil War’s military."

Organizational evolution and technological constraints are two areas in which Hess's analysis of Civil War artillery clashes with convention. From the description: "In one of his numerous reevalutions, Hess suggests that the early war practice of dispersing guns and assigning them to infantry brigades or divisions did not inhibit the massing of artillery power on the battlefield, and that the concentration system employed during the latter half of the conflict failed to produce a greater concentration of guns. In another break with previous scholarship, he shows that the efficacy of fuzes to explode long-range ordnance proved a problem that neither side was able to resolve during the war. Indeed, cumulative data on the types of projectiles fired in battle show that commanders lessened their use of the new long-range exploding ordnance due to bad fuzes and instead increased their use of solid shot, the oldest artillery projectile in history."

Hess's book begins by tracing the antebellum development of the U.S. Army's artillery branch from its European forebears. Following that is a wide-ranging exploration of topics related to Civil War artillery. More from the description: "Hess explores the major factors that affected artillerists and their work, including the hardware, the organization of artillery power, relationships between artillery officers and other commanders, and the influence of environmental factors on battlefield effectiveness. He also examines the lives of artillerymen, the use of artillery horses, manpower replacement practices, effects of the widespread construction of field fortifications on artillery performance, and the problems of resupplying batteries in the field." Other chapters look at counterbattery fire and artillery's role in both supporting and repelling infantry and cavalry attacks. A book like this one is long overdue.