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“The war now is away back in the past and you [the Civil War veterans in the crowd] can tell what books can
not. . . . There is many a boy here to-day who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”
—Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, impromptu address at a political rally in Columbus, Ohio, 11 August 1880
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Two fundamental technical factors shaped Civil War fighting—rifles and railroads. Defending infantry armed with
rifles and protected by breastworks or trenches exacted terrible costs from forces attacking across open ground.
Counterattacks were equally costly. Railroads, which became indispensable in supplying Civil War armies, also provided
defensive advantage. An advancing army moved further from its rail-supplied depots, while a defeated army fell back
toward its depots and fresh supplies.
The costliness of attacks and the often inconclusive results of battle made for a long war. The Union’s two decisive
victories, at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July 1863, did not end the war, but marked only its halfway point.
Nothing in a West Point education had prepared officers for the new realities of rifles and railroads, and not one
graduate had ever commanded an army in battle before 1861. Yet the Civil War became a West Pointers’ war, with 151
Confederate and 294 Union generals. West Pointers commanded both sides in 55 of the war’s 60 major battles, and one
side in the other five.
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