by Chad Chaney
I found this while doing some research for the treason post, which I hope will be done later tonight.... it includes a rather interesting discussion of what Mr. William Lind would classify as 1GW:
Washington and Lee, both Virginian gentlemen, were devotees of conventional state warfare and disdained partisan and irregular actions. Washington had no choice (to his fortune). The Confederate leadership did and largely rejected it. Washington had sought and was denied a regular commission as a British army officer, and had something to prove. The wealth of experience in irregular war from a century of conflict with tribes on the frontier and their French allies, indeed his own experience from Monongalia…was wasted for the hope of respectability in the eyes of his enemies. The stately Virginian adopted the Fredrickan System of linear tactics as taught by a mercenary Prussian ex-captain von Steuben, and wed America fatefully to conventional war. Use of cover/concealment by the line-infantry was shunned wholesale for l’Ordre Mince the 2-deep line of infantry exchanging volleys with a similarly deployed opponent in open ground, followed by a bayonet charge by whichever side’s salvos had the most effect (who had been able to fire the most volleys). War was a chess game played by gentlemen officers with human pieces. My fellow history buffs will be quick to pounce on the 18th Century musket’s inaccuracy as an individual weapon and vigorously assert the necessity of these Frederickan phalanxes, given the technology. I’d respond by pointing again to Monongalia, and also to European experimentation with skirmishers (Croats in Austrian service and Prussian Jagers), who’s use was limited (for socio-political reasons) but always effective. In any case, the common militia in America didn’t take well, to being cannon fodder, as Washington bemoaned at New York in the 1776 campaign (modern anti-gunners revel in the Colonial militia’s supposed uselessness). In any case, implementation of regular tactics with troops other than Continentals (always few in number) was faulty at best and logistical challenges, administrative decentralization, and difficult terrain ensured that partisan, decentralized warfare still played a pivotal role in the 1776–83 Independence war.
An interesting advocacy of a different strategy for preserving the Confederacy--though one wonders how morally licit any sort of guerilla warfare or "insurgency" may be, according to Catholic moral theology. Would libertarian anarchists be so zealous in their denunciation of the state and "statist" ideology if they really had to rough it on their own, without the comforts of middle-class American existence?
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