CS forts

[atlantis]

Early on the confederacy adopted a policy of using forts for defending the confederacy.? it largely failed but why, was it a question of poor placement, insufficient garrison, fort design/construction or poor leadership by the post commander in combat operations.
In theory well placed forts properly designed/constructed with sufficient garrison and competent leadership should have worked. The conflict took place at a time of arms improvement making assaults on a fortified position very costly for the attacking force.
Forts can be singular for blocking transit or preventing landings/crossing or as part of a ring defense for holding strategic points. Technically the confederacy should have able to build and garrison these positions.

 

[NFB22]

The existing Second and Third System fortifications in the United States that existed at the time of the war were built for the specific purpose of guarding major waterways along the eastern and Gulf coasts from enemy naval forces.

They were not primarily built to withstand major land-based sieges nor were they built to withstand sustained fire from land based rifled artillery.

For instance, Fort Sumter actually did the job it was intended to during the war. It, along with other fortifications guarding Charleston, did in fact seal off the harbor from attempts by the Union Navy to enter the harbor and was able to inflict damage on the vessels. It was, however, unable to withstand the land based artillery fire it was subjected to and was largely reduced to rubble.

Fort Jackson on the Mississippi below New Orleans was built for the purpose of defending the river but it was unable to stop Union naval forces from running past the fort up the river. A number of factors went into this but the fort itself held up and surrendered later.

Fort Pulaski fell after succumbing to land based artillery fire which threatened it's magazine. Fort Macon fell only after a monthlong siege. At Pensacola, Forts Barrancas and McRee were ineffective because Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island remained in Union control for the duration. At Mobile Bay, Forts Gaines and Morgan were also only surrendered after sieges. Other Third System forts such as Fort Clinch, Fort Caswell, Fort Pike, Fort Macomb and the unfinished fort at Ship Island off of the Mississippi were never subjected to sustained sieges while under Confederate command and were only abandoned when further garrisoning the forts would have not served a purpose.

Inland, other fortifications did their jobs such as those at Vicksburg, Drewry's Bluff and at Fort Donelson by closing off the rivers they were tasked with guarding but again, siege operations and land based forces reduced them.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Napoleon said that a fortress is only as good as its flanks. A. S. Johnston's line of fortresses, Columbus, Henry, Donelson, Defiance & Bowling Green individually were formidable. What they were not is what a probe taught Grant.

He discovered that Polk at Columbus could not support Donelson nor could Johnston from Bowling Green. Greatly outnumbered, Grant used mobility to concentrate his inferior force on Henry / Donelson.

Once Donelson fell Johnston had no option but to abandon Tennessee without firing a shot. It was a strategic foster of the first order.

When young Lieutenant R. E. Lee supervised the construction of Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River it was effectively indestructible. Parrott rifles emplaced at ranges three times that of the fort smashed it into surrender in a shockingly brief bombardment.

At Vicksburg, Chattanooga & Petersburg dependence on fortifications only fixed Confederate armies in place where superior Union force could concentrate & capture / destroy them.

In contrast to the isolated fortresses of the Confederacy, the Nashville, Fort Transit, Fortress Rosecrans, Works at Triune & Fort Granger in Franklin were (+/-) 15 miles apart.

With Nashville at the apex of the (+/-) 40 miles apart on a side triangular fortress complex the sides were protected by the Stones & Harpeth Rivers that had very few crossing points. The base from Franklin to Murfreesboro / Readyville was connected by hard surfaced pikes & interior lines. At no point could a Confederate army have isolated any of the fortified positions.

On July 25, 1863 the Army of the Cumberland advanced from its 50 miles apart wide front against the Army of Tennessee. Bragg's engineers had built miles of works fronted by a 1/4 mile deep abatis of felled trees.

Feinting a direct attack on Tullahoma as was expected, Rosecrans turned Bragg's right flank. It was only a 500 year rain event ( re: TVA ) that prevented Bragg from being encircled. Rosecrans never had any attention to waste his men's lives assaulting the formidable works.

The Middle Ages were over. Steam power on river & rail connected by telegraph coupled with rifled artillery had turned forts into traps.

 

[atlantis]

Napoleon said that a fortress is only as good as its flanks. A. S. Johnston's line of fortresses, Columbus, Henry, Donelson, Defiance & Bowling Green individually were formidable. What they were not is what a probe taught Grant.

He discovered that Polk at Columbus could not support Donelson nor could Johnston from Bowling Green. Greatly outnumbered, Grant used mobility to concentrate his inferior force on Henry / Donelson.

Once Donelson fell Johnston had no option but to abandon Tennessee without firing a shot. It was a strategic foster of the first order.

When young Lieutenant R. E. Lee supervised the construction of Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River it was effectively indestructible. Parrott rifles emplaced at ranges three times that of the fort smashed it into surrender in a shockingly brief bombardment.

At Vicksburg, Chattanooga & Petersburg dependence on fortifications only fixed Confederate armies in place where superior Union force could concentrate & capture / destroy them.

In contrast to the isolated fortresses of the Confederacy, the Nashville, Fort Transit, Fortress Rosecrans, Works at Triune & Fort Granger in Franklin were (+/-) 15 miles apart.

View attachment 579486

With Nashville at the apex of the (+/-) 40 miles apart on a side triangular fortress complex the sides were protected by the Stones & Harpeth Rivers that had very few crossing points. The base from Franklin to Murfreesboro / Readyville was connected by hard surfaced pikes & interior lines. At no point could a Confederate army have isolated any of the fortified positions.

On July 25, 1863 the Army of the Cumberland advanced from its 50 miles apart wide front against the Army of Tennessee. Bragg's engineers had built miles of works fronted by a 1/4 mile deep abatis of felled trees.

Feinting a direct attack on Tullahoma as was expected, Rosecrans turned Bragg's right flank. It was only a 500 year rain event ( re: TVA ) that prevented Bragg from being encircled. Rosecrans never had any attention to waste his men's lives assaulting the formidable works.

The Middle Ages were over. Steam power on river & rail connected by telegraph coupled with rifled artillery had turned forts into traps.

The reason I selected CS forts is because the US during the conflict was very capable at building and using forts for a variety of tasks. The third systems forts did prove vulnerable to bombardment; earthen works seem to offer better results. Developing effective counterbattery fire should have been a priority.
The US integration of all those elements you mention transport/telegraph and fortress design/construction was indeed impressive especially when you think in 1860 the army was only 16,000 strong scattered over a continental size country.

 

[Rhea Cole]

The reason I selected CS forts is because the US during the conflict was very capable at building and using forts for a variety of tasks. The third systems forts did prove vulnerable to bombardment; earthen works seem to offer better results. Developing effective counterbattery fire should have been a priority.
The US integration of all those elements you mention transport/telegraph and fortress design/construction was indeed impressive especially when you think in 1860 the army was only 16,000 strong scattered over a continental size country.

Effective artillery fire was a feature of fortified positions for 500 years.

Fortress Rosecrans near Murfreeboro TN / The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War.

Note the surveyed target lines on the center map. The position marked at the top center is from 1864. After the Battle of Franklin, Bragg ordered generals Nathan Bedford Forrest & Bate to isolate the garrison at Fortress Rosecrans near Murfreeboro. A battery of the Washington Artillery dropped trails in what is now the parking lot of a mall.

The first round fired by a 20 pound Parrott rifle from the fort scored a direct hit on a caisson. Under the rain of highly accurate fire, the battery had no option but to up trails & run for it. About 20 years ago, a bulldozer driver was alarmed to scrape up what was obviously an artillery round.

Due to rain soaked soil, about twenty of the impact fuzed Parrott bolts had not detonated. The first policeman who answered the 911 call was gobbstopped. " The things are everywhere ! " The E.O.D. team from Fort Campbell Army Base was called in. The live rounds were detonated in place.

The area around the fortress was a sea of tree stumps. At intervals poles with white tape flapping from the top marked survey points.

The gunners had printed sheets that contained azimuth & elevation solutions for the survey points. By the time Forrest & Bate arrived in 1864 these quaint 8" siege howitzers had been replaced by hard hitting rifles.

The piece in the foreground appears to be an 1841 model six pound smoothbore cannon. It is, in fact, a 14 pound rifle. 1/2 half of the existing inventory of six pounders were rebored & rifled. New Ames Model One bronze rifles were cast following that pattern.

 

[jackt62]

The preservation of the Confederacy's fighting forces should have been its paramount focus, in contrast to protecting and preserving fixed points or cities. The southern leadership never completely understood or could not properly communicate this principle across its wide territories and armies, which led to the fall of garrisons and/or personnel losses at Bowling Green, Fort Donelson and Vicksburg and was an utter failure in maintaining its hold over places such as Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Atlanta. The Confederacy's 1861 decision to fortify fixed positions along the key western river routes ended in complete failure and did nothing to stop the movement of federal armies across the southland.

 

[gary]

A good example of the effectiveness of Confederate forts is the defense of Charleston. When the Union attacked a second time (under Foster) on James Island, batteries on the other side of Charleston Bay (think north) shelled the Union infantry. Morris Island stood for a while and Battery Wagner served to distract Gillmore. The Confederates knew it was untenable b/c Swamp Angel was already shelling Charleston. However, Gillmore fixed on it and gave the Confederates time to strengthen other defenses. Ultimately Charleston held until Sherman was marching North. Charleston would not fall until Sherman approached, at which point the Confederates evacuated and Gillmore, having returned from the Bermuda Hundred, landed north of Fort Moultrie and approached from a fresh direction.

Port Hudson is another good example. It allowed a smaller force to hold off a larger army and only fell because the food supply was near exhaustion, percussion cap supply ran low and Vicksburg surrendered. Gardner didn't see any point to hanging on (and a threat of a third assault was imminent).

Fortifying an area does enhance one's ability to withstand an assault from a stronger force. However, if encircled and besieged, then it becomes a matter of starving out the defender before they can be succored by relief forces. Port Hudson and Vicksburg are two examples of isolation of the defending garrison and the garrison being starved out. This clearly didn't apply to Yorktown or Petersburg as the Confederates were not encircled and isolated.

 

[archieclement]

The reason I selected CS forts is because the US during the conflict was very capable at building and using forts for a variety of tasks. The third systems forts did prove vulnerable to bombardment; earthen works seem to offer better results. Developing effective counterbattery fire should have been a priority.
The US integration of all those elements you mention transport/telegraph and fortress design/construction was indeed impressive especially when you think in 1860 the army was only 16,000 strong scattered over a continental size country.

Forts fill a variety of roles, primarily as a force multiplier allowing point defense against larger force, or being able to be garrisoned by 2nd rate troops allowing first rate to be mobile.

Also certainly serve a morale purpose providing visable effort of defence to populace.

I disagree with Jack somewhat, certainly they couldn't defend everything, but at the same time when allready at a decided disadvantage in resources, simply giving them away puts them in increasingly hopeless position. Certainly most the Confederacys more heavily fortified positions represented positions or resources they could ill afford to lose, hence requiring actual defense.

Vicksburg and Atlanta are two rather classic examples, Vicksburgs heavy guns and river denial, or Atlantas factories, warehouses, and rail center rather represented irreplaceable resources requiring fighting in front or at them..............if you abandoned them for maneuver to defeat Grant or Sherman 2 weeks later....your still essentially defeated as the resources and value of the points would been certainly mostly destroyed.......if not during the Confederate abandonment, certainly Union would have if later forced to abandon.

The two are rather equal......saving an army for nothing left to defend or reclaim is also rather pointless. The point of the army was to have defended the infrastructure necessary to support an army and defense......

In modern warfare, the factory, warehouse, transportation infrastuctures require defense. For the Confederacy at a decided disadvantage to begin with in those, could add ports for the importation of material.

 

[jackt62]

A good example of the effectiveness of Confederate forts is the defense of Charleston.

There were a few isolated examples of Confederate fixed positions holding out or at least delaying federal movements. Ironically, Sumter in Charleston Harbor actually proved the utility of the American Third System of Coastal Fortifications by withstanding a sustained federal naval assault in 1863. But that was an exception; Pulaski, another third system fort fell in short order. In any case, the old United States coastal fortifications did almost nothing to safeguard the defense of the Confederacy. The coastal forts were designed against a foreign naval enemy; the Confederacy's reliance on fixed points to defend its vast interior swiftly failed in large part because federal forces were able to outflank or bypass those positions. Vicksburg and Port Hudson may have been able to delay the inevitable but they too, proved that relying on fixed strong points was a losing strategy.

 

[13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf]

The preservation of the Confederacy's fighting forces should have been its paramount focus, in contrast to protecting and preserving fixed points or cities. The southern leadership never completely understood or could not properly communicate this principle across its wide territories and armies, which led to the fall of garrisons and/or personnel losses at Bowling Green, Fort Donelson and Vicksburg and was an utter failure in maintaining its hold over places such as Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Atlanta. The Confederacy's 1861 decision to fortify fixed positions along the key western river routes ended in complete failure and did nothing to stop the movement of federal armies across the southland.

You are right, @jackt62. Mobile forces survive and fight again and again. Stationary, fortified forces are in essence trapped.

 

[bdtex]

The old forts were caught right in the middle of rapid advances in weapons technology and troop and supplies transportation.

 

[Rhea Cole]

The old forts were caught right in the middle of rapid advances in weapons technology and troop and supplies transportation.

bdtex makes a telling point. When the Parrott rifles opened fire on Fort Pulaski every masonry fort on the planet became instantly obsolete. The same thing happened when stone cannon balls brought down the walls of Constantinople & the trebuchet breached the walls of unassailable Welch castles.

As I write this the Ukrainian combined arms tactic of ground robots, visual attack drones & deep interdiction cruise missiles is rewriting the rule book again. Russian soldiers are surrendering to machines.

It was ever thus.

 

[Rhea Cole]

A good example of the effectiveness of Confederate forts is the defense of Charleston. When the Union attacked a second time (under Foster) on James Island, batteries on the other side of Charleston Bay (think north) shelled the Union infantry. Morris Island stood for a while and Battery Wagner served to distract Gillmore. The Confederates knew it was untenable b/c Swamp Angel was already shelling Charleston. However, Gillmore fixed on it and gave the Confederates time to strengthen other defenses. Ultimately Charleston held until Sherman was marching North. Charleston would not fall until Sherman approached, at which point the Confederates evacuated and Gillmore, having returned from the Bermuda Hundred, landed north of Fort Moultrie and approached from a fresh direction.

Port Hudson is another good example. It allowed a smaller force to hold off a larger army and only fell because the food supply was near exhaustion, percussion cap supply ran low and Vicksburg surrendered. Gardner didn't see any point to hanging on (and a threat of a third assault was imminent).

Fortifying an area does enhance one's ability to withstand an assault from a stronger force. However, if encircled and besieged, then it becomes a matter of starving out the defender before they can be succored by relief forces. Port Hudson and Vicksburg are two examples of isolation of the defending garrison and the garrison being starved out. This clearly didn't apply to Yorktown or Petersburg as the Confederates were not encircled and isolated.

Charleston was prime example of a lack of strategic planning. The city had burned almost completely out previous to the war. A yellow fever epidemic emptied out what was left of the population. The main driver of Charleston's economy was slave trading. Cut off from Virginia's extras, the long row of slave jails along the waterfront, each with its own whipping post out front, stood empty. As the blockade tightened, even the transshipment of goods from the interior disappeared.

The messages between General Hardee in command & Davis paint a grim picture. The prime objective was taking off such equipment & supplies as could be preserved. They couldn't know it, but Sherman had no intention of getting bogged down in a siege. Wisely he passed well to the interior, cutting off all communication & supply to the garrison. Hardee was ordered to evacuate while he could & save the garrison. Charleston fell to a force that never came within sight of the ruins.

Rationally, neither side should have made Charleston such a priority. It was more a matter of pride than any of any strategic value.

A curious indication of where Charleston stood on the Confederate order of importance was what happened to condemned black powder returned to the Augusta arsenal. Lee's rejects were repackaged as ammunition for Charleston's big guns. Needless to say, this was not greatly appreciated. The correspondence between Augusta & Charleston, especially when rejected rejects were returned, became quite heated… in the stilted official language all of us have had to suffer with.

 

[atlantis]

In the case of masonry forts being reduced to rubble you rebuild as earthen works. Forts provided an anchor to build defensive lines, given the lack of horses don't see how the confederates could win using an offensive strategy. The great Rebellion was not going to be a replay of the Mexican war; weapons development made sure of that.

 

[archieclement]

In the case of masonry forts being reduced to rubble you rebuild as earthen works. Forts provided an anchor to build defensive lines, given the lack of horses don't see how the confederates could win using an offensive strategy. The great Rebellion was not going to be a replay of the Mexican war; weapons development made sure of that.

Indeed, as the Confederacy wasn't in a vacuum. What was union doing at any city of any size/importance as well? Building forts and earthworks as well.

Again forts offer resurance to populace of defense. As well sometimes puts troops to use to avoid idleness. But both sides had slaves to use as well, as well USCT and contrabands for union.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Fortress Rosecrans near Murfreesboro TN was the largest earthen fortress in the world in 1862. The Military Atlas of the Civil War.

Rosecrans had saw mills, water & steam powered gristmills. Rations for 60,000 men for two weeks were stacked in enormous piles adjacent to the rail road spur.

Fortress Rosecrans was connected via couriers, telegraph & visual signals to the camps surrounding Murfreesboro.

The point being that the isolated works such as Fort Donelson that were inherently weak. Not only was Fortress Rosecrans astride the N & CRR, Stones River runs through it.

It became a major logistics hub. In anticipation of the Tullahoma Campaign, supplies were piled high along both sides of streets in Murfreesboro. Essential labor was supplied by self liberated people from the surrounding countryside.

Trainloads of equine remounts came southward & broken down animals headed northward were handled at the depot.

There was nothing like this on the other side. Bragg's Tullahoma bastion was without a RR connection to the Army of Tennessee's depot in Northern Alabama.

The N & C RR runs through Tullahoma, but supplies did not. The Atlanta Depot was exclusively dedicated to serving the Army of Northern Virginia.

 

[archieclement]

As well there's different types of forts in the thread....

Masonry forts have been mentioned, they are really inherited US coastal forts. Not sure how fair to call Confederate as they were not really building them......

Then earthen forts, redans, lunettes, interconnected trenches ect.......I would not say they were necessarily obsolete but actually evolving into more extensive trenches....and defensive type works actually increasing, culminating into WW1 trench networks. Abatis continued to evolve into dragons teeth and various anti tank trenches and obstacles.

Defensive works certainly continued with interconnected forts and pillboxes and existed with varying degrees of sucess well up and through WW2. Maginot line, west wall, siegfried line, Sevastopol and other fortress cities, ect. Some the German Festung cities held to end of the war.

Would think fair to say it's bit premature to call fortifications and defensive works obsolete in 1860's. As remained a prominent feature of warfare for quite some time yet, and would continue to claim large numbers of lives.

 

[gary]

Charleston was prime example of a lack of strategic planning.

Rationally, neither side should have made Charleston such a priority. It was more a matter of pride than any of any strategic value.

Absolutely. After blockading it, taking Charleston became a matter of pride for the Union and holding it a matter of pride for the Confederacy. Grant saw it was meaningless to the overall strategic picture of defeating the Confederacy and ordered Gillmore's men to Virginia. Butler botched that manuever.