Is there any scenario where a single, decisive battle could have been fought? I know that's a massive what-if, but I'm curious as to peoples' thoughts. If McDowell had won at First Bull Run (or someone else was in command and won or it was delayed and was more decisive) could that have been the end of the war? Would the fall of Richmond in July 1861 have led to the collapse of the Confederacy?
On a similar line of thought, part of the reason we don't see decisive battles could in fact be the result of cavalry. I leave it to those with more experience in this field of study to debate the merits, but rather than lack of decisive use of naval resources, it could be lack of a decisive cavalry arm that drew the war out. Even during World War I, European doctrine was to achieve a breakthrough and then send in the cavalry to break up the enemy and harass the retreat. Though cavalry was certainly used in pursuit functions during the Civil War, it was not in the same manner as we see in Europe (I think).
I think it's too simplified to argue that rifles rendered cavalry ineffective on the battlefield. It's not like rate of fire dramatically increased and with all the smoke the rifles weren't particularly more deadly than the muskets that came before. Are there instances of Civil War battles in which commanders desired or attempted to use cavalry to exploit a break in the enemy line? I beg ignorance on the topic.
The article I posted earlier in the thread suggests that decisive combat simply was not possible at the time of the Civil War or would have required pretty substantial doctrinal changes. Here's the link again:
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html
Emphasis is from the original article.
"In terms of grand tactics, Napoleon would typically threaten the enemy's flank, forcing him to commit his reserve. He always kept a large reserve available, a vitally important part of his system, to either exploit success or stave off defeat. Most often, with the enemy reserve committed, Napoleon would send his own reserve into the weak point in the enemy line and secure a decisive victory.
Co-operation among all three combat arms was key to Napoleon's system, and the reserve decided the battle. Does this sound like Civil War tactics to you? No, far from it! Civil War armies kept few reserves, and Civil War combat featured little in the way of combined arms cooperation. Unlike the Napoleonic Wars, and more like the 18th century, reserves were a rarity in the Civil War, and a commander had few options once a battle 'developed' to maturity. Civil War tactics were NOT Napoleonic, at least not in the sense of Napoleon I."
"Could Civil War battles have been decisive? Maybe. Skirmishers weren't consistently well used. In the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, skirmishers could all but decide a battle, but we don't see that in the Civil War. The Confederate army improved in this respect through the war, forming elite sharpshooter battalions in each brigade, but the Union army allowed its light infantry to decline over time. Why couldn't the Union army have formed units similar to the Confederate brigades' sharpshooter battalions and one-upped them by giving their skirmishers more repeating rifles? Properly organized Union skirmishers with repeaters firing rapidly from a prone position might have easily dominated Southern light infantrymen - and possibly even repulse full scale attacks. Could the cavalry have advanced with and supported infantry like in Napoleon's time? If you accept the argument that rifled muskets were little better than smoothbores, then maybe they could. Although admittedly an occurrence of the smoothbore era, Jeb Stuart successfully attacked Union infantry at 1st Manassas. Later examples were not as successful. At Gaines Mill and at Cedar Mountain, Union cavalry unsuccessfully attacked infantry, but these failures should come as no surprise since these were desperate attacks by small units against unbroken advancing infantry.
Perhaps fences and broken terrain with numerous woodlots made cavalry attacks on infantry impractical. At Chancellorsville, for example, a single Union cavalry regiment attacked down a narrow road, unable to change direction. Failure was the predictable result. Lack of training and experience in the cavalry arm may also have made it impractical. In the Confederate service, the men owned their horses, making them less willing to risk them. Regardless of who paid for them, horses were expensive, and it was difficult to find forage for them in a country more sparsely populated than Europe. European cavalry was the product of years of training, a horse alone requiring three years to train. Further, Union cavalry were armed with repeating rifles, and in many cases served as mounted infantry, which meant that they largely abandoned the full potential of shock attack, their traditional battlefield role. Late in the war, the Union cavalry did occasionally mount large scale shock attacks against infantry and conducted after-battle pursuit only late in the war - at Third Winchester, Cedar Creek, and Sailos Creek to great effect, for example. We may never know what could have been.
The Union cause was handicapped by Winfield's Scott's attitudes toward cavalry at the beginning of the war. Believing that cavalry was obsolete because of advances in weapons technology, Scott raised few cavalry regiments at the beginning of the war - a war that would soon be over, so he thought. Only with the rise of McClellan were significant numbers of cavalry regiments raised. Even then, it took time to train them, and many were used to protect lines of supply or were dispersed throughout the army. It was only late in the war that the Union army had large bodies of cavalry available. Even then, it wasn't always properly used. Having a good body of cavalry available for the Overland Campaign, Grant sent it on a raid to Richmond, losing not only any usefulness on the battlefield but also its usefulness with screening and reconnaissance."
Perhaps I'm completely off-base with this argument, but I think it merits consideration.