Hippensteel, Scott. Myths of the Civil War: The Fact, Fiction, and Science behind the Civil War’s Most-Told Stories. Lanham: Stackpole Books, 2021.

Scott Hippensteel is an associate professor of earth sciences at the University of North Carolina. If one wonders why a scientist wrote a book on the Civil War, it should be noted that his specialties include geoarchaeology and micropaleontology. Hippensteel himself is a Civil War buff and has sought to apply his specific field to this historical era. Myths of the Civil War does not deal with social issues like slavery’s importance or strategic ones like who was really responsible for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, but primarily with how historians and others who present the Civil War have uncritically accepted soldiers’ metaphors as literal fact or the objectivity of early photojournalism. Injecting his short book with bits of humor, Hippensteel is able to scientifically challenge claims about the Civil War in an engaging and entertaining fashion.

The first myth he challenges is that of the Civil War sniper, that thanks to advances in weapon technology, crack shots were able to hit generals like Sedgwick at Spotsylvania and Reynolds at Gettysburg with pinpoint accuracy. Studying physics and the capabilities of firearms at the time, Hippensteel convincingly argues that Civil War sharpshooters were not the equivalent of snipers and would either target clusters of men or work in teams to fill a general area with bullets.

The next two chapters deal with the literal acceptance of soldiers’ metaphors. Unable to convey what they were witnessing and feeling to civilians, soldiers would describe the aftermath of battlefields as covered by a “carpet of corpses” and the volume of fire as “hail.” Historians have uncritically reported these literary descriptions as fact. Hippensteel shows that for locations such as the Gettysburg Wheatfield to be literally blanketed with bodies, thousands of men would have to die in just that spot, far exceeding actual deaths in the battle. He also argues that even with thousands of weapons involved, the volume of fire around the head of one soldier could not literally be thick as hail unless every enemy was targeting him.

He then moves on to two chapters concerning muskets. One is the explanation for the presence of multi-loaded, never-fired rifles. Historians have argued that men forgot to actually discharge their weapons under the mental pressure of battle and kept loading, or that pacifists intentionally went through the loading process without actually delivering any projectiles. Hippensteel finds these arguments ridiculous and comes up with the mundane answer that Civil War muskets simply had a propensity to malfunction in lengthy shootouts. He then moves on to the declared “rifle musket revolution.” He points out that rifled muskets did not provide that much of an extra edge in battle and also that in contrast to the smoothbore muskets before and the breechloaders afterwards, rifled muskets saw only about a decade of primacy in military arsenals. This shows they were not quite the revolutionary leap in technology that people claim.

This brings us to the last two chapters concerning Civil War imagery. Hippensteel seeks to explain that many photographs uncritically plastered across Civil War books were actually staged. Images of dead bodies in particular were sometimes enhanced by prop weapons or involved moved bodies for dramatic effect.  Sometimes photographic assistants or live soldiers would play dead to create grim tableaus of death. The final chapter covers paintings. Hippensteel notes that many favored images, such as Kurz & Allison’s widespread lithographs, unrealistically show the majority of soldiers firing. More realistic art shows at least half of the men in the process of loading, as soldiers tended to fire at will and it took up to half a minute to load and fire a musket. Rounding out the book are the appendices which briefly cover the knockdown power of rifles, revolvers, and the how reenactments and movies fail to accurately convey Civil War combat.

This is a nice brisk read that quickly challenges (I find convincingly in most cases) common conceptions about how Civil War battles looked during and after. You can buy the book here.

Rating: Highly Recommend

 

Rating System

Must-Read: Definite read for history in general

Highly Recommend: Definite read within a certain subject

Recommend: Good for further information or into on a certain topic

Adequate: Useful if looking for further information certain topic

Pass: Awful, only useful for examining bad or ideologically-tainted history