by Eric Ruark

Created on: March 04, 2009

To the generations that have grown up on M.A.S.H. reruns or more recently, the war stories from the Iraqi war direct from CNN, MSNBC or the FOX news channels, the disregard for human life in Stephen Crane's THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE must seem incongruous. 21st Century man considers life sacred; to be preserved at all costs even in times of war. To understand the paradox of the disregard for human life presented in Stephen Crane's THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, the modern reader must adopt the mind set of someone reading the book when it first appeared in 1893.

The 1893 Reader:

To those living in 1893, "modern" warfare was still couched in Napoleonic terms. Trench warfare, quite literally invented by Confederate Lieutenant General James Longstreet at the battle of Fredericksburg, had not reached the apogee it would in the First World War (1914-1918). Even the Spanish-American War was still five years in the future. What the readers of 1893 did know was that the American Civil War produced casualties in unheard of numbers: Shiloh, 12,000; Antietam/Sharpsburg, 24,000 and Gettysburg, 54,000 dead and wounded. The culprit was a miss-match of technologies pitting a "modern" weapon against tactics that were developed for another time and place.

American Civil War battles were fought with Napoleonic tactics which called for massed men to line up, shoot at each other, and then march on each others lines. This tactic was developed for use with a smooth-bore musket, such as the famous "Brown Bess" of revolutionary war fame. Smooth-bore muskets had neither range nor accuracy. When a soldier fired a smooth-bore musket, the round ball left the barrel without directional spin. In 20th Century terms, think of a big league pitcher throwing a knuckle ball. Without spin on the ball, the ball moves erratically. It does not travel in a straight line. That was why masses of men were lined up shoulder to shoulder to fire. Generals wanted to throw a wall of lead at the opposing forces, hoping to wound as many men as possible.

Wounded men on a battlefield are a liability. Their screams and cries distract and disorient the others. And, on the average, it took two men to carry one wounded man off a battlefield. Therefore, an opposing force would lose three men from the fight for every one man wounded. For Napoleon and the generals of the American Civil War, battles were a numbers game which made the disregard for human life problematic.

What changed in 1861 was the arrival of the rifled musket

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>