Ep6 – Classic books: Paddy Griffith’s Battle Tactics of the American Civil War

Gary interviews Spencer on one of Spencer’s favourite military history books, Paddy Griffith’s Battle Tactics of the American Civil War.  Published in the 1980s, this volume reappraises the events, the weapons used, the men of the novice armies, their leaders and the strategies employed in the Civil War - which was fought with a new generation of weapons and trench systems similar to those of World War I. Spencer considers how the author argues that the conditions of combat were little changed from those of earlier times and far from being the birthplace of modern battlefield tactics, the Civil War was in reality the last Napoleonic-style war. He also talks about how the book influenced him as a military historian and his thoughts on where it has flaws.