anchoring the flank

ANCHOR THE FLANKS The strength of a Civil War battle line is its front. The linear formation focuses all of the energies of a regiment to its front where the musket can send volumes of lead onto an enemy force. The weak area is its flank where the formation does not make it is easy to bring firepower to bear. Where as a company of fifty privates can fire their full compliment of muskets in front, if attacked on the flank, the best they could do is fire two muskets unless the formation moves, a slow and awkward movement especially if under fire. Knowing the weakness of a linear formation is on its flanks, generals on the defensive worked to protect them while attacking generals worked to take advantage them. On November 30, 1864 General James Schofield and his army of 27,000 union men peered over well developed entrenchments, watching John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee form for a frontal assault on their positions. Schofield had secured his flanks around Franklin Tennessee by planting them on the banks of the Harpeth River thus denying Hood the ability to attack his flanks. Eager for a victory Hood decided on a frontal assault, a decision history well knows the result- over 6,000 confederate casualties. For the defending general anchoring a flank could be done in a number of ways. Schofield had the Harpeth River to anchor to, Robert E. Lee at Antietam had the Potomac River and the Antietam Creek to protect his flanks, and General Buckner had the Tennessee River to protect his flanks at Fort Donelson. Anything that would slow and a flank attack would give time for an army to redeploy itself: bodies of water, hills, swamps, or sometimes forests to protect themselves from flank attack. If a natural barrier was not available a defending general would refuse his flank, that is to have troops form at a right angle to his line thus providing protection. Chancellorsville, 3:00pm May 2nd 1863 three divisions of Stonewall Jackson’s corps of 30,000 men face east waiting for the sound of two signal guns. Meanwhile union soldiers of O.O. Howard’s Eleventh Corps face south, the men taking off their shoes, frying salt pork and boiling coffee while two fellow regiments refuse their Western flank. The sound of the two confederate cannons fired in quick secession began a rush and a shout of an attack that all but destroys two federal corps, smashing most of General Hooker’s line. If not for darkness the result of Hooker not protecting his flank could have been catastrophic for the union. The next day Hooker did redeploy his army with it flanks securely anchored on the Rappahannock River forcing Lee into a series of costly frontal assaults.