ACW 'national' characteristics

[Cubs]

I'd be interested to know where you got that from (honestly), because everything I've read about the army of Northern Virginia states its soldiers were mostly from rural backgrounds whilst its Union opponents were more urbanised. As I said, sure there would be exceptions, but we're dealing in generalisations.

[commissarmoody]

Mostly from living in the areas that the fighting took place, and looking at the locations that units where recruited. A lot has been made of the good'ol boy and genteel southern life style was post war fiction created to try to bridge the gap of the war.
I find that kind of info mostly in older written material the majority of the northern population was still very much a rural population. They just mustard in the cities after being recruited

[Cubs]

Hmmm ... food for thought, ta.

[commissarmoody]

I think I might have come across a little rude there. I apologize if I came across as a known it all, because I am far from an expert. I have just noticed a shift in writing styles and information being displayed.

[Cubs]

In fairness I think both sides had largely rural recruits and possibly too much is made of the differences between the common man and his different abilities. But then I think we're kind of looking for generalisations and cliches when we talk about these things, for the purposes of a game.

[shandy]

This is a great thread and I wouldn't mind if it could get a sticky like the WotR thread in the Medieval forum!

Regarding Southeners and their relation to hunting and weapons, I'm just reading Paddy Griffith's Rally Once Again and he argues that this image may due to political motives: opponents of slavery wanted to depict the slave-owners as violent people and so built up the image of gun-toting Southeners.

He also makes the interesting argument that the experience of a huntsman loading carefully and stalking an inoffensive prey has almost nothing to do with what happens in battle, when the soldier has to load rapidly and fire at an enemy shooting back.

[Arthur]

He also makes the interesting argument that the experience of a huntsman loading carefully and stalking an inoffensive prey has almost nothing to do with what happens in battle, when the soldier has to load rapidly and fire at an enemy shooting back.

Very true : marksmanship may have been important for sharpshooters and skirmishers, but those were only a minority of the troops involved in any given battle. The vast majority of the rank and file on both sides was trained to fire volleys in the general direction of the enemy : what mattered was the ability to reload as quickly as possible, not hitting the bullseye from a distance. The stress of combat often meant that the men didn't have the luxury of aiming accurately and they sometimes did not even notice their weapons weren't working properly (there's a well-known anecdote about hundreds of muskets being found on the Gettysburg battlefield with two to five powder charges and bullets inside their barrels : some soldiers were so stressed that they forgot to fit percussion caps on their weapons and reloaded their muskets after each volley without even noticing they hadn't actually fired them)   

I'm afraid the commonly held view of the Confederate army as a band of hardy and resourceful country boys facing a union host of city slickers who had never slept in the open in their entire lives holds as much water as the myth of the AWI being won by crack rifle-armed American minutemen who decimated row after row of robotic British redcoats from a distance.

For a solidly documented study of the Union army, Bell Irvin Wiley's The Life of Billy Yank (LSU Press, 1952 and 1971) is still recommended reading. It contains an excellent chapter entitled 'The men who wore the blue' : using regimental muster rolls as his source, Wiley concludes that farmers accounted for roughly 50% of all Union troops, the remaining half of the army coming from all walks of life and all strata of society.

Also bear in mind that many Union soldiers were foreign-born : the Germans were probably the most numerous and contributed around 200,000 fighting men to the Union army, but the Irish and the Scandinavians also provided large numbers of recruits. Many of these immigrants were relatively recent arrivals, having been in the US for less than ten or twelve years when the war broke out, and like many native-born Americans, they would have come from a wide variety of backgrounds. 

[Gangleri]

I'll try to cope with that.
...
Since the original poster was asking for opinions, I gave mine, taken from my reading of the subject. I'm pretty sure they still stand.
 

If my phrasing offended you, I'm sorry.  I was saying only that I don't think your assessment is correct. 

I'd be interested to know where you got that from (honestly), because everything I've read about the army of Northern Virginia states its soldiers were mostly from rural backgrounds whilst its Union opponents were more urbanised. As I said, sure there would be exceptions, but we're dealing in generalisations.

According to research by the US Census Bureau, in 1860 only 20% of Americans lived in cities. Let us assume that three of every four city-dwellers (or 4.5 million people) were Northerners.  That leaves 16 or 17 million Northerners (approximately 80%) living in rural areas. These figures seem reasonable, bearing in mind that (according to the US Army Center for Military History) 65% of American farm acreage was in the North.  And as Arthur pointed out, the urban population had a high concentration of immigrants (German, Irish, Scandinavian, and English), at least some of whom had emigrated from rural areas in their home countries.  Among German immigrants there was a strong element of "marksmanship culture," and urban membership in paramilitary shooting and hunting societies was high.  But, as has been mentioned, this kind of experience was not especially important or useful in most engagements. 

There is one 'national' or 'cultural' characteristic that made a marked difference at the beginning of the war, namely the extensive involvement of the Southern population in the militia system (which was galvanized by John Brown's Raid).   This exposure to military discipline prior to the war's beginning seems to have had an impact on the outcome of First Bull Run, after which several Federal officers attributed the defeat to the Confederates' superior fire discipline. But any deficiencies in training were made good by McClellan later in the year.

But then I think we're kind of looking for generalisations and cliches when we talk about these things, for the purposes of a game.

This is of course the most important point: how to have an enjoyable game 

[sepoy1857]

I'd be interested to know where you got that from (honestly), because everything I've read about the army of Northern Virginia states its soldiers were mostly from rural backgrounds whilst its Union opponents were more urbanised. As I said, sure there would be exceptions, but we're dealing in generalisations.

Outside of the New England States most of the north was extremely rural (even most of New York State!). the 13th PA Bucktails were recruited almost exclusively from Central and western PA hunters and outdoorsmen! The Army of the Potomac had troops from every state except MO, IA, and KY. So many western rural states were well represented. The western armies were even more rural!