The American Civil War was fought with a new generation of weapons and trench systems similiar to those of World War II. This work reappraises the events, the weapons used, the men of the novice armies, their leaders and the strategies employed in the Civil War. It 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.