Book Review: Sand, Science, and the Civil War: Sedimentary Geology and Combat

Sand, Science, and the Civil War: Sedimentary Geology and Combat. By Scott Hippensteel. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2023. Softcover, 295 pp. $44.95.

Reviewed by Joshua Lindamood

Throughout history, geological characteristics and certain topographical features have dictated where troops can and cannot move on a battlefield and how they chose to fight. The American Civil War was certainly no exception. Environmental factors like droughts, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes, many occurring ages ago, helped determine landscape formations long before the combatants turned fields, forests, and shorelines into combat zones.

Of course, armies had to adjust to their location and its available resources in real-time. Often forced to alter their environments for self-preservation, by perhaps piling up rocks or by digging in and building earthworks, sometimes soldiers did so just moments before or even during an engagement. Coastal defense locations were often the opposite. Beach fortifications usually allowed soldiers months or sometimes even years to improve and strengthen their posts without the threat of being under fire. In Sand, Science, and the Civil War: Sedimentary Geology and Combat, author Scott Hippensteel explores how the materials found below the earth’s surface often had a significant impact on the combatants and the tactical and strategic decisions that unfolded above ground.

To help form his arguments, Hippensteel provides numerous comparisons from both the Eastern and Western theaters, principally focusing on valley basin and coastal plain locations. He examines such well-known battlefields as Gettysburg, Antietam, Petersburg, Vicksburg, Stones River, and Chickamauga, and in doing so he skillfully transitions from the limestone and clay beneath these battlefields’ surfaces and commonly found around the river fall lines to the abundant sand and silt located along ocean coastal defenses like Fort Pulaski, Battery Wagner, and Fort Fisher.

Coastal sand environments created both opportunities and challenges for the belligerents. For defenders, sand provided a fortification building material that proved effective in absorbing lead and steel, but working with sand also tested manpower and supply resources. Attacking forces found it difficult to maneuver quickly across sandy surfaces, but digging approaches to besiege coastal positions was easier with sand than with earth.

To discuss the effect that Union gunners had in bombarding Fort Pulaski, and how strategy evolved as the war raged on, Hippensteel references Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore, a trained engineer who graduated first in his class at West Point in 1849. Hippensteel explains that Fort Pulaski was virtually doomed from start due to the nature of its design and that Gillmore learned a valuable lesson while capturing it. Gillmore came to understand that rifled artillery could wreak havoc on masonry fortifications. Particularly effective were massed land-based rifled artillery batteries protected by sand. Rifled artillery proved less damaging to sand-based fortifications like Battery Wagner and those emplacements that piled up sand against their masonry walls, like Fort Moultrie. Thus, Hippensteel considers Battery Wagner’s virtual immunity to a direct infantry assault. Constructed almost entirely of sand, when properly manned this position eventually fell only after the occupying force evacuated following a 60-day naval siege and land bombardment.

Hippensteel also describes the potential effect that water could have on the landscape, and in turn, how it might dictate strategy, tactics, and logistics. He shows how different intensities of rain could drastically impact both attackers and defenders in military situations. On the one hand, light rains could soften the ground just enough to make the mundane work of moving earth with pick and shovel easier on the soldiers. But on the other hand, too much rain might not only dampen the spirits of the troops, it may also create an operational nightmare. Along the same lines, the absence of rain could produce choking clouds of dust and possibly give away troop position; however, violent thunderstorms could turn what was once dust almost instantly into several inches of mud, causing severe mobility and communications issues.

Though a key ingredient in shaping earthworks and fortifications, water is also often their greatest threat. Hippensteel discusses the effects of erosion and provides examples that we can still see today. Visitors to coastal defenses like Battery Wagner and Morris Island can clearly see the damage that daily surf tides produce, actively weathering and eroding surface material. Battlefields that are further inland are not immune to erosion either. While the National Park Service and other battlefield stewards often work to restore historic viewsheds by removing timber, others are planting trees strategically to counter the effects of soil loss.

Battlefield preservation organizations often rightly tout the importance of being able to get out on the actual ground to understand the experiences of the soldiers who fought in the conflict’s engagements. Similarly, Civil War military historians commonly discuss the role that certain battlefield terrains played in various victories and defeats. However, few previous studies have offered such an in-depth look at the significant role that geology played in the conflict and why it is so important to think about. Sand, Science, and the Civil War: Sedimentary Geology and Combat offers many new considerations on these subjects. Readers will likely not look at battlefields, literally or figuratively, quite the same way again.

Joshua Lindamood works at Sailor’s Creek Battlefield Historical State Park, and previously held positions at the American Civil War Museum and Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. Joshua is a founding member of the Appomattox-Petersburg Preservation Society, an organization of passionate individuals dedicated to preserving Southside Virginia’s sacred landmarks and battlefields of the American Civil War and educating its local communities about the significant role this region played during the conflict.