When Scott Hippensteel agreed to give a presentation on his book Rocks and Rifles: The Influence of Geology on Combat and Tactics during the American Civil War as part of UNC Charlotte’s Personally Speaking Series, he had no idea that the war in Ukraine would coincide with his talk. Scott’s presentation will focus on the role that geology played during the Civil War, but the current situation in Ukraine adds another dimension to his presentation. After all, with Russian tanks sinking in mud, it is clear that geology is also playing a role in the war in Ukraine.
Scott’s presentation will take place on Tuesday, March 29 at 7 p.m. at The Dubois Center at UNC Charlotte Center City. The event is open to the public at no charge, but attendees are asked to register to attend the event. For more information about Scott’s presentation, please click on the following link: https://clas.charlotte.edu/rocks-and-rifles-influence-geology-combat-and-tactics-during-american-civil-war
Rocks and Rifles is about the Civil War, but Scott is not a history professor. He is an associate professor in UNC Charlotte’s Department of Geography and Earth Sciences. He earned his PhD in geology from the University of Delaware. I wondered how a geologist took such an interest in the Civil War, so I contacted him and asked him how he came to write Rocks and Rifles. Here is what he sent to me:
I grew up in central Pennsylvania, not too far from the most famous battleground from the Civil War, Gettysburg. As a younger man, I spent countless hours walking the boulder-strewn battlefield, studying the tactics and strategies used by the soldiers and considering how the huge rocks influenced the fighting. These experiences fostered a love of history—both American and natural—and eventually, after taking as many undergraduate classes in history and science as I could, I decided to pursue graduate degrees in geology.
When I joined UNC Charlotte in 2000, I was fortunate enough to join a research project that has been ongoing for the last twenty years and remains the most fascinating investigation I’ve ever been a (small) part of: the geoarchaeology of the Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley. On this project, I used my training as a sedimentologist and micropaleontologist to help determine how the submarine filled with clay and sand and why the bodies of the crew were so incredibly well preserved. I had found a direct link between geology and Civil War history.
Jump ahead to 2017 when I compelled my poor wife and daughter to visit yet another Civil War battlefield while on a “family” vacation. This time we ended up at Stones River, where the rock outcrops formed natural trenches that proved so ideal a defensive position for federal soldiers during the fierce fighting in the winter of 1862. These outcrops were dubbed the “slaughter pen” by the soldiers because of the results of the intense and sustained fight, and they reminded me of another “slaughter pen”, located between Little Round Top and Devil’s Den at Gettysburg. Here, as well, the geology had a great impact on the combat. I soon discovered many other ways that rocks influenced the fighting: soldiers piled cobbles and boulders for cover, soldiers threw rocks when ammunition ran low, soldiers even used rocks to explode the percussion caps on their otherwise defective and useless rifles. It occurred to me that even though there were dozens of books on the terrain (and geology) of the Gettysburg battlefield and hundreds on the actual battle, there were no books relating the two subjects; I decided to write one.
Rocks and Rifles: The Influence of Geology on Combat and Tactics during the American Civil War was the result. Each chapter of the book starts with a discussion of the strategic situation prior to a particular campaign and then explores the geology of the battleground, followed by the history of the battle. The final portion of each chapter is the most important—an analysis of how the rocks influenced the strategy, tactics, and combat. I targeted the book for people with an interest in geology or history or both. I had so much fun creating this book that I decided to write two more. The second of these will be published by the University of Georgia Press next year: Sand, Science, and the Civil War: Sedimentary Geology and Combat. This book concentrates on the fighting along the shorelines and Mississippi River.
During my Personally Speaking presentation, I plan on discussing my most recently published (and fun!) book: Myths of the Civil War: The Fact, Fiction, and Science behind the Civil War’s Most-Told Stories. Each chapter of this book tackles one “myth” or trope from the Civil War that has been repeated over and over in our history books. One chapter is called “The Myth of the Civil War Sniper,” in which I use physics to demonstrate that the history books are wrong – sharpshooters simply never killed individually selected officers from more than a half-mile away. There were no fields during the Civil War where, after the fighting ceased, “bodies covered the ground so densely that a person could walk from one side of the field to the other without ever touching the ground.” It never happened. Bullets never fell with the intensity of hail. Rifle muskets did not “revolutionize” the way battles were fought. And so on. This book has been met with outstanding reviews, especially from Civil War historians, so it delights me, as a natural scientist, to have contributed to a field outside my own.
Through his work as a scientist with an interest in military history, Scott adds to our understanding of how geology factors into the fighting of wars. He also shows that the much-ballyhooed division between the sciences and the humanities is counterproductive. There are lots of ways in which the science disciplines and the humanities speak to each other. The interdisciplinary nature of Rifles and Rocks is what makes the book so insightful. By writing books that combine science and history, Scott is making innovative and original contributions to Storied Charlotte’s library of scholarly works.