With reference to the Civil War, you are perfectly right, the weapon technology of the time dictated tactics and tactics dictated strategy. And so we have the tactics of men lining up to mass firepower causing huge casualties. We have those tactics dictating strategy which ultimately led, for example, to Lee's invasion of the North or Sherman's devastation by fire on his march to the sea.
In turn, these strategies of total warfare devastated the South for generations and led to a disparity in economic progress, Jim Crow, segregation, and civil rights struggles.
The professors' disdain for tactics, for the study of the blood and mud of war is to lose a very valuable perspective and to teach a distorted history.
Yeah. Look at what total war did for Germany and Japan? Economic basket-cases and social wastelands, the both of them.
Maybe the South brought its problems down on itself and should stop blaming others?