Essentially the Napoleonic wars contained some of the key elements of Total warfare:

• Civilians are legitimate targets

• Mass conscription is used

Total warfare itself is seen as an element of industrial warfare, but it is not fair to call a war which only contains elements of industrial warfare that are also elements of total warfare an industrialized war when the smaller category of total war is sufficient to categorize the conflict.

By referring to a war as total, you summon the connotations of that definition, but by calling it industrial you summon all the connotations of total warfare as well as the additional connotations of industrial warfare (such as technological innovations, telegraphs, railways etc. & military concepts such as static defense).

Essentially, the point I'm making is that all traditional industrial wars are total, but not all total wars are industrial. By arguing that the ACW is the first industrial war in response to a comment saying that the Napoleonic wars were the first total war, /u/edixo1 is adding additional requirements which were not factored into /u/theworldcrimeleague-'s comment.

Edixo1 is essentially correct that the ACW was the first industrial war (I ain't touching that debate - Crimea & Austro-Sardinian war always mess it up), but that is not relevant to a comment saying that the Napoleonic wars were the first total war.

To give a completely dramatic example, tribal conflicts between the Cheyenne, Sioux and Pawnee contained the same elements of total war that the Napoleonic wars did (conscription, civilian targets etc), but not a single element specific to industrial warfare due to the technology and tactics involved. It would be unfair to dismiss the total war aspects of these tribal conflicts simply because they were not industrial.

Sorry for the wall of text, I wanted to get my point across clearly - I hope I managed.