Chapter 7

In This Chapter

Arming the troops

Understanding the rifled musket’s influence

Breaking out the big guns

T echnology was on the fast track in the 1860s. New and more efficient (deadlier, more accurate) weapons came into use. New weapons meant training and practice. While Americans were quite familiar with firearms, they were not familiar with the tactical employment of individual weapons in battle. Nor were they familiar with purely military weapons like artillery. New recruits had to be trained to maintain and properly employ these weapons in battle. Cavalrymen had to learn how to fight both mounted and dismounted with three different weapons (pistol, saber, and carbine). Firepower, unless effectively employed on the battlefield, is useless.

The Weapons You Need to Fight

The North and the South had to equip tens of thousands of men pouring into camps, eager for battle. To the chagrin of the volunteers of both sides, these new soldiers had to learn far more than just picking up a gun and shooting at somebody. Part of the basic skill training of the Civil War soldier involved the employment of massed firepower in the form of a regiment standing shoulder to shoulder delivering aimed fire in a single volley at the enemy. Everyone loaded his weapon at the same time, everyone shouldered and aimed his rifle at the same time, and everyone fired his weapon at the same time. Given the types of weapons available at this time, loading and firing took a great deal of time. Likewise, new artillerymen had to learn how to put the cannons into firing position, what kind of shell to use, and learn the intricacies of loading and firing without killing themselves (something that happened with unfortunate regularity). Cavalrymen had to be able to use their limited firepower effectively enough to delay or deter an enemy force from gaining an advantage over friendly forces.

Struggling with the smoothbore

Part of the problem with arming the soldiers was the lack of modern weapons. The Confederacy had only about 25,000 modern weapons available. The vast majority of weapons on hand were antiquated flintlock smoothbore muskets, castoffs from Federal stocks delivered to militia units before the war. These types of weapons had been in existence since the early eighteenth century. A smoothbore musket fired a round lead ball from a barrel (the long metal tube). The barrel was smooth all the way down to the bottom, thus the name smoothbore. The ball was tamped into the barrel with a powder charge and wadding (to keep the ball from falling out of the barrel). When the trigger was pulled, a hammer containing flint would strike a steel plate, igniting the powder-ball charge at the bottom of the barrel. The resulting explosion of the powder would expel the ball. The effective range of this weapon was 40 yards, meaning that to kill someone, you had to be pretty close. At 100 yards, the weapon was useless. It was heavy (weighing about 11 pounds), and at best you could get off one shot a minute.

Many Southerners owned weapons like this and brought them to their units. Others brought shotguns, fowling pieces, and other oddities. The shortage of modern weapons limited the effectiveness of many Confederate units in battle in the first encounters in 1861 and early 1862. However, the South made up for its lack of rifled muskets through domestic manufactures. Facilities in Richmond and Fayetteville, North Carolina, turned out over 64,000 high-quality rifles using the arms-making machinery from Harpers Ferry. The Confederacy also purchased quality foreign weapons, including the British Enfield and the Austrian Lorenz.

Rifled muskets for the infantry

The Union army had little difficulty procuring new weapons. Unlike the Confederacy, which controlled only the arsenal and weapons production facility at Harpers Ferry, the North could rely on some of the most sophisticated commercial arms manufacturers in the world. The primary weapon on the Civil War battlefield was the rifled musket (see Figure 7-1). The rifled musket marked a significant improvement over the smoothbore weapon. In addition to an improved firing system (using a percussion cap made of copper that contained a small bit of explosive material to set off the charge), the barrel of the new weapon had small spiral grooves from top to bottom. These grooves caused a bullet leaving the barrel at high speeds to spin. The spin allowed the bullet to travel farther and straighter. Think of Joe Montana throwing a football; the spin he put on the ball in the act of throwing created a tight spiral that allowed the ball to travel long distances accurately into the hands of a receiver. Rifling does the same thing for a bullet.

Spinning faster: The Minié ball

Speaking of bullets, a French army officer named Minié (pronounced “Minnie”) developed a new design to replace the round ball used in the smoothbore musket. The new bullet was a conical soft lead projectile with a hollow base. When fired, the gases created by the burning powder pushed against the hollow base, sealing it against the rifling, and forcing it to spin along the grooves of the barrel. The Minié ball, as it was known, was the standard bullet used in the war. The rifled musket and its Minié ball allowed a soldier to kill an enemy at ranges of 200–300 yards. The new rifle weighed about 9 pounds, and a well-trained soldier could get off three shots a minute.

Effect of the Rifled Musket on Tactics

Although it was more accurate, lighter, and more reliable than the smoothbore, the rifled musket had the same loading process as the older design. The bullet and powder were wrapped in paper called a cartridge . The soldier stood with the rifle in front of him. He then had to tear the cartridge open with his teeth, pour the powder into the barrel, drop the bullet down the barrel, and then ram both the bullet and the powder down to the base of the barrel with a ramrod. Next, he pulled the hammer back, attached a percussion cap, and, finally, raised and fired the rifle. An order given by an officer in the ranks preceded each step of the process (nine in all). These orders were a necessity, because in the fear and confusion of battle soldiers often lost track of the loading process. With every soldier following the steps by order, this ensured (in theory) that the unit would deliver the massed fire that infantry units had relied upon for decisive effect since the 1700s.

There was a problem with this approach. The tactics of infantry combat since the first widespread use of muskets in the late 17th century involved masses of infantrymen facing each other from a distance of 40 yards, delivering a massed volley, and then following it up with a bayonet charge. Up to 1830, the bayonet, not the musket, ruled the battlefield. Only the best-trained professionals could withstand the sight of a thousand men carrying sharp, glinting steel running toward them. But the rifled musket changed all this. A weapon effective at 200–300 yards made massed formations, volley fire, and the bayonet obsolete. This new technology would have an effect on tactics in the latter stages of the Civil War, but the staggering number of casualties Civil War armies suffered was a direct result of the gap that developed between the fielding of a new weapon and its proper tactical employment.

The Really Big Guns: Civil War Artillery

Artillery, like the musket, was classified as either rifled or smoothbore, and identified by the weight of the projectile it fired (see Figure 7-2). And like the rifled musket, it was loaded from the muzzle (the front opening of the gun barrel) and had a prescribed order of actions to load and fire. Artillery units were organized into batteries of four to six cannon commanded by a captain. Field artillery , as it was called, was light and mobile enough to be used to support infantry on the battlefield. The standard Civil War artillery piece was the 12-pound smoothbore model 1857 Napoleon. This gun could fire a variety of ammunition depending on the target.

Every artillery piece had a horse-drawn caisson and limber, which carried the ammunition, tools, and equipment for the gun. The gun was attached to the limber, and the crew of nine cannoneers rode to battle on top of the ammunition chests — a slightly dangerous method, to say the least. It took about 91 horses to move an artillery battery. As the war went on, the need for horses to replace battle losses became a prime concern of both Northern and Southern artillerymen.

Artillery ammunition

Solid shot (cannonball) was used against large troop concentrations and fortifications. A shell contained a bursting charge that would cause it to explode while still in the air, showering troops with metal. Canister was used against close range targets (up to 350 yards). Canister resembled a tin can. Inside the cylinder were 27 pieces of cast iron round shot. Canister turned the smoothbore into a giant shotgun. Needless to say, it had a devastating effect on approaching infantry and was the most dangerous of all the ammunition available. The cannon had no aiming system, other than the sharp eye of the cannoneer, who had to see his target and guess at the distance.

Using artillery

Few Generals on either side were familiar with the proper tactical employment of artillery. But when used properly, and served, as the guns were, by capable gunners, artillery could be the decisive weapon in battle. Not surprisingly, from the beginning of the war, the Confederacy was hampered by a lack of dependable cannon and ammunition. The South had only a few facilities capable of casting cannon barrels. Most of the heavy casting mills were located in the North.

Cavalry Weapons

For centuries, the horseman and his saber (a curved sword for cutting and slashing) was a feared combination (see Figure 7-3). However by 1860, the horseman was vulnerable to rifle fire, which would knock down scores of horsemen before they ever got close enough to use their sabers. So the saber was outmoded, a relic of a romantic past. They were noisy and awkward to wear and carry, but they were a symbol of the dash and bravado of the cavalry, so almost every horseman carried a saber at one time or another.

The carbine

In both the North and South, the prized weapon of the cavalryman was the breech-loading carbine. A carbine is essentially a short rifle. A breech-loading carbine is a weapon that was loaded with a cartridge from the rear, near the trigger. (The breech is where the end of the barrel meets the firing mechanism.) A lever moved to open or close the breech, sealing the cartridge in the barrel and making it ready to fire. Several advantages are apparent:

First, a breech-loading carbine is easier to load, and quicker to fire — something a soldier appreciates when she is being shot at. The breech-loading carbine could get three shots off to every one fired by a muzzleloader.

Second, a breech-loading carbine is small and lightweight (about 8 pounds), which comes in handy when you are seated on a horse.

Breech-loading carbines were purchased in large numbers by the U.S. government, but the Confederacy had very few and could only produce a few inferior copies. Southern cavalrymen scrounged them from battlefields whenever they could. The Confederate cavalry also had muzzle-loading carbines, but these were less than useless after the first shot; nobody could reload one of those things while mounted. Many Southern horsemen preferred the sawed-off shotgun — an American original that came to be greatly feared in close combat.

The revolver

Of course, every cavalryman carried one or more pistols to use at close quarters in a cavalry fight. The preferred pistol was the revolver — a pistol that had a rotating cylinder containing powder and ball that moved to align with the rifled barrel to fire when the trigger was pulled (see Figure 7-4). Cavalrymen used a variety of types of pistols, but the most prized were the legendary pistols of Samuel Colt. The U.S. government supplied Colt revolvers to its mounted troops. The Confederates manufactured a few pistols using Colt’s model, but most revolvers used by Southern horsemen were obtained from captured supplies or battlefield scrounging.