Conference smurf::civil_war

    	Being somewhat of an armchair general, it sounds to me as if there
    *IS* no satisfactory explanation! Of course, one of the reasons I'm
    here is because I know very little about the war, and the tactics
    employed. Am I correct in assuming there was no mobile flanking
    type of force ever employed in the war? That could go a long way in
    explaining it. Sometimes, there is just no other way but a frontal
    attack. Beyond that, it sounds like very uninspired generalship.
    
    	Crawling advances (bounding) is very terrain dependent, no? It
    doesn't work too well in open terrain. There have to be defensive
    positions of even a minimal sort so that as one element covers, the
    second element moves forward to new defensive positions, then they
    cover the first element as they go even further forward, etc.
    
    						Steve
                                                                  

       Remember that at the time most of the men in command, if not all of
    them were graduates of West Point.  They had all been instructed in the
    use of the charge and employed it in the Mexican War which took place
    years before the Civil War.  Old habits are hard to break, it took the
    loss of thousands to change their thinking.
    
       I'd also like to add that there actually was a flanking force used
    by both sides during the war.  The cavalry was used extensively by the
    south to get around the north's flank for foraging and reconnaissance.
    You could recall J.E.B. Stuart's raids, which are probably the most
    famous.
    
    George
    

Flanking attacks were used extensively - at Fredericksburg, the original
intent of the South was to flank the enemy and get him in an enfilading
fire.  The Confederates kept Stonewall Jackson's command several miles
downstream from the expected battle site so that he could bring them up
in reinforcement against the Union left flank.  Lee was actually very
surprised that Burnside was fool enough to cross the Rappahannock where
he did, since it was directly into the place offering the Confederates
the strongest possible defense.

Crawling advance works better than an upright charge even over flat
terrain, providing that the troops are widely scattered, simply because
the targets are smaller, with more space between them.  Probability says
there's less likelihood of a hit under those conditions.  And although
the rifles were a great improvement over smoothbores, they still didn't
always hit precisely what was amied at.  Add to that the fact that most
troops under fire don't aim that precisely.

I do think it was a case of massive stupidity: the generals just could
not adapt quickly enough to the technology.

-d

    Sorry gents, I'll sign in in a minute; but Lee repeated Burnside's
    foolishness at Gettysburg. Had only Longstreet been more vociferous
    in his opposition to Pickett's Charge with Lee.
    
    MikeL
    

    I doubt that this is a satisfactory explanation, but remember that its
    very difficult to gauge what's going on from the middle of the fracas
    and was, at the time, difficult to get reliable information back to the
    hq behind the lines.  Maybe what looks clear to us is an example of
    hindsight being better than foresight.
    
    Just a guess.
    
    Dick

    -1.
    
    You are correct about the information on getting reliable info from
    hq to the line. This was evident in a lot of the Civil War battles.
    At Gettysburg,however, Longstreet protested the Charge to Lee on the
    morning of July 3, some 4 hrs before Pickett's charge. Pickett was
    a Brigadier under Longstreet's division, I believe, and before the
    charge went to Longstreet to get permission to attack. Longstreet
    merely nodded his assent.
    Hindsight in 20/20. Both Longstreet and Pickett,if I interpret
    correctly from what I read, saw the folly of the charge, but
    Longstreet, in particular, as division commander, should have protested
    more to Lee. He did not, and the Charge remains both fact and legend.
    Lee took total blame for the fiasco and offered to resign. Pickett,
    still bitter years later, recalled Lee with the words " That old man
    destroyed my command."  Hindsight, yup.
    
    MikeL
    
    

Why is it a surprise?

Generals commited similar follies in the Crimea, and where still commiting them
50 years after the Civil War (WWI)...

I am also aware that students at Britain's officer training college still 
occasionally order frontal attacks against entrenched weapon systems that
will destroy their [paper] forces, without being totally failed for their
folly... Perhaps one day they will learn?

/. Ian .\

Are we dealing here with simply one instance of the famous tendency of
the military mind to reject change?

The US military was still using single-shot Sharps and Trapdoor Spring-
field rifles in its wars of conquest against the American Indians long
after the Indians had Winchester repeaters (first Henry 1866 rifles and
later Winchester 1873 rifles).  In the Spanish-American war, the US was
using the .45-70 trapdoor Springfield, a black-powder rifle, against an
enemy armed mostly with .30-40 Krag smokeless-powder rifles.

This also applies to the Civil War, in which a few units were armed with
revolving Colts that they bought and paid for themselves.  There were a
few other repeaters here and there, but the standard US infantry arm was
the .58 cal Springfield rifle or, in some cases, the Remington Zouave, a
better version but still a .58 cal muzzleloader.  CS units used much the
same sorts of things.

Slowness to adopt imroved arms, slowness to adopt improved tactics, is
it all of a piece?

-d

    I suppose one should also consider the momentum behind the current
    training practices.  The men were taught to march in column, deploy in
    line and advance.  While I admit it took an increadable amount of
    dicipline to advance in front of enemy fire, try to immagine what the
    officers thought of trying to control a company (200 men back then?) as
    it crawled across the land.  I don't think the idea even occured to
    them.
                                                            
    Tom

The purpose of massed charges was to break lines of massed defenders.
The idea was to concentrate more firepower per yard than the enemy at
a point of the line, and to overwhelm it by the preponderance of fire.

The defense was able to form dense formations, because no one had developed
weapons that would cause the defense to spread out.  Artillery, even
when massed as at Gettysburg, could not open a hole by itself.  So the
defense was able to create neat lines.  They didn't operate on the
principles of points of strength and fields of fire as came later, because
the weaponry that would have allowed that (HE artillery and machine guns) 
hadn't been invented.

So my point is, an attack by squads of soldiers with single-shot rifles
(that required a person to stand to load it) crawling toward a row of dug-in
defenders is somewhat ludicrous.  They might have approached the defensive
line without the usual amount of casualties, but they would have been
powerless to break that line once they got there.

A different tactic was tried at the Muleshoe at Spottsylvania.  A low-level
Union officer had been bugging his superiors for months about a new idea
for breaching a line - rushing the line with superior forces but without
stopping to exchange volleys.  The idea was attempted, met with some initial
success, but was not exploited properly with reserves once the breach had
been effected.

Ben

    The idea that single-shot rifles were the limiting factor at a time
    when repeating arms were being made and were in limited use is
    supportable if we assign the blame for the obsolete technology to a
    refusal by the War Departments to adopt repeaters.  They let contract
    after contract for Springfields and Zouaves even after the superiority
    of repeaters such as the Colt sidehammer revolver and the Henry M1860
    was demonstrated.  Lincoln himself fired a repeater and was very
    impressed with it.
    
    Machine guns, too were coming into existence -- both sides had them
    beginning in 1862: Carr & Avery, Mills, Gatling, Gorgas, Robison.  They
    weren't any of them used to great effect.
    
    Snipers demonstrated the effectiveness of fields of fire in limited
    engagement or as prelude to larger battles.
    
    -d

    Is it possible that the "Military Industrial Complex" was already
    firmly established by the 1860's?  Had certain companies locked up the
    weapons contracts regardless of any competitive offerings?
    
    Just curious,
    
    Dick
    

It's possible, but I'm not ready to say it was a done deal.  One of the
companies that had large contracts was Colt's, which supplied great
numbers of revolving handguns.  It shouldn't have been too great a
step from that to supplying large quantities of Root revolving rifles,
yet Colt's did in fact supply a significant volume of issue muskets.

I suspect the U.S. guvmint itself, given that it was Uncle Sam hisself
who made the Springfield rifle.  The Confederates took advantage of U.S.
arms manufacture facilities when they captured Harpers Ferry; although
the garrison commander succeeded in burning some 20,000 rifles, he did
not destroy the machinery for making the Mississippi rifle.  These
machines promptly went south to aid the secessionist cause.

Amusingly, the Henry rifle was referred to by the Confederates as "that
damned Yankee rifle," and they remarked that it was loaded on Sunday
and fired all week.

-d

I think the massed charge syndrome could be blamed on the tactics of the 
last major war and it's most successful general, Napolean.   Generals tend
to look at the last previous war for their tactics.

In those wars,  (in GENERAL terms), one softened up the point of attack with 
some artillery, aligned your troops in the form of a column and attempted to
breech a critical point in the line with the right combination of firepower,
mass and shock.  Worked well for a while.  And so the generals, (especially
the stupid ones) tried to apply similar tactics to the Civil War despite the
fact that rifles, entrenchments and newer defensive tactics made Napolean
obsolete.   Hell, if generals of World War I had looked at the lessons of the 
Civil War more seriously , there MIGHT have been less carnage that war as well. 
But I bet they looked at the Civil War as a "petty disturbance"  in the 
Americas.

Even though there were exceptions, the smart generals learned to avoid frontal
assaults as much as possible.

		Bob Cohen

    
    > Hell, if generals of World War I had looked at the lessons of the 
    > Civil War more seriously , there MIGHT have been less carnage that war 
    > as well. But I bet they looked at the Civil War as a "petty 
    > disturbance" in the Americas.

    	You got it.
    
    	/prc

    To digress just a bit, The generals of WWI only needed to look back a
    decade to the Boer war to see the effects of machine guns, trenches and
    modern rifles on warfare.
    
    Back closer to the subject.  I suppose that the changes necessary in
    logistical supplies to change from muzzle loads to cartridges was also
    a deterent to switching to a more efficient weapon.
    
    Tom

re -1 :

Right, further evidence of the sharpness of military minds 8^)

		Bob 

Re: -.1

But ammunition for muzzle loaders was already supplied in the form of
cartridges.  They were made of a paper similar to cigarette paper, which
was soaked in saltpeter to make it burn more completely, and each one
contained a bullet and a powder charge.   carrying and handling metallic
cartridges is not notably different from handling paper ones.

Re: Napoleon

McClellan idolized Napoleon and deliberately patterned himself after
the man.

-d

To return to the original question - I believe that the frontal assault on
a prepared defensive position over open ground was used relatively
infrequently, but always(?) with disastrous results.  Perhaps they did
learn from their own mistakes (if not from those of others) as I can't think 
of an instance where an army leader tried this twice.  Lee had his Pickett's
Charge, Grant his Cold Harbor, Burnside his Mary's Heights, Hood his
Franklin(?).  (Oops, I just remembered Lee also can be credited with
Malvern Hill just a year before Gettysburg - maybe he should have been
paying more attention!)

Anyway, most commanders favored tactical maneuver over frontal assaults.
The idea was to gain a temporary advantage with superior forces on one
part of the field, and overwhelm a portion of the enemy's army with a
larger part of your own.

Trying something as radical as crawling in squads to attack a defensive
position probably never occured to any field general facing the enemy
army.  This would have required the foresight and preparation of many
months to make the weapons (repeaters, perhaps) available to a large
force and to train a large force in new tactics.  I believe the army
was not an environment conducive to such radical departures from accepted
doctrine at a level necessary to have effected such a major reorganization.

I think they were doomed to a certain extent to fight the kind of war that
was fought.

Ben

    I guess too there was always the hope that a determined frontal charge
    against an unknown entrenched force might cause them to run, this too
    happened on many occasions, but usually only till the defenders
    regrouped.

    Does anyone have any accurate data on the muzzle velocity (in feet per
    sec), range and general accuracy of the most common arms used during
    the Civil War?  I am doing a little research and this would be very
    helpfull.
    
    Tom

The muzzle velocity of a .58 rifled musket (Springfield or Remington)
with a charge of 130 grains of powder and a 505-grain bullet is in the
vicinity of 1100 feet per second.  That of a .36 revolver with a
24-grain charge and a 130-grain bullet is about 900 feet per second.

The range of a .58 rifle, with any kind of usable accuracy, is in the
ballpark of 150-200 yards.  The heavy, low-velocity bullet is ideal for
short-range work in grassy or brushy countryside, because its momentum
is sufficient to blast through a twig or a blade of grass, whereas a
smaller high-velocity bullet carrying the same muzzle energy can easily
be deflected by even the slightest obstacle.

Accuracy deteriorates astonishingly rapidly with black powder, because
the powder fouls the bore horribly.  After five or six rounds, a .58
rifle isn't markedly more accurate than a freshly-cleaned smoothbore
at any range greater than about 75 yards.

How fast could they reload?  If aimed firing wasn't the criterion, they
could probably reload and fire about as fast as soldiers in the American
Revolution.  The British manual of arms in the 1770s taught a sustained
fire rate of six rounds per minute using paper cartridges and flintlock
arms.  In my experience, a caplock is a little bit slower, because it's
a more finicky operation to seat a cap on the nipple than it is to slop
some powder in the pan.  If aimed fire is critical, the rate is going
to drop to perhaps two or three rounds a minute.  Revolvers take longer
per round than single-shot weapons because you have to turn the cylinder
as you load and again when you seat caps, and because handling the
built-in rammer is more finicky than using a free-swinging ramrod.
Revolvers were issued to cavalry troops (replacing the heavy single-shot
horse pistols like the 1858 .50 Harpers Ferry) and to officers.
Theoretically, the revolver would be used as a secondary weapon and so
would not need to be loaded and fired at the same effective rate as the
infantry's rifles.

-d

    Thanks, 
    
    Tom

re: .22

Good info.  Do you have range/accuracy information about smoothbore 
Napoleons with shot and cannister?  I believe this was the most widely-
used field piece by both sides.

I would quibble with the figure of 6 rounds per minute, even for well trained
British troops of 1770's.  I think the figure is closer to 3 - 4 per minute.
It takes 10 seconds just to speak through the series of commands without
pausing!

Ben

Re: .24

No info on napoleons, sorry.  I'll look in some books and see what I
can find.

I've seen the manual page, and it does indeed say six.  Whether that
rate actually occurred in combat I cannot say, but I've timed myself
loading and firing a .58 rifle, and I averaged 20 seconds for aimed
fire.  And I can load and fire a flintlock smoothbore faster than I
can handle a rifle because it's not necessary to be so persnickety
with the paper -- you just bite the end, splash a little powder in the
pan, stick the cartridge in the bore bullet upward, and ram the bloody
mess home.  (The powder drains out while you're fitting your ramrod.)

-d

    
    The plot thickens! has the mysterious -d done some reenacting???
    
    My $.02 is I've been reenacting now for about six odd years now. Our
    outfit has done the reloading both ways, "the load in nine" by the
    "Hardee's Manual of Arms" (bless his black heart, even though he was
    a Southerner) and the mad scramble in the heat of battle.
    
    Going by Hardee's manual, I can't see were they would come with the
    6 rounds per minute? Even under the best of conditions, eliminating
    the slowness of the officer calling the commands, the fumbling of the
    cartridges by the troops, the pause and wait for the next command,
    let alone the fact of enemy troops firing upon you! Under parade ground
    conditions, maybe, but in the face of fire, my guess would be 3 to 4
    rounds in combat conditions. That is if the enemy allows you time to
    do it. Let alone the stress factor!! And hoping your officer doesn't
    get shot.....
    
    The other possibility is and is used in the reenacting world anyway,
    is to get your Enfield or Springfield loading as quick as possible to
    present a field of fire to your enemy. I would hazard to guess that
    possibily it might have been the same 130 years ago?
    
    My viewpoint would be to get my trusty Enfield loaded quick enough to
    shoot that there Blue-coated fella over there before he shoots me! 
    Isn't that the whole point of warfare? Kill him before he kills me!?
    
    I will agree with -d the fumbling with the cap on that little nipple
    can get real tricky after firing a few rounds. Sometimes the nipple
    starts to expand from the heat of muzzle blast, forcing the cap to
    pushed a little harder to seat on the nipple, let alone the factor of
    your fingers getting greasy from handling the cartridges filled with
    black powder. Making those darn little caps slippery little things to
    handle. 
    
    My vote goes for the quickest way to load to get the most firepower
    toward your enemy. It may be only play acting, but, there is still an
    adrenaline rush when your facing opposing ranks firing at you! The
    "load by nines" are soon forgotten!
    
    But, that's one man's opinion....
    
    				The Alabama Slammer
                         

                       <<< Note 13.14 by CBRMAX::cohen >>>

>I think the massed charge syndrome could be blamed on the tactics of the 
>last major war and it's most successful general, Napolean.   Generals tend
>to look at the last previous war for their tactics.
    
    I would have said the most successful General in the Napoleonic war was
    Wellington myself..he did beat Napolean after all. And the tactic they
    should have looked at was the way the British 'Line' Defense almost
    always beat the massed 'column' attack ( more firepower). 
    Maybe your Civil War generals just thought of this as an 'petty 
    disturbance' over in Europe?
    :-)
    
    
>Hell, if generals of World War I had looked at the lessons of the 
>Civil War more seriously , there MIGHT have been less carnage that war as well. 
>But I bet they looked at the Civil War as a "petty disturbance"  in the 
>Americas.
    
    The British were looking at a much more recent conflict than the ACW
    namely the Boer war. And without any flanks to turn there WAS no
    alternative to frontal attacks, in Civil war terms the conflict on the
    Western Front was an extended Melee where eventually the defender
    (German Army), due to lack of manpower, was forced back until the army
    was in danger of losing its cohesion.
    
    Sorry..don't want to rathole this conference but it's long since tine
    that the old rubbish about brain-dead high commands in WWI was put to
    rest. It has been refuted by many excellent writers especially in a
    book called 'The Smoke and the Fire' (I forget the authors name).
    In fact there were innovations of tactics and inventions designed
    to break the deadlock from both sides throughout the war, its just not
    so easy to see them as in other conflicts.
    
    Aidan
    

 

>   I would have said the most successful General in the Napoleonic war was
>    Wellington myself..he did beat Napolean after all. And the tactic they
>    should have looked at was the way the British 'Line' Defense almost
>    always beat the massed 'column' attack ( more firepower). 
>    Maybe your Civil War generals just thought of this as an 'petty 
>    disturbance' over in Europe?
>    :-)

 I agree, Wellington tactics did effectively neutralize Napolean's tactics
but I think Napolean "got the press".     Supposedly much was written of 
Napoleans tactics after the wars, studied, quantified etc.  

	Bob Cohen

    There seem to be a couple of misconceptions floating through this
    discussion.
    
    On tactics, and Napoleon: True, most leaders in the ACW studied
    Napoleon's campaigns; several had experience in the Mexican War. 
    However, almost _no_ attacks in the ACW were made in anything
    resembling a Napoleonic column, which was a mass of infantry many ranks
    deep.  As one reply mentioned, the basic ACW attack was an attempt to
    get a _line_ of infantry, two ranks deep usually, at a point close
    enough to the defensive line to break that line with their own rate of
    fire.  To further reinforce another point made earlier, almost all
    generals were aware of the preference for a flank attack; and so in
    choosing defensive positions, one tried to find a "protected" place to
    rest ones' flanks, like a river or other obstacle.  (At
    Chancellorsville, Lee made a daring flank attack on the Union right,
    which had been left "in the air".)
    
    On attacking, and Fredricksburg: While ACW soldiers were trained to
    move and fight in tight formations - and trained that way because the
    best way to get massed firepower from a group of men who can fire only
    about three times a minute is to put them in a line, but you can't move
    a line over anything but an open field, so you need to move in column -
    they often spread out and used cover once a fight got started.  Even at
    Mayre's Heights, some survivors of each Union attack wave stayed, lying
    down, at a little ridge of ground about 100 yards in front of the stone
    wall and kept up some level of fire at the Confederates.  It was noted
    in several battles that a fence, sunken road, clump of trees, etc.
    could quickly become a strong point because of the cover it provided.
    
    	Note: a muzzle-loading musket can't be loaded easily lying down. 
    Many soldiers got wounds in their right hand and arm (the ramming hand)
    trying it!  That was one reason that a trench or wall gave such an
    advantage - you could fight protected, but standing up!
    
    	Without trying to minimize the stupidity of the repeated attacks on
    Mayre's Heights, it turns out there was _no way_ for an attacking Union
    column coming out of Fredricksburg to do anything but hit that stone
    wall.  Several other routes were tried, after the first attack wave got
    blown apart.  Remember, though, that downstream from Fredricksburg,
    Burnside tried (and might have succeeded) to turn the Confederate
    flank.  If his orders to his Corps commanders had been clearer, or if
    the "head-down" fighter who commanded the Union right had instead been
    in charge on the left, Burnside might have broken through, and forced
    Lee to abandon the Heights.
    
    	It is also worth noting that Mayre's Heights was carried, by a
    straight frontal assault, several months later during the
    Chancellorsville campaign.  The defenders were fewer, with a little
    less artillery, but the big difference was that the attackers finally
    tried a straight advance with no stopping to trade volleys - something
    similar to the successful attack at Spotsylvania two years later.
    
    A side note on weapons: There _is_ a lot of conservatism in military
    establishments.  Remember, though, that many new weapons prove
    unreliable at first (like the early Gatling gun, which jammed a lot); if 
    you are responsible for national safety, how much money (and security) 
    do you gamble on a new piece of technology? 
    
    Yes, the Union Army was slow, perhaps slower than it needed to be, in
    adopting repeaters.  But there were lots of factors involved, many of
    them valid.  For instance, the cartridges for repeaters took a
    different kind of technology to make - so you not only needed to
    re-tool your arms factories, you needed new ammunition factories, too. 
    Most of the competing brands of repeaters fired different cartridges,
    which weren't interchangeable, so unless you standardized on one, you
    greatly increased the supply problem (and the .58 Springfield was the
    standard infantry weapon at the start of the war).
    
    Also, most of the regiments which fought in the ACW were equipped by
    the _states_, not the central governments (so some did get better
    weapons than others), which meant that even _setting_ a new standard,
    had the government had the foresight and courage to do so, would have
    been difficult.
    
    There certainly were stupid generals in the ACW, and smart ones who
    made stupid mistakes, but before being _too_ smug about "why didn't
    they know better", we should ask ourselves similar questions about our
    _own_ jobs. :^)
    
    MikeR

    Re: .29
    
    Thank you.  Well considered and thoroughly expository response.
    
    -d

    
    Yes, thanks for putting that in.
    
    Aidan
    

Re: .29

I agree.  I was trying to say much of the same things in my notes .10 and
.19, but you said it much better.

Ben

    Several points, here.
    
    (1)  Hardee said that trained men ought to be able to fire 3 aimed
    rounds per minute.  I have tried and tried, using authentic paper
    cartridges, and I have never done better than 2 rounds per minute.
    If you took the cartridges out of your box and laid them out in
    front of you, and if you did not "return rammer" after each shot,
    it might be possible.  Now, we were shooting as though in a moving
    line, which means we were taking time to fasten the cap and cartridge
    boxes after each round.  That took time.  In my opinion, 3 rounds
    per minute of AIMED fire is quite a feat.
    
    (2)  The Federal government did not buy repeating arms in any numbers
    for several reasons.  The one most commonly stated is that the war
    department said repeaters would cause a waste of ammunition.  The
    cost of making such arms was far greater than for making muzzleloaders,
    even if you write off the cost of making the machinery to make the
    guns.  Repeaters require much tighter tolerances and have many more
    intricately-shaped, moving parts than to muzzleloaders.  (The Colt's
    revolving rifle was tried and became one of the most despised arms
    of the war.  It fouled quickly, was not all that accurate, and shooting
    one was tantamount to uncorking a small volcano six inches from
    one's nose.)  One of the most prohibitive aspects of repeaters was
    the cost of ammunition.  The Confederate Ordnance Dept. found it
    could make [I think] 20-odd paper cartidges and over 100 musket
    caps for the cost of a single Henry cartridge.  The machinery to
    make such cartridges was frightfully expensive to make and to maintain,
    too.  Paper cartridges for rifle muskets could be made by relatively
    unskilled labor and in huge quantities.  Yes, there was an element
    of idiotic "But we've always done it this way,"  but there were also
    some very pragmatic considerations.
    
    Remember, too, that formal training in marksmanship was something
    of an oddity in either of the American armies.  Training men to
    handle, shoot, and maintain repeaters would have been an overwhelming
    task.
    
    (3)  A nit, really:  the Zouave rifle (model 1863 Remington) was
    never issued during the war.  The North's primary arm was the
    Springfield rifle musket, M1861, M1861 Special, or the M1863.  The
    North's second rifle was the British Enfield, made by several armories
    in the London Armory Complex.  The M1841 Harper's Ferry Rifle, the
    Mississippi Rifle, was used in the hundreds of thousands.  The M1855
    Springfield was also used well into the tens of thousands by both
    sides.  Incidentally, the machinery taken from Harper's Ferry was
    to make the '55, not the '41.  The Richmond rifle musket was
    essentially a Model 55 rifle musket without the Maynard device.
    The Model 1842 Springfield was also very, very common right up to
    the end of the war.  Thousands of them were rifled, but many were
    used in their original .69 smoothbore configuration.  Both sides
    used large numbers of imported arms, espeically Dutch and Austrian.
     The Austrian Lorenz was a very important arm.
    
    (4)  The idea of the tactics was, indeed, to overpower a defending
    line with massed firepower.  Consider this:  the range of the rifle
    musket, fired from a bench rest under ideal conditions, is about
    400 to 500 yards.  This is an average; there have been too many
    recorded kills by sharpshooters in the 1000+ yard range to speak
    in absolutes here!  However, the average soldier could not dependably
    hit a man-sized target outside 200 yards.  If that soldier were
    moving around, out of breath, jostled and distracted by frantic
    activity on either side of him, standing on uneven ground, etc.,
    I doubt if the effective range of the man-rifle team was greater
    than 75-100 yards.  This gave the defense a big advantage.  As another
    noter accurately pointed out, standing still on defense eliminates
    the need for flexibility or maneuver in the line, so a defending
    line can be much more dense than an attacking one.  Consider two
    regiments, one on defense, the other on attack.  The defending unit
    stays nice and tight, shoulder to shoulder, the rear rank 13" back.
    The attacker opens his ranks by just the space of one man; instead
    of touching elbows, the men have 18" between them.  The rear rank
    drops back to three feet.  The front of the defending regiment is
    750 yards.  The front of the attacking regiment is 1500 yards. 
    That puts the flanks of the attacking regiment OUT OF THE FIGHT!
    The attacker is reduced by half just by having his rear rank drop
    back, and by another third by having his flank companies out of
    range of the objective.  The defender is launching 1000 ball in
    search of around 350 or so targets.  The odds of survival in the
    center of the attacking column are darned slim!  The dispersal of
    the attacking column essentially allows the defender to defeat the
    battalions in detail.
    
    (5) There were several successful frontal assaults:  The 4th Texas
    at Gaines' Mill, Lookout Mtn., Missionary Ridge, the Texas Brigade
    and Jenkin's South Carolinians at the Wilderness (though not against
    an entrenched enemy, they stopped Hanckock's corps in its tracks).
    Upton's massed column tactic at the Muleshoe was initially successful,
    but was defeated as much by the shape of the salient as anything
    else; there were just too darned many Yankees per square foot, and
    they couldn't move to fight efficiently.  I think Upton and Longstreet
    were both ahead of their time because their tactics were successful
    in WWI.
    
    (6)  In conclusion, as ghastly as the massed assaults were, they
    would have been far worse had they been made in open order.  The
    style of warfare favored the defender, period, and if you would
    have him off that spot, you must stand up and drive him from it.
    I have both defended and assaulted fortifications, and on the whole,
    I'd rather be in Waikiki.
    
    Wess

    Repeaters not much used?  In percentage terms, maybe not...
    
    Well over 125,000 Spencers were used by the Federals, of which some
    106,000 were listed as built and delivered at an average price of
    $27.00 under government contracts that expired June 30, 1866.
    
    Some 10,000 Henrys were made, bought mostly by individual soldiers
    wealthy enough to fork over the $40.00 price.
    
    The Confederacy had virtually no metallic-cartridge arms, and a fair
    part of the reason for this is that Southern manufacturing capabilities
    were not as ready to adapt to the precision manufacture required.  Over
    58,000,000 Spencer cartridges were used by Federals, an average of
    about 500 per weapon.
    
    -d

    re: .35
    
    Very interesting numbers.  May I ask what your source is?
    
    The Spencer was a darned good arm, and I know a large number were
    issued.  The problem is, they were issued almost exclusively to
    cavalry.  Cavalry units were but very seldom engaged in the really
    serious blood-letting, which was almost exclusively the province
    of the infantry.  (A relatively small percentage of casualties were
    inflicted by artillery - around 15 percent of the total.)  The primary
    arm of the Federal cavalry was the Sharps carbine.  Buford's men
    were armed with Sharps when they made that magnificient stand on
    the first day at Gettysburg.  The Confederacy made several copies
    of the Sharps because they could be used with paper cartridges.
    
    Some states armed their volunteer cavalry with repeaters, such as
    Wilder's Lightning Brigade, which was armed with Henrys.  The Henry
    was inferior to the Spencer in terms of sturdiness and the power
    of its cartridge, but it was still a potent weapon.
    
    In terms of the total weapons used and shots fired, repeaters played
    a very small role in the war.  Single-shot breech-loaders, such
    as the Sharps, made a far greater contribution.
    
    
    Wess

Source for the numbers in .35 is _Civil War Guns_ by William B. Edwards.

-d

    re: .37	Thanks.  I have the Edwards book, but didn't remember
    seeing those numbers.
    
    re: .36	Your challenge is quite appropriate.  My source is almost
    any statistical abstract of the war.  Andersonville saw a higher
    percentage of fatality than any other war, but two Federal prisons
    killed a greater number of men.  Elmira, New York was one.  The
    other was either Camp Douglas or Point Lookout.  (Good grief!  I
    don't believe the brain fade today.  Sorry for the vagueness.  I
    am absolutely certian of Elmira.  You see, Andersonville was only
    open a part of a year.
    
    Now let me set something straight right now:  Andersonville was
    a ghastly place -  a place where good men died needlessly and
    helplessly.  By condemning the Federal prisons I make no effort
    to excuse Andersonville; it was a horror.  It's just that I get
    so blasted sick and tired of people trying to shove it in my face
    as proof of the innate depravity of Southerners!  (I know y'all
    weren't trying to do that; I'm just real sensitive.)
    
    The treatment of prisoners on both sides was, in my opinion, the
    sorriest chapter of the war.  The catch is that the South really
    didn't have the resources to do much better than they did.  The
    North, on the other hand, had plenty of stuff, but deliberately
    starved and murdered Southern men.  For example, Johnson's Island
    in in the Great Lakes.  It's pretty far north.  The Federal government
    took boys from the deep South and sent them up there.  They had
    very little shelter from the weather - leaky, open huts - and almost
    no uniforms or blankets.  They died by the hundreds of exposure
    and starvation.  Yet close by Johnson's Island was a warehouse filled
    with rejected Federal Army uniforms, sent there by the quartermaster
    expressly for the use of the prisoners.  The commandant of the camp
    refused to issue the goods.  That, in my opinion, is cold blooded
    murder.  Another Federal camp commandant, I believe of Point Lookout,
    was given a medal for saving money.  He saved the money by cutting
    prisoner's rations and starving them to death.
    
    In his memoirs, Jeff Davis tells of two communiques sent to the
    Lincoln government after the cessation of the exhange of prisoners.
    In the first, Davis explained in detail the conditions at Andersonville
    and begged Lincoln to reinstate the exchange so those good men would
    not die like animals.  Lincoln never answered the letter.  A few
    months later, working through a neutral emmissary, Davis sent another
    letter to Washington.  In this letter, he offered to buy, in gold,
    medicines for the Federal prisoners.  He also offered safe passage
    through the lines for Federal doctors to adminsiter the medicine
    to their own men.  Linclon refused to answer the letter.
    
    Toward the end of the war, Davis offered to just RELEASE Federal
    prisoners, with NO EXCHANGE, if the Yankees would come pick them
    up.  Lincoln never answered the letter.  In my opinion, most of
    the blood and waste of Andersonville is on Abraham Lincoln's hands.
    
    When I held, in my own hands, a list of the Confederates who died
    at Elmira, I vowed that I would never again apologize for
    Andersonville, nor back up one inch from charges of inhumanity.
    
    The statistics on the prisons are readily available, but Burns chose
    to not use them.  I have an interview Burns granted before the series
    went on the air.  If I can dig it out, I will enter it in this forum.
    
    
    Wess

Re: .38 re: .37

Those numbers are not in the Edwards book as such.  I distilled them
from the numbers that are there.

:-)

-d

    re: .39
    
    Oh, okay.   blink....blink....
    
    I dug out one of my favorite books, "Small Arms and Ammunition in
    the United States Service," by Berkely Lewis, published by the
    Smithsonian.  This is a FANTASTIC reference work!  It contains the
    ordnance returns from a report in 1866.  The returns list every
    piece of ordnance purchsed by the Yankee government during the war.
    I forgot to bring it in, so I can't copy it in detail, but I can
    give a summary of a few points.
    
    The U.S. purchased more Spencers than any other cartridge gun. 
    That surprised me, as I had always thought there were more Sharps.
    The number of Spencer cartridges, though, does not indicate the
    Spencer's combat significance.  Lewis says that there was an appalling
    variety of metallic cartridge breech loaders in the U.S. service,
    and every one of them used a unique cartridge.  The Spencer cartridge
    would work in at least 6 of the major types, and by the end of the
    war the ordnance dept. was issuing Spencer rounds exclusively to
    units armed with these 6 types of carbine.
    
    The U.S. purchased over 1700 Henrys, which also surprised me.  In
    numerical order, the 4 most significant rifles in the U.S. service
    were the Springfield rifle musket (61-63), the Enfield, the Boker,
    and "Austrian" rifles (Lorenz?).
    
    Not only did the return list the number of arms purchased, but also
    what had been paid for them.  The four we have discussed here:
    Springfield rifle musket - $19.00 each
    Spencer carbine - 	       $25.00 each
    Sharps carbine -	       $27.00 each
    Henry rifle - 	       $40.00 each
    
    In most cases, these prices include some appendages - nipple wrenches,
    wipers, screwdrivers, etc..
    
    As you can see, the Henry was approaching prohibitive expense. 
    REmember this was in the days before deficit spending was a way
    of life!  Even governments were expected to pay their own way!
    
    The Lewis book has an incredible amount of really detailed information
    in it.  I would be glad to use it to answer answer any questions
    y'all might have.  (It is out of print, and the last one I saw on
    the market was in TERRIBLE condition (water damage) for $100.00)
    
    Wess

    Just out of curiosity, is there any proof that Lincoln received those
    messages?
    
    Pat
    

    Reply to .1
    
    Being an old infantry soldier I can tell you that the bounding method
    is used regardless of the layout.  The covering team keeps up fire
    to force the enemy to keep their heads down while the bounding team
    advances.  If both teams are well trained it works very effectively.
    However, this tactic does depend on modern weapons.  Single shot 
    weapons can not effectively cover in the open.
    
    
                                      Marshall

    Reply to .16
    
    Cartridges were already in use with the muzzle loaders.  
    
    
    
                                  Marshall

    Reply to .24
     
    They did not speak through the commands for reloading during battle
    in the CW.  That was only used in training.
    
    
                                   Marshall

    RE .44:
    
    I _think_ the statement in .24 was referring to the British Army of the
    1770 - 1820 era, when commands for reloading were used on the
    battlefield, rather than to the ACW.
    
    MikeR
    

Re: last 2

Actually my point was that even to speak through the commands takes ten seconds.
To actually perform those commands takes longer.  Hence my problem with the 
figure of 6 rounds per minute (for the British Army of the Revolutionary War
era).

Hello Marshall - it's good to have more cannon fodder in this conference!

Ben

    
    	Where did ya'll come up with that figure? 6 rounds a minute!???
    		Enlighten this here poor old Southern boy....
    
    	We timed ourselves once at an reenactment, from a double file
    we were able to fire 4 rounds, per man, in under 55 seconds and that's
    without ramming the cartridge down....
    
    	makes me wonder how the British ever lost the war???....
    
    						The Alabama Slammer

    Re: .47
    
    6 rounds a minute was what the 1755 British Manual of Arms specified. 
    Remember that these were practiced troops, working by INSTINCT.  They
    did not need to worry about having a wad hit someone accidentally; to
    the contrary, the more things that hit people the better.  :-)
    
    Whether that figure was actually achieved in combat by others besides
    a crack regiment remains shrouded in history/mystery.
    
    -dick

    I recall reading somewhere that a trained Civil War soldier was
    expected to get in 3 aimed rounds a minute.  A seasoned soldier 
    usually managed 4, and a REAL good one managed 5.  I guess that
    the difference is probably the aiming.  I'm no expert, but I've
    heard that due to the inaccuracy of smoothbores the 18th century
    soldiers didn't aim at the enemy: they watched where their leader
    directed with his sword and pointed their weapons there with their
    heads held up away from the firelock.  Can anyone confirm this, or
    correct it if I'm mistaken?
    
    Ziff

    You have it right, Ziff.  The tactics of massed line-abreast charges
    hark back all the way to the Greeks and earler.
    
    The deal was that as one army charged, the fight split up into
    thousands of individual confrontations, sword and shield against sword
    and shield.  Through the Middle Ages, things got a little nastier as
    better projectile weapons were developed.
    
    The introduction of the arquebus was not directly an improvement in
    killing technology because the things were terribly inaccurate.  The
    benefit gained with it was that the user need not be an assiduously
    trained, highly skilled person - hence, you could draw your army from a
    larger pool of potential corpses.
    
    As firearms improved, the improvements were put into reliability and
    ease of use - until rifling developed into a practical mass-production
    technique, military use retained smoothbores.  A Third Model Brown Bess
    musket wasn't significantly more effective at actual killing than a
    1620 matchlock.
    
    The tactics were to point all your muskets in the general direction of
    the wall of flesh that represented the enemy and bang away.  Any
    individual bullet was highly unlikely to hit the man it might be aimed
    at, but there was a fair probablility that it would hit somebody.
    
    -dick

    reply .priors
    
    La plus ca change, la plus la meme chose. Weren't the island attacks
    used in the Pacific Theatre of WW-2 a variant of the frontal assault.
    
    Or how about the beach assaults at Normandy.?
    
    Is there a topic available in this conference on the way the WBTS
    affected later wars?
    

    Re: .51
    
    Yes.  The WWI island assaults were frontals, preceded and supported by
    massive artillery barrage and aerial strafing/bombing.  I believe the
    frontal tactics were used because the primary first-wave assaulting
    force was the Marines, and that was the only way they knew how to
    fight.  (Read "the MACHO way to fight.")  The new USMC tactics field
    manual that came out in 1988 stresses misdirection and confusion of the
    enemy, and the end-run assault that was developed by applying this book
    probably saved thousands of US lives in Iraq.  The colonel who was
    responsible for the book was recently passed over for promotion to
    general, which means mandatory retirement.  It is said he was not well
    liked by his superiors because he wouldn't play their political games,
    but I don't know that as fact.
    
    Back to the WBTS.
    
    -dick

re .51

Frontal assault was not created by the ACW.  It is as old as war itself.  It's
problems were well-known by then, as well as its value.

In WWII, beach assault posed a problem with few alternatives:

	The assaulting side needed to be able to place troops ashore.

	This required a reasoanbly protected bay or harbor or the landing craft
		would not be able to reach the shore.

	Rapid unloading (like in the face of enemy fire) required calm seas and
		a flat beach to unload onto. Landing craft needed to be able to
		come in close to shore and needed to be able to move back off 
		the beach.

These facts (or technological limitations) required that landings take place in
a limited number of places.  So, the enemy could easily enough guess where 
landings could and could not take place.  That forced beach assaults to be 
frontal attacks.

  - Not becuase Marines are too macho to use smarts.
  - Not becuase the generals couldn't bother to think of something else.

Actually, Normandy WAS a flank attack.  The Allied Command went to great 
(successful) effort to convince the Germans that the assault into France would 
be at Calais, where the English Channel was narrowest.  For at least 3 days,
Hitler refused to commit his reserves to Normandy becuase he was sure that
it was a diversion, and nowhere as large as his reports said it was.



In the ACW, there were a variety of conditions that forced field commanders to
use frontal assaults.  These included:

	Restricted areas for maneuver 
		(geographic or organizational boundaries)
	Command/Control problems 
		(manuevering units easily became disordered and confused)
	Delivery of a charge assault was the best available force multiplier

My apologies for the impromptu military science lecture.


							-**Ted**-

    RE .52, .53:
    
    .53's analysis of the problems of amphibious invasion is a good one. 
    Not to get _too_ far from the ACW, but another major factor in the
    Pacific in WWII was the size of the target - islands (atolls, actually)
    like Tarawa simply were too small to allow maneuver, and the Japanese
    had dug in enough to make _everything_ a frontal assault.  Where there
    was a choice, the US tended to land where there were few Japanese
    troops.
    
    MikeR
    

    
    Yes, they had a tool called a worm which was used to remove
    balls from the barrels. A worm is a small metal piece that
    was twisted over on itself, leaving two small pointed edges
    exposed.  The worm was threaded so it would screw onto the
    end of the ramrod. The worm would be inserted into the barrel
    and by turning the ramrod the sharp points of the worm would
    grip the soft lead minnie ball and then it could be twisted
    back out to remove it. It wasn't used only when the powder
    got wet - sometimes during or after a skirmish the bore
    would be so fouled from all the firings the ball would get
    'stuck' and it was safer to remove it than to shoot it.
    
    Tom
    

    To picture what a worm looks like, think of two corkscrews exactly
    meshed together.  The .58-cal worm is slightly less than the bore
    diameter and about 1 inch long.
    
    Any serious black powder shooter has several worms - they break
    occasionally.
    
    -dick

    If you study the wars of Napoleon, you can understand this better.

    Compare the French and British troops in the Peninsula Campaign (1808-1814):

	The French troops were conscripts with little training and few could
	hit the proverbial barn-door. The best shots were extracted into the 
	fusilier companies used as scirmishers. 

	The British troops were a professional army, with excellent training
	and severe discipline. The troops were all taught to fire the rifled 
	musket.

    The difference in the tactics was marked. The French fought in tightly 
    packed "columns" where the inexperienced troops were surrounded by 
    veterns, raising the morale of the raw recruits and minimising the 
    risk of soldiers breaking rank.

    The British fought in more open lines where the maximum fire power 
    could be brought to bear on the advancing soldiers. 


    In the ACW, the troops were (initially, at least) volunteers, but they
    enlisted for 90-days, so their training was minimal. Frontal assaults
    may be costly, but they do not require much training - only courage.

    The discipline of the early combatants was terrible - many of the 90-day
    men insisted on leaving when their 90 days were up; they elected their
    own officers in many cases.

    RE .58:
    
    Are you saying that the 90-day regiments wanted to go home when their
    enlistment was up because they lacked discipline?
    
    Actually, except for the _very_ few Union regiments from the regular
    army, most ACW regiments elected their initial officers at some level,
    even if the state governor appointed the colonel.  This did not
    automatically produce poor discipline.  (One Confederate who was
    elected colonel of his regiment in the big reshuffle in 1862 was a
    private named Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose outfit was hardly
    "undisciplined".)  Many volunteer officers grew into their jobs, and
    many did not.
    
    Some of the 90-day regiments had discipline problems (as did some of
    the three-year regiments, and some veteran regiments later on), but
    many simply suffered from a lack of training.  Where officers with some
    experience were found, the units did pretty well.
    
    One misconception on training needs to be cleared up.  At the time of
    the ACW, a regiment required a certain amount of training to be able to
    _move_; the evolutions needed to get from a column into a line of
    battle were not learned overnight.  _Any_ assault, frontal or
    otherwise, required essentially the same level of skill for the
    soldiers; the column formation for attack was not still an accepted
    tactic in 1860.  The green troops on both sides at Bull Run and Shiloh
    fought well; what they could _not_ do well was retreat under fire -
    something that took not only a lot of training, but also experience. 
    The Union forces at Bull Run ran into trouble when they tried to
    retreat under pressure, broke, and ran.
    
    The period of drill and training that followed Bull Run was needed so
    that troops could maneuver as well on the battlefield, in difficult
    terrain, under fire, as they did on the parade ground.
    
    MikeR