During the Crimea the rifle was demonstrably a powerful addition to the infantryman’s arsenal; the Enfield rifled musket was adopted by the British army in 1853. It was “the introduction of the rifled musket, the rifled and breech loading cannon and the trench system which gave added protection and the advantage to the defender while undermining the attacker especially if he was on horseback.” (Galway Community College, n.d.). Despite this the “generals and leaders on all sides fought the war as if nothing had really changed since the Napoleonic era. The equipment, uniforms and most importantly the tactics would have not looked out of place on a European battlefield of 40 years previously” (Galway Community College, n.d.).
Before 1855 the “standard U.S. Army infantry long arm was a smooth bore, .69 caliber [sic] muzzle loading musket that fired a round lead ball. The maximum accurate range of these smoothbores was about 100 yards” (Jester, 2011). Other sources rightly state a longer effective range; Askew (2010) says the smoothbore musket of the Mexican War was effective to 200 yards. In truth the effective range of firearms, particularly smoothbore, varied based on a number of factors such as the quality of the powder used, the barrel being cold or warm, the temperature, windage and weather, elevation and relative height of the firer though Willegal (1999, p22) argues that “effective musket fire was not possible at ranges above 150 yards” and that “really effective fire could probably not be delivered at ranges above 100 to 150 yards”
In 1855 the Springfield rifled musket was adopted as the standard weapon for the U.S. Army. It was not just the barrel which had changed; the technology of war had improved in other ways too. The flintlock, a firing system which was vulnerable to damp and could be “cumbersome and faulty” (Leehan, 2002, p145), had been replaced by the percussion lock. A small copper cap which “looked somewhat like a miniature top hat with explosive matter inside” (Leehan, 2002, p145) was struck with a hammer, causing a contained explosion even in the wet. This led to a far more reliable firing mechanism which was faster to load as, “in place of the flint, steel frizzen, and flashpan” was replaced by a “small metal nipple that was vented into the barrel where the powder charge was loaded” (Leehan, 2002, p145).
At the start of the war both the Union and Confederacy struggled to arm their soldiers with the rifled musket. Askew (2010) tells us that of the 135,000 longarms in the Confederate arsenal at the start of the war only around 15,000 were rifles, and that things were not far better in the Union despite the Springfield rifled musket having been adopted by the US Army 6 years earlier. With advances in industrial manufacture and with large-scale import from Europe (particularly the British .577 calibre Enfield rifled musket which could use the same ammunition as the Springfield) this was rectified on both sides by 1863, two years into the war.
Whilst the technology of war advanced the same could not be said of the tactics which were employed; “the infantry formations used…in the first three years of the American Civil War, were still based on close-order linear and columnar drills reminiscent of Waterloo” (Chandler, 2000, p175). Using tactics which had been made obsolete with the mass adoption of the rifle, accurate to far greater ranges than a smoothbore weapon, naturally led to great losses on both sides. Jester (2011) notes that “some units suffered 50 to 60% casualties in the first two or three volleys” and Chandler (2000, p175) adds that the Battle of Shiloh, in the second year of the war, “saw heavy casualties on both sides, the Union forces losing 13,000 out of almost 63,000 engaged, the Confederates suffering 10,600 casualties out of 40,000 engaged”
The rifle, then, had two important effects on the battlefields of the American Civil War; it “multiplied casualties and strengthened the tactical defensive” (McPherson, 1988, p475). It was not just the way that infantry was used that changed due to the widespread use of rifles. Artillery became less important as an offensive weapon as, at longer ranges, it was not precise enough to accurately target troops sheltered behind walls or in trenches. At closer ranges marksmen could target the artillerists and their horses, though rifled artillery (such as the 10 or 20 pound Parrott Rifle) did prove an exception as it was accurate to a much longer range (which required spotters closer to the enemy to mark the fall of shot and select targets). Cavalry tactics, too, had to change. The use of cavalry to charge formed infantry had already been shown to be ineffective, against formed infantry with rapid-loading, long-range rifles it was suicidal.
The rifle then had become a potent force multiplier for infantry, particularly for infantry who were defending. At the Battle of Gettysburg General George Pickett led some 14,000 troops in a bold frontal assault described as a “magnificent mile-wide spectacle, a picture-book view of war that participants on both sides remembered with awe until their dying moment” (McPherson, 1988, p662). Barely half of the men who left the Confederate lines returned with Pickett’s own brigade suffering two third casualties along with the loss of all senior officers: “his three brigadiers and all thirteen colonels were killed or wounded” (McPherson, 1988, p662). There had been a large and sustained artillery barrage before the charge was began but, even so, tactics had evolved beyond that because of the rifle; the charge was a risk, and echoes of the First World War (in both barrage and a catastrophic attack against a strong defensive position) can be seen.
New tactics were introduced in attack; by the close of the war many of the actions more closely resembled the bloody, muddy battles of the western front of the First World War than the open battlefields of the Peninsular Wars. Infantry were trained to fight in looser formations, something that required a far higher level of training, discipline and leadership than moving and fighting in close-order formations. This was reminiscent of the skirmishers which preceded the armies of Wellington and Napoleon, making use of ground and cover to minimise their casualties. The reliance on loose formations removed the dominance from the tactical offensive; defensive warfare was more effective overall and “it became a rule of thumb that attacking forces must have a numerical superiority of at least three to one to succeed in carrying trenches defended by alert troops” (McPherson, 1988, p476). Askew (2010) agrees with this assessment, noting that “the skirmish line was strengthened becoming the first wave of the attack while the troops behind supported the attack in waves”. At Cold Harbour in 1864 General Grant attacked a strongly defended Confederate position and, in the final assault, lost 13,000 casualties in an hour compared with 1,000 suffered by the defenders.
By the close of the war the cavalry were no longer a force being employed in the charge against infantry; the effect of accurate rifle fire on a body of horse (which needed to be knee to knee for maximum effect in a charge) was simply too devastating. Horsemen continued to be a potent and effective weapon in the arsenal of a general; they were able to move quickly, spying ground and scouting the enemy. At the Battle of Gettysberg the commander of the Confederate Cavalry was late arriving, General Lee (the commander in chief) is reported to have said "General Stuart, where have you been? I have not heard a word from you for days and you are the eyes and ears of my army" (RAAB Collection, n.d.).
More than simply acting as eyes on the battlefield cavalry were well used in raiding, sending groups of horsemen into the enemy’s rear to disrupt communications, destroy supplies and to “attack depots and, above all, railway installations” (Chandler, 2000, p182). Cavalry had a use on the conventional battlefield too; they were used as mobile shock infantry, arriving and deploying at speed to offer fire from unexpected directions. As European armies discovered during the civil war cavalry was very effective mobile infantry and the war “hastened the evolution of dismounted cavalry tactics in which the horse was mainly a means of transportation rather than a weapon in its own right” (McPherson, 1988, p475).
In the later part of the war the North was able to field effective repeating rifles such as the Henry Rifle, Sharps and Spencer carbines; these were not popular with the War Department who felt that soldiers would simply waste ammunition if issued with them (Leehan, pp147-8) but some companies of infantry did make use of them. The carbines, and a short barrelled Henry, were issued to Union cavalry regiments late in the war and they certainly had an effect, the Spencer being famously described as “that damn yankee [sic] rifle you can load on Sunday and shoot all week” (Walter, 2006, p174) by one Confederate soldier.
The impact of the rifle on the American Civil War battlefield was impressive and cannot be overlooked. The casualties suffered by America during its Civil War are greater than those in both of the World Wars, Vietnam and Korea combined (and, arguably, all wars in which Americans have fought under their own flag) (Civil War Trust, n.d.). Faust (2009) tells us that the “rate of death, its incidence in comparison with the size of the American population, was six times that of World War II” and that were the same rate of casualties as a portion of the population, about 2%, taken today that would mean 6,000,000 deaths. He further notes that “Confederate men died at a rate three times that of their Yankee counterparts; one in five white southern men of military age did not survive the Civil War”.
At the beginning of the war Wellington would have cast a practiced eye over the field and recognised the tactics and formations, if not the uniforms, being employed. At the war’s end Haig could have looked at the trench works around Richmond and felt much the same. The rifle was the reason for that change, and for the deaths of a great many men: the impact of the rifle was enormous.
Bibliography:
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