Reddit Reddit reviews Battle Tactics of the Civil War (Yale Nota Bene)

We found 2 Reddit comments about Battle Tactics of the Civil War (Yale Nota Bene). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

History
Books
American History
United States History
U.S. Civil War History
Battle Tactics of the Civil War (Yale Nota Bene)
Check price on Amazon

2 Reddit comments about Battle Tactics of the Civil War (Yale Nota Bene):

u/BeondTheGrave · 37 pointsr/AskHistorians

Battle Tactics of the Civil War actually talks about this statistic a bit. The author Paddy Griffith basically agrees with you in suggesting some of the problems with his assumption (that Civil War soldiers refused to fire). If a person was killed in between volleys, or before they fired their weapons, youd see a higher number of loaded weapons on the battlefield. In addition, many of the weapons given to Union soldiers (and especially the second hand rifles procured by the Confederates) were of substandard quality. Many misfired or worked poorly in combat conditions, this led to situations where soldiers simply dropped their rifles and picked up a new one from a fallen comrade, especially if their's misfired. So, Griffith argues that many of the weapons left behind on the field wouldnt have been fired, but instead were dropped for one reason or another.

To the point of multiple loadings, again youre pretty spot on. In the chaos of battle, a soldier could make mistakes when operating their weapon. For example, if they accidently reversed the loading process, and put the ball in before the powder, the rifle would not work. But surprisingly, Griffith argues that the battle conditions would make it difficult to know if your own weapon went off. That led to situations where soldiers would have one misfire, not realize it, and continue to load their weapon. Then, either the soldier would be killed (and obviously drop their weapon), or they would realize their mistake, drop their weapon and scavenge a new one.

So you can see how a larger proportion of "defective", loaded weapons would end up on the field. Now, I personally am suspicious of Grossman's 90% statistic. It seems too large. Maybe youre right, and Pickett's charge skewed the numbers a bit, but on the face of it, I am suspicious of how he produced that statistic. But Ive also not seen his sources for that either, so its hard for me to say for sure. But it seems like a lot right?

As to his point about firing above the heads of the enemy, that was actually a major problem in the Civil War. But it was more a result of poor discipline and bad training practices. Soldiers almost never received target practices, so they really didnt have a good understanding of how to use their weapons accurately (except what they figured out in the field). Many soldiers aimed the weapons too high, and thus fired over their targets. Sergeants often recommended that soldiers actually aim at the enemies knees, because it was assumed they would still over aim, but this time hit the sweet spot. So it seems that the soldiers were more prone to over aiming, rather than intentionally missing their shots.

>What was the state of training of the respective sides, and of infantry of the era.

Infantry of the 18th and early 19th centuries focused almost exclusively on maneuver drills. Officers argued that an army that looked good on the parade ground would perform well on the battlefield. Thus, troops were regularly instructed on combat drills, transitions from line to column and back, wheeling in various combinations, passing one line through another, and other battlefield maneuvers. Most well drilled armies were actually pretty good at performing those maneuvers in battle. But this came at the expense of target practice, which is a very modern practice. For example, Griffith talks about one regiment in the AoP which was formed in 1861, but received its first regimental target practice in 1864. Another regiment which was assigned to the target training remarked how odd the practice was. Actually, Grant pushed the AoP to take some target practice right before the Overland Campaign. So, many troops would have had little or no training in how to operate their weapons in a non-combat scenario, which explains (along with misfires and crappy guns) how they could mess up reloading their weapons so often.

u/xtender5 · 1 pointr/MilitaryHistory

I enjoyed the Paddy Griffith one. Very well analyzed.

Edit: Sorry, did not have time to look up the specifics before. Here's a link.