Although rifles had been used by some Revolutionary-War soldiers 74 years before, the standard infantry weapon in the American Army until 1850 was the muzzle-loading smooth bore. In 1865, the standard infantry weapon of Union forces was the repeating rifle.
(Although modern usage tends to equate musket with smooth-bore, the original meaning -- still the meaning during the Civil War -- was an arm fired from the shoulder. To escape that ambiguity, I'm avoiding the use the word in this diary for times when some of what were called "muskets" were rifled.)
While there were many technological innovations which were first used militarily during the Civil War, railroads, telegraph, ironclads, a submarine, landmines, this improvement in firearms was the technological development which had the greatest influence on the tactics, and on the carnage, of the war. If the Civil War was a 20th-century war fought with 18th-century tactics, the improvement of firepower and its overrunning the tactical imagination of the generals was the main reason.
Classical wars were decided in hand-to-hand combat; modern wars are decided by people shooting at each other from a distance. Although Roman soldiers were issued javelins and accompanied by auxiliary archers and slingers, although you can read many accounts of WWII battles concluding in hand-to-hand combat, the contrast is stark. And the change didn't occur when soldiers were first issued muskets. [A]
Military tactics up to -- and during -- the Civil War involved bringing a force significantly more than your enemy had locally into physical contact with your enemy so that he'd be overwhelmed in hand-to-hand combat. If you could come at him from two sides, so much the better -- not only were you likely to be more numerous right there, but the individual soldier couldn't face both ways. In order to achieve this, the attacker would probably have to accept being fired on during the approach, but only one volley from muzzle-loaded smoothbores would be very effective; the charge could cover the range before the smoothbores could be reloaded. The defender would want to be standing on a rise or, at least, on the same level when the charge reached him. That would make the defender, too, susceptible to firing. Both sides would take care to keep their ranks closed up so that the individual soldier wouldn't have to face several enemies.
But rifled firearms changed all that. They were effective over much greater range. [B] Muzzle loading rifles were, however, much harder to load. For a smoothbore, all you require of the bullet is that it fit tightly enough so that it doesn't slide or roll out of the barrel when the weapon is pointed down. A rifle has a spiral of grooves down the length of the barrel, and those grooves don't impart spin unless a significant amount of the lead of the bullet is in the grooves. That required squeezing the bullet as it was loaded into the muzzle. Early riflemen's equipment included not only a ramrod, but a mallet to tap against the ramrod. This slowed reloading greatly. That wasn't so great a problem for hunters; they loaded their rifles before sighting the game and would have only one shot, anyway. It was a great problem for military groups who were expected to fire in volleys. The rate of fire was slower, and if one soldier had a bit of problem, he couldn't fire the next volley. [C]
The first solution came from a French colonel named Minie'. [1 p. 32] He designed a bullet with a hollow or dimple in the base. It could fit down the barrel as easily as smooth-bore ammunition did, but the explosion of the powder would expand the lead around the dimple into the grooves. This imparted sufficient spin to the bullet. These bullets got called "minnie balls," although they were not balls and the name was misspelled and mispronounced.
The next advance was the breech loader. Although this improved the rate of fire greatly, the peacetime Army decided that the infantrymen didn't need breechloaders. [5 p. 257] (Cavalry, of course, couldn't reload muzzleloaders on horseback.) In 1861, the army was provided with muzzleloaders, many of them still smoothbores. The center for conversion from smoothbores to rifles was the army arsenal at Harpers Ferry, then in Virginia. In keeping with the standard Confederate policy, Virginia militia attacked the arsenal upon declaration of secession. They seized the machinery, which, although Virginia secession had been clearly predictable, the War Department had left there. Both sides armed, as rapidly as they could, with rifles. Soon, breech-loading rifles followed. By the end of the war, the Union was using repeating rifles.
Each step, starting with rifles with Minie' bullets, made the attackers' efforts more costly. Then, too, the defenders who had more time to fire at the attackers while under fire themselves, took to entrenchments or -- at least -- taking cover. Since the attackers' final intention was a hand-to-hand encounter where they had larger numbers, they made every effort to keep their forces tightly together, and this only made the defenders' marksmanship easier.
In the situation, it's hard to see what choice Civil War commanders had. It was better to defend, but somebody had to attack. All their history classes at West Point was the study of battles fought before rifles had changed the balance. Still, both Grant and Lee made more frontal attacks than they needed to.
Lee, at Antietam and (in Pickett's charge) at Gettysburg, ordered one more -- particularly bloody -- frontal attack when the battle had clearly been lost.
Grant won his best-remembered victories by maneuver, but during those maneuvers he spilled a lot of his troops' blood in frontal attacks that were not central to those victories. In Vicksburg, mines destroyed one major fortification after another, and Pemberton finally surrendered because of hunger. It's hard to see how the bloody frontal assaults on the fortifications helped the Union at all. The attacks on Richmond - Petersburg were while Lee's army was stretched thin. Grant is praised for seeing that even the ratio of losses that the Union suffered were hurting the Confederate army proportionately worse. What would have been the result, though, of bringing in even more forces -- something that the losses necessitated, anyway -- and extending his lines to both left and right? At some point, Lee would have to stretch his lines too thin or allow the Union to reach the Southside Railroad.
Notes and sources after the jump.
[A] Indeed, Agincourt archers could deliver a more lethal firepower than Revolutionary-War redcoats could. They were deadly at a greater range and fired more rapidly. A trained long-bow man could keep three arrows in the air, getting the second and third arrow off before the first hit the target. The musket volley was considered deadly only at a range which attackers could cover before the ranks could reload for another volley.
If that was so, why did the weapons change?
1) Archery required years of training and constant practice. Statutes were enacted in England requiring long-bow practice of all commoner males.
2) On short notice, a king could hire and train as many musketeers as he wanted and could afford. Archers would have to be mobilized by their lords, who might -- after all -- be the enemy that the king was attacking. And the lord should have been nervous about depending on his serfs to protect him; they might just rise up one day.
3) A musket becomes a pike by merely fixing a bayonet and is a heavier and more effective quarter staff without even that. An archer must sling his bow and find his spear or sword when the attackers come too close.
[B] My sources, notably [1 p. 32], state that the actual distance traveled by the rifle bullet was much greater. The physics of this perplexes me.
[C] Another problem was that rifles' advantage over smoothbores depended greatly on marksmanship. Troops armed with muskets weren't trained much in marksmanship -- they were trained to load rapidly. A volley when attackers were close would have a devastating effect, practically and psychologically. For poor marksmen, and that means most of the troops at the time smoothbores were standard, the advantage of the volley might outweigh the advantage of the greater range and accuracy of rifles. Officers who had experienced or been indoctrinated in the necessity of the volley would be likely to overestimate that advantage.
Once the transition, including transition in training, was made, the advantage of the riflemen was overwhelming. The British decided that shortly after the Revolutionary War and raised two regiments of riflemen. The Rifle Regiments continue today, although their weapons are no longer distinctive.
-----------------------------
Bibliography:
1) Weigley, Russell F.
A Great Civil War
2000
Indiana University Press
Bloomington, IN
2) Thomas, Emory M.
The Confederate Nation 1861 - 1865
1979
New American Nation Series (Edited by Henry Steele Commager & Richard B. Morris)
Harper & Row
New York
3) Current, Richard N., T. Harry Williams, & Frank Freidel
American History, A Survey Vol. 1
3rd Edition, 1971
Alfred A. Knopf
New York
4) Davis, Burke
Sherman's March
1980
Random House
New York
5) Eisenschiml, Otto
The Hidden Face of the Civil War
1961
Bobbs Merril
Indianapolis, IN
6> Historical Statistics of the United States
Colonial Times to 1950
This is a personal bibliography more than a list of references for the particular diary, but its numbers correspond to the refence numbers in the material above it.