Discipline in American Civil War Armies

[Razgovory]

The rifling makes the bullet spin Raz, that means that it maintains a stable trajectory as it travels through the air and cuts down on wind resistance, so it flies much farther even though it was propelled with a similar amount of power.

Okay, why is the muzzle velocity the same?  I was under the impression that the range of a bullet is dictated by speed and gravity.

[dps]

Wad up a piece of paper, and throw it as hard as you can.  Then throw an otherwise identical piece of paper as hard as you can.  Your arm speed didn't change, but the wadded up paper goes further.

[The Brain]

Wad up?

[grumbler]

There's a web site here: http://whitemuzzleloading.com/long-range-muzzleloading/  that answers a lot of the questions about the advantages of rifled muskets and minie balls versus other types of muzzleloaders.

Look at the bullet energy of the round ball from a Kentucky Rifle:


Compared that to the Minie ball:


The Minie has 900 ft-lb of energy at 200 yards, the round ball 900 at 30 yards, even when both started near 1300.  Plus, the Minie is being driven by 80 grams of powder, the round ball by 125 grams (so much less kick, ergo the ability to fire more rounds before shooter exhaustion).

Note that a lot of the comparisons this author makes is between the Minie and a .69 round ball fired using 200 grams of powder, which isn't a practical military weapon, just the best that you could do with round balls.

[Berkut]

Jefferson Davis's leadership of the South precluded grand strategy. The man was Lincoln's inferior in every subject possible except direct military experience. And, arguably, that was to Davis's detriment and Lincoln's favor considering the shape of the war.

Lincoln had, IMO, just about the perfect combination of military experience and humility needed for someone in his position.

IE, no military experience at all. This served him well, since it meant:

1. He left military matters to the pros, and
2. He had no bad assumptions he needed to unlearn, but without any actual opportunity to unlearn them because, you know, he was kind of busy being President instead of going through the "Modern Lessons in Applied Military Theory (Why Everything You Think You Know About Tactics is Mostly Wrong)" classroom the military commanders were going through.

Combine that with a lot of humility, and he spent the first year or so pretty much letting his commanders do their thing, while he watched and learned. By the time he realized "Hey, these assholes don't actually know THAT much more than I do!" was right around the time he started exerting more direct control when needed. He sure as hell never showed up on any battlefields like fucking Davis.

Davis military experience was, IMO, a net negative for the South. They would have been MUCH better off if he had no idea about how the military worked at all. He knew just enough to think he knew enough to meddle.

[Berkut]

And why would we assume that nobody aims?

Of course they aim - they aren't "aiming" in the sense of "I am going to shoot that guy right there" but they are certainly aiming in the sense that "I have been trained to fire at knee height at the center of that mass of marching men".

With a musket, at say 200 yards, the odds of the shot hitting anything are incredibly low. The round itself at 200 yards is not going to be anywhere near where you are pointing your musket, and will likely have plowed into the ground or sailed over the head of the targets.

A rifled minie ball, assuming you are reasonably trained, is rather likely to be placed into the aimed area of where the rifle is actually pointed. It might not hit something, but it has a reasonable chance to do so, and is likely to be in the vertical band of the target.

Jesus, there is a reason Civil War battles were so damn deadly, and that reason was the rifled musket.

Hell, even if we are talking about more "medium" range firefights, where both sides are basically lined up at 100-200 yards blazing away at one another, where the battle lines are quickly obscured by smoke, the rifled musket is STILL much more deadly, because even if you cannot specifically see your target, you are still "aiming" at where the enemy lines are expected to be, and a weapon that actually delivers the round where the barrel is pointed is clearly more likely to actually hit something than a weapon that is going to deliver the round a few feet higher or lower than where you point it.

You don't have to be a sharpshooter to benefit from a weapon that delivers the round where you point it, rather than one that does not.

[PDH]

Goddamn Civil War hijacks of Civil War threads.

[Valmy]

Also, while pacifying the vast interior of the southern states was indeed a daunting task, I don't think that occupying Richmond would seem as challenging.

Well the fact that taking Richmond was in fact quite difficult reflects one of the other big strengths of the south: military technology and tactics of the time greatly favored the defense over the offense.

[mongers]

Goddamn Civil War hijacks of Civil War threads.

I got the impression that parliamentary forces were relatively undisciplined until Cromwell professionalised his NMA and that influence spread. 

[Valmy]

But what about the cavalier cavalry just running off and leaving their infantry unsupported? Clearly discipline problems were an issue with both sides.

[The Minsky Moment]

When discussing leadership, keep in mind that the US Army was tiny during peacetime--this didn't really change until after WWII.  I believe I've read that before the Civil War, the Army only had about 16,000 men. 

Also promotions were mainly based on seniority.  To rise in rank you had to wait for the death or retirement of the person above you, hope for luck and make sure you hadn't made too many enemies.  That's why so many of the top ACW era generals with prior service records had retired from the Army as of 1860.  Career prospects were awful for most people with energy or ambition.

[The Minsky Moment]

Well the fact that taking Richmond was in fact quite difficult reflects one of the other big strengths of the south: military technology and tactics of the time greatly favored the defense over the offense.

More reason for the South to think they should be able to win.
What the Southern leaders underestimated is the level of commitment, sacrifice and willingness to accept pain the North was prepared to bring to win the conflict, as well as the impact of a fully-mobilized industrial economy on the ability to wage war, something that never had been seen before.

[viper37]

And why would we assume that nobody aims?

Of course they aim - they aren't "aiming" in the sense of "I am going to shoot that guy right there" but they are certainly aiming in the sense that "I have been trained to fire at knee height at the center of that mass of marching men".

With a musket, at say 200 yards, the odds of the shot hitting anything are incredibly low. The round itself at 200 yards is not going to be anywhere near where you are pointing your musket, and will likely have plowed into the ground or sailed over the head of the targets.

A rifled minie ball, assuming you are reasonably trained, is rather likely to be placed into the aimed area of where the rifle is actually pointed. It might not hit something, but it has a reasonable chance to do so, and is likely to be in the vertical band of the target.

Jesus, there is a reason Civil War battles were so damn deadly, and that reason was the rifled musket.

Hell, even if we are talking about more "medium" range firefights, where both sides are basically lined up at 100-200 yards blazing away at one another, where the battle lines are quickly obscured by smoke, the rifled musket is STILL much more deadly, because even if you cannot specifically see your target, you are still "aiming" at where the enemy lines are expected to be, and a weapon that actually delivers the round where the barrel is pointed is clearly more likely to actually hit something than a weapon that is going to deliver the round a few feet higher or lower than where you point it.

You don't have to be a sharpshooter to benefit from a weapon that delivers the round where you point it, rather than one that does not.

exactly on point.  Soldiers did aim in the 17th-18th century with their muskets, they just didn't take their time to aim the Hawkeye way.  The idea was to shoot a mass volley of projectiles.  The goal was not to kill as many ennemies as possible, but to injure them, demoralize them, and finish them off with a charge, in the sense that their line would break and the army would rout.  That bayonet charge didn't aim to slaughter the ennemy, just to force them out of the field.  And that worked because after 6-7-8 volleys, the ennemy's ranks where thinned due to casualties, wounded, and demoralized soldiers.  The Prussian army of Frederick the Great could not only fire faster than others (4-5 volleys a minute, I think, compared to 2-3 for the French), they could withstand ennemy fire with more discipline before breaking.

(not relevant to ACW, but for musket fire: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/military-history/fire-by-volley-european-musketry-at-war/ )


As for the rifle muskets and the minie ball, from Wikipedia:

The problem of slow loading of rifles caused by barrel fouling was solved by the Minié ball, which was invented in the 1840s by French inventor Claude-Étienne Minié. Despite its name, the Minié ball was not a round ball at all - it was long and conical, with an expanding skirt at the rear of the bullet. The skirt allowed the minié ball to be smaller than the barrel's bore, so it would slip in as easily as the ball of a smoothbore. When the weapon was fired, the skirt expanded to fit tightly against the inside of the rifle barrel, with less energy wasted in blow-by around the projectile and insuring that the rifling lands and grooves would impart a stabilizing spin to the minié ball.[6]

In the 1840s and 1850s, many smoothbore muskets had their barrels replaced with similar barrels that were rifled so that they could fire the new bullet. These "rifled muskets" or "rifle muskets" were long enough to serve the function of muskets in close formations of line and square, were as quick to load as the old muskets and as easy to use with minimal training. Yet the Minié-type rifled muskets were much more accurate than smoothbore muskets. Tests of a rifled musket firing Minié ball, and a smoothbore musket firing round ball, at various ranges against a 10 by 10 inches (25 cm × 25 cm) target, showed much higher accuracy for the rifled musket.[7] From a smooth-bore musket, from 42% to 48% of bullets hit the target at a distance of 200 yards. At a distance of 300 yards, 18% of the bullets hit the target. For a rifle, the results were much better. From a rifle, 46% to 58% of bullets hit the target at a distance of 300 yards; 24% to 42% at 500 yards.[8] This potential accuracy, however, required skills only acquired through advanced training and practice; a rifle-musket in the hands of a raw recruit would not have performed very much better than a smoothbore. Nevertheless, the musket was still a formidable force on the battlefield. At the beginning of the American Civil War, some infantry regiments chose to keep smooth-bore muskets, preferring them because they could shoot "ball and buck"

If officers fought like it was 1776 and 1812, with newer, deadlier weapons, that would explain the high casualty rates.  I think, also, armies were less likely to rout in the ACW than other, previous, "imperial" wars.  They fought to defend their homes, their country mostly, not some arbitrary ruler in search of glory.

Btw, about bayonnets, didn't  Stonewall Jackson attack a union camp with bayonnets only to maintain the element of surprise?  Or am I imagining something... ?

[Valmy]

(4-5 volleys a minute, I think, compared to 2-3 for the French)

What? No way.

[Malthus]

Seems that the South, a much weaker power once the North mobilized its resources, had two reasonable strategies available to it:

1. Go for a knockout punch ASAP before the North could mobilize its resources for the fight; or

2. Avoid any offensive actions, fight purely defensively, and simply wear down the North's enthusiasm for the fight.

The problem with the first strategy was that the South was even less organized for war than the North (having to create some sort of unity out of a bunch of squabbling states) and offences were inevitably more costly than defensive battles; the problem with the second strategy was that it relied on the North getting tired of the war - while the North would only grow comparatively stronger than the South as time went on.

Just seems that there was nothing, aside from a change in politics in the North, that could lead to the South winning.