"Rifles vs Smoothbores" Topic

At the beginning of hostilities only about ten percent of the Confederate army was equipped with rifle muskets. In fact some were even equipped with the old flintlocks. As the war progressed they purchased and captured enough to equip all men with rifles, more or less. I know that buck and ball could be very effective at close range, but the thought occurred that instead of marching to about fifty yards of the enemy and trading vollies, the Federal army could have stood at about three hundred yards distance and poured fire into the rebel lines with the expectation that they would have a distinct advantage to hit. Was this tactic ever tried? Would there actually have been any advantage, or is this a false premise? Do the clouds of gun smoke make it a moot point?

It seems to me that the US army had at that time a long and celebrated history of using rifles to advantage in both wars against the British. Now that, thanks to secretary of war Jefferson Davis, every soldier was furnished with rifles did they not take advantage of the increased accuracy?

At the start of the war the Federal side was 16.000 troops total scattered about the frontier. So equipping them meant a lot of smoothbores were used as well.

Finding 300 yards of space during the Civil War wasn't easy. The predilection to fight in dense terrain horrified and perhaps amused the European observers. Also, both armies were green so regiments hitting anything at that range was more luck than skill until the unit developed some experience.

By the time it would have made a difference everyone had rifles.

Rifles have the distinct disadvantage that they are much slower to load than smoothbores so it ends up being a tradeoff. The argument has been forwarded many years ago that rifles didn't make any difference in the war. I argue that tactics did change. They made it possible for infantry to stand off from artillery and have an effect outside of cannister range.

A worthy discussion to have I think.

Ah, but the then modern minie ball rifle musket could be loaded and fired just as fast as the older smoothbores.

Some Northern regiments were still using smoothbores at Gettysburg.

Many union troops preferred the smoothbore because the buck and ball round was just so nasty. Really, the big change was the mass usage of repeaters in 1864-65. The rebels just couldn't match the new technology.

It comes down to taking the time, effort, and powder expenditure to train the infantrymen to properly use their rifles and sights. The fact is that live firing was wan't conducted long enough in training to maximize the rifle's capabilities. Essentially the majority of the actions were fought within 150 yards (or less) between lines.

I've seen many a gamer (including moi) when they learned their rifle armed unit was facing a smoothbore unit decide to park the rifle unit outside the smoothbore unit's effective range and bang away at them. Needless to say this wouldn't happen in reality because you didn't know what the other fellow was armed with and even when they were firing at you, you couldn't be sure.

As far as I can tell, the rifles wound up being used as slightly more accurate smoothbores through most of the war. The main thing to remember is that you can have the most accurate and deadly weapon in the world and it isn't worth a hill of beans unless the person using it is sufficiently trained to use that deadliness.

There are stories of units (1st VA at Cedar Mountain I believe) that missed a standing (prepared) volley at 100 yards or less (and routed without a shot at them).

The myth of the American "rifleman" lives on.

Firefights tended to be close, brutal and deadly.

Dan

There were some CS units in the east (but not many) still armed with muskets by war's end. The only federal units still armed with muskets were a few Veteran Reserve Corps battalions, and many of the local state units not called up.

When the Overland Campaign began in the spring of 1864, EVERY regiment in the AoP, as well as the Army of the James was armed with a rifle-musket. I can't speak to the western federal units, but in the east, by spring of 1864, every regiment taking the field had a rifle-musket.

The Austrians also re-equipped with rifles in 1859 and a fat lot of good it did them as the men in the line battalions weren't trained how to use the sights. Just level and fire, like they did with smoothbores.

You have to feel for the AoP. They finally get rid of smoothbores and then end up getting continually thrown at prepared positions!

Another example of terrain and tactics making the rifle armed shootout a matter of less importance.

We ran a First Bull Run Campaign, including running the Henry House Hill fight three times, a couple of years ago. With wily gamers who were aware of the possibility of 'stand-off' we were also worried that rifle-armed units would be marched up to just outside of smoothbore range and blaze away. We went through the OR Volume that included First Bull Run from start to finish, as well as crawling over many of the books specifically on First Bull Run, and found no reference to this as an issue at all. We therefore solved the problem by giving both rifles and smoothbores the same range, but allowing a small advantage to rifle armed troops first volley, on the basis that they had a more accurate weapon for the first volley, before everyone was enveloped in clouds of powder smoke. It required a separate first volley marker, though you could do it by book-keeping if your gamers are all upright pillars of rectitude.

gamertom pretty well nails it. The advantage and accuracy of the rifle-musket has been greatly exaggerated in a lot of popular history. In the hands of a trained marksman a RM could, indeed, hit a man at 400 yards or even farther. But under real battlefield conditions in the hands of the relatively untrained (in marksmanship) troops of the ACW the RM had little real advantage in effective range over smoothbores.

As noted, a lot of troops on both sides were still carrying smoothbores well into 1863 and I've never read a single account of such troops bemoaning the fact that the enemy could outrange them.

Most, if not all of the Army of the Cumberland had rifles at Chickamauga. I can't think of a single regiment offhand that had smoothbores, but I don't have my ordnance report with me either. As for the Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Ohio at the start of the Atlanta Campaign, I can't say.

Strangely, four out of the 5 regiments of the Irish Brigade carried smoothbores until the fall of 1864. The exception being the 28th Massachusetts. It was thought that a weapon that forced you to get in close was suitable for the Irish temperament!

But as pointed out above, the premium was placed on firing fast, not accurately.

A great book on this subject is The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth by Earl Hess.

Hess' book notes that rifled muskets were preferred for skirmishers, so the slight increase in the effective range of the weapon in most hands was noted. But when in line – as most troops were during the war – and without specialized training in range estimation and using sights, the difference was small.

My inclination for gaming is to give the same range for both sides (to stop gamers from 'parking' just beyond range) and give the better weapon a slight edge on defense.

Specialized units like Berdan's, or Hood's snipers, or the Rifle Brigade could exploit the full range of rifles. But not the ordinary line soldier.

"Hess presents a completely new assessment of the rifle musket, contending that its impact was much more limited than previously supposed and was confined primarily to marginal operations such as skirmishing and sniping. He argues further that its potential to alter battle line operations was virtually nullified by inadequate training, soldiers' preference for short-range firing, and the difficulty of seeing the enemy at a distance. He notes that bullets fired from the new musket followed a parabolic trajectory unlike those fired from smoothbores; at mid-range, those rifle balls flew well above the enemy, creating two killing zones between which troops could operate untouched. He also presents the most complete discussion to date of the development of skirmishing and sniping in the Civil War."

I look forward to reading Hess's book. Below is an oldie but a goodie. Coggins illustrates the danger space principle very well in this book. In fact it's filled with wonderful drawings by this artist.

Coggins is a "must."

Many Union regiments started out with old flintlocks that had been converted to percussion (but still smoothbores). When Grant captured Vicksburg he let his regiments replace their arms with captured Confederate ones (mostly Enfields) if they wanted to, and many did.

Strangely, four out of the 5 regiments of the Irish Brigade carried smoothbores until the fall of 1864. The exception being the 28th Massachusetts. It was thought that a weapon that forced you to get in close was suitable for the Irish temperament!

This was largely due to Meagher's eccentricity and the New York Regiments forming 3/4 (or 3/5) of the Brigade.

The 28th were delighted when the rest got rifles in the 3rd Quarter of '64, as up until then they often got to pull skirmish duty for the Brigade due to having Enfields!

I wonder if the Fenians had rifles or smoothbores when they invaded Canada after the war?

Really, the big change was the mass usage of repeaters in 1864-65. The rebels just couldn't match the new technology.

Mass Usage of Repeaters?? Huh? Not regular infantry units in any great numbers. Wilders mounted infantry, sure, but that was an exception.

Kim

I wouldn't say mass usage of repeaters, but there certainly were a marked increase in infantry regiments using them during the last year of the war. In addition to the cavalry who were issued many of there, there were quite a few regular line infantry that bought or had them. The 7th Illinois, the 66th and 64th Illinois (I think). There were a few regiments in the Army of the James that had repeaters. Sometimes there were only a few companies instead of whole units, but still, it was an increase in the use of repeaters.

There's a truck load of detail on the use of Henrys at this site:

link

link

"Illinois troops accounted for more purchases of Henry Repeating rifles than any of the other state. Other Illinois infantry regiment that purchased the Henry Repeating rifle includes the following: 7th, 11th, 16th, 23rd, 39th, 51st, 64, 66th, 68th, 73rd, 80th, 85th, 86th, 96th, 100th, 105th, and the 115th."

July 22 1864, 66th Illinois, near Atlanta
"Not a man faltered and when the order was given to open on them we started our sixteen shooters to work. The first column in front of us nearly all fell with the first two or three volleys but they stood their ground well. They were bound to get our trains but we had something to say about that. We will fight for our supplies if nothing else but as luck would have it the Rebs fell back just as we had got out of ammunition. I stood and fired ninety rounds without stopping. My gun barrel was so hot that I could not touch it. Spit on it and it would siz. There was seven hundred rebels buried in front of our regiment and the ground was covered with wounded."

A paper on the subject:

PDF link

An interesting twist is the "danger zone" concept and the need to adjust rifled bore sights (i.e., aim) to compensate for it as the enemy advances.

All other things being equal (which they never are), the bottom line – "The smoothbore with only ball is obviously worse than the rifle musket, while the smoothbore with buck and ball is better than the rifle musket at 100 yards and is better than the smoothbore with ball alone at 200 yards. Beyond 200 yards one should definitely use the rifle musket."

Given the training, or lack thereof, of civil war troops and the proximity of combatants in most battles, the buck and ball smoothbore likely was the most deadly.

By war's end at least partially Henry armed units:

7th Illinois Inf.
11th Illinois Inf.
16th Illinois Inf.
23rd Illinois Inf.
39th Illinois Inf.
51st Illinois Inf.
64th Illinois Inf.
66th Illinois Inf.
68th Illinois Inf.
73rd Illinois Inf.
80th Illinois Inf.
85th Illinois Inf.
86th Illinois Inf.
96th Illinois Inf.
100th Illinois Inf.
105th Illinois Inf.
115th Illinois Inf.
58th Indiana Inf.
59th Indiana Inf.
93rd Indiana Inf.
97th Indiana Inf.
100th Indiana Inf.
1st D. C. Cav.
12th KY Cav.
Col. Netter's Cav.
1st Maine Cav.
5th N.Y. Cav.
9th N.Y. Cav.
29th N.Y. Cav.
2nd WI Inf.
3rd WI Cav.
66th WI Inf.
1st Missouri Engineers
4th MO Cav.
25th MO Cav.
47th Missouri Cav.
3rd Reg. U.S.V.
7th WV Inf.
14th WV Inf.
10th Michigan Cav. Company B
31st PA Inf.
Corydon Home Guard
37th KY Inf.
46th Ohio Inf.
57th Indiana Inf.
Capron's 14th Illinois Cav.
81st Ohio Inf.?
20th Connecticut Infantry
9th Kentucky Cavalry
124th Indiana Infantry
65th Indiana Infantry
1st Indiana Infantry
5th Kentucky Infantry USV
40th Indiana Infantry
10th West Virginia Infantry
11th Kentucky Cavalry
13th Michigan Infantry
97th Illinois Infantry
36th Illinois Infantry
10th Illinois Infantry
40th Ohio Infantry
4th Ohio Infantry
1st Michigan Infantry
6th West Virginia Cavalry
7th Rhode Island Infantry
10th Rhode Island Infantry
10th West Virginia Infantry
66th Ohio

Rebel Henry's:

1st Arkansas Cavalry
Jefferson Davis' Bodyguards
7th Virginia Cavalry
11th Virginia Cavalry
12th Virginia Cavalry
35th Virginia Cavalry
21st Virginia Cavalry
Laurel Brigade
8th Texas Cavalry
5th Texas Cavalry
29th Texas Cavalry
10th Kentucky Partisan Rangers
Jesse McNeill's Rangers
Camp Ferguson's Guerillas
General S.G. French
38th Virginia Infantry

Where would all those Confederate units get Henrys?

I know that buck and ball could be very effective at close range, but the thought occurred that instead of marching to about fifty yards of the enemy and trading vollies, the Federal army could have stood at about three hundred yards distance and poured fire into the rebel lines with the expectation that they would have a distinct advantage to hit.

Panzerfaust,

I think you point out one of the areas where wargaming really differs from the war. In a war-game, using just about any rules it is pretty practical to do this exact thing. In fact, I've seen it done during American Revolutionary War & American Civil War games with various rules where a unit with a longer range weapon fires out of range from its target, falls back if the target advances and continues this fire & retreat delaying action indefinitely.

Historically, this was not a practical tactic for several reasons:

1) Rarely if ever did a regimental commander know what the opposing unit was armed with.

2) Firing at 300 yards or more wasn't practical in itself a lot of the time because what we consider open ground wasn't very flat, therefore the target, at 300 yards could likely be obscured.

3) Troops don't like standing there and getting shot at, so the target will either run or close.

4) Advance to 300 yards range, fire and retire is a very difficult thing for a unit to do and coordinate so trying to keep the range open would be far harder than we experience.

I do concur about the point made of the rifle-musket vs artillery, big change that was.

Cheers,

The Bandit

"Where would all those Confederate units get Henrys?"

And just as important where would they get ammo for them? The South didn't have the manufacturing capabilities to produce the cartridges.

A few points.
The Second Wisconsin used smoothbores at Bull's Run. They were well aware that some of the Confederate units had rifled muskets because they were losing men while well out of range of the enemy. William Strong picked up an Enfield and dropped a standard bearer at very long range.
They were very happy to receive Austrian rifled muskets after the battle even though they were listed and 2nd grade weapons by the Ordnance Department. They used them to deadly effect.
Although it is sometimes hard to get documentation, it appears that some Confederate units at Gettysburg were armed with everything from shotguns and smoothbores to rifled muskets. Assume one of these units had 25% rifled muskets in the hands of their best marksmen and 75% smoothbore in the hand of the rank and file, wouldn't you get the long range and buck and ball bonus?

With the heavy, low velocity minie ball, it could be difficult to get the ranges right. Several authors, including those above and Nosworthy, have noted that the arc on a shot over 250 yards had to have a high arc which not only allowed an area under the arc of relative safety, but the killing zone where the bullet dropped would be short.

The whole rationale for the Austrian column attack tactics of the 1866 war revolved around this. They noted that in the 1859 war, the French would advance so fast that not only was it difficult to range the rifle, but even when they did, the volleys would pass over the top of fast moving French columns. So they decided that they would do the same…

Civil War military men had mixed opinions about the superiority of rifled and smoothbore buck & ball. No reason we shouldn't too…

Once read, don't remember where, that after taking Winchester from Milroy, Ewell's corps was entirely armed with Enfields and Springfields at Gettysburg. Don't know about Longstreet's and Hill's corps.

An interesting anecdote – I'm reading Cozzens' "Shendandoah 1862" right now, and in one of Jackson's first actions in the valley, an attempt to destroy a canal dam, the Union defenders were armed with old smoothbores and could not effectively fire across the canal – they had to send away for the company of the their regiment armed with rifles to counter the Confederate rifles.

Another thought not generally taken into account was that a unit, even when said was armed with so and so weapon may not be completely armed with that one weapon. We might only be talking the majority. Say 60% rifles and 40% smoothbores to even different calibers. It seems some of the disapproval of foreign bought guns was the odd ball lack of consistent caliber in say non factory produced Lorenz rifles. A smoothbore that worked might be preferable to a rifle with too much windage or too little windage for your issue ammo. Likewise, the cone and lock can have an effect. Get a poorer quality or designed cone and you might have more misfires. In reenacting I have come across the this problem. The design of the 42 smoothbore firing mechanism is superior to the 61 rifle musket in reliability. Basically, the clean out screw/ cone design causes more fouling.

"Where would all those Confederate units get Henrys?"

And just as important where would they get ammo for them? The South didn't have the manufacturing capabilities to produce the cartridges."

It seems the Henry company was double dealing a bit. For the right price a confederate could get the gun private purchase (most union guns were also private purchase). However, the ammo shortage meant the rebels couldn't use their guns often.

EJ Nashill:

Regarding the various differences in windage, there is an interesting letter from an Ordnance officer to a Captain in the 11th US Infantry that is quoted in "Ready…Aim…Fire"

The Captain had returned a box of ammunition marked .58 caliber because it was actually .57 caliber. The Ordnance officer explains that no .58 caliber ammunition is produced. rather, .57 is produced so as to service both the American rifle-muskets, and the English .577 weapons. He also writes that the same is true for other caliber ammunition produced at US Arsenals, and I suspect the same would have certainly translated to CS Laboratories.

This is, to my mind, the source behind the old adage amongst federal troops that the Springfield was easier to load, but the Enfield more accurate. It all came down to windage. There was less windage with the .57 round when used in the .577 Enfield vice the .58 Springfield. It made the apparent rate of fouling seem diffent too, even though the same amount was being generated in each bore.

Always interesting to delve into the story behind the story.

Does .003" (three thousandths of an inch) really make that much difference?

Does .003" (three thousandths of an inch) really make that much difference?

You'd better believe it!

For a modern example, a Brit .303 actually uses a .310" diameter bullet that is UNSAFE to load into a .308 bored rifle.

As another, the .45-70 uses a bullet that's .458" in diameter. A .45 pistol uses a .452(ish)" bullet, and the .45 rifle bullets are unsafe to load into a .45 pistol, even if you're using black powder to drive the load.

You bet, Don. The nominal US .58 caliber round was actually .575 prior to the war. However, when large numbers of Enfields bored at .577 were brought into service, it was almost impossible to load and fire more than 10 rounds with US manufactured ammunition. Therefore, the arsenals went to a .570 round in order to provide for both arms with a standard round. Although the same amount of powder was being used (68 grains) the larger bore diameter of the Springfield meant that the fouling was spread over a wider area and thus more rounds could be fired between cleanings compared to the Enfield.

Also, that smaller .577 bore of the English rifle meant that less gas escaped around the ball before the skirts were forced into the rifling, and thus a tighter seal and greater energy was imparted to the round.

There's a table in the 1862 Ordnance Manual which lists these varying ball sizes, and the charges to accompany them.

FWIW, CS powder had more quality control issues than US manufactured did and thus CS cartridges, on the whole, had a larger powder charge to help compensate for the inferiority of the product. Same with percussion caps, there being a noticeable failure rate compared to US manufactured caps due to difficulties in manufacturing fulminate of mercury at high quality.

The whole issue is fascinating to research, and shows, though how difficult it was for the south to support itself without the research and manufacturing facilities that the north possessed.