…Delaware Volunteer Batteries.
"The majority of artillery batteries employed by Federal forces during the Civil War were volunteer formations from the states. Indeed, with the initial call for troops, there were more volunteer artillery batteries than needed. Because the states were responsible for organizing and in some cases equipping these batteries, there were many variations – organization, training, equipage, and others. Most of the "workable" variations were flushed out by the end of 1862. As I've discussed before, senior artillerists focused on organization and training as early as the summer of 1861. But the Federals were stuck with some of these variations, for better or worse.
From the administrative perspective, the naming of units is perhaps the most annoying to the researcher. Some states conformed to the same conventions as the regulars – regiments with lettered batteries. Others simply went with an ordinal number for each battery (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.). Some states, New York for instance, used both. There were separate regimental systems for "light" and "heavy" artillery. And… and… some states just seemed to adopt a "whatever" approach. Thus the volunteer batteries were often cited by different names in reports. Add to the confusion the practice of calling the battery by the commander's name (or mustering officer's name) in the field. Makes one glad the alternate designations section appears in each OR volume.
That aside, there were also interesting variations with the equipment used by these volunteer batteries. We'll see more hand-written column headers as we proceed. And those lead to some interesting research trails to say the least…!
Full article here
link
Amicalement
Armand
prepares to do some regimental-level ACW gaming.
