"Napoleonic Linear Tactics and the American Civil War" Topic

"American Civil War battles were fought using the same tactics that were used during the Revolutionary War nearly a century before. The primary infantry formation was the line of battle and was used primarily in the attack. To form into the line of battle, the men stood shoulder to shoulder in two lines called ranks. The two ranks were 13" apart, or the distance from the back of the front-rank man to the chest of the rear-rank man. The front-rank man and the man standing directly behind him formed a file.

(Right) A company of infantry standing in a line of battle during the Civil War. Units such as this were rarely at full-strength, primarily due to illness. Photo courtesy National Archives

The formation relied heavily upon the bayonet. The line of battle would advance, with bayonets fixed, to about 50 – 100 yards from the enemy and would fire a volley (each man firing at the same time) into the enemy's ranks. This way, the attacker was able to compensate for the smoothbore musket's short range and poor accuracy by concentrating the maximum amount of lead into the enemy to ensure that some of the bullets would hit. Without reloading, the attackers would then rush towards the enemy's lines and fight them with the "cold steel" of the bayonet…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Sigh…

The same old nonsense of the "the commanders didn't realize that the rifle-musket was so much more deadly than the old smoothbores, so they kept the same obsolete tactics from earlier wars and this led to mass slaughter on the battlefield."

It's an easy talking point, but completely false. Civil War tactics were the way they were because they worked. The rifle-musket may have been a bit more accurate in the hands of the untrained Civil War soldiers, but it had the same slow rate of fire as the smoothbores. You still had to line up men shoulder to shoulder to get the volume of fire you needed to be effective.

Also agreeing with Scott. I was in another discussion on target practice. get a copy of: "A system of target practice for the use of troops when armed with the musket, rifle-musket, rifle or carbine", by the war dept, Washington, Government printing office, 1862. reprints are available. Through the example of the period theory behind shooting it shows why liner tactics were still needed until the wide adoption of repeating and breechloading weapons, Simply put, the slow loading, muzzleloading, and lack of windage adjustment meant guns were far more effective in tight linear mass volley formations.

The ballistic trajectory of the Minie projectile fired from the rifled musket required extensive training and fire control to be reliably effective. That also necessitated using lines of battle.

Jim

There was also the problem of controlling the movements of thousands of men.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Yet attack columns were rare during the ACW and, by 1864, troops were digging in whenever they got a chance. So the rifle had an impact on the battle field.

The greater range and accuracy of the rifle made a big difference in tactics. Gone are the deep columns and squares of the Napoleonic era. Cavalry is rarely on the battlefield. Infantry generally deploy in 2-deep lines and RUN through the beaten zone, rather than waddle at 100 yards per minute. Lines are looser and less formal.

If you her about massed cuirassiers in the ACW, let me know.

There is no doubt that by the time of the Civil War there is a greater emphasis on firepower than shock action. But columns (by company or division) are still used for maneuver, just as they were in the Napoleonic Wars. It's true they were rarely used for actual assault, although there are some exceptions. Squares were used, but rarely because cavalry was rarely seen on the battlefield in a shock role. That was partly due to the increased firepower of the infantry, but also because there was proportionately far less cavalry in Civil War armies (usually less than 10% of the total, while in Napoleonic armies it was often as high as 25%).

The two rank lines were almost always shoulder to shoulder and the troops would rarely run for any distance since their formations would quickly come apart. Double Quick time (165 paces a minute) was used when ground needed to be crossed quickly.

While skirmishers gained increased importance as the war progressed, I have examined literally thousands of after action reports in the Official Records and my own conclusion is that the formal parade ground tactics remained in use right up to the the end of the war.

Are columns "linear"?

The number of rifled long arms didn't really surpass smooth bores in either army until around 1863. Grant re armed many of his regiments with rifles captured at Vicksburg and returns for Gettysburg show a lot of smooth bores still in the ranks. By 1864, there was a change in the tactics and in the thinking of the commanders. Cold Harbor gave Grant much to think about.

I think the big change after 1863 was that the initiative had passed almost completely to the North. Lee and the other Southern commanders had (reluctantly) given up the idea that they could win the war with some grand Austerlitz-style victory. They were on the defensive now both strategically and tactically and so they began to entrench at every opportunity. Northern troops saw the value in this and began to do so as well. It quickly became standard doctrine. And the fact that both sides could keep their men supplied by rail or water meant that as long as the armies stayed connected to a railhead or a navigable river, they did not have to forage for food and could, thus, stay entrenched for long periods.

I believe I've read that by Gettysburg Lee's entire 2nd Corps was armed with rifles (Enfields/Springfields) after capturing quite a few from Milroy's division at Winchester. His other two corps probably still had a mix.