During the Revolutionary and Civil wars....

The rifles of the time, often known as "Kentucky" rifles, were quite long...near or beyond 5ft in length. It's not impossible to load one lying down or in the kneeling position, but it is a whole lot easier, and faster to load while in the standing position. There are several steps involved in firing a musket...powder, patch, ball, cap...each of these are normally kept in separate pouches worn around the waist or over the shoulder. It's difficult to grope around in pouches while lying down, without spilling everything...besides trying to work a ramrod, that is four feet or so in length, without getting it tangled in everything around you...including your fellow soldiers.

They did often fire kneeling, load then kneel....and when possible found shelter to hide behind.

The open field marches were a part of the tactics of the day, which isn't quite this simple, but simply put....line your men up, send them at the enemy, whoever breaks and runs first, loses the battle. Do this enough and you win the war.

Given that Kentucky did not exist at the time of the Revolution, it is an anachronism to suggest that anyone was using a "Kentucky Rifle." Rifles were rarely used--the notable exception was "Morgan's Rifles," which referred to companies of Virginia and Pennsylvania riflemen who were placed under the command of Daniel Morgan, a native of New Jersey who had moved to Virginia when he was 18. He had been sent to Boston with a company of Virginia riflemen in 1775, and later joined the expedition of Benedict Arnold which attempted (and failed) to take the city of Québec. However, he performed all of his duties well, and by 1777, commanded the combined riflemen from Virginia and Pennsylvania who were still in Continental service by that time.

Rilfes were designed to hunt game, usually deer or elk, and they weren't the type of weapon which had a lot of "stopping power." That means that they did not necessarily knock a man down, even if you hit him. They were of a small caliber, and even the large caliber musket balls did not necessarily knock a man down. For example, during the battle of "the Plains of Abraham" (named for Abraham Martin who owned the meadow in which it took place) before Québec in 1759, the English commander, General James Wolfe, decided to inspire his men by taking a musket and joining them in the ranks as they advanced on the French. He was hit by a musket ball in the wrist, which broke his arm. He handed off his musket, and continued to advance with the infantry. He was struck a second time in the upper thigh by a musket ball, but it was a "soft-tissue" wound, and he continued to advance with the troops. Finally, he was struck a third time in the chest, at which point he fell, and he eventually died from his wounds. (His troops were suitably inspired, however, they were advancing with the bayonet, and did not return fire; when within one hundred paces--a pace is roughly two feet--they lowered their muskets, fired a single volley, and ran at the French with their bayonets. The French line broke, and because the French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, was shot through the lungs before the city gates, the defense collapsed, and the city was taken the next day.)

This meant that riflemen were vulnerable on the battlefield. Disciplined troops would continue to advance even in the face of enemy fire, and hundreds of years of experience have shown that if a line of infantry can keep their cohesion and break into a quick march with bayonets fixed and leveled, their enemies will, nine times out of ten, run away. Riflemen could not fix a bayonet on their firearms, and so they commonly fired until the English sent light infantry out to attack them with the bayonet, at which point they very wisely ran away. During the Saratoga campaign, and especially during the battle of Freeman's Farm, which ended the campaign with an American victory, Benedict Arnold had assigned Continental light infantry to protect the riflemen. Daniel Morgan was therefore able to do a lot of damage to the English with the relatively accurate rifles, and then protect his riflemen with the light infantry, who used ordinary muskets with a bayonet fixed.

Which leads us to the question of muskets and accuracy. This is complex, and it will be necessary to go back hundreds of years to explain this, so i will start another post.

As TwoPacks has pointed out, it is difficult and time-consuming to load and fire a black-powder weapon, whether it is a musket or a rifle. This had a profound effect on how they were used in battle.

The first hand-held long guns were clumsy, heavy and inaccurate. The earliest versions which were widely used were either wheel-locks or matchlocks. A wheel-lock used friction to create a spark which would light the priming powder and fire the gun. The matchlock used a burning piece of slow match (roughly speaking, this was a piece of small rope impregnated with tar and black powder--they were first designed to fire cannons, and were long used for that purpose by artillery and naval gunners, even long after flint-lock firing devices were invented). The slow match would be lit, and then pushed down into the priming powder when the trigger was pulled, in order to fire the weapon. Wheel-locks and matchlocks took from one to two minutes to load and fire. They were very heavy, and usually came with a prop to hold up the end of the weapon while the slow process of firing it was carried out.



In the image above, although you cannot see it very well, the soldier is using an arquebus (you can't see if it is a wheel-lock or a matchlock), and he is leaning on the stand in which the front of the weapon was rested while the soldier aimed and fired.

Obviously, this greatly limited the rate of fire of those who used the weapon. Originally, in fact, the arquebus was known as a "wall-gun," and was simply a very small cannon which was mounted on the wall of a fortification, or on wagon--it was in the 15th century that the weapon was re-designed for use by an infantryman.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, in the petty wars which plagued northern Italy during the Renaissance, the problem which any commander always faced was how to stop the charge of mounted knights. Now, despite what you see in the movies, cavalry did not charge at a gallop--the horses were already carrying hundreds of pound of man, armor and weapons, and wouldn't have held up. But even moving at a trot (which was about as fast as they usually got when charging), they could cover a lot of ground in the time it took a crossbowman to reload, aim and fire his weapon. So a three-part system was devised, which was later used with firearms.

Originally, about one third of the infantrymen would use a pike. This is basically a modification of the spear, and was in use long before either crossbows or firearms existed. The pikes of the Renaissance ear were usually 14' to 18' feet in length, and had a spear-head, and axe-head and a hook. The use of the spear point is obvious. The axe was to crush or cut through the armor of the horse or the rider. The hook was used to pull the horseman from his mount. These men would protect the formation from cavalry. One third of the force would use the crossbow to shoot down the enemy, and about one third would use the two-handed broadsword to hack up the enemy when they were unhorsed. The Spanish infantry of the 15th and 16th century used this formation so effectively that they became famous for it, and they called their formation the tercio. As a result of the Wars of the Reformation in the 16th century, the Spanish infantry became the most feared military organization in Europe. This method is rather obvious, and was devised in Japan in the 16th century as well, during what is known as the warring states period. Oda Nobunaga used the arquebus rather than the bow (crossbows were almost never used in Japan) in a combined formation such as this, and he was able (usually) to shatter the enemy formations in battle.



A Japanese arquebusier of the Sengoku, or Warring States period.

Whether they used the crossbow or the arquebus, the commanders of the day depended on the pikeman to protect the formation from cavalry, and the broadsword was still the principle lethal weapon in use. The crossbow or the arquebus was only intended to empty saddles as the enemy got close. The long, slow and complicated process of loading an arquebus meant that it could not be relied upon to stop cavalry--or, at least, that was the thinking of the day.

In 1564, the Dutch rebelled against their Spanish masters. (I won't go into the long explanation of why Spain then "owned" what we think of as Holland, Belgium, norther France and parts of western Germany.) This was madness by the military thinking of the day, as no one had ever been known to reliably stand against the Spanish tercios and their heavy cavalry. Even if you could win a few battles, the prevailing wisdom is that you would lose the war. Charles V "lost" the Wars of the Reformation largely because it became to expensive to keep armies in the field, while his German opponents were relying upon the religious fanaticism of their people to keep putting troops in the field.

The Dutch relied upon German and English mercenaries. After their leader, William the Silent, was assassinated in 1584, that man's son Maurice of Nassau, took it upon himself to keep the rebellion alive. The Dutch were routinely defeated in just about every battle, and relied upon their excellent seamen to harass the Spanish supply lines, and when pressed by certain defeat, such as at Leyden, they would break the dikes and flood the enemy out of their camps. This was, of course, hardly a reliable solution to keep a rebellion alive against the richest, most powerful empire in the world. In 1587, Maurice was made Captain General of the Dutch forces, and the Earl of Leicester, who had commanded the forces, left for England (which was just as well, because the Armada was even then being formed to attack England).

Maurice carefully studied all the latest texts on military doctrine and method, and had great natural talent as well. At the siege of the city of Breda in 1590, he deployed his newly created Dutch army, and proceeded to use artillery to reduce the defenses in a systematic way, while keeping his Dutch troops outside the town to face the inevitable Spanish reaction. Maurice then did something unheard of--he put his arquebusiers in regiments alone, without the protection of pikemen, and he put them on high ground near the city. When the Spanish attacked, he had his men arranged in lines ten men deep, which was also against the military practice of the day. At Breda, when the Spanish came to relieve the city, Maurice's Dutch troops stopped the attack of the Spanish heavy cavalry using firearms alone. He used a method known as fire by files. This meant that the first rank fired, and then retired to the back of the formation to reload. The second line, now in the front, then fired and repeated the process. The fire was not accurate, but it was nearly continuous, and when the Spanish cavalry was decimated and ran away, the aura of invincibility of the Spanish army had been destroyed.

Now we need to jump to Sweden. Gustav Vasa had sent many of his officers to study Dutch methods under Maurice (Maurice was 22 when he destroyed the Spanish cavalry in 1590, and he had a long career ahead of him). Among those who learned the new methods was Gustav's grandson, Gustav Adolf--known to history as Gustavus Adolphus (the Latin version of his name). Gustav Adolf was not yet born when Maurice changed the course of military doctrine at Breda, but he studied Maurice's methods, and was trained by Swedish officers who had served with Maurice. There are a host of reasons why the Swedish army was to become the most advanced and effective army in Europe in the 17th century, but that is not to the point here. The French had already developed a lighter weapon than the arquebus, which became known as the musket (from a French word, but word derivation is not to the point here either). One very significant change was the introduction of the flintlock, which was a great advancement over the wheel-lock and the matchlock. The Swedes quickly adopted any new method which was being developed in the late 16th and early 17th century, and one Swedish officer developed new training methods to use the flintlock musket to greatly increase the rate of fire.

Despite Maurice's innovations, most armies in Europe in those days still formed regiments into huge blocks. A standard full-strength Imperial regiment (refers to the Holy Roman Empire) was 1500 men, it was still based on the three-part system with pikemen, swordsmen and arquebusiers, and would be formed on a front of fifty men, thirty men to a file. The prevailing wisdom was that such a formation would be safe from attack in any direction. It was, however, incredibly slow to form, and moved very slowly. It also could not cover a large front, and could not change formation quickly or easily.

Gustavus Adolphus became King of Sweden in 1611. He was still just a teenager, and had a lot to learn. He learned it by fighting the Danes in southern Sweden (the Danish then controlled the southern province of Sweden), where he lost all the battles, but succeeded in winning a settlement, in which the Danes agreed to withdraw their army if the Swedes would agree not to attack. This was in line with the policy of King Christian of Denmark, and famous drunkard and arguably the richest man in Europe in that day. Tensions from the Wars of the Reformation had never really subsided, and had been growing in the early 17th century. In 1618, the Thirty Years War began, mostly because King Christian had a vision of himself as the savior of Protestant Europe.

The fist, Danish phase of the war saw some initial successes by the Danes and the Protestant, but the Holy Roman Emperor had two aces up his sleeve--Tilly and Wallenstein, and particularly Wallenstein. Wallenstein defeated the German commander, Mansfeld, in a series of battles in the period 1625-27, and knocked the Danes out of the war in 1627. There was now no coherent force to oppose the Imperial armies (Catholic armies now ravaging Protestant Germany), but the reputation of the Swedes had risen, and Wallenstein recognized the potential threat of the Swedes. He attempted to aid the Poles who were fighting the Swedes, but failed to bring them to battle. Incredibly, the Emperor fired Wallenstein in 1630, because men jealous of the famous Czech general had convinced the Emperor that Wallenstein was going to try to take the Holy Roman Empire away from him.

Back to Gustavus Adolphus. Gustavus Adolphus initially attacked the Russians, because he believed (wrongly) that the Russians were the allies of Poland. The King of Poland was his uncle, Sigismund, who had converted to Catholicism in order to be elected King of Poland. He would normally have been the King of Sweden, too, but the Lutheran Swedes did not intend to let a Catholic rule them, so the younger brother of Sigismund, Karl, known as Charles IX, became king. When he died, his son Gustav Adolf became King.

With the Baltic coast of Russia and most of Finland in Swedish hands, Gustav turned to Poland, to fight his uncle. Gustav's grandfather and father had fought the Poles from 1600 to 1611, when Gustav came to the throne. Gustav fought the Poles inconclusively from 1620 to 1622, and an armistic was signed. Gustav used the time to equip an army with the new flintlock muskets and small, mobile field artillery, and to train them in the new methods that he and his Dutch-trained officers had devoloped. When the armistice ended in 1625, the Swedes determined to renew the conflict. Gustav then landed in Poland in 1626, and by 1629 had forced Sigismund to sign a treaty renouncing any claim to the Swedish throne. In the same period, the Swedes used the Baltic and their new navy (begun by the grandfather, Gustav Vasa) to supply the Protestant garrisons of Prussian and Pomerania, and particularly the port of Stralsund.

In 1630, Gustav landed at Stralsund, and quickly spread out to snap up all of the Imperial garrisons in Pomerania. The Electors of Brandenburg (his descendants would become the Kings of Prussia) and of Saxony couldn't make up their minds. The hated one another cordially, and were jealous of and feared Gustav. The Emperor panicked, and thought the Swedes would move directly on Vienna, so he withdrew most of his troops, and concentrated his forces in Silesia (setting up many wars to come, once again, a different story). Early in 1631, Gustav tired of the conniving of the Elector of Brandenburg, marched on Berlin, and lined his artillery up to threaten the city of Potsdam (the Elector's capital), after which the Elector decided the Swedes could pass through his territory. The Elector of Saxony went so far as to offer troops and support to the Swedes.

In 1631, the only Imperial troops which were still mobile were under the command of Tilly, and they marched toward Leipsic. Gustav arrived with his army and the Saxons, and at Breitenfeld, he collided with Tilly. The Swedes had taken the Dutch method to even greater extremes. Gustav had very few pikemen, and did not rely upon them. His regiments would be formed in two parts. Half would form a front three men deep, and the other half would form in a dense column behind them. Light artillery pieces would be placed on the flanks between the regiments, and the cavalry would be divided among the regiments to protect the flanks and to support the artillery. This method would not be used effectively again until the Wars of the French Revolution about 150 years later--military men are usually slow to learn, which accounts for the success of innovators such as Maurice and Gustav.

The Imperial cavalry was commend by the Count von Pappenheim. By this time, the Imperialists and the troops of the Catholic League had partially revised their methods, but they still relied upon huge, dense formations of pikemen, supported by small numbers of musketeers. Their cavalry was divided into two large bodies on the flanks. Pappenheim looked at the Swedes, and decided that he could break their line because their cavalry was dispersed. Ignoring Tilly, and violating his orders, he attacked the Swedish right flank. Although he was initially effective, the Swedish muskets had emptied many saddles, and the Swedish artillery had shredded his formations. When the Swedish cavalry quickly united and counterattacked, Pappenheim was not prepared to deal with it. His troops were scattered and disorganized, and the Swedes quickly routed them. The Swedish infantry which had been driven in by the Imperial cavalry quickly reformed (good discipline and superior doctrine) and punished the Imperial cavalry badly as they retreated.

Tilly, was enraged--his regiments had barely begun to move, and here the Swedes were reformed and waiting as though nothing had happened. Their gunfire was almost continuous, because their superior weapons and training allowed them to fire three to four times as fast as the Imperialists. Tilly was good, though, so once his regiments were moving, he sent them one at a time behind the line to move by his right, and then launched an attack on the Saxons, who took one good look and ran. Most of them ran all the way back to Dresden. Tilly was sure he had won now, and sent his cavalry to the far right to capture the Swedish supply train. They probably couldn't have done much good in the coming end game anyway, but it was a fatal mistake. The Swedes, because of their good discipline and their light, shallow and mobile formations, turned to their left to face the Imperialists, and were soon pouring musket fire into the Catholic ranks, which were not even close to coming to grips with the pike. The Swedes would fire by files--the front rank would fire, then the second, then the third. When these ranks were reloading, the second half of the regiments would pour through their formation, and form up one hundred paces further on, and begin to pour more fire into the Imperialist ranks. Tilly's line began to waver, and then broke completely. The Swedish cavalry, not heavily armored and mounted on small, fast horses, poured into the rear of the Imperialist formations, and there was no Imperial cavalry left to oppose them. Tilly and Pappenheim escaped, and most of the army was eventually reformed, but the Swedes were not only masters of the field, there was no coherent Imperial army left in Germany to oppose them.

This was the beginning of the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years War, and it was also the end of heavy cavalry (heavily armored mounted troops), although no one could yet see it. The former method of battle was what was known as parallel formations--both sides would line up facing one another and then have at it. This method would continue long after Gustav's death (he was killed the following year, 1632, at Lutzen, very near the battlefield of Breitenfeld, although the Swedes won that one, too). The lesson of separate operational axes would have to be "re-learned" from the French armies of the Wars of the Revolution and Napoleon, but one important lesson was learned by military men all over Europe. That was that properly handled infantry with firearms could master the battlefield.

Now we get down to the heart of your question. This is why did they form the dense lines and stand up to shoot at each other. Although TwoPacks has pointed out that it was difficult to load and fire while sitting or prone, that does not explain why lines of infantry with muskets formed as they did and fought as they did.

The basic reason is inaccuracy. The musket was not necessarily more accurate than the arquebus which it replaced, but it could be loaded and fired far more quickly. Two or three times a minute by well trained disciplined troops. But it remained largely inaccurate. Troops were not trained to aim and fire, because of the inaccuracy. Instead, they were trained to "level" the musket. Because they had low muzzle velocities, the musket balls would rise as they left the weapon, and even experienced troops tended to "throw-up" their weapons as they fired. Therefore, they were trained to level their muskets, and to actually "aim" at the ground just in front of their enemies. Because of the inaccuracy of the weapon, it was only effective if the troops were packed together closely (most doctrine had them lined up with one man for every two feet of frontage) and fired all at once. Different armies used different methods. The French tended to use "fire by files." That meant that the front rank would fire, and then retire behind the line to reload. The English used "platoon fire." The regiments were divided into platoons, numbered one, two or three. All the members of platoons numbered one would fire, and then reload. Meanwhile, all the platoons numbered two would fire. Then all the platoons numbered three would fire. Both methods, if properly executed, could produce what was known as a "rolling fire," and it could be very effective. However, because the weapon was only effective at about one hundred paces (two hundred feet), the principle weapon which was relied upon was the bayonet.

During peasant uprisings in France, the peasants of Bayonne, who commonly carried a long hunting knife, developed the habit of shoving their knives into the barrels of their muskets after they had fired, to protect them from the enemy cavalry and pikemen. Colonel Martinet, the Inspector General of the armies of Louis XIV, introduced the first bayonets about 1670. These were "plug-bayonets," meaning that they were just shoved into the barrel of the musket. Eventually, socket bayonets were invented, which fit over the barrel of the musket, and allowed the weapon to be fired while the bayonet was attached. The perfection of the socket or ring bayonet spelled the end of the pikemen. Now infantry could protect themselves from cavalry, or could attack the enemy infantry while they were reloading. It became an axiom, which usually proved true, that if your infantry could keep their morale and formation, and could run at the enemy with the bayonet, the enemy would break and run away.

So, the use of the musket was confined to one useless and one sometimes useful function. The useless function was to make a lot of noise, and encourage your infantry, while doing very little damage to the enemy, because of the range and the inaccuracy of the weapon. The useful thing which the musket could do was to put a devastating volley into the enemy line, just before you ran in to "give them the bayonet." A German scholar who analyzed the battle of Mollwitz (1741) came to the conclusion that only 1% of the musket fire found a target. His calculation was based on the records which showed that 350,000 rounds of musket shot and paper cartridges had been issued to the Austrians, and the Prussians had suffered 3,500 casualties due to firearms. His calculations were probably flawed, though, because he did not account for the 60 rounds per man which the Austrians were carrying when they entered the battle, and he took no account for artillery fire. In fact, the figure was probably less than 1%. (The Prussians won, by the way, despite initial shakiness and heavier casualties; with their discipline, they marched into the Austrian fire despite casualties, and "gave them the bayonet"--the Austrians suddenly remembered other things they wished to do elsewhere; they ran away.)

Modern scholars pretty uniformly ascribe an effective rate of one half of one percent for musket fire. As with the example i gave in the first post of James Wolfe, a man might be hit by a musket round, and continue to march forward. Also, as i have previously noted, most fire went over the heads of the enemy, which tended to encourage rather than discourage them. When they were fired upon, and very few of them were hurt, they were ready to continue the advance. Troops who had sufficient discipline to hold their fire until they were twenty paces away, and then run in with the bayonet, were always likely to be more effective--once again, few troops were willing to face an organized bayonet assault.

Because musket fire was lethal at close range, no other method was suitable. Most armies trained for a formation usually called "repel cavalry." The regiment would quickly re-form into a box-shaped formation, called a square, and the front rank would kneel, jamming the butt of the musket into the ground with the bayonet fixed. The rank behind them, also with bayonets fixed, would fire into the advancing cavalry, who were usually coming at a trot. Whatever the rider may think, most horses were unwilling to run into a hedge of bayonets, and at close range, the musket fire was devastating. The "Brown Bess" musket used by the English (and most American militia at the beginning of the Revolution), which was usually the "short pattern" or the "India pattern" musket, was .75 caliber (that's a huge lead slug). The French provided the Americans with 70,000 Charleville muskets, of .69 caliber. (The Springfield musket, which in various forms was used by the United States up until and beyond the Civil War, was based on the Charleville musket.) That weapon had true "stopping power"--even a "spent" musket ball which did not enter the body could knock a man down. That accounts for the superiority of the musket over the rifle in the era of the Revolution, the sheer weight of lead which a close-packed rank could put into the enemy lines.

As with any subject, there are many exceptions. Because the musket was seriously lethal at 50 paces (100 feet), it made for a very lethal weapon when used in a fortification. In the American redoubt on Breed's Hill, during the battle known as Bunker Hill, the defenders were assaulted three time by the fine, disciplined infantry of the British Foot and the Royal Marines, but were twice forced to retreat with very heavy casualties, because they were unable to come at the Americans with the bayonet. By the time the thrid assault went in, the Americans were out of musket balls, and were stuffing anything they could find--nails, broken glass, rocks--into their muskets, giving rise to atrocity stories among the redcoats. The old commander of the Americans before Washington arrived, Israel Putnam, is said to have commented that if you covered their legs, Americans would fight all day (meaning to put them behind a stone wall or an earthwork). By contrast, even though more than 4000 "Minute Men" harried the British marching back to Boston after Lexington and Concord, the Foot and Marines suffered only 273 casualties--those New England militiamen were equipped with the Brown Bess, but it didn't do a lot of damage at range, even with someone who was accounted a good shot.

Americans have only ever used the bayonet frequently during the American Revolution--when they used it to great effect. One particular method, which was used at Stony Point, Paulus Hoek and at redoubt number ten during the Yorktown siege, the American commanders had the men draw the charges (unload the powder and shot from the musket) and go in with the musket. The element of surprise, and the terror instilled by a man running at you with a bayonet were effective in each case. At the battle of Guildford Court House, the attack of the Continental line with the bayonet was so effective that it broke the line of the Brigade of Guards (the premiere English infantry unit), and Cornwallis turned his artillery on his own line in order to stop the Americans.

So, as you can see, the musket was not a very effective weapon--except for everything else.

At the time of the American Civil War, the most common weapon in use by the army and the various state militias was the 1855 model Springfield rifle-musket. This was a variation on the smooth bore musket which had two rifling groves cut into the barrel.

During the early history of the United States, rifles had been uncommon and very expensive. Usually, to refer to TwoPack's example of the Kentucky rifle, these were hand-made by craftsmen, about .50 caliber, and had a very long barrel, with two or three rifling groves laboriously carved into the barrel with a special frame-mounted hand tool. The earliest rifles date back to the 15th century--but they remained uncommon because they were so expensive to make, and were not easily or cheaply mass-produced for armies. The original of the "Kentucky rifle" was actually the Pennsylvania long rifle. These were made by German craftsmen, and had a very heavy cast-steel barrel, with rifling grooves cut into the barrel, and stocks made of maple or walnut. They were usually the most expensive and valuable item which a frontier family possessed.

I have already pointed out the drawback of the rifle in the time of the Revolution--the threat of the enemy's light infantry armed with the bayonet. By the time that the 1855 rifle-musket was being produced, the quality and reliability of machine tools had improved to the point that they could be used to produce such weapons relatively cheaply. A rifle-musket was simply a smooth-bore musket with the rifling groove, and otherwise was identical to the earlier model of muskets. They were, nevertheless, more effective than muskets--more accurate and having a greater lethal range. They were not true rifles, in that the relatively "flimsy" barrel would not take three or four deep rifling grooves, which was what was needed to produce a true rifle. This was overcome with the 1861 model Springfield rifle, which had a heavier barrel, and three deep rifling grooves. (The spiral groove caused the bullet to spin as it left the barrel, giving it more accuracy and a greater lethal range.)

Most troops on both sides continued to use the 1855 model rifle-musket, or copies of it. The southerners preferred the English Enfield Short rifle model 1853, a rifle-musket of .57 caliber, fired with a percussion cap, as were almost all military muskets and rifles of the day. (Percussion caps were similar to the priming cap which is today built into a bullet, but which were at that time individually loaded onto a "nipple" and used fulminate of mercury mixed with fine grain powder to ignite the cartridge through the touch hole--it was a much more reliable and "clean" method of firing the weapon.) To get one, though, was the problem--they had to be brought in through the blockade, at great risk and expense. Because of different calibers from the wide variety of weapons in use, Southern regiments could not guarantee that they could supply sufficient ammunition for a prolonged fire fight. Southern soldiers tended to pick up weapons on the battlefield, especially if they could get the cartridge box from the dead or wounded soldier from whom they got the weapon. Commanders like Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson continued to order them men to "give them the bayonet," but it was an uncommon and unpopular order. After the Revolution, Americans seem not have liked using the bayonet, and it was not common in any later wars.

The 1855 model was more accurate than older models of muskets, but not that accurate--Federal infantrymen preferred, when they could get it, to load buckshot in their rifle-muskets, because they were pretty sure they could hit someone with that. In one trial of which i have read, a Federal regiment which was about to be issued the 1863 model Springfield rifle (a "tweaked" version of the 1861 model), who were marched out, 850 men strong, and ordered to fire at a flour barrel at a distance of 150 paces (about 300 feet). The entire regiment of 850 men fired, and three musket balls hit the barrel. They were then issued their new rifles, were ordered to sight their weapons and familiarize themselves with, after which they were marched back to the flour barrel. That time, at 150 paces, no one could tell how many rounds hit the barrel, because it exploded into a cloud of flour and wood splinters.

Still, military men are slow to change, and the old methods continued to be used, even though the weapons were now much more lethal. This explains the extraordinarily high casualty rates suffered by many units in a few minutes in battle. However, during the late 18th century, due to their experience helping the Americans in their revolution, the French had developed a tactical doctrine which called for skirmishers. Often in our revolution, the few riflemen who were present with any regiment of the Continental line would spread out in front of the infantry line to harass the enemy by shooting at officers and non-commissioned officers (drummer boys, other military musicians and color guards used to suffer badly, too, because they were dressed in colorful uniforms, and were indistinguishable at range from an officer or an NCO). The new French tactical doctrines developed before their revolution called for an organized body of skirmishers to be provided from the lead battalion of each regiment. This would be comprised of the best marksmen of the regiment, and they would fan out in front of the line to a distance of up to 200 paces. They would both harass the enemy as they tried to form up and advance, and provide a warning of approaching enemy troops who might not be visible from the main line. Other European armies were slow to take the hint, and many of them did not begin to experiment with skirmishers until after the Napoleonic Wars.

But the Americans had always used the method, and when the United States Military Academy was founded, the taught French military doctrine to their cadets. By the time of the American Civil War, it was a matter of routine doctrine to send out one or more companies of skirmishers as a regiment advanced, or awaited the advance of the enemy. Using weapons such as the 1853 model Enfield rifle or the 1861 and 1863 model Springfield rifles made those skirmishers far more lethal than they previously had been. Some enterprising Federal officers took advantage of this to use skirmishers to "develop" the enemy line--which means getting single men close enough to see exactly how the enemy was posted, and to shoot as many officers and NCOs as possible. One very successful Federal commander, Francis Barlow, rose from the ranks as a private to attain command of a division by the time he was 30. Another Federal officer said of Barlow that "he raised skirmishing to a fine art." Barlow's common practice in 1864 and 1865 was to send out an entire regiment as skirmishers in front of the division, which was kept in marching columns, if it was safe to do so. If the skirmishers, accompanied by a competent field grade officer (a Major or a Lieutenant Colonel) found the enemy "thinly" posted, they would move individually to come close to the enemy, at which time they would form, fix bayonets and charge. If the resistance was deemed too great, they would remain in skirmish order, and harass the enemy as other regiments were sent out in skirmish order on their flanks, and attempted to overlap the enemy position. If this were not possible, eventually, the entire division would flow up to the firing line in skirmish order, to reduce casualties in the approach march. The method was informally used eventually in all of Hancock's Second Corps, of which Barlow's division was a part. His greatest success with the method was at the "Mule Shoe" at the battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Colonel Emory Upton is usually credited with the use of shock troops--troops who rush in in a mass without firing, the survivors overwhelming the defense and achieving a penetration. While denying nothing to Upton, the disaster of the Mule Shoe occurred when Hancock's troops broke through Anderson's line temporarily, and prevented reinforcements from reaching the salient which Upton was attacking. Generally ignored because of Upton's spectacular success, Barlow had gotten his division to within 100 yards of Anderson's line undetected by his infiltration method--when the Confederates were distracted by the attack to the north, Barlow's troops suddenly appeared before them, and with relatively low casualties, tied up troops who might have counterattacked Upton's brigade.

However, even with the improved methods and weapons of the day, military men are conservative. As late as 1914, troops still marched out in massed lines to attack machine gun positions. It was not until the Second World War that methods such as Barlow used, a sort of dispersed infiltration, became common, and that, sadly, goes for the American army, as well.

WOW! Thank you for a very thorough and very informative history of this topic.