Prologue-Tactics, Weapons, etc.

 by Jim Cameron

Army of Northern Virginia
Army of the Potomac

The two armies which marched up from Virginia, into Pennsylvania in the 
summer of 1863 were perhaps the most dangerous on the planet. Two years of 
grim war, encompassing some of the most closely fought battles in the history 
of land warfare, had left them experienced, well trained, and battle tested. 
Inept leaders had been winnowed out, the weak had died or gone home. The 
war-weariness of the later years had yet to set in. They were still in large 
part volunteer forces, the ranks not yet filled with unwilling conscripts or 
paid substitutes, and morale was generally high. Officers and men alike were 
well versed in the art of war as practiced on the mid-19th century 
battlefield.

Civil War armies of both the Union and Confederacy were organized in much the 
same way, reflecting the common military heritage of both sections. 
An army was composed of three main combat arms; infantry, artillery, and 
cavalry. It would have additional elements, including engineers, signal 
corps, and ordnance, plus the obligatory commissary and supply services, but 
the fighting power of the army was concentrated in the three main combat arms.

Of these, the infantry formed the bulk of the army. The artillery supported 
the infantry, and, to a lesser extent, cavalry, which in turn performed the 
scouting and screening functions so vital to successful operations.

The basic building-block of the army was the Regiment. An infantry regiment 
was typically composed of 10 companies, each with a paper strength of about 
100 officers and men. With staff and senior officers, a full strength 
regiment would muster just over 1000. Some variation existed in this 
structure. Regular Army regiments in the Union army had a somewhat different 
structure than Volunteer units, Cavalry regiments had a different 
organization from infantry, and there were some nonstandard units such as 
battalions here and there, but for the purpose of this seminar it is 
sufficient to know that the regiment was the basic unit of each army, and the 
one the common soldier most identified with. Ask a Civil War veteran what 
unit he had served in, and he almost certainly say "40th New York," "5th 
Texas," or whatever regiment he had been in. (By way of comparison, ask the 
same question to a World War Two veteran, and he'll probably say "29th 
Infantry Division" or "8th Air Force.") 

Regiments usually mustered into service at or near full strength, but then 
began immediately to loose men to disability, disease, desertion, and once 
they got into action, casualties. By the time of Gettysburg the typical 
regiment was down to well below half strength, anywhere from 250 to 350 men. 
In the Union army the situation was worsened by the pernicious habit of 
allowing veteran units to dwindle, with new regiments continually being 
formed rather than existing ones being kept up to strength. The Confederacy 
was better about making sure existing units received at least some 
replacements. Confederate regiments thus tended to be somewhat larger than 
Union ones, but few regiments at Gettysburg, on either side, fought at 
anything near full strength. As a rough approximation, consider an infantry 
regiment at Gettysburg as having about 350 men, maybe a bit less if Union, a 
few more if Confederate.

Regiments were grouped into brigades. In theory, a brigade had two regiments 
and consisted of 2,000 men. In practice, the reduced size of the typical 
regiment meant that several had to be put together to keep brigades at a 
reasonable size. At Gettysburg, a typical brigade would have 4 or 5 
regiments. A good rule of thumb is to figure a brigade at about 1,500 men. 
As with regiments, a Confederate brigade might tend to run somewhat larger 
than a Union one.
If the regiment was the basic organizational unit of the army, the brigade 
was in many ways the basic combat unit. Regiments would almost always go 
into action as part of a brigade formation, and commanders would look to the 
number of brigades they had available, not the number of regiments. 

Brigades were in turn organized into Divisions. Typically, a division would 
have three brigades. Some, however, only had two, while others, particularly 
on the Confederate side, might have as many as four, or even five. Here the 
disparity in unit size really tended to favor the Confederates. A large 
Confederate division might well approach the size of a small Union corps. 
Again as a rule of thumb, a typical three brigade division would have roughly 
5,000 men.

Divisions were grouped into the largest formation within an army, the Corps, 
which almost always had three. Here again, a Confederate corps tended to be 
larger than its Union counterpart.

Two or more Corps, with attached supporting elements, formed an army. 
Confederate armies tended to be named after the geographic area in which they 
operated, such as The Army of Northern Virginia. Union armies tended to be 
named after important local rivers, which is why we have the Army of the 
Potomac.

At Gettysburg, The Army of the Potomac had seven infantry corps, the Army of 
Northern Virginia, three. As an example of the disparity in formation size, 
though, the Army of the Potomac's 11th Corps had a total of only 6 infantry 
brigades in its three divisions. Rodes' division of Ewell's corps of the 
Army of Northern Virginia, which it fought on the first day of the battle, 
had five infantry brigades.

The cavalry of both sides was organized in a generally similar manner on the 
regimental, brigade and division levels. In the case of the Army of the 
Potomac at Gettysburg, the cavalry was further organized into a Corps 
structure similar to that of the seven infantry corps. While in the case of 
Stuart's command the Confederate cavalry was formed into a division, other 
Confederate cavalry brigades operated on an independent basis during the 
campaign.

While the regiment formed the basic unit of the infantry and cavalry, the 
battery was the basic organization of the artillery. Many artillery 
batteries were, in fact, part of artillery regiments, the batteries being in 
effect the regiment's companies. These regiments were, however, 
administrative units only and did not serve as field formations in the way 
infantry and cavalry regiments did. Early in the war batteries tended to be 
attached to specific infantry brigades. This made it difficult or impossible 
to concentrate the power of the artillery effectively, and by the time of 
Gettysburg both sides had adopted broadly similar structures which grouped 
individual batteries into battalions or brigades.
A typical Union battery had six guns, generally all of the same type and 
caliber. Confederate batteries tended to be smaller, often only four guns, 
which were in turn likely to be of different types.

At Gettysburg, the artillery of the Army of the Potomac employed a brigade 
structure, with each brigade having an average of five batteries. One 
brigade was assigned to each Corps. Each of these corps artillery brigades 
contained at least one Regular battery, to serve as an example to the 
Volunteer units. This was a very effective measure, and by 1863 the Union 
artillery, Regular and Volunteer batteries alike, functioned at a high degree 
of professionalism.
Five additional brigades, one composed entirely of Regular batteries, the 
other four of Volunteer organizations, formed the Artillery Reserve. These 
brigades supported the Corps batteries in the line of battle as needed.

In the Army of Northern Virginia, batteries were similarly grouped, although 
the resulting formations were designated battalions instead of brigades. 
While in the Army of the Potomac each corps had an artillery brigade 
attached, in the Army of Northern Virginia each division had an attached 
artillery battalion. And while there was no army wide artillery reserve, as 
in the Army of the Potomac, each Confederate Crops had its own reserve 
artillery of two battalions. While the Confederate artillery battalions and 
Union artillery brigades each had about the same number of batteries, the 
Union formations were more effective due to the larger number of guns per 
battery, more uniform equipment, and better quality ammunition. 

Weapons:

An understanding of the types and characteristics of the weapons used by the 
two armies at Gettysburg is essential for an understanding of why the battle 
was fought the way it was. The nature of the weaponry directly influenced 
the virtually every aspect of the fighting. It does not go to far to say 
that if one does not understand how it weapons worked, it is almost 
impossible to fully understand how the battle worked.

The weapons used at Gettysburg can be broken down into three main categories. 
Small arms, which covers all hand carried firearms, including muskets, 
rifles, cavalry carbines and handguns. Artillery, which at Gettysburg 
includes the various field pieces in use by the two sides. And lastly, edged 
weapons, in which is included both swords and bayonets.

Small Arms:
Just as the infantry was the largest component of each army, small arms 
formed the bulk of the weapons used at Gettysburg. Before getting into the 
specifics of the weapons used in the battle, it is useful to know a bit about 
the evolution of military small arms prior to 1863.
First, a few brief definitions:

Musket: A full length infantry shoulder arm. Barrel length typically about 
42 inches, with three retaining bands securing it to the stock. Smooth 
bored, caliber usually .69. Fired either a single round ball, or "buck & 
ball," which was one full-sized ball plus three buckshot pellets.

Rifle: Shorter than a musket, with a 33 inch barrel. Usually two rather 
than three barrel bands. Rifled bore. Caliber usually smaller than a 
musket, typically .54, sometimes .58.

Rifle Musket: A full length, three band infantry shoulder arm. Combines the 
length of barrel of the traditional musket with the rifled bore of a rifle. 
Barrel typically about 40 inches, caliber usually somewhat smaller than a 
smoothbore musket, .58 being typical. Modern collectors sometimes make a 
distinction between Rifle Muskets, those being arms originally made with 
rifled bores, and Rifled Muskets, those arms originally made as smoothbores 
but later rifled. I personally regard this as a somewhat artificial 
distinction, and tend to used both terms interchangeably.

Carbine: A short, usually breech loading, rifled shoulder arm designed for 
use by cavalry. Assorted calibers, .52 being about average.

Infantry Weapons:

The muskets carried by the infantry in the first half of the 19th century 
differed little from those used in the Revolutionary War. These were 
smoothbore, flintlock arms firing a cal. .69 round ball. Accuracy against 
man-sized targets was uncertain at any range, and all but nonexistent at 
anything more than about 50 yards. They were designed for use by soldiers in 
shoulder to shoulder, double rank lines of battle against a similarly 
deployed enemy. When so used, volley fire against enemy formations could be 
effective at 100 to 150 yards. The 1840's saw a change from flintlock to 
percussion cap ignition, but aside from increasing reliability somewhat this 
did not, in and of itself, increase the accuracy or effectiveness of these 
weapons.

Rifles were well known, but were considered specialists weapons. The main 
reason for this was that rifles loaded too slowly to be used by troops on the 
line of battle. A smoothbore musket used a relatively loose-fitting round 
ball, easy to ram home rapidly. A rifle ball had to be a tight fit, to take 
the grooves in the barrel. This made it much slower to load than a musket. 
As a result, use of rifles was limited to troops specially trained and 
employed as skirmishers. The slowness of loading was less of a handicap to 
them, since they could take advantage of cover and concealment and pick their 
shots. The troops on the battle line needed the rapidly loaded smoothbore to 
generate the volume of fire needed to break up enemy formations. Accuracy 
was of secondary importance to rate of fire. 

This began to change during the mid-1850's with the invention of the 
expanding bullet, better know as the "minie ball." Actually the product of 
several different inventors, the minie ball had a hollow base which expanded 
on firing. This allowed a rifled arm to be loaded with a loose fitting 
projectile, in the manner of a smoothbore, yet still achieve rifle accuracy 
as the expanding base gripped the rifling. Troops on the battle line could 
now be armed with rifled arms with long range accuracy greatly in excess of 
that possible with smoothbores. The United States adopted rifled arms for 
general issue in 1855. The US initially produced both a Rifle and Rifle 
Musket version of the Model 1855, but by the time of the Civil War it was 
realized that there was no particular advantage to making both, and the Rifle 
Musket replaced both the Rifle and the older smoothbores.

Production of the new rifled arms was initially very limited, hardly more 
than enough to arm the small Regular Army. When the Civil War broke out, the 
rapidly expanding armies on both sides quickly used up the few rifled arms 
available. Fortunately, the arsenals on both sides contained large numbers 
of the older smoothbores. These were promptly issued the newly raised 
regiments, while both sides scrambled to increase domestic production. At 
the same time, buyers were dispatched to Europe to purchase foreign weapons.

By mid-1863, domestic arms production had expanded tremendously, particularly 
in the North, and vast numbers of weapons had been imported from Europe. 
Still, while the majority of the infantry was armed with rifled arms, so 
great were the demands of war that many troops retained the older smoothbores.

The two armies at Gettysburg were very evenly matched in terms of small arms, 
particularly in the infantry.

The primary infantry weapons used at Gettysburg were the Springfield Model 
1861 rifle musket, the somewhat simplified for war production version of the 
Model 1855, and its English counterpart, the Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle 
musket. These were both single shot, muzzle loading rifled arms. Calibers 
were close enough, .58 for the Model 1861, .577 for the Enfield, that they 
could both use the same ammunition. The Springfield (so called, as many were 
made by contractors) had a 40 inch barrel, the Enfield (again so called, most 
being made by contractors, not at Enfield) was a bit shorter at 39 inches. 
There is a tendency to thing of the Springfield as the Union gun, and the 
Enfield as the Confederate one, but the North imported more Enfields than the 
South did, while the South in turn used large numbers of captured 
Springfields. Both types were in wide use by both armies at Gettysburg.

Other rifled arms were present in varying numbers. Both sides used large 
numbers of the Austrian Lorenz rifle musket. This .54 weapon has, over the 
years, come in for a good deal of criticism as being defective and poorly 
made. Some of the first ones imported, early in the war, had indeed been 
beaten up in the Austrian service, and this may have left a poor first 
impression, but by 1863 most of the ones coming in were newly made contract 
pieces. While not as smoothly finished as the Springfield, or the better 
quality Enfields (which themselves tended to vary in quality), they were 
soundly made, serviceable arms, and appear to have been well liked by the 
troops.

A number of troops carried .69 Rifled Muskets, mostly Model 1842 smoothbore 
muskets upgraded by rifling the bore and adding a rear sight. While heavier 
than the '61 Springfield or the Enfield, they were for all practical purposes 
equally effective as rifled arms. 

The effective range of these rifle muskets against an individual, man-sized 
target was about 250 yards. They were sighted for longer ranges, 500 in the 
case of the Springfield, 800 for the Enfield, and some skilled shots might 
better that figure, but troops rarely opened fire at ranges in excess of 250 
yards.

It should be noted that most of the rifled arms used at Gettysburg were the 
musket length Rifle Muskets. Very few of the shorter rifles were by this 
time in use by the Army of the Potomac. The Army of Northern Virginia 
probably had somewhat more, since they couldn't be a picky as the North about 
what they used, but there was a definite preference for the longer rifle 
musket. The reason is that rifle length arms were not well suited to use by 
troops in line of battle. The shorter, 33 inch barrel made it hard for the 
men in the rear rank to get the muzzles of their pieces out past the heads of 
the men in front. At the same time, the longer rifle musket was just as 
accurate as the rifle, and the extra length proved no practical disadvantage 
on the skirmish line. As a result, Northern infantry weapons production 
concentrated almost entirely on rifle muskets. The South did continue rifle 
production to some extent, in some cases using captured machinery and gauges.

While rifled arms were in the majority, a significant number of troops on 
both sides still carried smoothbores. In the Army of the Potomac, 10% of the 
infantry regimens at Gettysburg were armed in whole or in part with 
smoothbores. The figure for the Army of Northern Virginia is harder to 
establish, but appears to have been higher. As will be discussed later, 
while this would seem to have placed these men at an extreme disadvantage, 
this was not necessarily the case, and troops armed with smoothbores could 
and did fight very effectively even against rifle-armed opponents.

A few very infantrymen, almost all in the Army of the Potomac, carried breech 
loaders. Most of these were the Sharps Rifle, the new Model 1859, a .52 
single shot weapon. Of these, most were members of the two United States 
Sharpshooters regiments, although a few were found in other regiments. The 
Bucktails had some, as did the 1st MN. A very small number of Merrill 
rifles, also breechloaders were also used. Most infantrymen considered 
themselves fortunate to have a Springfield or Enfield. 
While the Sharps rifles present were effectively employed, particularly by 
the Sharpshooters, their overall impact on the battle was minimal.

In addition to the above, issue weapons, a very small number of privately 
owned civilian target rifles were employed by some sharpshooters. These were 
usually heavy barreled weapons, often with scopes, used for long range 
sniping. While some good shooting was doubtless done with them, their 
numbers were too limited to have more than a negligible impact on events.

Cavalry Carbines:

The armament of the cavalry at Gettysburg was considerably different from 
that of the infantry. Likewise, the weaponry used by the cavalry of the two 
armies differed much more than that of the two infantry of the two forces.
While infantry could and did make do with muzzle loaders, breech loaders were 
clearly the better weapon for cavalry. The Federal Ordnance Department, very 
reluctant to consider infantry breechloaders, was by comparison far more open 
to consideration of such weapons for the cavalry. By the time of the Civil 
War, a number of designs were competing for adoption.

Foremost among these was the Sharps carbine. By 1861 this had gone through 
several modifications, and was a relatively mature design. The Ordnance 
Department bought all it could get. (One of the main, and in my opinion very 
valid, objections to buying Sharps rifles for Berdan's Sharpshooters was that 
doing so disrupted very critical carbine production for several months.) 
Sharps production was limited, so numerous other designs were also accepted. 
Some, such as the Burnside, were quite good, others ran the gamut from 
acceptable to mediocre.

These carbines varied considerably in design, but were all single shot, 
breech loading weapons, externally primed, with short barrels. Calibers 
ranged from .50 to .54, and most used their own unique ammunition. All were 
patented designs, manufacturer by private concerns. None were made by the 
government itself.
While most of these carbines had long range rear sights, adjustable for 
anything from 500 to in some cases an optimistic 800 yards, their effective 
range against a single, man-sized target was realistically only about 150 
yards or so. While they had a greater rate of fire than a muzzle loader, 
they lacked the range and stopping power of the Rifle Musket.

At Gettysburg, most of the Union Cavalry had Sharps carbines. Other types 
present in varying numbers included the Burnside, Smith, Merrill, and 
Gallagher. While the Sharps was the best, and the Burnside probably a close 
second, there was little to chose between the various types in terms of 
tactical effectiveness.

Present as well, although in limited numbers, was a harbinger of the future, 
the Spencer Rifle. This seven shot repeater fired a .56 caliber, self 
contained, rimfire cartridge. Contrary to popular opinion, no Spencer 
carbines were used at Gettysburg, and certainly not by Buford's cavalry on 
the first day, for the simple reason that none had been made yet. Two of 
Custer's Michigan cavalry regiments used Spencer Rifles on the second and third 
days of the battle. While they turned in a good performance, as is often the 
case with specialized weapons used in limited numbers, they had little more 
than localized impact on the fighting.

The situation in the Confederate cavalry was much different. Equally mindful 
of the advantage of breechloaders, the Confederacy had a much harder time 
placing them in the hands of its cavalry. The Union carbines were all 
private, patented designs, and no southern arms factory had experience making 
them. Aside from a rather crude copy of the Sharps, the South was at a loss 
to produce breech loading carbines domestically. Carbines were obtained by 
capture, but apart from the Sharps, which could be loaded with any .54 rifle 
ammunition, the unique cartridges most other types uses rendered the guns 
useless as soon as whatever ammunition was captured with them was used up.

As a result, Confederate cavalry, even as late in the war as Gettysburg, 
often had to make due with muzzle loading infantry weapons. Carbine and 
rifle length versions of the Enfield rifle musket were sometimes imported and 
issued. These rendered good service, especially in the dismounted fighting 
so common during the Civil War. In fact, rifle armed dismounted cavalry 
could be a serious problem for Union troops armed with less accurate, shorter 
ranged carbines. Older rifles, such as the 1841 "Mississippi," were 
sometimes carried, as were older musketoons. (A musketoon was essentially a 
very short, carbine length version of the smoothbore musket. Obsolete by 
1861, many were pressed into service when the war broke out.) Some men 
carried civilian shotguns, effective at close range but hardly the thing for 
any sort of long range firefight.

Pistols:

All cavalrymen on both sides, officers and men alike, carried pistols, 
specifically, revolvers.
In the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, the most common pistol was the Colt 
Model 1860 New Model Army revolver. This was .44 caliber, six shot weapon, 
powerful and accurate at normal pistol ranges. Some men had the .36 Navy 
version of the Colt, while others had either .36 or .44 Remington revolvers. 
The .44's were better man-stoppers, but the .36's were also adequate and 
quite popular.

As an aside, the terms "Army" and "Navy" had nothing to do with which service 
used which caliber. Or, with whether sailors were easier to kill than 
soldiers. When Colt first came out with .44's, the cylinders of the 
revolvers had a land battle scene engraved on them. The .36 revolvers had a 
naval battle scene. People began to call the .44 the "Army" and the .36 the 
"Navy" revolver. The terms became generic, to the point that any .44 was the 
considered an "Army" revolver, and any .36 a "Navy."

Confederate use of pistols was similar. Captured pistols could be used far 
more readily than carbines, and there was also a fair amount of domestic 
manufacture. 

Officers on both sides, regardless of branch of service, routinely carried 
pistols both for self defense and as a badge of rank. These were usually 
privately purchased, and while the most common types mirrored the issue 
weapons discussed above, almost any design might be found in use. Many 
officers, particularly in the North, favored the lighter Colt pocket or 
police revolvers. Navy Colts were very popular as a good balance between 
weight and stopping power.

Edged Weapons:

Most if not all cavalrymen carried a saber in addition to their carbine and 
revolver. Various designs were in use, but are typified by the Union's Model 
1860 Light Cavalry Saber. This had a curved blade designed for both cutting 
and thrusting. Despite the advances in firearms technology, and the common 
resort to dismounted fighting, hand to hand melees with sabers still took 
place, and the saber remained a vital weapon.

All officers carried swords. As with pistols, these were both weapon and 
badge of office. Models varied with rank, there being different designs for 
foot officers, staff and field officers, generals, and even surgeons and 
chaplains. There were even simpler swords for noncommissioned officers and 
musicians. Most of these were rarely used to draw blood, but there are some 
instances at Gettysburg of officers using their swords in close combat. 

Bayonets comprise the last class of edged weapons. Most of the ones used at 
Gettysburg were angular socket bayonets. These were simple devices what 
slipped over the muzzles of muskets and rifle muskets. The blades were 
offset about 2 inches to clear the muzzle, then made a right angle and 
continued out 18 inches to a point. They had no cutting edges, but were 
purely thrusting weapons. 

A smaller number of weapons, those being some older model rifles, took what 
were called sword, or saber bayonets. These were heavy, brass handled 
weapons with long, curved sword blades. They were not popular, badly 
unbalancing the rifles when fixed and making aiming and shooting very 
difficult. The men used to joke that they were called sword bayonets because 
they were equally useless as either swords or bayonets. They were 
essentially obsolete, but a number were still in use at Gettysburg.

Artillery Weapons:

The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia brought to 
Gettysburg a substantially identical set of artillery. The basic 
organization of the artillery was similar in each army, with individual 
batteries grouped into battalions or brigades, which were in turn attached to 
either division or corps formations, or in the case of the Union army, formed 
into an Artillery Reserve. The Confederate army actually had more batteries, 
but the larger number of guns in a Union battery gave the Army of the Potomac 
the advantage in the overall number of guns. The Army of the Potomac also 
benefited from its batteries having uniform equipment, and from generally 
better quality ammunition, in particular, more reliable fuses.

The artillery of the two armies may be broadly divided into two types, 
smoothbore guns, and rifles. Smoothbores comprised something over 40% of the 
pieces in each army, rifles, the rest.

The smoothbore was typified by the 12 pounder "Napoleon" gun-howitzer. The 
12 pounder part of the designation referred to the weight of a solid round 
shot fired from the piece, "gun-howitzer" to the effect that it had an 
intermediate length barrel, longer than a howitzer but shorter than a gun. 
(Artillery pieces are broadly characterized by length of barrel, from 
shortest to longest howitzers, gun-howitzers, and guns. As a rule, the 
longer the barrel, the higher the velocity and greater the range.) They had 
a maximum range of about 1,860 yards, and, of more practical importance, an 
effective range of about 1,200 yards. The Army of Northern Virginia did also 
have a number of the shorter howitzers with it. 

Rifles were of two basic types, the 10 Pounder Parrott and the 3" Ordnance 
Rifle. Both were of nominal 3" bore size, and fired a roughly 10 pound shell 
to an effective range of about a mile.
Both armies also had a smaller number of 20 pound Parrotts, somewhat heavier 
versions of the 10 pounder firing, as the name implies, a 20 pound shell. 
Range and accuracy were similar to the lighter piece.
Guns heavier than 20 pounds were too heavy to keep up with the armies on 
campaign, and were left behind.

Perhaps more important than the types of guns themselves, in determining 
effectiveness, was the ammunition they fired.

The oldest and simplest was the solid shot. Despite the wide variety of 
explosive ammunition available, solid shot remained an important projectile. 
At Gettysburg, it's use was confined mainly to the 12 pounder Napoleon. It 
was considered effective when fired at troops concealed in woodlots, and 
could be devastatingly effective when used against massed formations. A shot 
down the length of a line of infantry could be horrifyingly effective. Solid 
shot was also effective in counter battery fire, where a direct hit on a gun 
carriage could dismount an enemy piece. It could also be deadly to the 
horses, which unlike the men, couldn't take cover. Solid shot was used in 
substantial amounts by both sides at Gettysburg.

All artillery pieces fired explosive projectiles. These came in two basic 
types, Shell, and Case Shot, sometimes known as Shrapnel. 
Shell was simply a round shot, or in the case of a rifle, elongated 
projectile, which was hollowed out and the cavity filled with gunpowder. In 
the case of the smoothbore Napoleons, shell was normally set off by a time 
fuse. This was a simple, powder train device, which burned at a known rate. 
It was cut to a length which corresponded to the time of flight to the 
target. The flash of the propelling charge ignited the fuse on firing. 
Rifle shells used both time and impact fuses, which as the name implies 
detonated the shell on impact. Impact fuses were not generally practical for 
round shells, as there was no way to tell which way the fuses would be facing 
when they hit the target. 

Regardless of fusing, shells depended more on fragmentation than blast effect 
to produce casualties. The black powder explosive charges had nowhere near 
the destructive power of modern high explosives. Unfortunately, the powder 
charge tended to break the shell into a relatively small number of fairly 
large fragments. If one hit you, it was lights out, but the number of 
fragments from a given shell was too limited to cause extensive casualties. 
While there were instances of a single shell causing a large number of 
casualties, this was the exception rather than the rule. 

Case Shot, the other explosive projectile, was an attempt to increase 
lethality. The shell's cavity was filled with musket balls. A small 
bursting charge, set off by a time fuse, ruptured the shell casing and 
released the musket balls. The momentum of the projectile carried the musket 
balls on to the target, much like a blast from a shotgun. To be effective, a 
case shot had to go off just above, and in front of, the target. Since the 
target was apt to be an advancing infantry line, or charging cavalry, getting 
the fuse setting right was as much art as science. Case shot achieved its 
effect almost entirely from the load of musket balls it carried. The 
bursting charge was too small to cause more than incidental damage, in and of 
itself. 
Case Shot was sometimes called Shrapnel, after the British officer who 
invented it. There is a tendency to think of anyone hit by a piece of an 
exploding artillery shell as having been hit by shrapnel, but the term really 
only refers to the balls carried inside the shell. Pieces of the shell 
casing itself are more properly called shell fragments. 

The last, and most deadly, artillery round was Canister. Canister was simply 
a tin can, the diameter of the bore, filled with iron balls about an inch in 
diameter. The can was torn apart by the force of discharge as soon as it 
left the muzzle, turning the piece into what was in effect a giant shotgun. 
Against troops in the open, within up to 300 yards of so, it was in the 
highest degree murderous. If needed, at close range, double canister could 
be loaded.

The Napoleon was more effective firing canister than the rifles were. This 
was due partly to its larger bore diameter. A canister round from a Napoleon 
contained more balls than one for a 10 pounder or a 3" Ordnance rifle. The 
spin imparted by the rifling tended to spread out the shot patterns of the 
rifled pieces, reducing their effectiveness even further the greater the 
distance from the muzzle.

Also present with the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg were two breech 
loading Withworth cannon, imported from England. These were long range 
rifles, with a unique hexagonal bore. They fired a matching hexagonal "bolt" 
which made a very distinct noise as it passed. They had a range greatly in 
excess of any other piece on either side, in fact, more range than the 
artillery techniques of the day could make good use of. The bolts were solid 
shot, and barring an unlikely direct hit were ineffective. The guns 
themselves, despite the breech loading mechanism, were of no particular 
advantage over muzzle loading pieces. Civil War artillery lacked recoil 
mechanisms. The entire gun recoiled on firing, often several feet. The time 
required to manhandle the piece back into position and re-sight it limited 
rate of fire more so than the time required to load it through the muzzle.

All artillery firing was on a direct, line of sight basis. The guns had only 
rudimentary sights, and as noted above, no recoil mechanisms. Fire had to be 
adjusted from the battery position itself, there being no such thing as 
forward observers. Smoke conditions often hampered long range firing. Under 
these conditions, even the one mile range of the rifled pieces was often more 
than the gunners could take full advantage of. 

All things considered, the most useful and all around deadly artillery piece 
at Gettysburg as the Napoleon. Its range, while less than that of the rifled 
pieces, was adequate for most situations. A skillfully handled battery of 
Napoleons could actually slug it out with a rifled battery, and stood a good 
chance of coming out on top. And they were far more deadly at close range, 
firing canister.

Tactics:

The first installments of this part of the overview have covered the 
organization of the armies, and the weapons they carried with them to Gettysburg. We now come to how these armies fought.

One thing that was just as important in 1863 as it is today was firepower. In
today's armies, firepower is obtained by the use of rapid firing, automatic
weapons. Soldiers may be yards apart and still be able to saturate the ground
to their front with accurate, sustained fire.

During the Civil War, troops armed with muzzle loaders were able to fire no 
more
than two to three shots per minute. The only way to develop firepower was,
therefore, to concentrate the men carrying the muskets as closely as possible.
Infantry in line of battle fought literally elbow to elbow, in a double ranked
formation. The manuals of the day allowed 2 feet per man, which translates to
one gun barrel for every foot of line. Even with each individual weapon only
able to fire two to three times per minute, a line of battle could throw a
daunting, and deadly, amount of lead at an enemy formation.

The characteristic shoulder to shoulder lines of battle associated with Civil
War tactics were not employed because they were picturesque, or easy to 
control. They were used for the sole purpose of getting all the massed 
muskets into a formation in which every single weapon could be brought to 
bear on the enemy at the same time. 
There have been few things invented more difficult to control than a Civil War
line of battle. Line up a hundred people single file, one behind another, and
you can walk for miles with everyone in their place and going in the same
direction. Line those same people up next to each other, and you'll be lucky 
to
get a hundred yards before bits and pieces of the line are going off at
different angles. Civil War regiments drilled endlessly to perfect both the
ability of the men to march in line, and, of the officers to control them. 
The dense linear formations were in a sense forced on the armies by the very 
nature of the weapons they used. It would not until breechloaders, with their 
greater rate of fire, became items of general issue that formations could open up and
still develop adequate firepower. And as long as one side fought in these
formations, the other side had to as well in order to be able to mass enough
fire to defeat them. These formations dominated virtually everything the 
armies did on the battlefield. 

The greatest problem with these dense formations was simply that of 
controlling the movements of the vast numbers of men they contained in such a way as get them where they needed to be, without creating mass chaos and confusion.
Troops could not march from place to place, even for limited distances, in 
line of battle. They marched in column, four abreast. Getting units from column 
of march into line of battle, and back again, filled entire drill manuals. 
Units which could not perform these evolutions quickly, flawlessly, almost 
instinctively, under fire did not long survive on the battlefield.
The movements a regiment would go through to form line of battle are beyond 
the scope of this overview. Suffice it to say a unit had to be able, on 
reaching the field in column of march, to deploy into line to its front or to 
either flank. Once in line it had to be able to shift that line to face 
threats from any direction, rear included, to advance, and if need be, 
retreat, all without loosing cohesion.

Forming line of battle was time consuming, and would generally only be done 
if action was imminent. Units not expected to be engaged in the immediate 
future would often be held in massed formations on reaching the field. This 
allowed them to march quickly to any point needed and only then deploy into 
line.

There is a tendency, because of the very term "Line of battle" to picture a 
deployed army as just that, an unbroken line of men and guns. In actuality, 
there were often gaps between adjacent formations, as individual units took 
advantage of terrain features such as high ground, fences or stone walls, 
sunken road, or anything else that would work to their advantage. These gaps 
would be covered, to the extent possible, by fire, or reserve formations.
The line of battle was also more than a single line. Both attacking and 
defending lines would be deployed in depth, line backing line. An attacking 
brigade might have three regiments in its front line, each of which might 
itself be in two lines. Behind that brigade might be another, similarly 
deployed, and perhaps another in support, its regiments still in column, 
ready to deploy into line as needed. Reports will often speak of the enemy's 
attacking "columns," a reference to the successive lines of battle that 
characterized a major attack. A defensive line might likewise have only a 
fraction of its troops in the first line. A second line of battle often 
awaited the attacker just behind the first, with reserve formations massed 
behind that, out of immediate range but close enough to deploy quickly to any 
threatened point.

Artillery would be interspersed among the lines infantry units. The exact 
spacing depended on available battery positions, which had to provide both 
suitable ground and room for the guns and caissons, and a good field of fire. 
As a rule, the batteries of a corps artillery brigade, or in the case of the 
Confederate army, divisional artillery battalion, supported their parent 
formation. Reserve batteries would bolster the line as required, augmenting 
the gun line to resist an attack, and if need be replacing damaged batteries.
A battery was considered to have enough firepower to protect its own front, 
but it was customary to provide batteries with infantry support as protection 
in the event of close contact with enemy infantry. A battery forced to 
protect itself against enemy infantry could not perform its primary duty of 
supporting the line of battle.

When no actual attack was in progress, the artillery would attempt to prevent 
that of the other side from gaining favorable positions. This counter 
battery fire would occasionally flare up into artillery duels. These were 
unavoidable, but unless there was a serious threat the artillery commanders 
tended to discourage them as being wasteful of ammunition.

Once battle was joined, particularly an action between maneuvering 
formations, a Civil War battle involved far more than just two lines of men 
firing away at each other. The line of battle assured that a unit's muskets 
were all directed to its front. The disadvantage to this was that a 
formation in line of battle was very vulnerable to any enemy on its flank. 
As a result, contending formations would be constantly maneuvering and 
counter-maneuvering to both gain the enemy's flanks, and at the same time 
protect their own. This constant shifting of lines, with units deploying and 
redeploying, advancing and giving ground, is often overlooked and all but 
lost in the neat battle maps with their carefully charted lines. A battle 
was a fluid affair, the lines of battle rarely as precise as they look on 
paper, with confusion the order of the day.

Tactics, continued:

Infantry arriving on the field did not simply takes its place in the line of 
battle and await developments. It normally deployed skirmishers. Often 
taken for granted and overlooked in accounts of the fighting, the action on 
the skirmish lines was some of the most sustained and important of the battle.

Not often realized is that except when an attack was actually in progress, 
the infantry on the line of battle was usually not doing any firing. Most of 
the firing going on at any given time was being done on the skirmish lines.

While it may seem an odd statement, the line of battle was, in a way, very 
vulnerable. As previously noted, formations on the line were often massed. 
Artillery men had to stay near their pieces. There were large numbers of 
horses, and mounted officers made attractive targets. This made it 
absolutely essential that rifle armed enemy skirmishers be kept well away 
from the line, a minimum of several hundred yards if at all possible. As a 
result, it was typical for about 10 percent of the force in line to be 
deployed forward as skirmishers. This force might come from detachments from 
several different regiments, or at times, an entire regiment might be sent 
out to cover a brigade or division front. 
The terrain at Gettysburg was generally very open, and as a result the 
skirmish lines tended to be deployed well out from the line. 400 yards or 
more was not at all unusual. Depending on available cover and concealment, 
opposing skirmish lines would probably average about 200 yards apart. This 
assured that the line of battle was fairly safe from effective aimed rifle 
fire, although with active skirmish lines there tended to be a continual give 
and take, and even the best screened line of battle was not immune to losses 
to long range sharpshooting. Unlike troops on the battle line, skirmishers 
were expected to take advantage of cover and concealment, and generally fired 
at will as targets presented themselves.

It has often been written that the rifle musket allowed enemy formations to 
be take under killing fire at up to a quarter of a mile, and the impression 
is often given that opposing formations routinely opened fire at 500 yards or 
more. Most of the rifle muskets in use were in fact sighted to at least that 
far.
In actuality, when an attack was in progress, the lines of battle generally 
engaged each other at ranges of less than 250 yards. At Gettysburg, it is 
difficult to document more than isolated instances of troops on the line of 
battle opening fire at more than about 200 yards.
There were numerous reasons for this. First of all, the troops on the line 
had to wait for their own skirmishers to get out of the way. A skirmish line 
would normally give ground gradually in the face of an enemy advance, 
delaying it as long as possible but ultimately falling back on the main line. 
By the time this happened, the enemy advance was likely to be well within 
500 yards. The high, curved trajectory of the relatively low velocity minie 
ball made hitting at extended ranges very difficult. At anything more than 
200 yards or so, misjudging the range by even a few yards could result in the 
round landing short or sailing harmlessly over the target's head. Smoke 
conditions often obscured targets. Also, if fire was opened at long ranges, 
muskets would foul and the rate of fire slow by the time the enemy came into 
really effective range. Another factor sometimes overlooked is that many 
officers, and indeed some enlisted men, considered opening fire at excessive 
range not only a waste of ammunition, but, a sign of unsteadiness under fire. 
Veteran troops often prided themselves on withholding their fire until the 
enemy was close at hand. 

The under 200 yards ranges of most engagements explains why, in many 
respects, troops armed with the older smoothbore muskets were not at as great 
an disadvantage as one might think, at least while part of the line of battle. 
While a rifled arm was certainly an advantage on the skirmish line, 
smoothbore muskets loaded with buck & ball (one full size ball and three 
buckshot pellets) were effective, in massed fire, to very nearly that range, 
and the closer the enemy got, the more effective they became. Going up 
against a line of troops armed with smoothbores, with every shot sending out 
four projectiles to a rifle musket's one, was a grim prospect. Officers 
tended to treat troops armed with smoothbores no differently, in terms of use 
in the line, than they did those armed with rifled arms.

I have refrained thus far from discussing Cavalry tactics, for the reason 
that this discussion has concentrated primarily on tactics used on the main 
battlefield. On campaign cavalry's main role was scouting and intelligence 
gathering, while at the same time screening the army to prevent the enemy 
cavalry from accomplishing those same goals. The boundary between two 
maneuvering forces was apt to the scene of a constant series of forays and 
clashes as the respective cavalry forces sought advantage and information.

Cavalry generally avoided direct engagements with unbroken infantry. When it 
did need to fight infantry, it most often did so dismounted. A mounted man 
was simply too large a target. Despite the greater rate of fire of a 
breechloading carbine, cavalry generally could delay, but not usually stop, a 
serious infantry advance. Not only were their carbines out ranged by 
infantry rifle muskets, but dismounted cavalry fought in a single line, with 
one man in every four back holding the horses. Infantry fought in a double 
rank and of course, needed no horse holders. The usual, and most effective 
tactic, was for the cavalry to put up enough of a fight to force the infantry 
to deploy into line, a time consuming process. When the advancing line got 
too close, the cavalry would fall back, and force the enemy to repeat the 
process all over again at the next hill of bend in the road. 
When fighting other cavalry, the action could be either dismounted or 
mounted. When dismounted, carbines or other shoulder arms predominated. 
Mounted actions were more likely to rely on pistol and saber.