Working side by side with soldiers, horses labored
to pull artillery pieces into battle.Without them, field artillery
could not have been used to such deadly effect.
By James R. Cotner

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The field artillery of the Civil War was designed to be mobile. When Union or Confederate troops marched across country, the guns moved with them. During battle, the guns were moved to assigned positions and then were switched from place to place, pulled back or sent forward as fortune demanded. The field batteries went galloping off to support an advance or repel an attack. When they withdrew, they contested the field as they went. Movement was everything. The guns could fulfill their essential function only when they could be moved where they were most needed.

At the time of the Civil War, such movement required draft animals–horses, mules or oxen. Mules were excellent at pulling heavy loads, but they were not used in pulling the guns and caissons of the field artillery. No animal liked to stand under fire. In the fury of battle, horses would shy and rear and flash their hooves; but mules carried their protests to the outer limits. When exposed to fire, mules would buck and kick and roll on the ground, entangling harnesses and becoming impossible to control.

An exception to the rule against using mules was their role in carrying small mountain howitzers. These guns were light enough to be broken down, with the component parts carried on the backs of pack animals. They had been developed for use in country that was mountainous and heavily wooded, with only trails or wretched roads. Strong, surefooted animals were needed, and mules were the obvious choice.

The danger of using mules in battle is vividly depicted in Confederate Brig. Gen. John D. Imboden’s account of his seriocomic experience at the Battle of Port Republic in June 1862. In that engagement, Imboden, a colonel at the time, commanded a band of cavalry with a battery of mountain howitzers, carried on mules, in the army of Maj. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. At Port Republic, Jackson ordered Imboden to put his battery in a sheltered place and be ready, upon the enemy’s withdrawal, to advance to a point where his guns would have a clear field of fire. Imboden took his men and the mules, carrying the guns and ammunition, into a shallow ravine about 100 yards behind Captain William Poague’s Virginia battery, which was hotly engaged.

Within a few minutes, Union artillery shells were screaming across the ravine well above the sheltered men and mules. Imboden, in his account of the action, recalled: “The mules became frantic. They kicked, plunged and squealed. It was impossible to quiet them, and it took three or four men to hold one mule from breaking away. Each mule had about three hundred pounds weight on him, so securely fastened that the load could not be dislodged by any of his capers. Several of them lay down and tried to wallow their loads off. The men held these down and that suggested the idea of throwing them all to the ground and holding them there. The ravine sheltered us so we were in no danger from the shot or shell which passed over us.”

The use of mules to carry mountain howitzers was a choice based on their fitness for the task, not due to any shortage of horses. The Manual for Mountain Artillery, adopted by the U.S. Army in 1851, stated that the mountain howitzer was “generally transported by mules.” The superiority of mules in rough country outweighed their notorious contrariness under fire.

Plodding oxen obviously were not well suited for hauling field artillery, since rapid movement was often needed. Oxen were strong–their name is synonymous with strength and endurance–but they were too slow. Nevertheless, oxen were sometimes pressed into service during the Civil War.

In November 1863, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s force was detached from the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg, then besieging Chattanooga. Longstreet’s troops moved north through eastern Tennessee to confront Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Federal force at Knoxville. It was a long, harsh journey for the Confederate artillery. As the Southern army neared Knoxville, the Confederate caissons carrying ammunition for the field artillery were being pulled by oxen, a choice dictated by the scarcity of horses in the region.

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