Civil War soldiers fought close-up, in grisly, deafening conditions.
MANY SOLDIERS volunteered to “see the elephant,” a period metaphor for witnessing something exotic, outside the realm of everyday life. Volunteers might also have hoped that participating in the circus of war would confer some special status back home. In actuality, they could find combat invigorating, but more frequently they found it horrifying—and sometimes both. When the mass armies collided, they wreaked havoc on one another. Killing on an industrial scale had arrived.
Standard 1860s shoulder weapons look deceptively antique, akin to the flintlocks carried by earlier generations. That type of gun fired when the flint struck a spark from the lid of a pan containing gunpowder, causing a combustion that traveled through a touchhole to the charge in the barrel. Because of wear in the mechanism, dull flints, damp or clogged powder, flintlocks often misfired twice in the dozen.
The military favored a smoothbore musket without the grooved tube that spins a rifle bullet to impart velocity and accuracy. Admittedly, a smoothbore’s effective killing range was only 150 yards, and the ball could even fly wide over 50 yards. But the smoothbore was fast-firing; the ball, inserted from the muzzle end, dropped easily down the firing tube, as it had no rifling to fit, so a good musketeer could achieve two to three discharges per minute. These characteristics led officers to rely on a rapid volume of unaimed fire, delivered by packed ranks at “whites of eyes” range, backed up by the bayonet.
From the mid-18th century on, armies also issued rifles, but only to picked men. Rifles remained true at a distance; they sustained accuracy for sharpshooting, yet they continued to be expensive to craft and slow to load. The ball had to be hand-cast and painstakingly rammed tightly down the rifling, which took about 1½ minutes, unacceptably slow in close action.
By the mid-19th century, three developments had radically improved the standard-issue weapon. First, precision machine tools made interchangeable parts that allowed economical mass-production of high-quality weapons. Second, by the Mexican War, a percussion mechanism began superseding the flintlock device. A metal cap containing an explosive charge fitted onto a nipple that replaced the powder pan. When hit by a hammer, the ignition in the cap fired a powder line from the nipple to the main load. Relatively immune to wet weather, the percussion musket, if kept clean, proved 99 percent efficient. Third, fast-firing rifle bullets appeared, ones that could be dropped down the tube like a smoothbore load, but— when propelled by the discharge— exited as a rifle round. This increased hitting power and accuracy to something like 1,000 yards.
In 1861 many troops made do with percussion smoothbores, even flintlocks or shotguns, often loaded with buckshot and ball, deadly close-in but erratic at longer range. Large quantities of dubious surplus weapons imported from abroad included used Belgian rifles, reputed to be little better than bayonet stands. Steadily, Enfields and Springfields dominated the fighting. By 1862, repeating weapons like the Sharps and the Spencer carbine became available, especially in the North, but these saw limited service, as they expended ammunition at an unsustainable rate. Sharpshooters and cavalry mainly received repeating weapons, to offset their disadvantage in numbers when opposing infantry. Troopers also carried revolving pistols, as did officers.
Artillery saw similar advances, both heavy guns in permanent installations and lighter pieces for fieldwork. Grouped in horse-drawn flying batteries, the latter included rifled iron guns, often firing a 3-inch caliber shell, effective to 1½ miles. The 1862 Parrott rifle, throwing a 10-pound projectile, proved particularly lethal. At closer range, the 12-pounder bronze or brass smoothbore Napoleon howitzer could effectively smash enemy formations.
The devastating firepower of the new weaponry might have been expected to change battlefield alignments. We would anticipate commanders spreading out the traditional blocks of men to provide less dense targets and, opening fire at longer ranges, breaking up attacks to avoid face-to-face butchery. But during the Civil War, old practices dominated. Officers still packed men together in close-order columns or firing lines and withheld defensive fire until the enemy came within murderously short range. One study, based on eyewitness reports, estimates that, on average, musket volleys in the Civil War began at 127 yards’ range. In a 113-case sample, no units opened fire over 500 yards, 80 percent waited to 250 or less, 60 percent to 100 or fewer yards.
The volume of fire encountered in battle stunned combatants, leaving an indelible impression. Union Maj. Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain said descriptions of projectiles “darkening the air” were not hyperbole but a “dead-level fact.” Cartridge expenditure proved immense. Army of the Cumberland records show 3½ million rounds expended in June 1864, 2¼ million in July and 3 million in August. A Rebel brigade under Samuel French, sent to collect spent balls on the field, gleaned 2½ tons. The general noted, “the ground was literally covered with them—oxidized white like hail-stones.”
The noise of musketry deafened soldiers, with veterans likening it to brick buildings collapsing or a hard rain clattering on a tin roof, while artillery fire, like claps of thunder, made the ground shake and fence rails jump. Projectiles mowed down any vegetation standing in the way. At Chancellorsville Confederate Brig. Gen. Raleigh Colston observed trees cut off a few feet above the ground as if scythed, and brush fractured in every branch. “The bullets seemed to fill the air and to be clipping every little weed and bush and blade of grass around us,” wrote Corporal C.F. Boyd about Shiloh. “Acres and acres of timber such as small saplings and large underbrush were mowed down and trees one foot in diameter were cut down as if a mowing machine had gone through the field and limbs fell like autumn leaves in the leaden and iron storm.”
Human flesh fared no better. The musketry grew so intense at Spotsylvania in 1864, reported Major Thomas Hyde of the 7th Maine, that many a corpse resembled “nothing but a lump of meat or clot of gore.” One man could be identified only by beard color, as his face could not be recognized, “but appeared more like a sponge.”
In one episode at Antietam, Union Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams watched two Napoleons fire canister into oncoming Confederates: “Each canister contains several hundred balls. They fell in the very front of the line and all along it apparently, stirring up dust like a thick cloud. When the dust blew away no regiment and not a living man was to be seen.” Over 200 had perished, “in two ranks, as straightly aligned as on a dress parade.” Repeatedly, survivors testified that you could walk on bodies without touching earth. Union Colonel William Averell counted over 5,000 Rebels sprawled on Malvern Hill. “A third of them were dead or dying, but enough were alive and moving to give the field a singular crawling effect.” Dead Yankees lay so thick in front of the 11th North Carolina’s position in the 1864 Wilderness that they built a breastwork of corpses.
Small arms and artillery inflicted most wounds. Musket balls did massive damage to the body. Unlike a modern high- velocity steelhead bullet in the .30-caliber range, a .57- or .58-caliber lead ball frequently lacked the force to drive through and exit the target, instead staying in the victim, wrecking bone and organs. The 71st New York’s chaplain, Joseph Twich ell, “saw one man who received a ball in his cheek and, glancing over his jaw, it was taken out between his shoulders.” The construction of the Minié ball magnified this roaming characteristic.
When the rifle fired, the Minié spread out in the barrel, meaning the pliable lead could no longer hold up on impact but became unintentionally a dum-dum or soft-head bullet. Meeting the resistance of flesh and bone, it flattened out further, even assuming the diameter of a half dollar. As it slowed, it traveled through the victim, wrecking everything in its way. This is why experienced officers cautioned against crouching during an advance: The ball would travel the body lengthwise.
Serving the powerful engines of war conferred no immunity to damage. Gunners’ ears bled from the concussions of the cannons, their eardrums often shattered and their hearing permanently impaired. Battery-to-battery counterfire caused some of the worst injuries. Joseph Crowell, a Union soldier, recounted what happened at Chancellorsville when a shell landed on the ammunition stored in a wheeled artillery caisson: Debris from the wagon and the remains of men and horses filled the air. One gunner dropped from the sky to the ground right beside him. “‘For the love of God,’ he said, ‘for the love of God, shoot me! Put me out of my misery!’” The sufferer had gone up amid the flames, and fire had roasted off all his clothes, burning the flesh to a crisp. His eyes had been seared away and the ears were gone. The ends of his fingers had charred to the bone, and a white kneecap protruded through charcoaled flesh. “Such a sickening sight was never seen,” said Crowell. “And yet the thing was alive, and not only alive, but conscious.”
Officers had an even higher percentage risk of injury and death than rankers. In both armies, the proportion of officers killed reached 15 percent more than enlisted men, and generals had a whopping 50 percent higher likelihood of dying. Union Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday, who fought in the East, compiled a list of generals killed and wounded at Gettysburg. On the Rebel side, six generals died: Armistead, Barksdale, Garnett, Pender, Pettigrew and Semmes. Four sustained major wounds: Anderson, Wade Hampton, Kemper and Scales. Union general officers fared no better. The fighting killed five: Farnsworth, Reynolds, Vincent, Weed and Zook. Thirteen fell wounded: Barlow, Barnes, Brook, Butterfield, Doubleday himself, Gibbon, Graham, Hancock, Paul, Sickles, Stannard, Warren and Webb.
The cost proved equally exorbitant at the regimental level. Not only were all three brigadiers in Confederate Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s division casualties, but 13 colonels also fell. Even before the killing fields of Gettysburg, there had been a severe loss of field-grade and midlevel commanders. Yet, if anything, the attrition worsened as the fighting became more desperate, and the concomitant slaughter intensified during the last campaigns of the war. For example, between May 4 and June 3, 1864, 22 of 58 generals in the Army of Northern Virginia became casualties. In one afternoon at Franklin, the Army of Tennessee lost 50 percent of its regimental commanders, some 54 officers wounded or killed, along with six generals who died.
The poor visibility and tremendous racket of battle required officers to appear in easily recognized dress and equipment, wearing a sash and waving a sword as they bellowed commands to overcome the fearful noise. The ethic of leadership by example also demanded that officers stay at their posts as long as they possibly could, even if seriously wounded. A famous example is Brig. Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, in command of Confederate forces at Shiloh, who bled to death on the field after refusing aid for a leg wound.
The most controversial case might be Rebel Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood. On July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg, he was hit by shell fragments that ranged through his left hand, forearm, elbow and biceps. He returned to Longstreet’s Corps in time to be hit in the right leg at Chickamauga. A surgeon took off the shattered limb at the thigh. Hood suffered terrible pain that aged him, and frequent heavy medication may have made him erratic, also adding to his debility. He might not have been up to commanding the Army of Tennessee. For example, he failed to exercise proper oversight of the frontal fighting outside Atlanta, especially during a critical phase on July 19, 1864. He also missed an opportunity to catch Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield’s command in a trap because laudanum kept him in bed. We may reasonably conclude from Hood’s and other case studies that grave impairments and critical losses of leadership adversely affected operations on both sides.
Volunteers and their leaders often did find the elephant, and it proved to be a horrible beast that bellowed and trampled. What these soldiers had to say about the war may shock us, but we must not flinch away. For how can we hope to understand them if we do not confront what they endured?
Originally published in the August 2014 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
