Weapons and Tactics of the Civil War

A detailed Summary of Weapons and Tactics of the Civil War


Modern Weapons and Tactics in the Civil War, 1861 - 1865

The Civil War (1861-1865) produced more casualties than any other war in American history. Union deaths amounted to 360,000 while Confederate losses totaled 258,000. Part of the reason both sides lost so many men is because of the weapons and tactics employed during the conflict. Many military inventions and innovations came about during theCivil War. The telegraph made communication easier while railroads made the movement of troops quicker. Thaddeus S. C. Lowe organized a Union Army balloon unit to observe Confederate troop deployments. The Gatling gun, a weapon with revolving barrels, had its debut on Civil War battlefields in 1862. On the sea, both sides experimented with ironclad warships like the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia. In 1864 the Confederate submarine Hunley actually managed to sink a Federal sloop, the USS Housatonic, off Charleston, South Carolina. However, nothing had more impact on the war than the musket ball.

In 1833 a French army captain, Claude E. Minie


, perfected a bullet whose powder would not clog a rifle's barrel after a few shots. The so-called "Minie ball" was an elongated, cylindrical bullet with a hollow base. When the rifle's powder charge was ignited, the base of the Minie ball would expand and cause the projectile to grip the grooves in the barrel. In the 1850s the US Army adopted the Frenchman's innovation, which made the loading of a rifle easier. More significant though was the manner in which theMinie ball improved the accuracy and range of the rifle. While a smoothbore musket had an effective range of only one hundred yards, the Springfield and Enfield rifles employed by 1863 could hit targets at four hundred yards.

Both sides in the Civil War employed military tactics that were made obsolete by this improvement in small arms firepower. The United States Military Academy at West Point adhered to a doctrine that identified the mass infantry charge as the key to victory. The academy's infantry manuals assumed that defenders armed with muskets would be able to fire only one

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Approximate Word count = 705
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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