Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
Confederate General James Longstreet was, in some ways, a man ahead of his time. He was one of the very few on either side of the Civil War who fully appreciated the change brought about by the development of the rifled musket and the new conical projectile – the Minié ball. The old smoothbore muskets had a very short effective range. A young Ulysses Grant had once opined that with the smoothbore:
“At any range over 200 yards, a man might shoot at you all day without you ever finding out about it.”
The new technology changed that forever. A rifled musket firing the new conical projectile could be loaded and fired as quickly as a smoothbore but yet kill with aimed fire as far away as a man’s eyesight and steady hand might permit. Used against massed infantry targets, it could reliably pull men down at 800 yards and more.
The smoothbore technology had dictated infantry tactics…masses of infantry moving and firing together at close range. It put a premium on closing with the enemy and driving them from the field at bayonet point. To the British Army this was holy writ, and its thin red lines of infantry had conquered half the world. The tactics hadn’t changed in 150 years.
Longstreet appreciated the fact that the new technology demanded new tactics. He sensed the deadly combination of earthworks and rifles and Minié balls against massed infantry in the open. The carnage faced by Federal troops at Fredericksburg provided a case in point. In this he anticipated the First World War to come. He began thinking about new tactics for infantry in the attack. One man firing. One man loading. One man moving forward. Even then he calculated you’d lose 1 of 3… at least. He began thinking more about defensive warfare.
After the Confederate success on July 1st at Gettysburg, Longstreet proposed a strategic movement. He wanted to disengage and move the whole Army of Northern Virginia to the south and east. He proposed looping around to their right, getting behind the Federals, then busily digging in on the hills south of Gettysburg, and finding a nice piece of high ground of their own. Someplace between Meade’s Federal Army and Washington. Someplace that sat on the Union lines of supply. Washington would be apoplectic!!! The telegraph would be burning up with demands that Meade attack at once! And the Federals would come to the Rebels like lambs to the slaughter. It’d be Fredericksburg all over again.
Longstreet proposed this to Lee. But Lee refused. He wouldn’t leave tonight the field he had won at such high cost today. Of the Union troops he said, “We pushed them today. They ran today. They’ll remember that tomorrow.” Perhaps if Jackson had still been alive, Lee might have been persuaded. Jackson understood maneuvers like few others. People had called Jackson’s infantry ‘the foot cavalry’ and Jackson had once said of his troops, “I’ll sweat them today so I don’t have to bleed them tomorrow.”
But it wasn’t to be. Jackson was gone and Longstreet’s movement to the right never happened. The next two days demonstrated Longstreet’s thinking. Just not to the South’s benefit. The attacking infantry advancing into the sights of dug-in defenders wore butternut and grey, not blue. And Gettysburg played out as we know it.
Published in General
Discussion (13)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Addendum. Longstreet’s proposal is one of those things that sounds good on first hearing but becomes more and more problematic as you think it through.
Is there some likely spot to move to?
Where is this nice piece of high ground? Which roads lead there?
Are they passable or blocked with Blue cavalry? How long will it take? Is there potable water in sufficient supply for tens of thousands of men and horses?
And I’m sure a hundred others.
Lee was effectively blind. His go-to cavalryman was off on a joyride … scaring the bejezus out of civilians from Philadelphia to Washington but not operating as the eyes and ears of the Army.
Lee had other cavalry at his disposal, but, for some reason, chose not to employ them in that role.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Keep them coming, Ekosj! These are great.
Along with the straight history, you've demonstrated how technology impacts the very basics of how wars are fought. Along with the increased rate of fire, the metallic cartridge made it possible to reload without standing up and exposing yourself to the enemy's fire.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Interestingly, the Merrill’s didn’t use metallic cartridges. They were paper with the Minie ball tied in to the front. My understanding is that closing the breech snipped off the back end of the paper cartridge exposing the powder inside. They still used a percussion cap for ignition.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I believe the Spencer repeating carbine had already been officially (but grudgingly) adopted by the US Army for cavalry troops in 1863, along with the Sharp’s carbine. (1851). The Sharps used a .52 caliber paper-patch cartridge. So, too did Berdan’s 1st U.S. Sharpshooters use the Sharp's rifle with the paper or linen cartridge w/ Minie ball.
The Spencer used a .56 caliber rimfire metallic cartridge, fed from a tubular magazine in the buttstock.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Stuart took the best cavalry brigades with him on his ride. The next best cavalry brigades were in the Shenandoah Valley guarding Lee’s supply lines. The cavalry left with Lee were irregular cavalry brigades not used to working with the army , less disciplined than the regular cavalry, and not experienced at gathering intelligence for the army. This was why Lee did not use the cavalry units he had with him at the time.
You're seeing five of 13 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.