Did the Southern men fight better than the Northern men?

Well, yes! I don't disagree, but someone claimed that the Southerners were the best troops of the 19th century...
Someone still claims that.
"I was there at Bentonville with a regiment that had faced Beauregard at Shiloh and Bragg at Stone's River, that participated in nearly every battled of the Army of the Cumberland. We had taken a hand in the terrible assaults at Kenesaw Mountain and Jonesboro but for desperate valor on the part of the rebels and for a desperate resistance and determination to whip them on the part of our men we saw nothing in four years of army life to compare to the 19th of March at Bentonville." - Walter Clark
 
Someone still claims that.
"I was there at Bentonville with a regiment that had faced Beauregard at Shiloh and Bragg at Stone's River, that participated in nearly every battled of the Army of the Cumberland. We had taken a hand in the terrible assaults at Kenesaw Mountain and Jonesboro but for desperate valor on the part of the rebels and for a desperate resistance and determination to whip them on the part of our men we saw nothing in four years of army life to compare to the 19th of March at Bentonville." - Walter Clark
Would there be any reason to doubt that the Confederates who remained under arms until 1865 were much better soldiers than they were in 1861-62?
 
Most of the US Civil War was fought in regions with only a few railroads, very few improved roads, and very low population density. Conditions in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania may have been similar to European conditions. But throughout most of the west and far west there was a very large benefit to being able to conduct combined arms operations, and the Confederates ably demonstrated the benefit of hard riding, hit and run logistical raids. Mobility compensated for lack of mass, in the west and far west.
 
Someone still claims that.
"I was there at Bentonville with a regiment that had faced Beauregard at Shiloh and Bragg at Stone's River, that participated in nearly every battled of the Army of the Cumberland. We had taken a hand in the terrible assaults at Kenesaw Mountain and Jonesboro but for desperate valor on the part of the rebels and for a desperate resistance and determination to whip them on the part of our men we saw nothing in four years of army life to compare to the 19th of March at Bentonville." - Walter Clark
Remember, what we are trying to evaluate is whether the Southerners were the best troops of the 19th century as you claimed.

What advantages do they have over the British that I pointed out?
 
The thing to remember about the claim that the Southerners were the best troops of the 19th century is that it is a major claim.

There are several ways in which troops can become better. They can have a national culture which gives them military advantages (though this is not simply so clear cut as saying that there is an honour culture, or something like that - a culture can also be detrimental especially if it impedes discipline, because a modern army is a machine made out of parts and operating in concert).

Troops can also benefit from having a better baseline doctrine than their enemy. If your doctrine emphasizes long range musketry and your opponents do not have a doctrinal counter to that, then every battle you fight will be at a major advantage.

Troops can benefit from long periods of training. This improves their discipline and ability to execute the actions which are called for, and it also means that they become fitter.

Troops can benefit from a military culture which takes the training seriously, in which the training they are going through is the correct form of training to foster not merely actions but skills.

Troops can have better weapons, of course, though this has to be qualified a little - how capably you can use it matters. If you have a better weapon but do not have the capability to use it better then you don't really have a better weapon.

There's also leadership. A unit with a leader who knows what he's doing will improve faster and perform better in combat, and this applies on all levels - but being a good leader takes a knowledge base.

Finally, there is experience. This improves troops, but it only really improves the skills they already have - someone who has gone through a dozen battles but has never been shown how to set the sights on his rifle-musket will not suddenly level up and become able to do so - while too much experience can cause burnout, where all the enthusiastic men in a unit have become casualties and the ones who lag behind are the ones who are left.



The armies of the Civil War were produced pretty much from nothing, and this means that what they actually achieved is really impressive and deserves attention. However, that does not mean they were the best just because they did a lot of fighting - to use a 20th century example, the Japanese army had been fighting continuously from 1937 to 1945 by the end of WW2 but they had never had to get good because they were fighting the poorly supplied and chaotic Chinese army. This meant that their forces were decidedly subpar.
The flaws of the Civil War armies are mostly related to how they came pretty much from nothing. There was no cadre of experienced NCOs to keep the men functioning properly, while the officers often didn't have any knowledge base themselves to work from and were learning out of a book. The men were often not trained properly (and certainly not in things the drill book happened not to mention) and there were very few people around who could recognize what well-trained troops looked like in the first place to be able to say "yes, this is a well trained unit now, well done".
In addition, there were very few units that had a long period of training under the drum, and almost none under experienced NCOs (who were mostly in the Regular Army units).

There are however doctrinal issues as well. The rifle is a new weapon but there is no institutional bias towards learning how to use it, and American troops are able to stand fire fairly well but always have trouble manoeuvering under fire.
A double line of men with smoothbore musket accuracy open fire at smoothbore musket range at Gettysburg and it causes an attacking force in line to stall and ultimately halt, even though the double line of men with muskets was the standard tactic before the French revolution and it got ripped repeatedly to shreds by the French armies for years on end.
When Emory Upton uses the assault column at Spotsylvania it's a revelation, even though that was basically the first step of Napoleonic tactics.
It takes years to get cavalry good enough to operate on the battlefield in concert with infantry, and it's very rare that they actually do even when the opportunity is there.
Effective counter-battery shoots at a range of more than a mile are vanishingly rare (even though they come in with rifled artillery in Europe) and there's no perception of the lack; either this is something American cannon are incapable of doing and the Americans don't care enough to fix it, or it's something American cannon can do but they never try.



All of this is because every single European army was trying hard to understand what the best tactics for their situation were, and they were adapting according to their best understanding of the geopolitical situation and their own resources and assets. The combined strength of the armies on the European continent was well over a million men, and they had been that size for decades, and all of them were doing their best to create the most effective armies possible. Despite that, they often got it wrong.

In America the US Army was about 16,000 men at the start of the war (having been recently expanded) and they suddenly form an enormous national army on almost no knowledge base. They did not get everything right, and for them to get everything right would have been enormously unlikely as a lot of the time they were just guessing.
Americans need training and development just as much as other armies, and they had much less of it.
 
The 1859 Manual was written after the British Army had enjoyed (snark!) the lessons of the Crimea and the Mutiny. Those adventures had cost Palmerston his job as Prime Minister. That it was an improvement over the instruction set for the American army is hardly surprising; the embarrassments that the British military had experienced had caused an upheaval in British politics and the creation of a new political party.
 
The 1859 Manual was written after the British Army had enjoyed (snark!) the lessons of the Crimea and the Mutiny. Those adventures had cost Palmerston his job as Prime Minister. That it was an improvement over the instruction set for the American army is hardly surprising; the embarrassments that the British military had experienced had caused an upheaval in British politics and the creation of a new political party.
The British did indeed learn lessons from the Crimea, chiefly related to logistics (and they do learn these lessons, by the end of the war the death rate in the Crimea was lower than it was for troops back home) but what's not often remarked on is how good the British Army was at open field combat during the Crimean War.
They do not need major improvement because they are already very good - the Alma is the first major British battle in several decades and they advance against strongly fortified heights over a river, taking them (twice, owing to SNAFU) and routing the enemy out of their forts. During this battle their musketry, despite the newness of their rifle training program, inflicts thousands of casualties with a hit rate of around 1 hit per 20 rounds fired (ten times better than the Union at Gettysburg).

This is like if the Union (say) fought Fredericksburg as the first battle of the Civil War and successfully took Marye's Heights, while inflicting more casualties than they suffered.


Now, despite already being able to do the kind of thing the American armies never work up the capability to do, the British do improve their army afterwards. This is actually quite significant, because it's much harder to learn harsh lessons from success than from failure; among the things the British improve, we have their mobilization system (where they set things up so that in future they can call out the militia very quickly to free up the strategic reserve in Britain and the garrisons in the Mediterranean). They roll out full musketry training on the highly effective Hythe system to the army, and also to their militia and volunteer auxiliaries, and they replace their artillery with accurate long-range percussion shell rifled Armstrong guns; even these highly effective weapons aren't good enough for the British and they replace them with the RML guns, which are just as effective in almost every way while also being significantly cheaper.
 
The thing to remember about the claim that the Southerners were the best troops of the 19th century is that it is a major claim.

There are several ways in which troops can become better. They can have a national culture which gives them military advantages (though this is not simply so clear cut as saying that there is an honour culture, or something like that - a culture can also be detrimental especially if it impedes discipline, because a modern army is a machine made out of parts and operating in concert).

Troops can also benefit from having a better baseline doctrine than their enemy. If your doctrine emphasizes long range musketry and your opponents do not have a doctrinal counter to that, then every battle you fight will be at a major advantage.

Troops can benefit from long periods of training. This improves their discipline and ability to execute the actions which are called for, and it also means that they become fitter.

Troops can benefit from a military culture which takes the training seriously, in which the training they are going through is the correct form of training to foster not merely actions but skills.

Troops can have better weapons, of course, though this has to be qualified a little - how capably you can use it matters. If you have a better weapon but do not have the capability to use it better then you don't really have a better weapon.

There's also leadership. A unit with a leader who knows what he's doing will improve faster and perform better in combat, and this applies on all levels - but being a good leader takes a knowledge base.

Finally, there is experience. This improves troops, but it only really improves the skills they already have - someone who has gone through a dozen battles but has never been shown how to set the sights on his rifle-musket will not suddenly level up and become able to do so - while too much experience can cause burnout, where all the enthusiastic men in a unit have become casualties and the ones who lag behind are the ones who are left.



The armies of the Civil War were produced pretty much from nothing, and this means that what they actually achieved is really impressive and deserves attention. However, that does not mean they were the best just because they did a lot of fighting - to use a 20th century example, the Japanese army had been fighting continuously from 1937 to 1945 by the end of WW2 but they had never had to get good because they were fighting the poorly supplied and chaotic Chinese army. This meant that their forces were decidedly subpar.
The flaws of the Civil War armies are mostly related to how they came pretty much from nothing. There was no cadre of experienced NCOs to keep the men functioning properly, while the officers often didn't have any knowledge base themselves to work from and were learning out of a book. The men were often not trained properly (and certainly not in things the drill book happened not to mention) and there were very few people around who could recognize what well-trained troops looked like in the first place to be able to say "yes, this is a well trained unit now, well done".
In addition, there were very few units that had a long period of training under the drum, and almost none under experienced NCOs (who were mostly in the Regular Army units).

There are however doctrinal issues as well. The rifle is a new weapon but there is no institutional bias towards learning how to use it, and American troops are able to stand fire fairly well but always have trouble manoeuvering under fire.
A double line of men with smoothbore musket accuracy open fire at smoothbore musket range at Gettysburg and it causes an attacking force in line to stall and ultimately halt, even though the double line of men with muskets was the standard tactic before the French revolution and it got ripped repeatedly to shreds by the French armies for years on end.
When Emory Upton uses the assault column at Spotsylvania it's a revelation, even though that was basically the first step of Napoleonic tactics.
It takes years to get cavalry good enough to operate on the battlefield in concert with infantry, and it's very rare that they actually do even when the opportunity is there.
Effective counter-battery shoots at a range of more than a mile are vanishingly rare (even though they come in with rifled artillery in Europe) and there's no perception of the lack; either this is something American cannon are incapable of doing and the Americans don't care enough to fix it, or it's something American cannon can do but they never try.



All of this is because every single European army was trying hard to understand what the best tactics for their situation were, and they were adapting according to their best understanding of the geopolitical situation and their own resources and assets. The combined strength of the armies on the European continent was well over a million men, and they had been that size for decades, and all of them were doing their best to create the most effective armies possible. Despite that, they often got it wrong.

In America the US Army was about 16,000 men at the start of the war (having been recently expanded) and they suddenly form an enormous national army on almost no knowledge base. They did not get everything right, and for them to get everything right would have been enormously unlikely as a lot of the time they were just guessing.
Americans need training and development just as much as other armies, and they had much less of it.
Thank you for the useful reminder of how much American military training fell behind European doctrine. I think my comment about Southerners (and Northerners) can stand if one is willing to limit the discussion to the capacities and capabilities of the individual soldiers who survived first contact.
 
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Thank you for the useful reminder of how much American military training fell behind European doctrine. I think my comment about Southerners (and Northerners) can stand if one is willing to limit the discussion to the capacities and capabilities of the individual soldiers who survived first contact.
But it's not a matter of first contact suddenly making the American soldiers good, is it? You can have gone through First Bull Run, Yorktown, Seven Pines, the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor and if you have never been taught how to estimate ranges and set your rifle sights you will not be able to shoot targets at 400 yards. Conversely if you are a British soldier who has gone through the annual Hythe course five times then it does not matter that you have never been in a battle before, you will be able to shoot targets at 400 yards.

Why exactly do you think that Southern soldiers became the best in the world in the 19th century? What basis are you using for comparison?
 
Thomas it is always a pleasure to get your feedback. I was always under the impression that the Southern boys were good shots. Could you go into more details about this?
Put it this way.

When you think "good shot", how far do you imagine someone being able to shoot?

For British soldiers, a third-class soldier (the lowest) could hit man-sized targets on a rifle range at 300 yards about 70% of the time; a first-class soldier (the highest, and about 1/3 to 1/2 of the army as a whole and a much higher fraction of some battalions) could hit them at 700-900 yards about 50% of the time (can't remember the exact numbers but it's only around 900 yards that they fall off). They were expected to be able to deliver effective fire at that range, and during the Crimean War a formation of essentially randomly selected British battalions shook out into skirmish line and delivered heavy, accurate sharpshooter fire against a Russian gunline at ~600-800 yards.

Note that when I say accurate battlefield fire I don't actually mean the same sort of hit rate as you get on a rifle range, but the British sharpshooters could still achieve a hit rate of ~1 in 16 on the battlefield before the Hythe system of training was fully developed. Afterwards they got better. (Compare this to, say, the Gettysburg hit rates, which were ~1 in 100 for the Confederates assuming most/all casualties were from musketry.)


Basically, if you go hunting with a rifle, you might learn to be a good shot at up to 100-150 yards (the range at which you need to point the gun straight at the target to hit). It takes specific training to be able to shoot at 300+ yards, though, because you need to be able to estimate range accurately and point the gun over the target.

100-150 yards is quite a long way already!
 
Put it this way.

When you think "good shot", how far do you imagine someone being able to shoot?

For British soldiers, a third-class soldier (the lowest) could hit man-sized targets on a rifle range at 300 yards about 70% of the time; a first-class soldier (the highest, and about 1/3 to 1/2 of the army as a whole and a much higher fraction of some battalions) could hit them at 900 yards about 50% of the time. They were expected to be able to deliver effective fire at that range, and during the Crimean War a formation of essentially randomly selected British battalions shook out into skirmish line and delivered heavy, accurate sharpshooter fire against a Russian gunline at ~700-800 yards.

Note that when I say accurate battlefield fire I don't actually mean the same sort of hit rate as you get on a rifle range, but the British sharpshooters could still achieve a hit rate of ~1 in 16 on the battlefield before the Hythe system of training was fully developed. Afterwards they got better. (Compare this to, say, the Gettysburg hit rates, which were ~1 in 100 for the Confederates assuming most/all casualties were from musketry.)


Basically, if you go hunting with a rifle, you might learn to be a good shot at up to 100-150 yards (the range at which you need to point the gun straight at the target to hit). It takes specific training to be able to shoot at 300+ yards, though, because you need to be able to estimate range accurately and point the gun over the target.

100-150 yards is quite a long way already!
300 yards - 70% accuracy - for a Pattern 1853 with a .577 minie? A 1 to 16 hit rate at 700-800 yards in the Crimea for British sharpshooters, an accuracy 6 times better than Confederate sharpshooters using the same weapon? (As our members know, the Pattern 1853 was imported by both the South and the North during the war.) Really?

Offering the British experience with the Martini-Henry as a comparison against soldiers using rifled and unrifled muskets a quarter century earlier is a wonderful use of rhetoric but it is hardly evidence, by itself, of superior military training and tradecraft. If we are going to get at this question of which were the best men to have in a 19th century fight, we need to limit the discussion to specific citations and remove all technological advantages from the comparisons. Otherwise, we are in the land of Hillaire Belloc and British imperial art, which is great historical fun but gets rather far away from the question that began this thread.

In puzzling out why we 19th century volunteer amateurs of war were getting so consistently marked down, I found myself thinking about the two subjects that are not mentioned in all these assertions of superior European militarism. One has already been touched on - the minimal importance of conscription for the American civil war versus its near universal application by European governments and their armies. The other topic that is missing in action is the change in armaments that separates the American civil war and the European ones Sheridan watched from all those that came after 1875: the development of the machine gun. It is truly the elephant in the room that voided even the regular British Army's superb marksmanship at the turn of the century as a tactical advantage.

https://rar.rutgers.edu/whatever-ha...in-british-imperialist-imagery-by-ramey-mize/

“Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.”
 
300 yards - 70% accuracy - for a Pattern 1853 with a .577 minie? A 1 to 16 hit rate at 700-800 yards in the Crimea for British sharpshooters, an accuracy 6 times better than Confederate sharpshooters using the same weapon? (As our members know, the Pattern 1853 was imported by both the South and the North during the war.) Really?
Yes.
I can provide the derivation of the statistics if you want.

Offering the British experience with the Martini-Henry as a comparison against soldiers using rifled and unrifled muskets a quarter century earlier is a wonderful use of rhetoric but it is hardly evidence, by itself, of superior military training and tradecraft. If we are going to get at this question of which were the best men to have in a 19th century fight, we need to limit the discussion to specific citations and remove all technological advantages from the comparisons. Otherwise, we are in the land of Hillaire Belloc and British imperial art, which is great historical fun but gets rather far away from the question that began this thread.
What are you talking about? I'm discussing the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-musket (and the earlier Minie rifle) as used in the Crimea. This is years before the Civil War.
For British artillery, I'm referring to the British Armstrong gun they were using in the 1860s. Either this was far superior to the American rifles or it was not, and if it was far superior then the Americans show no indication whatsoever of either caring or noticing - which is a bit of a sign by itself that they weren't the best all-round, I would say. While if it was not then the Americans far underperformed the British with similar weapons.


In puzzling out why we 19th century volunteer amateurs of war were getting so consistently marked down, I found myself thinking about the two subjects that are not mentioned in all these assertions of superior European militarism. One has already been touched on - the minimal importance of conscription for the American civil war versus its near universal application by European governments and their armies. The other topic that is missing in action is the change in armaments that separates the American civil war and the European ones Sheridan watched from all those that came after 1875: the development of the machine gun. It is truly the elephant in the room that voided even the regular British Army's superb marksmanship at the turn of the century as a tactical advantage.
I notice you still haven't explained why it is you think that amateurs would be the best, as in better than career professionals, despite my repeatedly asking. You also haven't explained why you think Southern Confederate soldiers would be better than British regulars.

And the British didn't use conscription, which means that (regardless of whether that's considered an advantage or a disadvantage, and you haven't explanied why you think it would be a disadvantage) it's not a factor here.

So, please, actually provide some information. As promised, I'll provide the derivation of the Enfield hit rates on the practice range and in the field if you ask, but the quid pro quo for this is that once presented you have to be willing to accept the information as valid.
 
I have qualified to shot at 1000 yards with a Creedmoor 6.5. I am not a sniper. I just had to prove I could shoot at that range safely.

How in the world do they get these statistics? When people start throwing around statistics like these I cannot help but to question them.
 
I have qualified to shot at 1000 yards with a Creedmoor 6.5. I am not a sniper. I just had to prove I could shoot at that range safely.
That's a much faster moving bullet, of course, which means that it's got a flatter trajectory and is easier to hit targets at 1,000 yards. In fact, since it's three times faster, the bullet would drop 1/9 as far for a Creedmoor 6.5 as it would for a P1853 Enfield. (Drop is as the square of time.)

Functionally this means that it's as hard for you to shoot at 1,000 yards as it would be for an Enfield user at ~300 yards (same travel time).



How in the world do they get these statistics? When people start throwing around statistics like these I cannot help but to question them.
If there's a specific statistic I've provided that you're questioning, please specify and I'll do my best to explain how it's derived.
 
Thomas it is always a pleasure to get your feedback. I was always under the impression that the Southern boys were good shots. Could you go into more details about this?

I am not Thomas, but I'll give you a documented, real world example of the quality of Confederate "marksmanship":

The mythology of the Civil War asserts that Confederate troops were better shots their Federal opponents, but the available evidence does not necessarily support that conclusion. Responding to an order from Lieutenant General William J. Hardee, Major General Patrick Cleburne directed the testing of .54 caliber Austrian rifle muskets at 100, 150, 200, and 300 yards [91, 137, 182, and 274 meters] using two lots of ammunition; one manufactured in England and the other at the Atlanta Arsenal. Given the large percentage of Muster 1854, Type I, rifle muskets in Major Caleb Huse’s purchases from the Austrian Army, the Austrian rifles involved in the tests were probably Type I weapons. On 19 June 1863 Captain Charles F. Vanderford, Cleburne's division ordnance officer, reported on the resulting tests. He had been directed to use a company of average soldiers from the 6th​, 10th​, and 15th​ Texas Consolidated Infantry Regiment of Cleburne’s Division. Although the troops had been in service for a year and a half, Vanderford discovered during the 100-yard phase of his test that three quarters of them had never been instructed on how to load, aim, and fire military shoulder arms. Contrary to the legend of Texican marksmanship in the American west the troops’ accuracy of fire was extremely poor. The weather conditions during the 100-yard test on 18 June had been perfect; cloudy, dry, and windless. Each of the 20 men involved in the 100-yard test fired one shot using Atlanta Arsenal ammunition at a 10-foot high by six-foot wide target, achieving an aggregate 13 hits. None of the rounds hit the black painted six-inch [15.2 cm] bullseye at the center of the target. Prior to continuing testing Vanderford had to instruct the men in basic marksmanship. [emphasis in original] (Vanderford’s Report, 19 June 1863, National Civil War Museum)

After instructing the soldiers on how to load and take aim Vanderford continued his test with five selected soldiers. The weather conditions remained the same; cloudy, dry, and windless. Firing 20 rounds of English manufactured ammunition at 150 yards, the troops achieved 18 hits. All the hits were in a group considerably tighter than the hits from the Atlanta Arsenal ammunition used at 100 yards. It is not clear from the report if the improvement was due to the use of English ammunition or the marksmanship instruction given the selected troops, although I suspect that it resulted from the training. (Vanderford’s Report, 19 June 1863, National Civil War Museum)

Vanderford continued the tests on 19 June. At 200 yards he selected 10 soldiers of “average ability as marksmen.” Firing 10 rounds of Atlanta Arsenal ammunition and 13 rounds of English ammunition they achieved 14 hits. Continuing with the 10 selected men at 300 yards they fired 27 rounds of Atlanta Arsenal ammunition and 16 rounds of English ammunition, achieving 12 hits. The weather conditions were again excellent; sunny with white clouds, dry, and with a light breeze from the front. (Vanderford’s Report, 19 June 1863, National Civil War Museum)

Vanderford clearly did not have a good understanding of the scientific method. Since the troops fired a mix of Atlanta Arsenal and English ammunition at 200 and 300 yards it is impossible to determine how well each of the lots of ammunition performed, although Vanderford observed that the “English cartridge gave much better results than the Atlanta [Arsenal cartridges]. The data obtained today and yesterday was, however, insufficient for any accurate comparison between the two.” Nor did Vanderford have a good understanding of the sights on the Austrian rifles, noting that:

“In firing at 300 yards distance, it appears that neither the Atlanta nor the English cartridge gave proper results, the guns being sighted directly upon the center of the target. Three fourths of the ‘misses’ fall too low, nearly one half striking the butts below the lower line of the target. This is perhaps attributable principally to the considerable windage of the guns, the balls being too small for target practice. This by no means a fault, however, the difficulty being (usually) to load [the] guns after the 12th​ or 15th​ round.” [emphasis added] (Vanderford’s Report, 19 June 1863, National Civil War Museum)

Given the calibration of the Austrian rifle sights in Schritt and the arched trajectory of the bullets, Vanderford achieved at 300 yards exactly the result one would expect from troops and an officer who had no understanding of the battle sights on their Austrian rifles. The possibility also exists that Vanderford did not understand that the bullets from the English cartridges were supposed to be loaded in the greased cartridge wrappers and that he instructed his test troops to remove the wrappers. Since the Texans’ weapons were fouling by the 12th​ to 15th​ round there is also reason to question the soldiers’ maintenance of their weapons. Vanderford or his superiors passed the results of the test up their chain of command because Colonel Mallet acknowledged receipt of a copy of the test report from Brigadier General Gorgas on 3 August 1863. (Thomas, Round Ball to Rimfire, IV, 97)

So, one has troops who have been in the Confederate Army for a year and a half with NO marksmanship instruction by their officers and NCOs, and a division ordnance officer who has no clue about basic ballistics. Neither the soldiers nor the officer had a clue about how to use the sights on their weapons. But the Confederate Army and the Confederate soldier was the best in the world. If you had put them up against good European troops these Texicans would have been butchered, and Cleburne's people were reputedly amongst the best the Confederate Army had to offer.

Regards,
Don Dixon
 
Cleburne's people were reputedly amongst the best the Confederate Army had to offer.
This was partly because he did actually train his men in musketry and range estimation, though I believe this took place in late 1863 into 1864 (it was started while he was at Wartrace, which he arrived at April 30 1863). He had a copy of the Hythe musketry manual to work from but was not himself a product of the Hythe school, so the extent to which he could put it into action in a hurry may have been limited; it seems Liddell's brigade had benefited from it by Liberty Gap given a dissertation on the subject.
 
Note that when I say accurate battlefield fire I don't actually mean the same sort of hit rate as you get on a rifle range, but the British sharpshooters could still achieve a hit rate of ~1 in 16 on the battlefield before the Hythe system of training was fully developed. Afterwards they got better. (Compare this to, say, the Gettysburg hit rates, which were ~1 in 100 for the Confederates assuming most/all casualties were from musketry.)
Not sharpshooters, regular infantrymen. These figures are determined by hits achieved/ ammunition expended for all the infantry. Now, many of them were firing as dispersed skirmishers at long ranges, but these were not picked sharpshooters. As we know, the British expended 176,790 Minie balls at Inkerman (which would included unfired lost rounds), as well as 23,150 smoothbore rounds and 2,066 artillery rounds. The Russians lost 11,959 casualties before them. Deducting the British artillery, British 4th Division (who were smoothbore armed), 2 engaged French batteries and the French 7th Light Infantry (which was engaged), probably at least 10,000 of those casualties were hit by British Minie armed infantry (i.e. on the order of 17.6 rounds per hit).

300 yards - 70% accuracy - for a Pattern 1853 with a .577 minie? A 1 to 16 hit rate at 700-800 yards in the Crimea for British sharpshooters, an accuracy 6 times better than Confederate sharpshooters using the same weapon? (As our members know, the Pattern 1853 was imported by both the South and the North during the war.) Really?
Yes. See the British infantry destroying the Russian artillery line at ca. 800 yards at Inkerman with sustained, well directed small arms fire. This was with the old M1851 Minie, not a 1853 Enfield.

The British Enfield of 1862 was actually far better than what the British had in 1853. The understanding of rifling improved, and a new progressive rifling system had been adopted, which was a major improvement on the older rifling. The ammunition had been through multiple changes. The British .55 Boxer-Hay pattern bullet was much improved, and far ahead of the Burton ammunition issued in the US. Indeed, the rebels sought modern British ammunition because it never clogged the weapon - a soldier with British ammunition could fire his full load of 40 rounds without cleaning, whereas Burton balls became unloading usually after less than 10 rounds without cleaning.

The reason the rebel sharpshooters like the 2-band Enfield short rifle is simple. The sights went up to 900 yards, whereas the Springfield sights only went up to 500. That alone was a good reason to use it.
 
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