Are you talking about artillery or just saying that British soldiers were way better shots on average? Because I really don't think that's the case or would have been if Britain and the US had to fight a full scale war in the 1860s (and consequently the British would have to quickly raise millions of troops who couldn't be given the best training, like the US had to do in the Civil War).
Artillery and infantry. The British gave intensive sharpshooter training to every single man in their infantry force; they also gave similar though less intensive training to their militia (114,000 in 1863) and volunteers (163,000 in 1863).
There's already a pool of nearly 300,000 musketry-trained battle casualty replacements in Britain; besides which, the training process doesn't take long if you know how. The problem is that (as per numerous sources, such as Paddy Griffith) there was not musketry training in the Civil War - certainly not across the whole army - and musketry at long range is a skill you need to be taught.
There's nothing I'd find unexpected about the idea that a few men in some regiments were effective sharpshooters by pre-war training, natural ability or wartime programs - we certainly know that some Whitworths got handed out - but training ordinary line infantry universally in long-range musketry is something that only really comes up for Cleburne's men (he got hold of a copy of the Hythe musketry manual).
Griffith and Nosworthy:
“There does appear to have been a serious lack of target practice in the armies of both sides, and we find that when it did occur most diarists regarded it as a highly exceptional event.” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, p. 87
24th Michigan:
“It was sent to the front within a very few weeks of its formation in July 1862, and in its only recorded target practice during that time three men were wounded and one died of a heart attack… the regiment’s next target practice came some four months later… After this we learn of a resumption over a year later” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, pp. 87-8
13th Massachusetts
“formed in August 1861, it... held its first target practice… only in the spring of 1864... its nearest approach to formal target practice had been an exercise in estimating ranges up to five hundred yards” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, p. 88
“35th Massachusetts in 1862, despite being armed with Enfields considered that 300 yards was out of range of the enemy” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, p. 148
5th Connecticut:
“About a hundred yards away, the broad side of a barn proved to be too much of a temptation. The men fired a volley at the harmless foe. The men were sadly disappointed when they checked the results of their seemingly fearsome fire. Only four bullets [of forty] had found their way to the building, though it was 20 feet long and 15 feet wide. Of these, only a single bullet hole was within the height of a line of infantrymen.” Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the American Civil War (London: Constable, 2005), p. 145
“There is little in the literature to suggest that the average Civil War infantry regiment even began to judge distances or set sights accurately for battle. On the contrary, there are many references to officers telling their men simply to aim low” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, p. 88
“At Drewey’s Bluff, Virginia (May 13, 1864), I. Hermann, a Confederate infantryman, noticed the execution Union bullets were inflicting on a tall pine just within the rebel breastworks. Though the two firing lines had been only a hundred yards apart, Hermann noticed bark, needles and cones being knocked down the entire height of the tree down to the top of the breastworks. Hermann concluded that even though thousands of shots were fired in a high parabolic trajectory into the upper regions of the tree, thousands more were fired even higher and escaped any sort of visual detection.” Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage, p. 581
We certainly know that in 1864 this problem hadn't been solved in the Army of the Potomac. Before the Overland a circular is issued to make sure all men know how to load and fire their weapons:
'Circular, Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, April 19 1864
To familiarize the men in the use of their arms an additional expenditure of 10 rounds of small-arm ammunition per man is hereby authorized... Every man should be made to load and fire his musket under the personal supervision of a company officer. It is believed there are men in this army who have been in numerous actions without ever firing their guns, and it is known that muskets taken on the battle-fields have been found filled nearly to the muzzle with cartridges...
By order of Major-General Meade
Chas. E. Pease,
Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General'
It didn't take, however, or new units weren't held to the same standard. In November 1864 Warren complained of the 5th Corps:
'The command... consisted, first, of the First Division... 4,707 strong, of which 1,247 were ignorant of the manual, and 2,803 had never fired off a musket. Second, of the Second Division... 4,704 strong, of which 104 were ignorant of the manual, and 812 had never fired off a musket. Third, of two brigades of the Third Division... of which 298 were ignorant of the manual and 298 had never fired off a musket.'
It seems self evident to me that if you have a Union formation in the Army of the Potomac in late 1864 where about a third of them have never fired a musket, it is unlikely that the Union army had institutionalized musketry and marksmanship training.
The British Army, on the other hand,
did. Everyone went through the training course yearly, and a recruit would fire 110 rounds ball while a trained soldier would fire 90 (plus blanks and percussion caps for snapping practice). The militia got roughly 40 and 20 respectively for a new and a trained man.
There is significant evidence that, for the great majority of line infantry formations in the Union army, there was no musketry training out past "point blank" range (100-150 yards), if that. The exceptions are the same sort of thing you'd get from the Rifle formations in Wellington's day - specialized troops in small numbers.
Yeah I agree with all that, I'm just saying cavalry's importance was fading in traditional roles. Glorious cavalry charges worked sometimes (even as late WWI) but that era was coming to an end. The Light Brigade reached the guns but took 40% casualties. In the Civil War, cavalrymen on both sides did fight dismounted more often than not, especially late in the war. They were more like dragoons and used revolvers and carbines a lot more often than sabers (though of course sabers were used on occasion). I just think if the British cavalry found themselves in a full scale drawn out war they would probably have had to adapt along similar lines.
Except that in the Civil War in 1864-5 Union cavalry started using increasing amounts of their strength in
sabre squadrons, which was something the Confederates couldn't match. At Five Forks they even overrun infantry in works.
What this means is that Union cavalrymen became more effective when they determined based on battle experience that the saber was a worthwhile weapon. The sabre was not yet obsolete in trained hands.
This is not to say that the British did not train their cavalry as dragoons - they certainly did, and (as you might have guessed by this point) they trained them in range estimation, musketry and marksmanship as well. The point is that they had multiple options (mounted action, particularly useful against enemy cavalry or disordered infantry, plus dismounted action) and that evidence from the latter part of the Civil War indicates that for mounted action the sabre is superior.
Of course, there's also the issue of scouting and screening, and for that (especially when faced with enemy cavalry - that is, penetrating an enemy screen or driving off enemy scouting squadrons) the mounted charge is quite useful!
An infantry regiment in the Civil War usually started with about 1,000 men on paper and in the field it could be less than half that. Elphinstone had 4,500 troops under his command during the retreat in 7 infantry and cavalry regiments. He was a major general in the British army but that would make him at least a brigadier general even in Civil War standards, and proportionally the British army was much smaller in India so he was a major commander and it was considered a huge loss. The governor of India had a stroke when he heard about it.
I said in proportion; in 1842 the British Army had 103 line battalions of King's infantry (of which 22 were in India), plus six European battalions of Company in India and on the order of 100-150 regular native infantry units, plus native cavalry and irregulars. In total there were 276,000 troops in India in 1842, of which Elphinstone commanded 4,500; this makes him in command of 1/60 of the army, which means that (with the 1842 US army having 14 regiments in it) he'd be roughly the fourth in command of a regiment.
I know you're talking about 1862 or so, but this is sort of my point; if you bring in examples from outside the Civil War years to demonstrate British incompetence, the problem that starts to arise is that the British have formations doing things constantly for the whole 19th century (so incompetence gets exposed more easily) while someone as fallible and as proportionately important as Elphinstone in the US army in the same year might well not end up tested at all.
I'm not arguing that the British didn't have incompetent officers, certainly - or that the US had more than their share of them. I'm simply saying that the evidence is not sufficient to suggest that the
British had more than their share of them, and that consequently we should stick to the idea that they did not.
There are many more examples of incompetent British commanders from the Crimean War to the Zulu wars to WWI. The British were certainly no less susceptible to it than Americans when they had people like Burnside and Bragg in command.
I'd say Banks is the closer comparison.
It might be an interesting exercise to try and pair off examples of incompetence and try and work out how many years of British incompetence we need to equate to the four years of high-intensity fighting in the Civil War; it's probably not helpful though.