How many regiments were there?

[Saphroneth]

Did the concepts of platoons or squads exist in the ACW? They seem pretty meaningless in linear combat, except maybe for sharpshooters or an equivalent unit like artillery batteries and sections.

My understanding is that it worked like this:


There was not really any such thing as a squad, at least not in any organized sense, though the term appears to have been used to refer to small groups.

In battle, a tactical battalion (i.e. regiment, partial regiment or multiple merged regiments which operated as a single tactical unit following the drill book) would form ten equalized tactical companies. These were not necessarily the same as the administrative companies (i.e. if the administrative Company A was 50 men, Company B was 100 men and all the other companies were 75 men, then the ten tactical companies would all be 75 men and in this simple case it would be done by transferring men from Company B to Company A on the battlefield) and the equalization was sometimes done on the field of battle or even under fire - it's necessary to be able to operate properly according to the drill book.

These tactical companies were commanded as two platoons (by the Captain and 1st Lt) for some operations in the drill book.

In practice, those platoons would be less than 50 men and in some cases as small as ten men (by the point you're below about 200 men it's pretty much a better idea to combine the tactical battalion with another unit). And if you've got only a couple of dozen men doing a task when they're armed with rifle muskets but they're deployed in any sense independently then they don't really have the combat power to do anything.


In an artillery formation the battery corresponds to the company, so obviously there were sub-company organizations in that. Sections were two guns.