Tim - the Civil War is notable for the wide distribution of rifled arms to the troops. But this also happened in the Crimean War. Still, as Prof. Hess points out in The Rifled Musket in Combat, it didn't really have an effect on the casualties as one would think. Certainly the guns were more accurate than their smoothbore forerunners, but marksmanship practice and instruction were very wanting in both armies. I discuss this to some extent in my book.
However, that the percentage of rifles increased did give the infantryman who knew how to aim and had a knack for Kentucky Windage the ability to hit f a r ther out than he would have had he been issued the smoothbore. Hence, the examples of long range sharpshooting that was once rare in the earlier wars became a lot more common.
I agree with all that. The only thing that I believe is commonly overlooked on this is that when troops were firing at one another more than 100 yards out, they were not usually firing at individuals -- they were firing at units.
This is area fire, and the rifle changes the way units are moved and deployed tactically. The easiest, fastest way to move infantry under fire is in a dense column. French Napoleonic infantry tactics made a lot of use of it in 1793-1815. When the troops were really well trained, they used a mixture of battalions in alternating column and line with a cloud of skirmishers out front.
The column is the easiest and fastest -- but also the most vulnerable, the biggest and densest target. We see very little use of columns in ACW open-field battles as a result. At 200 yards in the Civil War, a dense column is a fat target. Area volley fire by a regiment armed with rifles could likely have inflicted painful casualties at that distance. With smoothbores, the defender would not even try to fire. As a result, almost no one tried to maneuver that way in the ACW, although it was a key part of infantry tactics before the ACW. (As I would guess you already know, there is a revival of infantry assaults in column late in the war under Emory Upton, attempting to break through entrenchments in a rush, starting at Spotsylvania. It was an all-or-nothing tactic, resulting in either quick breaking of the line or awful slaughter.)
The rifle also affected cavalry on the battlefield. With flintlock smoothbores, infantry within a few hundred yards of formed enemy cavalry almost had to form square for protection. A cavalry charge was ideally developed over 600 yards, increasing the pace every 200. Against smoothbore infantry, the first 400+ yards, maybe 500, were done without receiving fire. On an ACW battlefield, that cavalry might receive fire at 200-300 yards from the defender's rifles. A cavalry regiment moving in formation makes a very big target for area fire by an infantry regiment -- and most of the damage is done by hitting horses, not men. As a result, I can tick off the number of verifiable instances of units forming square in the entire ACW on the fingers of my hands (1st Bull Run, Gettysburg, New Market ...) I can find more than that in just about any small Napoleonic battle.
Rifles also allowed area fire to cover gaps in the line and protect other units better, but I see little discussion of this around. This in turn allowed units to influence a wider area, and assisted defenders in repelling attacks.
I agree with you absolutely that training and doctrine in the world's armies was muddled and unsuited to the rifle at that time. It was new, they weren't sure how best to use it, they made mistakes, and the shift to mass armies in the US makes for an organizational nightmare. But the Austrians -- who had a different tactical system based more on firepower than shock dating from the Archduke Charles in 1809 -- totally blew the introduction of the rifle. Having lost to the French in 1859, they decided that shock action with the bayonet, largely in column, was the way to go with the new weapon. They retrained their infantry to do that. In 1866, they tried it against the breechloader-armed Prussians with horrible casualties the result. Clearly even the Austrians (regarded as the 2nd best army in the world at that time) couldn't figure out the implications of the new weapons in peacetime. The US soldiers need not hang their heads in the comparison.
I think a lot of the implications of the rifle in the ACW are shown more in what was
not done than in what
was done. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery usage changed in reaction to it. Also, the period of the rifle muzzleloader was short. The Crimean War sees the first mass use of it, and that really only on one side. The Prussians -- who have had some breechloaders in use since the 1840s -- rearm totally with the "Needle Gun" breechloader starting in 1862 and cream Austria with it in 1866. The French switch to the Chassepot breechloader in reaction in an emergency move in 1866, and the next big war, the Franco-Prussian in 1870, is fought with both sides armed with breechloaders. There was barely a decade to work out how to use these new muzzleloading rifles, and then they were already obsolete.
Tim
Bringing the