Percent of the armies that were infantry

major bill

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Aug 25, 2012
According to the latest Military Images magazine 80% of the Union soldiers were infantry and 75% of Confederate soldiers were infantry. I am trying to decide if this says anything.

Union 80% infantry, 14% cavalry, and 6% artillery
Confederate 75% infantry, 20% cavalry, and 5% artillery.

I do not see the numbers doing very much to add to our knowledge of the Civil War. It would be interesting to see how the percentages compared with European armies of the same era. The terrain of most of the areas the Civil War was fought in were not great cavalry areas.
 
Interesting.

I think you would have to compare it to Continental European armies since I've read that generally cavarymen made up a smaller proportion of the British army than the French or Austrian armies, for example.
 
Did Military Images say where they got these figures from. I think the other two arms might have been made up of more men, but their organization were somewhat different. There was no organization for artillery over a regiment. Cavalry had basically the same organization as the Infantry. No idea about European numbers.
 
Did Military Images say where they got these figures from. I think the other two arms might have been made up of more men, but their organization were somewhat different. There was no organization for artillery over a regiment. Cavalry had basically the same organization as the Infantry. No idea about European numbers.

No MI did not go into details and this is from an article discussing identifying photographs. The concept being most photographs show infantrymen because most soldiers were infantrymen. This would have to assume that infantrymen, cavalrymen, and artillerymen took photographs in proportion to the numbers of each. I am not sure this is the case. For example heavy artillery spent more time in or near large cities where photographers were more common and thus I could make an augment that heavy artillerymen had more photos taken.
 
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