Was there NOT A LOT of Actual hand-to-hand combat during the War ?

Rio Bravo

First Sergeant
Joined
Oct 6, 2013
Location
Suffolk, U.K.
This North Carolina Memorial States: “....The fighting here at Fox’s Gap saw one of the few instances of actual hand-to-hand combat of the War “
I was surprised to read that, thinking it happened in quite a few battles ! What does everyone else think ?
5AF0530E-516F-463F-AB55-7367CEA711F6.jpeg
 
This North Carolina Memorial States: “....The fighting here at Fox’s Gap saw one of the few instances of actual hand-to-hand combat of the War “
I was surprised to read that, thinking it happened in quite a few battles ! What does everyone else think ?
Instances of hand-to-hand combat probably occurred during several battles, but as far as being statistically significant in inflicting casualties compared to small arms and artillery, it really wasn't very significant.

Colonel Trevor Dupuy's overall assessment from his HANDBOOK ON
GROUND. FORCES ATTRITION IN MODERN WARFARE
, SEPTEMBER 1986 lists the following casualty statistics for 19th Century warfare. The majority of the post-1860 stats were of course compiled from the American Civil War. So you can see where you would expect to see casualties from hand-to-hand fighting (saber and bayonet), only 4-6% of the overall casualties were a result. Significant but not nearly so much as pre-1860 warfare.

Figure 18, page 55
Causes of Battlefield Casualties in the 19th Century
Artillery
Before 1850: 40-50% After 1860: 8-10%

Infantry Small Arms
Before 1850: 30-40% After 1860: 85-90%

Saber and Bayonet
Before 1850: 15-20% After 1860: 4-6%
 
Vote Here:
Instances of hand-to-hand combat probably occurred during several battles, but as far as being statistically significant in inflicting casualties compared to small arms and artillery, it really wasn't very significant.

Colonel Trevor Dupuy's overall assessment from his HANDBOOK ON
GROUND. FORCES ATTRITION IN MODERN WARFARE
, SEPTEMBER 1986 lists the following casualty statistics for 19th Century warfare. The majority of the post-1860 stats were of course compiled from the American Civil War. So you can see where you would expect to see casualties from hand-to-hand fighting (saber and bayonet), only 4-6% of the overall casualties were a result. Significant but not nearly so much as pre-1860 warfare.

Figure 18, page 55
Causes of Battlefield Casualties in the 19th Century
Artillery
Before 1850: 40-50% After 1860: 8-10%

Infantry Small Arms
Before 1850: 30-40% After 1860: 85-90%

Saber and Bayonet
Before 1850: 15-20% After 1860: 4-6%
I do not question the statistics, to the limit they go.
Hand to hand engagement was much more often with a rifle stock than bayonet;with rocks, fists and feet also.
The bayonet was not a very effective infantry weapon, thrusts were simple to fend off. On the other hand, it was really hard to stop a rifle butt coming down on you. And hand to hand tended to produce prisoners, not casualties. Gun crews rarely fought with firearms. The statistics do not actually demonstrate frequency or intensity of hand to hand combat.
 
Vote Here:
I do not question the statistics, to the limit they go.

Points well-taken. As @Rio Bravo also discussed above and as we know from much of the bloody fighting at Franklin, hand-to-hand fighting did take place. And do you seriously want to differentiate a death due to a rifle musket being thrust over a parapet and fired point blank into another human body from actual hand-to-hand combat? Statistics are statistics, and unfortunately that's all the hard evidence we have to go by aside from the few actual documented first-hand accounts...
 
Vote Here:
The May 12th 1864 “Bloody Angle” fighting at Spotsylvania Court House involved 24 hours of desperate hand-to-hand fighting, some of the most intense of the whole Civil War- this must be the exception to the rule though.

I wonder if what really went on was shooting at each other from close range with occasional flurries of hand to hand. And lots of hunkering down on either side of the parapet.
 
Vote Here:
I wonder if what really went on was shooting at each other from close range with occasional flurries of hand to hand. And lots of hunkering down on either side of the parapet.
Yes I think that’s what happened over the Breastworks, Men were crouched either side of them, shooting & stabbing through the crevices between the logs. Sometimes one Man would mount upon the works and have loaded rifles passed up to him rapidly, and I think Rifles with bayonets attached were thrown down like spears !
I remember reading that one smallish Georgian Officer was seized by his collar by a huge Wisconsin Officer & jerked over the works and was captured !
 
Vote Here:
The bayonet was not a very effective infantry weapon
However, Colonel Chamberlain utilized a bayonet charge very effectively to defend LRT. Another case, of which I am very familiar because it involved my boys from the 2nd Mississippi, occurred at the Wilderness near the close of the day on May 5th. Colonel John Marshall Stone of the 2nd Mississippi, being the senior colonel in the brigade, was in charge of Davis's brigade during the battle (Davis out sick). They were deployed north of the Orange Plank Road. By early evening the brigade had withstood seven separate organized assaults by elements of both II and VI Corps, Army of the Potomac. Stone was out of ammo. All the men sent back to procure more had been killed or wounded. No help seemed to be forthcoming, so he went up and down the brigade line ordering "Fix Bayonets!" and was fully prepared to sacrifice the brigade in a bayonet charge to, temporarily at least, stabilize his position. Just as he was preparing to order the charge however, elements of Kirkland's brigade finally began to arrive to relieve them. So, long story short, bayonet charges still were utilized from time to time, and to good effect occasionally.
 
Vote Here:
However, Colonel Chamberlain utilized a bayonet charge very effectively to defend LRT. Another case, of which I am very familiar because it involved my boys from the 2nd Mississippi, occurred at the Wilderness near the close of the day on May 5th. Colonel John Marshall Stone of the 2nd Mississippi, being the senior colonel in the brigade, was in charge of Davis's brigade during the battle (Davis out sick). They were deployed north of the Orange Plank Road. By early evening the brigade had withstood seven separate organized assaults by elements of both II and VI Corps, Army of the Potomac. Stone was out of ammo. All the men sent back to procure more had been killed or wounded. No help seemed to be forthcoming, so he went up and down the brigade line ordering "Fix Bayonets!" and was fully prepared to sacrifice the brigade in a bayonet charge to, temporarily at least, stabilize his position. Just as he was preparing to order the charge however, elements of Kirkland's brigade finally began to arrive to relieve them. So, long story short, bayonet charges still were utilized from time to time, and to good effect occasionally.
Well yes, Union Col.Emory Upton ordered his assaulting force ( against the Mule Shoe Salient, Spotsylvania) to try novel tactics. He formed 12 Regts into 4 lines, with instructions NOT to fire their rifles until they were ON TOP of the Confederate trenches, which were to be carried by the Bayonet !
Upton’s Men took 1000 Prisoners and opened a wide gap in Lee’s front.
 
Vote Here:
I don't know about overall...but I know of at least a couple of instances where Wofford's brigade (or individual regiments in it) were engaged in hand to hand combat.

July 2, 1863 at Gettysburg - individuals of Cobb's and Phillip's Legions, fighting hand-to-hand, bayoneted several of the enemy resulting in the capture of three flags.

November 24, 1863 rifle pits before Knoxville - About 8 o’clock AM, General Ferrero sent forward the 2nd Michigan to charge the rifle pits occupied by a portion of the 3rd Battn GA Sharpshooters. Fighting hand to hand over the impalement, the 2nd MI was successful in driving the SS from their pits and occupied them for about half an hour before the rest of the 3d Battn SS was moved up and soon succeeded in driving the enemy from the works with a loss. About 50 or 60 of the 2nd MI were killed, wounded, and prisoners, while the 3d Battn SS's loss was 5 men wounded, 2 of them mortally.
 
Vote Here:
Stonewall Jackson didn't appear to think to negatively about the bayonet and he seems to have been in a position to know. I believe Patton said something to the effect "few men are killed by bayonets, most men fear it." Someone else who might have some idea of what he speaks.

I believe there were at least a couple of instances of charges that were conducted with bayonets fixed and muskets uncapped to prevent the troops from stopping to deliver their fire too soon.

I am under the impression that in most bayonet charges in the horse and musket era one side or the other breaks before the actual melee takes place.

At the battle of Gettysburg the colonel of the 124th New York was killed by a bayonet I believe, and Wade Hampton received a serious sabre wound to the head. I am under the impression that the 69th Pa. meleed hand to hand with Pickett's men in front of the copse of trees. Custer's life was saved by a sabre wielding enlisted man at Hunterstown.

Just an opinion of course, but close combat, whatever the weapon, may have been infrequent in the Civil war, but seems to have occurred.



John
 
Vote Here:
Also on the subject of bayonets, and of course I can't be sure where I read this, I believe in a history of Hood's Texas Brigade, that Hoods brigade intentionally discarded their bayonets after going west with Longstreet. Upon returning to the east they scrounged around to acquire them again.I

John
 
Vote Here:
Some up close and personal fighting took place at a strategic position at the battle of Port Republic known as the "The Coaling". The coaling was located on high ground that provided a commanding view of the battlefield. It was here that a Union battery was strategically placed and wrecked havoc on the Confederate forces of Stonewall Jackson. It was Dick Taylor's Louisiana brigades that led the bloody charge that captured the Union battery.

Here is a description of the assault from Robert Krick's "Conquering The Valley - Stonewall Jackson at Port Republic".
"At such close quarters swords and bayonets came into play. Modern writers reviewing Civil War accounts often reject contemporary reports of the use of edged weapons, dismissing them as hyperbole for popular consumption. Virtually every witness of the bloody encounter at the Coaling recorded bayonet fighting. In General Taylor's words, "many fell from bayonet wounds." One of Taylor's subordinates wrote that the brave Federal gunners resisted until "thrust with the bayonet and hacked to pieces with sword and sabre." Two Virginia gunners on the plain described bayonet encounters: "Bayonets gleamed in the morning sunshine one moment and the next they were plunged into living human flesh and dripping with reeking blood."

"In mortal combat at that range, men grabbed and swung anything with the potential to inflict harm. The artillerists' long-staffed ramrods became defensive utensils, their iron-tipped extractors making one end like a medieval lance. They "used their rammers in a way not laid down in the manual," Dick Taylor recalled. Combatants snatched up musical instruments and flailed about with them. Others on both sides simply used their fists."
 
Vote Here:
Here are my current numbers tallied from Gettysburg, both armies together, where the type of wound/injury on an identified infantry combatant is described:

Total cases: 2,718

Gunshot: 2,060 (75.8 %)

Artillery: 627 (23.1 %)

All other causes (broken down as follows): 31 (1.1 %)
Fall from horse, runaway horse, thrown horseshoe: 9
Bayonet: 6
Clubbed musket and butt end of musket: 5
Sword/saber: 3
Exploding cartridge box: 2
Falling tree limb: 2
Falling bricks: 1
Falling into a ditch (railroad cut): 1
Artilleryman's rammer: 1
Struck by comrade having a nightmare: 1
 
Last edited:
Vote Here:
Here are my current numbers tallied from Gettysburg, both armies together, where the type of wound on an identified infantry combatant is described:

Total cases: 2,718

Gunshot: 2,060 (75.8 %)

Artillery: 627 (23.1 %)

All other causes (broken down as follows): 31 (1.1 %)
Fall from horse, runaway horse, thrown horseshoe: 9
Bayonet: 6
Clubbed musket and butt end of musket: 5
Sword/saber: 3
Exploding cartridge box: 2
Falling tree limb: 2
Falling bricks: 1
Falling into a ditch (railroad cut): 1
Artilleryman's rammer: 1
Struck by comrade having a nightmare: 1

Interesting how close they are to Dupuy's aggregate numbers...
 
Vote Here:
Its was rare but it did happen , I think people get a misconception about hand to hand fighting because its sounds so dramatic and as were know soldiers love to exaggerate or embellish , Fact is more soldiers died to falling off their horses than actual bayonet wounds.

On the other-hand their were instances of specific engagements where hand to hand did take place.

I think soldiers on both sides tried to avoid hand to hand where possible as they did not want the war to get up close and personal bit of a difference firing a ball from 80 yards and giving a person the cold steel a couple of feet away.
 
Vote Here:
Some up close and personal fighting took place at a strategic position at the battle of Port Republic known as the "The Coaling". The coaling was located on high ground that provided a commanding view of the battlefield. It was here that a Union battery was strategically placed and wrecked havoc on the Confederate forces of Stonewall Jackson. It was Dick Taylor's Louisiana brigades that led the bloody charge that captured the Union battery.

Here is a description of the assault from Robert Krick's "Conquering The Valley - Stonewall Jackson at Port Republic".
"At such close quarters swords and bayonets came into play. Modern writers reviewing Civil War accounts often reject contemporary reports of the use of edged weapons, dismissing them as hyperbole for popular consumption. Virtually every witness of the bloody encounter at the Coaling recorded bayonet fighting. In General Taylor's words, "many fell from bayonet wounds." One of Taylor's subordinates wrote that the brave Federal gunners resisted until "thrust with the bayonet and hacked to pieces with sword and sabre." Two Virginia gunners on the plain described bayonet encounters: "Bayonets gleamed in the morning sunshine one moment and the next they were plunged into living human flesh and dripping with reeking blood."

"In mortal combat at that range, men grabbed and swung anything with the potential to inflict harm. The artillerists' long-staffed ramrods became defensive utensils, their iron-tipped extractors making one end like a medieval lance. They "used their rammers in a way not laid down in the manual," Dick Taylor recalled. Combatants snatched up musical instruments and flailed about with them. Others on both sides simply used their fists."
I was thinking about the "Coaling" as I read down the posts. Confederates took it, lost it, retook it, lost it again, finally retook it for good the third time.
 
Vote Here:
Back
Top