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The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth (Modern War Studies) | 
| Author: Earl J. Hess
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 19979
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0700616071
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.73
EAN: 9780700616077
ASIN: 0700616071
Publication Date: September 9, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
The Civil War's single-shot, muzzle-loading musket revolutionized warfare--or so we've been told for years. Noted historian Earl J. Hess forcefully challenges that claim, offering a new, clear-eyed, and convincing assessment of the rifle musket's actual performance on the battlefield and its impact on the course of the Civil War. Many contemporaries were impressed with the new weapon's increased range of 500 yards, compared to the smoothbore musket's range of 100 yards, and assumed that the rifle was a major factor in prolonging the Civil War. Historians have also assumed that the weapon dramatically increased casualty rates, made decisive victories rare, and relegated cavalry and artillery to far lesser roles than they played in smoothbore battles. Hess presents a completely new assessment of the rifle musket, contending that its impact was much more limited than previously supposed and was confined primarily to marginal operations such as skirmishing and sniping. He argues further that its potential to alter battle line operations was virtually nullified by inadequate training, soldiers' preference for short-range firing, and the difficulty of seeing the enemy at a distance. He notes that bullets fired from the new musket followed a parabolic trajectory unlike those fired from smoothbores; at mid-range, those rifle balls flew well above the enemy, creating two killing zones between which troops could operate untouched. He also presents the most complete discussion to date of the development of skirmishing and sniping in the Civil War. Drawing upon the observations and reflections of the soldiers themselves, Hess offers the most compelling argument yet made regarding the actual use of the rifle musket and its influence on Civil War combat. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, his book will be of special interest to Civil War scholars, buffs, re-enactors, and gun enthusiasts alike. This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.
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| Customer Reviews:
Important study of Civil War combat realities September 4, 2008
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
The flyleaf of Earl J. Hess's "The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth" promises "a completely new assessment of the rifle musket, contending that its impact was much more limited than previously supposed" and at the start of the book's Introduction Hess states that "the prevailing view of this weapon has been that it revolutionized warfare because of its increased range." Well, back in the 1980s in his "Battle Tactics of the Civil War" British military historian Paddy Griffith stated that "it is difficult to find any evidence at all to support the suggestion that Civil War musketry was delivered at ranges much longer than those of Napoleonic times" and furthermore concludes that "Civil War musketry did not ... possess the power to kill large numbers of men, even in very dense formations, at long range." For the past twenty years, this understanding has, among those of us who study and think about such things, been pretty much the orthodox view, not heresy. See, for example, Brent Nosworthy's "The Bloody Crucible of Courage" and Joseph Bilby's "Civil War Firearms" and "Small Arms at Gettysburg" for quite clear statements about the matter. (To be fair, Hess in his new book cites Griffith, Nosworthy, and Bilby for their work in this area.)
But, if Hess's "The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat" might not be as groundbreaking as the flyleaf description and author's introduction indicate, the book nonetheless provides a solid, detailed underpinning for this relatively new understanding of the practical use and limitations of the prevalent American Civil War infantry weapon; and the book may spread that notion to a wider spectrum of Civil War readers than heretofore has been the case. Hess has performed a valuable service in digging through mountains of primary source material to quantify the impact of rifle muskets on Civil War combat, yielding numerous statistics in support of his conclusions that firefights occurred mostly at ranges far under the theoretical capacity of the weapons and that Civil War battles were no more bloody or indecisive than earlier battles when smoothbore muskets were the rule.
Perhaps of particular value is Hess's assessment of the impact of rifle muskets upon skirmishing, sharpshooting, and sniping (Hess takes pains to differentiate between the terms, noting that they are often incorrectly used interchangeably). He concludes that the widespread use of the weapons permitted large numbers of soldiers to act in the skirmishing role, not concentrating that duty upon a couple of picked companies from each regiment or in elite units such as described in Fred L. Ray's "Shock Troops of the Confederacy: The Sharpshooter Battalions of the Army of Northern Virginia." Hess states that "Lee's sharpshooter battalions were unique and impressive examples of Civil War specialist units. But there is no convincing evidence that they consistently dominated the skirmish line or regularly outshot their opponents during the Overland or Petersburg campaigns ... In the long run, it might have been the wiser course for the Federals to insist that all their regiments be able to skirmish rather than rest that important duty on a small cadre of elite troops."
I might have wished that Hess, perhaps in an appendix, gave a little more technical information about the performance and trajectory of rifle muskets, although in his basic text he does provide a clear description of limitations imposed by the high arching flight of the bullets. And I could wish for a specific comparison between rifle muskets and smoothbores at close range (say, less than a hundred yards), the smoothbores firing both the traditional single round balls or the more effective "buck-and-ball" ammunition, although it may well be that there is insufficient primary source material available to do a meaningful study (based upon records of test firings and modern experiments, I think that rifle muskets and smoothbores with buck-and-ball were at least roughly equivalent at such ranges, and decidedly more effective than smoothbores firing single round balls alone; this may in part explain what firefights during the American Civil War tended to be at somewhat longer range than those during Napoleonic times. even though at distances far less than the theoretical capabilities of rifle muskets.)
Any small quibbles or unfulfilled wishes aside, I find Hess's "The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat" to be an important contribution to better understanding the realities of Civil War battles, and to place those battles in their proper context in the general history of warfare.
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