More powerful military in the 1860s: CSA vs. Great Britain

[DG Valdron]

I think we can pretty much acknowledge that the Confederacy has negative hope of conquering England. This would be a number exponentially less than zero.

The British Empire from a standing start doesn't have much ability to invade and conquer the Confederacy... from a standing start. But assuming that the British Empire has the motivation to spend the same amount of time and a proportionate commitment of resources to destroying the Confederacy... the Confederacy is destroyed. Guaranteed, signed, sealed and delivered.

In terms of third party adventures - the Confederacy has no logistical depth, they can't field a force effectively outside their borders. So if it's a dust up in some hypothetical overlapping sphere of interest or ambition - Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, etc.... we can expect the Confederates to show up and flounder. We can expect the British to show up and roll them up like a blanket.

 

[robcraufurd]

The Brits had as many twits, slowpokes and sicklys as any other group.

However, the Confederacy is supporting an army of c.500,000 on a population of c.5.5m, whereas the British are supporting an army of c.250,000 on a population of c.29m. Therefore, I think it's reasonable to assume that the Confederates were forced to accept more "twits, slowpokes and sicklys" in the first place, and that if we select a Confederate army later in the war as our point of comparison (in the interest of giving them more experience and better weapons) the average standard will be even lower.

They, mostly, haven't been under fire, never shot a fire in anger, never came under fire and have to really think about when to fire or not. Training helps but it is no substitute for real life experience.

Training may not be everything- though it does beg the question of why modern armies do so much of it- but it will mean that the British are able to institutionally absorb the lessons of earlier wars. When we say "they mostly haven't been under fire", we should remember that because of the ten-year enlistment period, most of the soldiers who served through the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny will be due for discharge in 1864-1867. Nor do they form a negligeable proportion of the army. As of 31 May 1866, there are 9,385 soldiers whose ten year period expires during 1866 and 15,167 where it expires during 1867, plus 14,060 soldiers who chose to extend their service between 1860 and 1865, plus the soldiers who enlisted between 1845 and 1850.

They know how to pick targets, how to move on the battlefield, how not to panic under fire, when to hold fire and when not to and by that time it is almost instinctive.

Actually, experience alone will not necessarily teach you any of those things better than training will. A Confederate veteran of two years who has only ever moved round the battlefield as part of a formed unit will not know how to skirmish better than the average Britihs soldier, where light infantry drill has been compulsory since 1833. More importantly, Confederate soldiers will not know how to pick targets better than the British regardless of how much experience they have had. By 1864 21st Virginia had been through the Shenandoah valley, the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg; however, it was still unable to engage the enemy at 400 yards.

The parabolic trajectory of the minie ball makes it crucial that a soldier can estimate the range of their target accurately and set their sights accordingly. If the soldier estimates his enemy to be 300 yards away and he's actually 250 yards, the ball will more or less pass over his head. Because the ball loses momentum towards the end of its flight, this effect is more marked the further away you get. The average Confederate soldier has, in all probability, never been told how the sights on his weapon work. He's been instructed to wait until the enemy get within range, (c.150 yards), reminded to aim low, and then told to fire. He has no way of judging whether his individual ball has taken effect, and therefore has no opportunity to adjust the way he fires in order to make sure it does next time. The descriptions of civil war battlefields- trees stripped of bark for up to fifty feet of their height, despite the two lines engaging one another at a hundred paces or less- clearly show that the overwhelming majority of soldiers had absolutely no idea how to pick a target, nor how to fire their weapon so that it took effect, regardless of how much experience they had.

Compare this to British musketry training of the time. Each soldier undergoes a lengthy training in how to judge distance and is scored in how well they do. They don't even get to shoot a weapon until they can judge ranges, accurately. Every year, they shoot a qualification course including both static target practice and moving between positions: they receive an individual score and ranking for this, making it perfectly clear whether they were hitting or not. So the idea that the Confederates could "instinctively" pick targets and hit them accurately, and do so more effectively than the British, on the basis that battlefield experience trumps training is totally and utterly fallacious.

 

[Anaxagoras]

Which really sums it up neatly- the best weapon available to the Confederacy, which they battle to get their hands on and issue to sharpshooters, is the standard weapon available to the British.

This isn't quite correct. The Enfield was (along with the Springfield) the standard infantry weapon of the Confederate army, which they imported in large numbers, manufactured themselves, and captured from the enemy.

Specialist sharpshooters in the Confederate army were armed with Kerr and Whitworth rifles run through the blockade from England.

 

[robcraufurd]

Specialist sharpshooters in the Confederate army were armed with Kerr and Whitworth rifles run through the blockade from England.

When I call the Enfield the best weapon available to the Confederacy, I'm quoting the Confederate ordnance chief Joseph Gorgas, who called it "the finest arm in the world": I appreciate there were technically more accurate weapons, though these were unsuitable for wider issue because of their specialist nature. Incidentally, you may be confusing the large number of Confederate troops designated as sharpshooters, who were armed with the Enfield, with the much smaller number who acted as snipers. The snipers received the specialist target rifles when they could be got through the blockade: the remainder didn't.

"Here I wish to correct another misstatement by saying that they were not 'armed with the celebrated Whitworth of the latest pattern.' They were armed with Enfield rifles. Every short Enfield which came into possession of any of our men was taken away and given to these men; but there were not enough, and some of them had the common long Enfield... There were but two of the imported Whitworth guns given to our brigade" -Isaac Gordon Bradwell, on the Battle of Fort Stedman, 25 March 1865

Looking at the Whitworth, a weapon which the British never adopted, also shows the disparity in the way in which the two armies are equipped. The Confederates probably imported c.150 of the rifles; the British bought a thousand .451 Whitworths in 1861, and another eight thousand in 1863.

This isn't quite correct. The Enfield was (along with the Springfield) the standard infantry weapon of the Confederate army, which they imported in large numbers, manufactured themselves, and captured from the enemy.

Like I said, thanks to loot and imports the Confederates managed to issue most of their soldiers in the East with a modern weapon after two years of a four-year conflict (though Army of Tennessee still only had 56% of troops carrying Springfields or Enfields by June 1864). However, to call .577 rifled muskets the Confederate "standard infantry weapon" implies a level of ubiquity that simply isn't sustainable. Smoothbores represented around 30% of all the guns the Confederacy acquired during the conflict, compared to less than 14% for the Union. At the end of the day, you surely can't be trying to imply by this that the Confederate army was as well-equipped as the British.