doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Nathan Bedord Forest and SxS's

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-shotgun-the-ultimate-gun-the-planet-25573

One of the most brilliant commanders of American troops in history. He really proved his qualities as a conventional soldier in the retreat of Hoods shattered army from Nashville in 1864 as the General in charge of the cavalry shielding the troops. The story sounds apocryphal ...I know WBTS history and never heard this one before. Why would troops with rifles wait until cavalry were 20 paces from them?

argo: forrest's pursuit and capture of the raider streight, is a wonderful story...and the battle of brice's crossroads, well that just makes us southern boys salivate...

suggested reading: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=nathan+bedford+forrest+books

Why would troops with rifles wait until cavalry were 20 paces from them?

they would not...read about the repulse of farnsworth's charge at gettysburg...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg,_Third_Day_cavalry_battles

but, then maybe, perhaps that early in the war, 1861, the yankee volunteer infantry did not know what they were doing...by 1863, veteran soldiers on both sides had learned their trade...sadly, generals like hood, had not...

and this is interesting...

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/new-released-book-on-confederate-use-of-shotguns.142133/

My G Grandfather, James Madison Fulks, was officially in the Starnes/McLemore 4th TN Volunteer Cavalry (CSA). Nevertheless he took that ride across North Alabama where they caught up with Abel Streight a bit from Rome GA & tricked him into surrendering without a battle.

His unit had a very good relationship with Forrest & the company my
G Grandfather was in was once assigned to Forrest for an entire year as a Scouting Company. My dad had always told me he was a scout for Forrest, but when I started doing research found he was in a different unit. This likely came from that year his company was assigned to Forrest as scouts.

quotes from forrest:

"get there (the battlefield), first and with the most men"

"war means fighting...and fighting means killing"

"i told you twice, g-d damn it...no"

There are several things, important things to bear in mind when reading this story.
First, troops on both sides of the war were irregularly equipped. This is especially so at the onset of the war and in the western theater. Most weapons, infantry weapons, were holdovers from previous conflicts and were not rifle muskets, rather most commonly smooth bore flint locks converted to percussion cap ignition. They were .69 caliber weapons firing .65 diameter round balls and had only a front sight blade. Additionally the ballistic performance was so poor that the rounds when fired were extremely inaccurate.
Secondly troops at the time were not instructed in the intricacies of proper aiming and marksmanship. They were taught to load, point at and fire a round once every 20 seconds or three times per minute. A horse at a gallop can cover a lot of ground in the time it takes to reload.
Given those two factors plus the innate fear most men have of being run down but a horse and rider it was tactically prudent at the time to allow charging columns of cavalry to get to within 50 yards of the infantry square before firing upon them in a mass volley in the hopes that the volley of lead will do the most damage and the crash of the volley would unsettle the horses and break up the charge.

dtm: good point...what you are describing are napoleonic era tactics employed by infantry squares, often three ranks deep...as employed by the british infantry against the french cavalry at waterloo...


certainly, the advent of the rifle in the hands of veteran soldiers made cavalry charges against massed infantry a suicide mission...as farnsworth found out the hard way...

The tactic I described were exactly those employed during the American civil war. They came straight out of the drill manuals from which both infantry and cavalry were taught and used during that conflict.

The principle reason Farnsworths charge at Gettysburg failed was because his force lacked the numbers to be successful against Hoods infantry. A good sized portion of his command, including Farnsworth himself, punched through the confederate infantry. With out proper support to hold their attention, the confederate infantry turned about, changed front as they say and continued to engage Farnsworth as other infantry came up to stop the breakthrough effectively surrounding Farnsworth and the troopers that were with him.

Lastly terrain played a major factor in the failure of his charge, preventing the proper deployment of his men.

Farnsworth was a brave man to lead that charge, knowing full well it would fail. His little brigade of roughly 1200 men, over ground not suited for mounted attacks, charged a brigade of infantry behind a fortified stone wall too high for horses to leap supported by artillery. Outnumbered and over poor ground with many obstacles in terrain to overcome his three tiny regiments charged piecemeal and were promptly slaughtered.

Again I cannot stress this enough. The advent of the rifle had little advantage except in th elands of trained marksmen, known as sharpshooters. The training manuals of the day did not instruct men how to use the sights on their weapons. They merely instructed the load, point and fire. To use them effectively as rifles, the men would have had to accurately assess the range not when they were fired but rather when the bullets would impact. The bullets were heavy and slow moving and traveled in a great ballistic arc. At 75 yards the bullet would roughly 5 inches above the point of aim but fall steadily from there so much so that at 140 yards, it would be 5 inches below, 200 yards will find it 25 inches low and at 225 yards a whopping 40 inches below point of aim. Adjusting for this would take a great deal of training which simply was not given.