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.

Last edited by Dtm; 04/29/18 08:04 AM.