Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

60 The OrganizaTiOnal hisTOry Of field arTillery
new super intendent in 1838, artillery
instruction received greater empha sis.
Hunt had also assisted in revising a
manual on field artillery tactics for the
War Department, published in 1860,
and was now prepared to command.
However, General McClellan, taking
the traditional view of artillery
command, wanted his artillery chief
to perform solely administrative and
staff duties, exercising command only
upon receipt of specific orders from
the commanding general. Although
Hunt finally persuaded McClellan to
broaden his authority over the artillery,
his powers and responsibilities would
vary greatly according to the whims of
succeeding army commanders. 33
With the battery as the primary
organizational unit, Union artillery
suffered from the lack of field-grade
officers. When artillery captains were
promoted, most were promoted in the
Volunteers and given command of
regiments, brigades, and divisions.
Sergeants were then commissioned to take over the batter ies, and the ranks were
filled with recruits. Promotions and transfers into volunteer organizations, where
opportunities for advancement were plentiful, weakened the Regular batteries. In
1863 two colonels, a major, three captains, and a lieutenant commanded the artillery
of seven corps. Two captains command ed two horse artillery brigades, and there
was one field-grade officer in the reserve. Hunt believed that most of these commands
in any other army would have been considered proper for general officers.
Twenty-one field-grade artillery officers in the Regular Army became generals in
the Volunteers, but only two remained with the artillery branch. 34 Colonel Hunt
In 1865, Hunt
described the problem as follows:
33 Edward G. Longacre, The Man Behind the Guns (New Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes and Co.,
1977), pp. 18, 67–69, 99, 119, 261. In 1856 Hunt, along with Barry and William G. French, was directed
to serve on a board tasked with revising Robert Anderson’s 1839 field artillery instruction text (including
revisions of 1845). The revision took until March 1860, and it was published later that year as Instruction
for Field Artillery by J. B. Lippincott. The new work and the French-based text Evolu tion of Field Batteries
of Artillery, translated by Robert Anderson, were widely used during the war.
34 War Department, War of the Rebellion, 1/27(pt.1):242; Tidball, “Remarks Upon Field Artillery,”
pp. 15–16, FA School files; Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1913, 1:207–08.