Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

The civil war
The chief advantage of rifled artillery over smoothbores was an increase in range
and accuracy, and ranges were extended even further when tubes were mounted on
newer carriages that supported a greater degree of elevation. 58 Maximum ranges for
rifled pieces were considerably greater than those for smoothbores, but the benefit
of such ranges was uncertain. When the gunner could not see the target, he could
neither judge the effect of nor adjust the rounds. Thus, long-range artillery offered
little practical use in land warfare unless gunners were firing with an unobstructed
view or were participating in a siege where the target was both wide and deep. Rifled
artillery had some value at shorter ranges in the defense, but the canister effect of
the Napoleons was more deadly against infantry. Consequently, the principal role
for rifled artillery became counterbattery fire. At Malvern Hill in the summer of
1862, the Union artillery showed its defensive power against attacking infantry and
its ability to provide effective counterbattery fire. Most of the Union artillery pieces
were rifles with greater ranges than the smoothbores that made up the majority of
Confederate artillery weapons. Union rifled artillery, positioned on a cleared hill
offering excellent fields of fire, unmercifully battered the massed target presented
by the Confederate artillery batteries. The Southern artillery, besides having inferior
range and being hindered by poor roads and trails, was badly handled. Over 5,000
Confederate soldiers fell in the battle—over half of them, according to Maj. Gen.
D. H. Hill, hit by artillery fire. 59
Again, at Antietam in September 1862, the Union artillery provided excellent
counterbattery fire, but its total effectiveness was reduced by the lack of higher artillery
staffs that were not yet thought necessary. General Robert E. Lee had already
gone to a battalion organization for his artillery, which gave the Confederates a
ready means of centralized control to shift batteries to threatened points and partially
offset their inferiority in quantity and quality of materiel. Even though the Army of
the Potomac’s Artillery Reserve had been significantly reduced to fill understrength
artillery units assigned to infantry commands (usually brigades), many Union commanders
still felt it was not enough and that all light batteries should have been
under their direct control. They blamed the artillery for the lack of overwhelming
victory at Antietam and recommended that the Artillery Reserve be abolished. In
reality, nearly all the light batteries had been in the hands of infantry commanders,
leaving the Artillery Reserve with the heavier, less maneuverable 20-pounder
Parrotts. Ignored was the fact that the offensive power of artillery, so prevalent
during the Mexican War, was simply no longer paramount. 60
Although artillery served well in counterbattery fire, General Hunt perceived
that the chief value of the arm was to assist the infantry in repulsing attacks. In his
opinion,
58 See Table 6 for effective ranges of artillery pieces at 5-degree elevation. Maximum ranges were
considerably greater. The older Napoleons could not be elevated beyond 5 degrees.
59 Naisawald, Grape and Canister, p. 135; McWhiney and Jamieson, Attack and Die, pp. 3, 112–13,
117; Frank E. Comparato, Age of Great Guns (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1965), pp. 187–89.
60 Naisawald, Grape and Canister, pp. 183–84, 229–30; Nesmith, “Quiet Paradigm Change,” Ph.D.
diss., pp. 31–32.
71