At the opening of this civil conflict most of the matériel for both
armies was of the same type--smoothbore. The various guns included
weapons in the great masonry fortifications built on the long United
States coast line since the 1820's--weapons such as the Columbiad, a
heavy, long-chambered American muzzle-loader of iron, developed from
its bronze forerunner of 1810. The Columbiad (fig. 14d) was made in
8-, 10-, and 12-inch calibers and could throw shot and shell well over
5,000 yards. "New" Columbiads came out of the foundries at the start
of the 1860's, minus the powder chamber and with smoother lines.
Behind the parapets or in fort gunrooms were 32- and 42-pounder iron
seacoast guns (fig. 10); 24-pounder bronze howitzers lay in the
bastions to flank the long reaches of the fort walls. There were
8-inch seacoast howitzers for heavier work. The largest caliber piece
was the ponderous 13-inch seacoast mortar.
[Illustration: Figure 14--U. S. ARTILLERY TYPES (1861-1865). a--Siege
mortar, b--8-inch siege howitzer, c--24-pounder siege gun, d--8-inch
Columbiad, e--3-inch wrought-iron rifle, f--10-inch Rodman.]
Siege and garrison cannon included 24-pounder and 8-inch bronze
howitzers (fig. 14b), a 10-inch bronze mortar (fig. 14a), 12-, 18-,
and 24-pounder iron guns (fig. 14c) and later the 4-1/2-inch cast-iron
rifle. With the exception of the new 3-inch wrought-iron rifle (fig.
14e), field artillery cannon were bronze: 6- and 12-pounder guns, the
12-pounder Napoleon gun-howitzer, 12-pounder mountain howitzer, 12-,
24-, and 32-pounder field howitzers, and the little Coehorn mortar
(fig. 39). A machine gun invented by Dr. Richard J. Gatling became
part of the artillery equipment during the war, but was not much used.
Reminiscent of the ancient ribaudequin, a repeating cannon of several
barrels, the Gatling gun could fire about 350 shots a minute from its
10 barrels, which were rotated and fired by turning a crank. In Europe
it became more popular than the French mitrailleuse.
The smaller smoothbores were _effective_ with case shot up to about
600 or 700 yards, and _maximum_ range of field pieces went from
something less than the 1,566-yard solid-shot trajectory of the
Napoleon to about 2,600 yards (a mile and a half) for a 6-inch
howitzer. At Chancellorsville, one of Stonewall Jackson's guns fired a
shot which bounded down the center of a roadway and came to rest a
mile away. The performance verified the drill-book tables. Maximum
ranges of the larger pieces, however, ran all the way from the average
1,600 yards of an 18-pounder garrison gun to the well over 3-mile
range of a 12-inch Columbiad firing a 180-pound shell at high
elevation. A 13-inch seacoast mortar would lob a 200-pound shell 4,325
yards, or almost 2-1/2 miles. The shell from an 8-inch howitzer
carried 2,280 yards, but at such extreme ranges the guns could hardly
be called accurate.
On the battlefield, Napoleon's artillery tactics were no longer
practical. The infantry, armed with its own comparatively long-range
firearm, was usually able to keep artillery beyond case-shot range,
and cannon had to stand off at such long distances that their
primitive ammunition was relatively ineffective. The result was that
when attacking infantry moved in, the defending infantry and artillery
were still fresh and unshaken, ready to pour a devastating point-blank
fire into the assaulting lines. Thus, in spite of an intensive 2-hour
bombardment by 138 Confederate guns at the crisis of Gettysburg, as
the gray-clad troops advanced across the field to close range, double
canister and concentrated infantry volleys cut them down in masses.
Field artillery smoothbores, under conditions prevailing during the
war, generally gave better results than the smaller-caliber rifle. A
3-inch rifle, for instance, had twice the range of a Napoleon; but in
the broken, heavily wooded country where so much of the fighting took
place, the superior range of the rifle could not be used to full
advantage. Neither was its relatively small and sometimes defective
projectile as damaging to personnel as case or grape from a larger
caliber smoothbore. At the first battle of Manassas (July 1861) more
than half the 49 Federal cannon were rifled; but by 1863, even though
many more rifles were in service, the majority of the pieces in the
field were still the old reliable 6- and 12-pounder smoothbores.
It was in siege operations that the rifles forced a new era. As the
smoke cleared after the historic bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861,
military men were already speculating on the possibilities of the
newfangled weapon. A Confederate 12-pounder Blakely had pecked away at
Sumter with amazing accuracy. But the first really effective use of
the rifles in siege operations was at Fort Pulaski (1862). Using 10
rifles and 26 smoothbores, General Gillmore breached the
7-1/2-foot-thick brick walls in little more than 24 hours. Yet his
batteries were a mile away from the target! The heavier rifles were
converted smoothbores, firing 48-, 64-, and 84-pound James projectiles
that drove into the fort wall from 19 to 26 inches at each fair shot.
The smoothbore Columbiads could penetrate only 13 inches, while from
this range the ponderous mortars could hardly hit the fort. A year
later, Gillmore used 100-, 200-, and 300-pounder Parrott rifles
against Fort Sumter. The big guns, firing from positions some 2 miles
away and far beyond the range of the fort guns, reduced Sumter to a
smoking mass of rubble.
The range and accuracy of the rifles startled the world. A 30-pounder
(4.2-inch) Parrott had an amazing carry of 8,453 yards with 80-pound
hollow shot; the notorious "Swamp Angel" that fired on Charleston in
1863 was a 200-pounder Parrott mounted in the marsh 7,000 yards from
the city. But strangely enough, neither rifles nor smoothbores could
destroy earthworks. As was proven several times during the war, the
defenders of a well-built earthwork were able to repair the trifling
damage done by enemy fire almost as soon as there was a lull in the
shooting. Learning this lesson, the determined Confederate defenders
of Fort Sumter in 1863-64 refused to surrender, but under the most
difficult conditions converted their ruined masonry into an earthwork
almost impervious to further bombardment.