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Rifles In The American Civil War
During the American Civil War, an assortment of small arms found their way onto the battlefield. Though the muzzleloader percussion cap rifle was the most numerous weapon, being standard issue for the Union and Confederate armies, many other firearms, ranging from the single-shot breech-loading Sharps and Burnside rifles to the Spencer and the Henry rifles - two of the world's first repeating rifles - were issued by the hundreds of thousands, mostly by the Union. The Civil War brought many advances in firearms technology, most notably the widespread use of rifled barrels. Background Historically, the smoothbore musket had been the primary weapon of the infantry while the rifle was reserved for specialist units. In order for rifling to impart a spin upon a projectile it has to have a tight fit, and with weapons of the time being muzzleloaders this made it much slower to load and fire a rifle compared to a musket. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, several advances hel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American Union Army Infantrymen
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Slavery in the United States, enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West Africa, West/Central Africa, Central African with some European descent; some also have Native Americans in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rifled Musket
A rifled musket, rifle musket, or rifle-musket is a type of firearm made in the mid-19th century. Originally the term referred only to muskets that had been produced as a smoothbore weapon and later had their barrels replaced with rifled barrels. The term later included rifles that directly replaced, and were of the same design overall as, a particular model of smoothbore musket. History and development In the early 19th century, there were rifles, and there were muskets. Muskets were smoothbore muzzle-loading weapons, firing round lead balls or buck and ball ammunition, that were also designed to accept a bayonet. Rifles were similar in that they used the same kind of flintlock or caplock firing mechanism, but the main difference was that their barrels were rifled – that is, their barrels had grooves cut into the interior surface which would cause the bullet to spin as it left the barrel. Rifles have the advantage of long range accuracy, because spinning bullets have far ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Powder
Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, carbon (in the form of charcoal) and potassium nitrate (saltpeter). The sulfur and carbon act as fuels while the saltpeter is an oxidizer. Gunpowder has been widely used as a propellant in firearms, artillery, rocketry, and pyrotechnics, including use as a blasting agent for explosives in quarrying, mining, building pipelines and road building. Gunpowder is classified as a low explosive because of its relatively slow decomposition rate and consequently low brisance. Low explosives deflagrate (i.e., burn at subsonic speeds), whereas high explosives detonate, producing a supersonic shockwave. Ignition of gunpowder packed behind a projectile generates enough pressure to force the shot from the muzzle at high speed, but usually not enough force to rupture the gun barrel. It thus makes a good propellant but is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Grimsley
Mark Grimsley (born October 8, 1959, Ahoskie, North Carolina, United States) is an American professor of History at Ohio State University. His 1995 book, ''The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865'', earned second place in the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize category. Education Grimsley earned his B.A. in History at The Ohio State University in 1982, M.A. in War Studies at King's College London in 1985, and Ph.D. in History at The Ohio State University in 1992. Career Although primarily an academic historian, Grimsley has written extensively in magazines of popular history. In 1980 he published his first article, in ''Civil War Times Illustrated''. He has since published over sixty articles for general readers. After earning his doctorate, the History Department at Ohio State University hired Grimsley as an assistant professor. Grimsley attained the rank of associate professor in 1997. In 1999 he received the Ohio State University Alumni Di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paddy Griffith
Paddy Griffith (4 February 1947, Liverpool, England – 25 June 2010) was a British military theorist and historian, who authored numerous books in the field of War Studies. He was also a wargame designer for the UK Ministry of Defence, and a leading figure in the wargaming community. Academic life Griffith was a freelance military historian and a prolific author on military history and tactics. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he obtained a first-class honours degree in Modern History. He was a lecturer and then senior lecturer at RMA Sandhurst from 1973–89. Forward into Battle In ''Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to Vietnam'' (1981), Griffith put forward ideas about the "empty battlefield" or how increased fire-power had led to military formations becoming increasingly disaggregated. The conclusion he drew was that the willingness to close with the enemy was a key factor. It proved to be a highly influential work. Wargames Griffit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trench Warfare
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. Trench warfare became archetypically associated with World War I (1914–1918), when the Race to the Sea rapidly expanded trench use on the Western Front starting in September 1914.. Trench warfare proliferated when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. On the Western Front in 1914–1918, both sides constructed elaborate trench, underground, and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire. The area between opposing trench lines (known as " no man's land") was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides. Attacks, even if successful, often sustained severe casualties. The development of armoured ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Field Artillery In The American Civil War
Field artillery in the American Civil War refers to the artillery weapons, equipment, and practices used by the Artillery branch to support the infantry and cavalry forces in the field. It does not include siege artillery, use of artillery in fixed fortifications, or coastal or naval artillery. Nor does it include smaller, specialized artillery classified as small arms. Weapons The principal guns widely used in the field are listed in the following table. There were two general types of artillery weapons used during the Civil War: smoothbores and rifles. Smoothbores included howitzers and guns. Smoothbore artillery Smoothbore artillery refers to weapons that are not rifled. At the time of the Civil War, metallurgy and other supporting technologies had just recently evolved to a point allowing the large scale production of rifled field artillery. As such, many smoothbore weapons were still in use and production even at the end of the war. Smoothbore field artillery of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cavalry In The American Civil War
The American Civil War saw cavalry tactics move largely away from the offensive towards the defensive, with the emphasis on screening (tactical), screening, raid (military), raiding, and reconnaissance. Development of the rifled musket had also rendered the cavalry charge both impractical and detrimental. In the first half of the war, the Confederates enjoyed the advantage in cavalry, as southern men were more accustomed to the riding and shooting life, and most of the experienced cavalry officers from the regular army had chosen to side with the Confederacy. By the second half, from 1863 onward, the Union Army had gained an equal cavalry capability, through Benjamin Grierson's brilliant deception tactics in the Mississippi valley, and Philip Sheridan's aggressive movements, while in command of the Union Army of the Shenandoah, Army of the Shenandoah at the end of the war in Virginia. Cavalry units proved highly expensive to maintain, and unscrupulous agents would often ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infantry In The American Civil War
The infantry in the American Civil War comprised foot-soldiers who fought primarily with small arms, and carried the brunt of the fighting on battlefields across the United States. Historians have long debated whether the evolution of tactics between 1861 and 1865 marked a seminal point in the evolution of warfare. The conventional narrative is that generals and other officers adhered stubbornly to the tactics of the Napoleonic Wars, in which armies employed linear formations and favored open fields over the usage of cover (whether constructed or natural in origin). Presumably, the greater accuracy and range of the rifle musket rendered that approach obsolete, and the Civil War armies' transition to longer battles in 1864 is taken by numerous scholars as proof of the new technology's transformative impact. More recently, however, academics have begun to reject this narrative. Earl J. Hess judges the tactical training of the Civil War as critical to the armies' success, and maintains ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frontal Assault
The military tactic of frontal assault is a direct, full-force attack on the front line of an enemy force, rather than to the flanks or rear of the enemy. It allows for a quick and decisive victory, but at the cost of subjecting the attackers to the maximum defensive power of the enemy; this can make frontal assaults costly even if successful, and often disastrously costly if unsuccessful. It may be used as a last resort when time, terrain, limited command control, or low troop quality do not allow for any battlefield flexibility. The risks of a frontal assault can be mitigated by the use of heavy supporting fire, diversionary attacks, the use of cover (such as smokescreens or the darkness of night), or infiltration tactics. Frontal assaults were common in ancient warfare, where heavy infantry made up the core of armies such as the Greek phalanx and the Roman legion. These dense formations, many ranks deep, would utilize their weight in numbers to press forward and break enemy lin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Napoleonic Tactics
Napoleonic tactics describe certain battlefield strategies used by national armies from the late 18th century until the invention and adoption of the rifled musket in the mid 19th century. Napoleonic tactics are characterized by intense drilling of the soldiers; speedy battlefield movement; combined arms assaults between infantry, cavalry, and artillery; and a relatively small numbers of cannon, short-range musket fire, and bayonet charges. Napoleon I is considered by military historians to have been a master of this particular form of warfare. Napoleonic tactics continued to be used after they had become technologically impractical, leading to large-scale slaughters during the American Civil War, Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War. Infantry tactics Infantry formed the base of Napoleonic tactics as they were the largest force in all of the major battles of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. Many Napoleonic tactics base their origin from ''Ancien Régime' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James M
James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (other), various kings named James * Saint James (other) * James (musician) * James, brother of Jesus Places Canada * James Bay, a large body of water * James, Ontario United Kingdom * James College, a college of the University of York United States * James, Georgia, an unincorporated community * James, Iowa, an unincorporated community * James City, North Carolina * James City County, Virginia ** James City (Virginia Company) ** James City Shire * James City, Pennsylvania * St. James City, Florida Arts, entertainment, and media * ''James'' (2005 film), a Bollywood film * ''James'' (2008 film), an Irish short film * ''James'' (2022 film), an Indian Kannada-language film * James the Red Engine, a character in ''Thomas the Tank En ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
