After reading Brett’s comments on historiography and how the story of Grierson’s Raid had been changed to suit various authors, I decided to revisit some comments I made on Eric Wittenberg’s blog recently about John Buford and his cavalry carbines. Wittenberg wrote about the myth, which he had debunked, that Buford’s boys were armed with Spencer repeaters and that this added firepower had enabled them to hold off the Confederates at Gettysburg on July 1.
Wittenberg has written eleven books (and counting) and has a reputation as a careful historian, so when he says he looked at the ordnance returns there’s no reason to doubt his conclusion that Buford’s men were armed predominantly with Sharps breech-loaders plus a smattering of other breech-loading carbines. But how much difference did that really make that day? This is where we get into peeling the onion of history, and often there are more layers than we think.
Let’s compare the arms: the Sharps was good for about 10 rounds per minute aimed fire; the Spencer maybe 15 (one round every 6 seconds vs. one every 4 seconds). Not a whole lot of difference, and every 7 shots the Spencer shooter has to stop, remove the follower from the stock, drop in 7 more rounds, bring the rifle up to his shoulder, recharge, and resume firing. The Sharps shooter does not, so in a sustained engagement, as at Gettysburg, the rates of fire are probably pretty close, especially considering the time needed to acquire and aim at a target, lulls in the action, time to cool off, resupply, etc. In fact, the Sharps shooter may actually have an advantage in this sort of fight, since there are a number of instances where Spencer-armed units quickly shot off all their ammunition.
A muzzle-loader, by contrast, could fire about three rounds per minute, or one shot every 20 seconds, which is a whole order slower.
My conclusion, then, would be that there was not a whole lot of difference in the amount of lead going down range on July 1 whether Buford’s men were armed with Sharps or Spencers, given the circumstances.
So now we’ve gone full circle. Made a useful correction to the historical record, to be sure, but without really changing the final scenario. Did fast-firing carbines, whether Spencer repeaters or Sharps breech-loaders, make the critical difference?
What about the tactics? Buford acted boldly – setting up a blocking position on the road against infantry, which was rare in 1863. In fact (anyone welcome to help out here), I can’t think of anyone else doing it before that. Still, he had a fairly large force there, most behind some sort of improvised cover, and could not simply be brushed aside. The Confederate infantry, strung out on the road, had to deploy –- a lengthy process -– then launch an attack. The temptation is to do this quickly — as soon as you get any sort of organized force, but if the attack fails (which happened) the infantry commander then has to rally and reorganize them as he deploys the rest of his men. This adds significantly to the time it takes, and it may be that simply putting up enough fight to make this happen gained the Federals the time they needed.
Let’s now jump ahead a year to May 7, 1864. The Army of the Potomac is leaving the Wilderness and marching on Spotsylvania Court House (NPS article by Mac Wycoff here). This time it’s the Confederate cavalry under Fitz Lee who are attempting to block their opponents’ advance down Brock road. Lee fells trees on the narrow road and sets up a series of dismounted blocking positions that he has to be forced out of. Helped by bungled Union orders, he delays the Federal cavalry (who are, remember, armed with Sharps and Spencers) all night, until General Meade finally loses patience and orders the infantry of the Fifth Corps forward. Even then Lee manages to slow them enough to enable the Confederate infantry to win the race to Laurel Hill. And Lee’s men are almost all armed with muzzle-loading carbines.
Maybe this is one of those campaign problems that Dimitri Rotov was talking about that needs a closer look. How many more layers does the onion still have?
Check out Beyond the Crater: The Petersburg Campaign Online for the latest on the Siege of Petersburg!
Leave a Reply