Did booze or drugs play a significant part in a major battle?

I got to thinking about Gen. Lee and how he might have suffered from diarrhea at Gettysburg as a result of the fresh produce available in Pennsylvania. Then I wondered if laudanum or morphine could have played a role in his mental state, in that narcotics were used to quell such disorders. (In a quick internet check, someone said that Gen. Braxton Bragg's behavior was consistent with opiate usage; OPIUM IN THE CIVIL WAR

Under the Influence: Marching Through the Opium Fog
by James Street, Jr.

I will leave now; I want to read more on this; and, yes, though I have not the slightest evidence, I wonder if something other than diarrhea...and even that is subjective...influenced Lee's decision to propel Picket into the jaws of death.

And:
DIARRHEA [acute or chronic, the flux, the quickstep] Acute and chronic diarrhea were the two leading causes of disease for Union soldiers - with chronic diarrhea causing some 27,558 deaths. It is estimated that almost everyone suffered from diarrhea at some point in his army career.

The following is some internet reference to substantiate RE LEE'S diarrhe. Please be aware that all written material may or may not be fact. But I have read about his diarrhe elsewhere, and it does add an element to his command decisions during Gettysburg. I did not know about his heart problems. Geesh, these guys were tough hombres, eh? Nu? Wot?The Court Martial Of Robert E. Lee
Douglas Savage:

At Seminary Ridge, General Lee -- Number Two man at W Point, class of '29 -- remained edgy. He waited for his general Longstreet, Pickett, and Hill to assault Cemetery Ridge. Neck red with anger, Lee was exhausted. A week of dysentery and acute diarrhea had left him weak, pale, and sorely irritable. Lee had been out of sorts since his first coronary attack only four months earlier when a serious sore throat was accompanied by severe chest pains. His face, always ruddy, had been even redder than usual during the week ending April 6th when he had been confined to an ambulance. The terrible chest pain lasted until April 16th, only two and a half months ago.

They got drunk, then they got high

I think his problem was caused by a sore throat tuning into pericarditis.

Also the cure at that time was mercury pills which could add to other problems as well.

Raise a good point I've never considered. It may have some validity. AP Hill was debilitated by what was likely gonnorhea, and it definitely had an impact on his performance at Gettysburg. Laudanum (opium) use was very common, a common treatment (as you point out) for diarrhea/dysentary.

There are MANY examples of unit commanders so drunk that they were worse than useless in various battles.

I got contracted amoebic dysentery in Mexico, and it got to my liver which made me very, very weak. If the amoebas get to your heart or brain, you die. I knew abstractly about the disease, but I now know concretely what it is. The funny part is that people make jokes about it. As far as officers being too drunk to properly command in battle, I imagine that I too would have had no other way to face the ordeal. That was the last major war in which officers led from the front, at a point in history when the minie ball had changed war profoundly, albeit not the mindsets of most of the army commanders.

I hope you totally licked the amoebic dysentary -- no need for me to tell you how nasty it is.

I wrote a blog post last nighton the role of the Minie ball in CW combat, and 1stTexasReb followed it up with an excellent blog of his own. I urge you to read his views.

I have also dealt with the minie ball in my article on the Spencer and other breach loaders. Go to Archive, then Articles. There are photos and there is also a comparative table with weights, calibers, locking and loading mechanisms of the Spencer, Henry, and Sharps.

Could you post the link? It's a subject I'm very interested in.

Why don't you join the forum as a member rather than a guest? You clearly have much to offer. I personally would love to read more of your insights in this forum.

www.aotc.net/Spencer.htm

I just put in a link to this forum on my Links page. Is, by the way, Brooks Simpson, or are people like him members here?

Thanks for the link. I'm having a bout of insomnia and needed something to read. Fascinating. Any data tables on the ballistics of the Springfield and Enfield? I know from experience that the trajectory makes accurate aiming between 100 and about 800 yards difficult without a range finder and knowing how to use the sights. Would like to know more about this - I use my replica Springfield for deer hunting.

AJ,

I don't think that, in the CW, the soldiers did much aiming in battle. They were trained to put out massed, indiscriminate fire. The minie ball simply expanded the perimeter of effectiveness, making the charges of yore too expensive and rendering the bayonet obsolete. I don't have tables of the Enfield-Springfield ballistics. But I do know that at 200 yards a human sized target looks real small to the unaided eye. I also know that it takes a doublequickstepping soldier enough time to cover 200 yards to allow the defenders to get off a lot of volleys.

Well, soldiers did aim their muskets however it was not precise if that is what you mean.. They didn't sight in and take their time to make sure they were going to hit but they did generally pick a target as long as they could see one.

They were trained to put out massed, indiscriminate fire. The minie ball simply expanded the perimeter of effectiveness, making the charges of yore too expensive and rendering the bayonet obsolete. But I do know that at 200 yards a human sized target looks real small to the unaided eye. I also know that it takes a doublequickstepping soldier enough time to cover 200 yards to allow the defenders to get off a lot of volleys.

Yes they were trained to put out a mass volume of fire. You said that at 200 yards a human sized target looks real small. And if by your own words and I agree, they did not aim very precisely but rather try to put as many bullets down range as possible... how accurate is the firing done at 200 yards really going to be? They will get a couple hits but it will by no means be a deadly fire, especially when the smoke from their rifles starts to obscure their vision. An average human adult male jogging speed is 6.9 miles an hour. Let's cut it back two miles an hour to 5 to account for weight of weaponry and the necessity to stay in rank and other factors. At a pace of 5 miles an hour, they would cover 8,800 yards in an hour. That is 146.7 yards per minute. Practically, Civil War soldiers fired two shots a minute. (the three that was aimed for was under perfect conditions and let's face it, was NOT common on a battlefield due to reasons that can be discussed later). This means that between the distance of 200 yards and 54.3 yards, the defending regiment is going to get off two shots, at a long and average distance where their target will appear small. Just because it was volume of fire doesn't magically make it effective, each man is still pointing his rifle and the bullet is going to go where the rifle is pointed, even if he didn't aim it. So shooting a mass doesn't automatically make the fire deadly. And in fact would only be a real benefit at around 50 yards and under when your target is so close that it could be difficult to miss. This is also within the accurate range of a musket. So from a distance of 200 yards the defending regiment is going to get off 3 or MAYBE 4 shots if they are lucky. 2 of which are at ranges at which mass of fire is not a better policy than aimed shots. Only one would be a close range, devastating volley. This same one devastating volley could also be gained with a musket because they would be well within your accurate range. Therefore the springfield or enfield in this case would offer the defender only the benefit of a harrasing fire at the enemy and perhaps a few hits they would not have had. But that is a far cry from making the charge or bayonet obsolete, as was proved on MANY a Civil War battlefield. And don't sight Fredericksburg or Pickett's Charge as examples of them being obsolete because those were general assaults(not charges) and that should never have been made. And even if everyman on the field was wielding a musket,they in all probability would still not have succeeded because the major factor was the massed artillery fire. Many battles involved charges on a small scale between regiments and brigades and were notably effective at driving an enemy force off. Many times the sight of that many men rushing towards them with the bayonets flashing was enough to make the men turn tail and run. If you want an accurate picture of the effectiveness of bayonet charges during the Civil War, look up small scale charges in battles that aren't known for having a "charge" as the defining element.

The definition of obsolete from Merriam Webster is:

a : no longer in use or no longer useful <an obsolete word> b : of a kind or style no longer current

It may have been savage and costly but the bayonet and charge were by no means an obsolete implement. They were one of the most valuable tools when used by a commander who knew how and when to use them and they were most definitely still in use. If the Springfield nad Enfield rifles had made them obsolete, they would not have been used anymore because commanders would realize they never worked. The problem is, people look at massed assaults such as Pickett's Charge, Fredericksburg, and Malvern Hill and say look! the bayonet and charge was obsolete.

Although the attack is popularly called a "charge", the men marched deliberately in line, to speed up and then charge only when they were within a few hundred yards of the enemy.

That is a quote in reference to Pickett's Charge but holds true to the other battles as well. The main factor in turning back those assaults was massed artillery fire from distance. Marching that many men across that much open ground under fire from that many guns is NOT a common factor in charges. You will note that during Pickett's Charge Confederate soldiers stopped behind the fence of the Emmitsburg road to return fire because they felt helpless. This distance was estimate at between 150-180 yards. Their officers urged them forward because their fire was having little effect on the Union's and the enemy's cannons were tearing them up at that range. That concludes my take on this matter.

I intend to offer my 2 cents on the two most recent posts a bit later today. But I wanted to point out something interesting and humorous about this thread. Notice the title. Now look at where things stand. Isn't that exactly the point behind having these fascinating discussions? Start at Point A vaguely aimed at Point B, but end up at Point X because we follow where the threads take us. I love it!

I read that there were relatively few bayonet wounds recorded during the CW. However, the bayonet had many other uses.

5 miles an hour for the doublequickstepping soldier carrying a 20 pound rifle and maybe a knapsack sounds too fast to me.

The well trained peloton had at least two tiers of infantry firing, and there were also loaders. They could get more than 2 or 3 volleys per minute off in 3 or 4 minutes. I imagine those last 100 yards or so were a real bitch. When the attrition rate gets too high, survivors turn around. That's why the Soviets had machine gun squads behind their lines to boost attacking spirit.

According to my reading, most massed frontal infantry charges against prepared positions in the CW failed.

Yes, most massed infantry assaults failed, almost (but not quite) invariably so. But massed assaults over open ground were, I believe, the exception rather than rule. Most CW combat occurred in dense, heavily-covered terrain, which made maneuver difficult and limited the potential effect of the rifle's increased range. It surprises me, given the close quarters nature of civil war combat the battlefield terrain demanded, that the bayonet wasn't used more often.

I've spent time today pawing through my stored stash of books, looking for one in particular, Brent Nosworthy's "The Bloody Crucible of Courage". This is not the kind of book one curls up on a stormy evening. It's dense and detailed, better used as a reference. He exhaustively examines the state of the military art through the CW, including the powerful influences professional European military thinking had on American attitudes. It turns out both the British and French had extensively studied the impact of rifled and smoothbore small arms on tactical formations then in common use. This study occurred primarily before the CW, and it did not in any way lead to a consensus among the leading military thinkers of the day on how to most-effectively employ the changing technology of small arms (including the development of breechloaders and repeaters). There wasn't even a consensus of which was more effective, with champions on both sides (smoothbore vs. rifled musket). It's way beyond me to rehash Nosworthy's data -- it's there for anyone to look up if desired.

However, he did include a table that came from a careful study by French officers in the 1850s about what an average soldier without telescopic aids could see at given ranges. Again, it's beyond me to copy down the whole table, but I can summarize some of the observations.

At 650 yards, the movements of companies advancing or retiring were discernible.

At 430 yards, the movement of a musket was discernible.

At 325 yards, the parts of the uniform could be made out.

At 215 yards, the cartridge boxes and their emblems became clearly visible.

It wasn't until 115 yards that individual body parts and the movement of individual opposing soldiers became clear (the above, in case you have nothing better to do with your time and want to wallow in Nosworthy's book, is from "The Bloody Crucible of Courage, pp 213-214).

I post this information merely to show SOME of the relative difficulties hindering careful aiming of a soldier's piece. Trajectory notwithstanding, the Minie ball could indeed kill at greater than 1000 yards, but aiming at a specific target without the aid of a scope took more training than the average USV or CSV ever got.

Bob, your point about the last 100 yards being a bitch is dead on (no pun intended). That's what file closers were for, but who in God's name kept the file closers going -- they were every bit exposed as the front of the battle line. One of the questions that drives me is the hunger to understand what forces, moral or physical, compelled men to keep advancing under such conditions??? In my personal experience, during in my time in the Navy there were only two occasions when I had to do something and I knew I was close to dying while doing it, or was in a position where I could reasonably expect combat conditions as a realistic possibility. In both cases, I can say there was no conscious thought of danger; I was like a cork carried on a stream, acting by rote and from training. There was, as Small pointed out, no heroism or bravery involved. Had I had time to think, who knows how I would have acted? Small also points out the worse time for a soldier wasn't the advance, but the waiting before hand.

I read that there were relatively few bayonet wounds recorded during the CW. However, the bayonet had many other uses.

On this account, yes... very few bayonet WOUNDS... this is the key that everyone seems to forget when they throw this statistic around and it amazes me how little it gets considered. First, those statistics were taken from Union hospitals in 1864 an on. Second, the odds of being stabbed by a bayonet and living are extremely small so there would be no evidence of it at the field hospitals. The bodies would simply be buried after the battle, sometimes in several man graves. Most of the time, the bodies were buried by soldiers of the victorious army, they didn't want to stand around and analyze how each man died... they wanted to bury them all as quickly as possible. No soldier who has just fought a battle wants to dig graves to put the dead in.

Now, as for why it is unlikely to survive a bayonet. One, in order to have been stabbed by a bayonet you had to be within 18" of your enemy. In other words, your regiment or brigade is engaged with an enemy in hand to hand melee. Most of the times when there is a melee, it is a heavily contested piece of ground on the battlefield. In this case, no hospital men are going to be wandering through that area collecting wounded and their comrades can't just decided to stop fighting to carry their fallen back. So in all likely hood you have just had an 18" piece of steel rammed through your body. You are going to bleed out most likely before you can make it back. Or short of bleeding out, you are now laying in the middle of a melee between hundreds if not sometimes thousnads of men... more than a handful of soldiers wound up being trampled under foot or suffocated from other bodies landing on them.
Two, bullets and cannonballs have a higher likely hood to impact a non-fatal area of the body, such as the arms and legs because you are at distance. A bayonet, you are very close to your opponent and the abdomen and chest are a giant target and if stabbed there, your odds of it not hitting a vital organ are slim.
Three, having an 18" object rammed through your body is MUCH more traumatizing than taking a gunshot. It is not absurd to assume that they would die from shock.
Four, if you didn't die from the first stab who is to say he isn't going to finish you off with another, or a knife, or pistol, or a rock, or a fist. In melee you stop when the other guy isn't moving anymore.
So my thoughts on that statistic is that it is VERY valid. There were very few bayonet WOUNDS. and as I explained, most times they didn't go analyzing how they died.
And yes the bayonet had many varied uses such as a candle holder, meat sticker, and even to break up ground for digging.

5 miles an hour for the doublequickstepping soldier carrying a 20 pound rifle and maybe a knapsack sounds too fast to me.

Perhaps, however I have done so before. Over a greater distance than 200 yards. Even so take 3 miles an hour... which is a walk mind you. Even at that snails pace it is only going to take two and a half minutes to get there. And you assume also that they maintain that pace the entire time... at the end of the quick step the men would break into a full sprint towards the enemy which could definitely reach 7 to 8 miles an hour and would cover the ground quickly. There is proof also that the the defenders weren't able to fire as much as it would seem because a common habit was to hold their fire until the charging force was literally at point blank range.

The well trained peloton had at least two tiers of infantry firing, and there were also loaders.

Loaders were usually only used in strong defensive positions where they could not fit anymore men on the firing line and therefore they were used to reload rifles. In a field battle, regiments did not have loaders, they fought two ranks deep. You said they often had two tiers of firing, well the most common method regimental officers used was the first several shots that the regiment fired would be in volley fire, because the impact of that many rounds was supposed to devastate the enemy's morale. But why only the first couple shots?
Because after that, there was so much smoke that they couldn't see what they were shooting at. Therefore he would give the command to "fire-at-will" because this allowed the men to fire quicker. The ones who were fast did not have to wait for the slow ones to finish before they could shoot. When you can't see what your shooting at, the best way to inflict casaulties is to put the most amount of bullets down range as quickly as possible. With this in mind, unless the officer in charge of the regiment had a clear enough mind to order his men to "Load, prime, and hold" when he saw the enemy approaching for a charge, the regiments shooting would be disorganized and not enough enemies would be dropping at one to cause the psycological effects of inducing panic. It is much were to lose twenty instantly than it is to lose 20 over a span of thirty seconds because it looks worse to the men experiencing it, not necessarily because it is worse.

When the attrition rate gets too high, survivors turn around.

Yes, this happened often. An attack would be turned back by overwhelming losses and fire. However, it works the other way as well. Often an enemy would be panicked by a charging enemy force, even one much smaller than their own, and run before the charging soldiers ever had to fight. Second that is not an absolute principle. Although many men did falter, a large bulk of Confederates managed to reach The Angle at Pickett's Charge and crack the defending Union line despite the fire. The only thing that saved the Union forces were their reserves that were able to rush in kick the confederates out. And about their bravery it was absolutely incredible. Those who survived Pickett's Charge cried to rally, reform, and make the attack again because they "knew they could push them!" Lee of course refused, but the amazing thing here is that even the men who had just walked across that slaughter will willing to do it again. Again at Wilderness, this is an excerpt from John Michael Priest's "Victory Without Triumph"
"Tears of pride streamed down Private Leonard G. Gee's face. The orderly who was screaming and yipping at the top of his lungs, choked back his tears and cried,'I would charge into hell for that old man.'"
The old man of course is referring to Gen. Lee. The point is their devotion was to a large part, I believe, beyond our comprehension without having experienced it.

And yes, alot of the massed infantry assaults in the Civil War failed... but a massed infantry assault is much different than a bayonet charge. And those massed infantry assaults were mainly failures as I said earlier, due to concentrated artillery fire, not small arms.

Hope this answer helps your consideration on this matter and I'm glad we are all open-minded and accepting of analyzing each other's views. Been a pleasure!

as for why it is unlikely to survive a bayonet

This reminds me of something a "real son" told me once (and by "real son" I mean a man whose father fought in the War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance)

He said he asked his Daddy if he ever stuck a yankee with his bayonet. He told him "Hell no son, If you stuck him with that damned thing it would just make him mad but if you hit him in the head with the butt of a musket he would never get up again!"

I believe this tactic was probably just as or maybe even more common (at least to the Southern soldier) and probably as indicated even MORE effective than a bayonet thrust when it came down to close combat.

Think about it. If an enemy was coming at you with a bayonet and you swung a clubbed musket at him and hit his bayonet or musket it would likely knock the weapon out of his hands or at least the momentum would drive the bayonet socket deep into the ground. Before mr yank could recover he would have one big headache!

About the Day 3 confederate assault piercing the Union Angle. It's true, but to a very limited extent. The small penetrating force suddenly faced the full power of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was no fool, and he had plans in place to plug such holes. And again, Union artillery was decisive. Double-shotted cannister would rip a penetrating CSA force to absolute shreds. A very similar scenario played out in Grant/Meade's assault on the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania. They initially penetrated the CSA lines in one of the most brutal examples of close-in battle of the Civil War, complete with bayonets and clubbed muskets. Lee was able to hold of an overhwelming Union force long enough to erect a second line of breastworks behind the horseshoe break. That's about what Pickett's forces would've faced if they broke through the Gettysburg Angle.

To Bob Redman -- one of the few examples of a wildly successful assault over open territory was the AOTC's storming of Missionary Ridge. I've read some hypotheses about how and why this happened, none of which I find wholly unsatisfying. Can you offer any insights into the real reasons? I am aware of the confusion in the highest Federal ranks, and the common belief that the troops spontaneously took matters own hands. There has to be more to it than that.

To mac, yes soldiers often used many things beside the bayonet in a melee. Some refused to use the bayonet because of how brutal it was. However, one soldier's feeling about it doesn't over rule the science of what happens when you get stabbed by that implement. In addition, a soldier wielding a rifle with a bayonet has an 18" reach advantage over an opponent who is not!

My attempt to answer this very question was the genesis of my website.

First, the idea that the soldiers took matters in their own hands is untenable. Many brigade commanders stated they had positive orders to take the rifle pits at the foot of the ridge and continue. All it took were 3 or 4 in the know to get the others going. The charge up Missionary Ridge was not over open ground. The attackers didn't walk or trot in formation but crawled, dodged, hid, and fired in irregular pattern up an albeit steep but broken climb - a thoroughly modern technique, invented there perhaps spontaneously. The Confederates were thinly spread, their artillery poorly placed, their defenses hastily improvised.

Most importantly, the charge took place AFTER Hooker and Osterhaus had mauled and almost surrounded Bragg's left flank, thus creating panic in the center and leakage to the rear, thus softening it before the charge started.

The starting point for you would be my summary of the battle of Chattanooga at www.aotc.net/Chattanooga.htm. From there you can follow the link to the reports of Stewart's Division (the defenders of the left flank) at www.aotc.net/chatt-stewart.htm. Or the link to www.aotc.net/SmithsMap.htm where I deal with the question of Sherman's "wrongly laid down" map. Or if you want to drown in detail go to my article "Politics in the Union Army at Chattanooga" at www.aotc.net/article1.htm. It's called article1.htm because it was the first thing I put online in 1998 when nobody else wanted to post it.

I have completely answered the question, years ago. There was no miracle. Grant, Dana, and Halleck invented the idea in order to diminish Thomas' astounding performance. He managed and won the battle "behind Grant's back." Here I am quoting Bobrick who was quoting me. Grant was not there to win a battle, but to keep Thomas (his only possible rival for top command) from winning it. Plan A with Sherman didn't work, so he resorted to tried and true plan B - rewriting history.

Why all the fuss about this charge? It was the central part of the central battle of the central campaign of the central experience in our nation's history. And the architect of the charge, battle, and campaign was a man born in Virginia.

I sum it all up in my last article "Bring Thomas Home" at www.aotc.net/Thomashome.htm.

TexReb,

Remember the lesson from wrestling, boxing, karate, or whatever. When you commit your entire body weight you are vulnerable. All the more when you are also committing a 20 pound rifle.

TexReb,

In a melee (without handguns) the most dangerous opponent is a grappler who knows how to use a knife.

PS: the server here includes the period in link, rendering it invalid.

Appropos of not much, but I remember something from my time in Quantico, VA (a fascinating place so near to much of the Eastern theater fields of battle) with the Marine unit in charge of training new officers. We were preparing for a training exercise, and one of the Marines started swearing about something. He called me over and I said, "What's up?" He pointed to a bloody patch on his BDU pants, held up his bayonet (or whatever it was they carried as an edged weapon in the 1980s -- I didn't carry weapons, but a field dessing set)and said, "I just stabbed myself with this frigging thing. It's just another peice of BS to lug around 'cause a bunch of old Marines think you need it to keep from being whimp (he used another, not so printable word), What the f*** they think we're doing? Fighting Gettysburg?"

Off to church, Happy Easter all.

However, one soldier's feeling about it doesn't over rule the science of what happens when you get stabbed by that implement.

True, ole Pap's story is only one man's but I think it illustrates the point. Getting stabbed even with an 18" triangle bayonet will not result in immediate death or even incapacitation (unless you are unlucky enough to get stabbed directly in the heart) I believe this is what ole Pap meant when he said it would only make a yankee mad. Many have been killed by a "dead man"

But a nine pound clubbed musket to the head? (and it was 9 pounds NOT 20) now THAT equals immediate incapacitation.

The 18" reach advantage would be irrelevant if the first blow was to the opponents bayonet or musket as I explained above.

A bayonet was more effective as a psychological weapon than a practical one.

I'm purposely trying to poke a hornet's here. The US military recently said they're discontinuing bayonet training as part of the basic curricula. Any thoughts?

You might be amazed what a student of human anatomy can do with a 6 inch knife.