Image – The Battle of Shiloh

Chapter 14

The Battle of Shiloh

Before the 1850s infantry were mostly equipped with muzzle-loading, smoothbore muskets firing a round lead ball. This technology remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of years. When fired, the round ball rattled down the length of a smoothbore barrel and then moved through the air without spinning and with a very imprecise trajectory. Beyond 100 yards the accuracy of smoothbore muskets was negligible.

In 1847, French army officer Claude-Étienne Minié invented a "rifled musket" that could shoot "Minié balls" accurately to 500 hundred yards. These new and relatively inexpensive muskets proliferated quickly due to the emergence of new industrial production techniques and they became the standard weapons of both the Confederate and Union armies. Armed with these new and more lethal rifles, both sides fielded large masses of men capable of firing rapidly and accurately at long ranges. Infantry tactics, however, continued to emphasize tactics from the Napoleonic era (1800-1815) in which formations of soldiers lined up tightly, shoulder to shoulder. Soldiers using these tactics in a defensive position could produce devastating firepower against attacking armies. The results were a distinct tactical advantage for defenders and a shockingly high casualty rate for attackers.