Rhetorical question

[Shawnee]

Hi C&B...

"Facing a cavalry charge by a gang of whooping and hollering sabre fairies even if not real, is terrifying."

HaHaHaHaHa!!! You can say THAT again! That's exactly why I can't do
re-enactment - I don't know where I could buy my circa-1860 "Depends"

 

[Cap n Ball]

Well...I'm a bit too old to enjoy marching around in the sun, wearing wool and carrying nine lbs of iron on my shoulder. I do artillery so if we are to get overrun I generally will fall close to the piece to avoid the occassional errant hoof. Nobody on the crew but the gunnery Sargt has a revolver we have to depend upon our skill at re-loading to keep our skins. Of couse at many reenactments lots are drawn and if you die then you die. We like to place our piece usually somewhere near some shade. Playing dead in the hot sun is no fun and being hot and stinky is no way to be afterwards when we do a little hoop skirt lifting amongst the camp followers.

 

[Shawnee]

Hi All...

Happened to catch a show on the Documentary Channel this evening about the Confederate guerrilla fighters in Kentucky during the Civil War.
For starters it made the point that though KY began as generally "pro-Union", it was an area where families were often split and Lincoln, in his uneasiness about it, essentially turned KY into an "occupied state" under a couple hard-handed Union Kommandants and much of the guerrilla activity stemmed from the growing disenchantment and resentment toward the brutal (documented) Federal Occupation.
Be all that as it may (or may not , a part of the show dealt with the guerrilla cavalry and pointed out they dispensed with the traditional cavalry sabre and carried a Mississippi rifle only for the event they wanted to dismount against Union Infantry on favorable ground. To the point - they said the guerrillas carried as many C&B revolvers as they could - almost always two on their person and two more in pommel holsters - and they went on to say some of the fellows garried as many as 8 or 10 - all this due to their reliance on mobility and firepower to arrive suddenly, shoot things up bigtime, and disappear quickly.
Just an interesting bit of CW and C&B lore for Y'All.

 

[sundance44s]

Sundance44s

Guerrilla fighting sounds like a modern day air strike ..( from the back of a fast horse )

 

[4v50 Gary]

Can't put a bayonet on a revolver

Actually, you can. There were plenty of old guns with blades affixed to them. The last time I know of was WW I when the British attached a bayonet to their Webley revolver.

While the bayonet was carried by both sides, it was the fear of being bayonetted that caused many units to flee. Not all soldiers can be trained to be like Alvin York who shot down attacking Germans from rear to front. That takes a cool operator and most mortals would shoot the closest one first (hey, that's video game training). I would still maintain that in battle, the long armed equipped soldier would prevail over one armed exclusively with revolvers.

Thank you Shawnee for calling the spectators from Washington, D. C. the first tailgate party.

 

[Shawnee]

LOL!

Sundance - I agree with Col. Francis Marion ("Swampfox" of Revolution era)
- "fight and run away to live and fight another day"! He and about 35 men gave several hundred British redcoats fits for over a year with that tactic. LOL! Of course, maybe I'm just too yellow to enjoy being shot at for more than a few minutes.

4v50 Gary - LOL! I would have loved to have seen the faces of the D.C. Elite when their parasols started getting ventilated by mini-balls !!
And sometimes I think that Beltway Crowd hasn't gotten any smarter in 160 years. LOL!

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

I was watching the Discovery Channels series on Rome. And in watching it I realised that battle tactics had not changed that much from Roman times during their civil wars in which the two armies basically are trained the same way as in our own civil war. You have two opposing line of infantry facing each other with calvary units that are supposed to harrass and disrupt the enemy, have artillary battaries which in the Roman era were catapults and the archers which could be compared to sharpshooters. Not every component of the Roman armies have a US civil war conterpart but basically I was struck by the fact that the battles were fought in basically the same manner. I am sure that there are members of this group who disagree with this observation and would appreciate your opinions.