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Obviously if you compare Scott to history, the match is fairly close.

Cavalry

    We've discussed this before. What the Federals lacked was a cavalry depot and a cadre of horsemen in the East that they could use to raise a horse arm. They had some cavalry [quite good units by the way] but it was busy in Kansas, Missouri and Utah  fighting Jayhawkers, Native Americans, and Mormons [there was more than one rebellion in progress we often forget]. So start from zero. Pull what seed units you can from Kansas and Missouri and start training Federal horse near the Federal concentration in Illinois.

    Historically the Federals raised about thirty thousand horse.  In retrospect this was nowhere near enough cavalry. Partly this was a shortage of horses, and partly because infantry fed on hardtack and coffee, was cheaper than a trooper, raised on beef, whiskey and a horse raised on oats. Cavalry was EXPENSIVE. The US, contrary to popular opinion, was not a rich country, yet. Losing the South to secession, hurt the US economy severely. The bastards in Richmond had good reason to think that King Cotton would actually be a war winner for them.

   Well, anyway......The objective with raising a lot of cavalry out West is to give the Army of the Cumberland a raiding and reconnaissance arm it didn't have at the time; while it meanders it way down the Mississippi to join the Federals working their way up from New Orleans. Flood  Mississippi and Alabama with Federal horse and Shiloh becomes a non-event. Vicksburg happens a year earlier and Texas leaves the war much sooner. Of course Grant, Sherman, Foote and Porter and their forces  don't get to practice all the heroics  they pulled off, but by the same token,  Nathan Bedford Forrest would have gotten what he deserved.

More later.

Herald

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Herald

I don't think you would. The American Civil War, given the means at hand, and for all my above criticisms, was a well fought and thoroughly professional exercise in arms, with both sides doing their best to try to win. Sure they made mistakes [Hood for one], but the Civil War is a textbook case in mobilization, economic management, and the military art used by BOTH sides. You can criticize them easily, but when you  look at them hard, you see that the criticisms are mostly nitpicks and in the margins. Those people KNEW what they were doing then and why they did it the way they did.

Not so WW I. That sad exercise, which was supposed to epitomize European warmaking at its finest at the time, was a bunglefest from beginning to end. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY comes out of that debacle with any laurels.

I will have more to write on how you modify small unit tactics in the Civil War. Get used to hearing the name Emory Upton..

Herald  

     Small unit tactics.

     Let's suppose that "Beast" Butler, as he actually did, personally  purchased and tested Gatling guns. Let us further suppose that Richard Gatling offered "Beast" Butler kickbacks and bribes as was the custom of the day.  If Butler is the Ordnance weenie, he should have been, to sponge off war contracts as he was wont to do then the Federal army would have gatling guns instead of the Ager gun disaster into which so much Federal money was sunk and wasted.

     A logical man and a unheralded engineer in his own right,,  Ben Butler was smart enough to try to cut down the size and weight of the contraption. We could suppose that after a year of trying , Richard Gatling and he would have a gatling gun configured as a four man carry weapon very much as shown above.

     We now have the crew-served base of fire weapon.

     Emory Upton.

     At Spotsylvania Courthouse, the Army of the Potomac was to demonstrate fifty years before German shock troops repeated the same methodology how to attack a fortified dug in enemy.  Upton LED that assault. He basically had men run in small groups at top speed from their own works into the Confederate works dashing from cover to cover while their fellows in the Federal trenches laid down covering musket fire to force the rebels to keep their heads down. he pierced the Mule, the Confederate fortified position, with about ten battalions worth of his trained shock troops, but because he was with the first echelon assault and the officers leading the follow up wave were disorganized and didn't see the need for hurry, the follow on exploitation wave wasn't there. The first echelon was cut off and had to fall back to their original trenches under Confederate counterattack. Nevertheless Hancock later that same day attacked using the same tactics and more or less carried the ground. He just couldn't hold it, in the face of a Confederate counterattack since in the taking his men shot off their ammunition. They badly needed a base of fire weapon that they could dig in and use to keep the counterattacking Confederates at bay until they could resupply en masse.

       Enter the machine gun.

      One of the technical faults about which Upton complained was that in the crtical first hour of exploitation when the attacking troops disrupted a dug in defense, they had no means to beat off a counterattack, because the attackers were BONE TIRED from fighting. At Spotsylvania, both  Upton's and Hancock's troops reported that they fought Confederates in the trench lines hand to hand with knife, bayonet, clubbed musket, and fist  for up to six HOURS trying to hold their positions after their ammunition ran out.  They bitterly complained that they had no ammunition resupply, grenades, artillery support, or fresh reinforcements; ALL VALID COMPLAINTS. They would not have needed any if Gouvernor Warren had gotten off his dead ass and attacked the right flank as Grant scheduled him when he, Grant, saw the success.

     Upton in what we would call an after action report, suggested that moving  gatling guns up to sweep the trenches  on either side of the breach and to lay down a defensive cross-fire against Ewell's II Corps counterattack might have bought the first echelon Federal attackers the time they needed to rush fresh troops forward and send runners back for more ammunition. That of course would have necessitated somehow getting those horse drawn gatling guns across shell plowed ground. That wasn't going to happen at Bloody Angle. Not the way  that ground was cratered and torn up, yiu had to use MEN.

     So what was the alternative? You still use Upton's storm tactics. This time, though, along with the infantry assault parties  rushing forward in short spurts as open order platoon-sized skirmish lines in repeated spaced waves  you send forward the sledge-mounted gatling gun with their crews doing the four man carry. Mixed in with them, you send the ammunition parties carrying litters of ammunition to sustain the first assault wave's riflemen and machine gunners. You leapfrog forward with three attack echelons covering the distance you can expect a man to run under burden-maybe 500 meters, maximum.  Each echelon stops and sets up a base of fire to cover the advance of the next one until it  closes the m enemy line Roman style.  What worked for  the legions works for your  troo

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    You can imagine this as a variant of the Civil War skirmish line.Sergeants would be with the  ammunition litter  parties to make sure that the  advance continued, and that the machine gun would be properly employed . Corporals would be echelon left leading each five man unit.  The Lieutenant would be with the senior sergeant and the machine gun.  No flag waving heroics here, just 35-40  men running forward as fast as they can to find good ground from where they can flop down and open fire on the enemy. The section illustrated has a machine gun-most sections would not as the gatling gun is an expensive and difficult to manufacture item. Assuming that each company might have one, a typical Union Army might have as many as 400 of the gatling guns available. That would give theb Federal Army roughly 3x times the firepower of its Confederate counterpart. Bear in mind that for the cost of one gatling gun [$1000] you can purchase and outfit a squad of horsemen or TWO brass Napoleon field pieces including the limber boxes and the horses. OUCH!

Herald

I think one thing is overlooked here, with all the talk about Henrys and Gatlings.

At the Springfield Armory, Erskine S. Allin's trapdoor design allowed existing musket stocks (Models 1861 and 1863) to be cheaply converted to cartridge firing rifles.

The model 1865 (made in 66), just missed the war.  Hurrying up the process, would have given the north a decent cartridge rifle, with a superior effective range than the lever action rifles then in use. 

Its one weakness was the extraction of cases, but being that's probably due early cartridge used copper cases (rather than brass).

If you read about the Wagon Box Fight, two years after the war ended, Red Cloud's Souix got a nasty surprise, despite overwhelming the U.S. troops by a huge margin (1000 - 2000 vs 31).

ChdNorm and Albany -- I officially became a collector with my model 1866 Springfield.  I had been intent on a 61 or 63, but found that I could probably get a better specimen for the price with a trap. Overall nice shape, but light pitting on the barrel.  I was afraid of what I'd find under the wood, but the metal was almost pristine where it was covered.

I found .50-70 cases for it at about a buck a pop.  I'm having problems getting decent groups, and about one in three bullets tumble.  You can definitely hear it when it happens.

-ZF (ex -Spent Case)

I didn't ignore it. That was a HORRIBLE weapon with markedly poor ballistics, and a recoil that was how shall I say it, fierce?

Easily prone to fouling and extraction jams-even with the later brass cartridges, powder fouling and putting out smoke at the muzzle and the breech, the weapon required a very well-trained trooper to keep it clean and shoot it well. Not knocking the trapdoor per se at the time; or the penny pinching foolishness [oh well, yes I am] that went into its design and procurement, but there was a very good TECHNICAL REASON Custer was massacred, in addition to his poor tactical leadership at the Bighorn, and THAT rifle was it.

Herald
     

I'll agree that by 1876, the Springfield was lagging technologically.  Hell, they were still in use during the Spanish-American War.  However 1876 Sioux (and plenty of 'em) with Winchesters aren't 1860-1865 rebs with Richmond muskets, so looking at in this context (ACW use), can't reflect too poorly on the Springfield.

The three rounds used by the Springfield (.58-60-500, .50-70-500 , .45-70-500) are all in a similar league, with similar powder weights throwing the same bullet masses as the muskets, so I don't see why recoil would increase.  I've never felt a difference, myself.  Despite the "70" in the designation, the standard load was 65 grains of powder, close enough to the 60 grain standard musket load.

Ballistically, 30-06 they ain't, but then neither is the Spencer's .56?56.  The .45-70 came along to improve the ballistics, being the same weight as its .50 predecessor, and had a fine reputation for accuracy, but that's probably outside the scope of potential Civil War use.

Herald