Macoupin County IL - Lairs in the Civil War by John Kirchoff

©opyrighted by John Kirchhoff

Also see:
Charles Washington Lair Military Career
and
Other Lairs in the Civil War

Just a quick familial background; my mother is Pauline Lair, daughter of Coy Hershel Lair and Mary Draper, Coy’s parents were Charles Leslie (Less) Lair and Della Mollen, Less’ parents were Charles Washington Lair and Caroline Jones. When I was 10 we moved from Macoupin County near Nilwood to north central Missouri.
I won’t go into any of the causes or events that led up to the Civil War nor will I offer any personal opinions on such, but I have been able to dredge up a lot of information concerning the Lairs and Lair cousins that served in the Civil War. For me, genealogy that consists of nothing more than names and dates is drier and more boring than my 8th grade math teacher. I will go into detail about the personal experiences of various individuals, both their war experiences as well as some personal details when applicable. I will also go into the details that would have impacted the average man’s life as a soldier as well as his personal wellbeing. Knowing that an ancestor was in the military 150 years ago is one thing, but to know what their life in the military was actually like, that’s a whole different facet of their life that opens up. Therefore, in the first section will I will cover details such as the enlistment-draft policy, what the soldier’s life was like in basic training, health issues and life (and death) in the field. In some ways life back then was totally unlike it is today, but then there are some things, especially human nature that never changes. I guess nobody said life was fair. Even readers uninterested in military history may be enlightened as to what military life was like back in the so-called “good old days.” In fact, my oldest son told me, “Someone has finally made the Civil War interesting to me.”

I have always been interested in military history and especially so when family members were involved. Charles Washington Lair (1847-1929) was my great-great grandfather and while I knew he served in the Civil War, that was the extent of my knowledge until I started digging. I have a $5 Confederate Tennessee bank note he brought back, but I had no idea of where it came from (other than hidden in the family Bible) or if he had actually even been in Tennessee or not. I had no idea of how he landed in the army nor did I know he had been injured.

Uncovering details of a person’s military experiences can be more elusive than any other part of their life because oftentimes their untold experiences in battle die with them.  While certainly not a recent phenomenon, most generally those individuals that experienced the worst possible situations are the ones least likely to ever speak of those events.  A common theme among the children of holocaust survivors is that their parents never once spoke of their experiences in the concentration camps.  It seems that most soldiers with bad experiences are satisfied to simply come home and resume their lives in the here and now.  I know for a fact that men will do morally reprehensible things in time of war that they would never, ever do at any other time.  Reliving those terrible memories is the last thing they want to do, so they never speak of it.  Sometimes they may talk about their experiences to others who went through the same thing, but not to anyone else, family included.  For example, both my father and uncle served in WWII, my father in the Army and my uncle in the Navy.  In the late 1940s they were both working in the basement of my parents house when my uncle spoke of watching a Japanese torpedo speed dead on towards the middle of his minesweeper (a small, low riding ship).  He knew it was a given that his ship would be struck and most likely he killed.  Praying and thumbing his Rosary beads, his biggest regret was that he had never had the opportunity to see or hold his 2-year-old son back home (he was sent overseas before the boy was born.)  At the last instant, the torpedo hit a wave, jumped out of the water, wriggled across the deck and plopped into the ocean on the other side, he totally dumbfounded as he watched the entire, miraculous scene unfold before him.  After that he never doubted the power of prayer.  I recently met up with his daughter and we talked about family history.  She had never heard the story nor did she even know he served on a minesweeper in the Pacific.  Neither her brother or mother had ever spoken of the torpedo incident, making me believe the story he told was one meant to be shared between two soldiers of kindred spirit, who both served overseas and were both separated from family for years.  It would seem that an intense, life-altering experience like that was deeply personal and told that one time only.  It most certainly wasn’t a subject for dinnertime conversation with the wife and kids.

Unless someone has his diary stashed away, I suspect the details of Charles W’s short lived military career were lost generations ago.  The plethora of information now available via the internet has revolutionized the ability to reassemble the lives of those long dead.  By piecing together a lot of disparate known facts, I believe I can provide a fairly accurate account of the battle and the most likely location of where and how he was wounded.  Being my ancestor, I will devote the second, rather detailed section to his experiences based on factual information as recorded by other men in his company as well as a few personal observations.  Other descendents of Charles W will probably appreciate knowing what the poor guy went through.  Anyone interested in human nature may appreciate learning of how warring egos of commanders on both sides got plenty of men killed.  The third section will have less tedious accounts of the experiences of CW’s cousins, which will surely better interest the descendents of those guys.  I warn readers that I don’t beat around the bush and I call it as I see it.  Some people write syrupy sweet accounts of their ancestors that have one reaching for an insulin syringe after the first paragraph.  Not me, if they were a jerk, I say so.  If they were involved in “war crimes”, and yes at least one was, you’ll know it.  And I admit that I do sometimes stray from the subject path, but those literary forays do relate to the subject.  And they’re interesting.

A Patriotic Bunch To Say The Least

With over 285,000 of her men serving in the war, Illinois provided more men than all but two other states, New York (1) and Pennsylvania (2).  There were a surprising number of Lairs from our family that fought in the war and most surprisingly, I can confirm that only one actual Lair named cousin died, although the Bridges cousins took it in the shorts.  I’ve confirmed a total of 15 cousins (of Charles W’s line) that served; 12 Lairs, 2 Bridges and 1 Hart (in bold below.)

Here are the Lairs I came up with.

Lair, Austin L PVT F 48 IL US INF
Lair, Austin L  PVT F 133 IL US INF WOODBURN, MACOUPIN CO, IL
Lair, Austin S PVT I 152 IL US INF WOODBURN, MACOUPIN CO, IL
(May have went by “Lewis”.)
Lair, Charles W PVT E 51 IL US INF
Lair, George PVT E 122 IL US INF
Lair, James PVT A 48 IL US INF MACOUPIN CO, IL
Lair, James M PVT A 32 IL US INF PALMYRA, MACOUPIN CO, IL
Lair, James P PMUS HQ 122 IL US INF MACOUPIN CO, IL
Lair, Jeremiah M PVT E 33 IL US INF MACOUPIN CO, IL
Lair, Samuel PVT E 122 IL US INF
Lair, James MISSOURI CALVARY, 3RD REGIMENT C.S.A..
Lair, David 8th MISSOURI VOLUNTEER REGIMENT U.S.A.

There is this guy that I don’t know if he was a Lair or not, but, maybe some of you might.  Notice the last name is spelled differently, but I found James Pleasant’s (“Plez”) name misspelled Laire in the state database.
Laire, Henry PVT B 144 IL US INF MONTICELLO, MADISON CO, IL

It seems that either through marriage or blood, the Lairs were related to nearly everyone living in Macoupin County.  (Probably an exaggeration, but probably some truth in there too.)  There was somewhere around 240 or so Macoupin County men that served in the war.  I haven’t researched any of the following vets from the county, but I know the last names are associated with the Lairs in one family line or another.  Here are a few names of veterans that may ring a bell to those with Lair blood in their veins.

Adcock, Caleb (died of disease <5 months after muster in), James J and William A (deserted, returned 32 months later).

Bridges, Absalom, John, Julius T (died of disease), Samuel (died of disease), George W (died of disease)

Clevenger, Isaac N (died of disease), John B (sick for over four months when discharged), William S, Joshua B (died from accidental wounds, more common than you would think), Joshua C and Michael B (died of disease).

Crawford, James (sick for 3 months before discharge), Jesse H, John, Jonathan D (sick for 3 months before discharge), Joseph and Sargeant B (yes, Private Sargeant B Crawford, I bet that caused some confusion.)  Incidentally, the Crawfords were all rather tall, ranging from 5’9” to 6’ 2”.

Hart, Alexander, Alvin, George F (died of disease or killed at Shilo depending upon the source) and John F.

The state’s records aren’t 100% accurate and there may be Lair related people in addition to those above.  I’ll let the readers decide if they are related to any of the above.

If the Lair family ever had extended family reunions, no doubt the veteran’s corner was standing room only.  As mentioned, of the total 15 confirmed cousins of and including Charles W Lair, 3 died; 1 Lair and 2 Bridges.  When you do the math, the Lairs clearly beat the odds (for surviving) while the Bridges failed miserably, losing at least 60% of their veteran family.  It seems that for the most part, the Lairs knew not to drink the water and stayed relatively healthy in addition to knowing when to duck.  The Bridges may have known the ducking routine, but apparently they were either a sickly bunch or drank from the wrong watering hole.  My mom said the old timers always spoke of some Lairs that fought for the South and I’ve confirmed 1 of the above 15 without a doubt.  Of the two known Lair vets that came from Missouri, one brother fought for the South while his younger brother joined the Union Army.  That may have caused a little contention after the war whenever family got together for weddings, buryings and other family going-ons.  More on the rebel cousin later.

Considering the Lair family’s penchant for having a maximum number of offspring while using a minimum number of first names as well as using nicknames, I used military records, birth dates, etc. to confirm who was who.  Therefore I can’t guarantee 100% without any doubt whatsoever accuracy for every single one of CW’s cousins.  One thing I can guarantee is that my family now knows more about the Lair family’s military involvement than has been known since the old timers who did know sauntered off to their great reward.

As for a bit of trivia, it’s interesting when you look at the Lairs official Civil War “detail report.”  Completed when each person enlisted, the report contains the person’s name, residency, their nativity (where they were born), profession, personal details such as age, height as well as complexion, hair and eye color and also military information such as company, muster in-out date and so on.  What I find interesting with the Lairs is that they were either rather short or rather tall with really none in between.  They were either 5’6” tall, give or take a half inch or they were 5’10”-5’11” tall.  Again, most Lairs either had blonde hair, blue eyes and light complexion or they had dark or black hair, eyes and complexion.  I think there may have been a “gray” eyed one somewhere, but still it seemed that their pigmentation was either one extreme or the other.  It makes me wonder what the original Charles and Samuel Lairs from Pennsylvania looked like.  Maybe someone with more patience and time than I could trace back the Civil War veterans and see which family lines were built for picking apples and which ones were made for pulling turnips.

Disease, More Dangerous than the Enemy on Either Side

Over the course of the Civil War from 1861-1865, approximately three million men (and a handful of women disguised as men) served in the armed forces.  By the time it was all said and done, there were very few extended families that weren’t affected by the war in one way or another and the Lairs were no exception.  By the end of the war, approximately 620,000 men had died, though some historians believe that number is too low.  Approximately 2/3 of the dead succumbed to diseases such as smallpox, mumps, whooping cough, chickenpox, measles, typhus, typhoid fever and dysentery, unromantically referred to as “the quickstep.”  You ever hear of explosive diarrhea?  If you have, then you understand the “quickstep” moniker was putting a pretty face on an ugly situation.  For guys on both sides, over 99% could expect to contract chronic diarrhea or dysentery sometime during their service.  Approximately 25% of non-combat deaths in the south were from typhoid fever, caused by drinking water or food contaminated with salmonella bacteria.  25% of men on both sides could expect to contract malaria with recurring bouts of fever and chills throughout most of the rest of their lives.  The largest portion of soldiers on both sides came from rural areas or farms and as a child hadn’t been exposed to many of the diseases that all too often tore through crowded cities.  That meant that as an adult, they had no resistance to many of the childhood diseases that would have sickened them as a child, but instead killed them as an adult.

As an example of the toll disease took, the 15th Alabama started the summer of 1861 with 1,000 men and by fall, 200 had died from measles.  They lost 20% of the troops without an enemy shot ever being fired.  And ever present were the “gray back vermin”, or body lice.  The only difference between the lice and the disease germs was that one could see and feel the lice whereas the germs were doing their deadly work sight unseen.  By the end of the war, the military organization on both sides were starting to figure out some of the basics of sanitation and because of that, camp conditions improved somewhat.  What seems ridiculously obvious now but was an epiphany for them was that you don’t poop in your drinking water, or at least you dug the latrines downstream of where you get your drinking water.   Another important one was that if you’re going to bath in a creek, you get your drinking water upstream of all the dirty bodies trying to get clean.  While the disease-to-battle death ratio of 2:1 seems atrocious by today’s standards, it was far better than the 5:1 ratio during the Revolutionary War.

And for a bit of trivia, the floating bar of Ivory brand soap was a big hit during the war and it was all happenstance.  The company that made soap for the military was working around the clock to fill the orders.  They had big mixers that would stir up the ingredients before they were poured into molds.  One mixer operator was working nights and fell asleep on the job while the mixer chugged on and on.  When he woke up and found he had been asleep for several hours, I’m sure the, “Oh poop, I’m in trouble” feeling compelled him to quickly pour the mix into the molds, he hoping the bosses wouldn’t find out he’d been asleep.  Ends up the air entrained into the overly mixed soap caused it to float, which came in really handy when you were standing in a creek and had no place to put your soap while you were scrubbing with both hands.  Instead of the bar sinking out of sight to the bottom of the creek, it bobbed around like a cork, happily awaiting the next dirty crack or crevasse that needed cleaning.

During the Civil War, on the average, a soldier in the field could expect to fight one day out of every 30.  The rest of the time was spent in makeshift camps, often with 10,000 or more people bunched together.  Early in the war, “sink pits” or trench latrines were all too often dug uphill of the camp’s water supply with people knowing little of anything about the bad things that happen when humans ingest water tainted with human fecal bacteria.  The single greatest killer of the war wasn’t a man dressed in gray or blue, a minie ball plowing through flesh or cannon fire tearing people into shreds like a kid opening a Christmas present, it was bacteria that worked silently and invisibly, resulting in amoebic and bacterial dysentery.  The diarrhea was so bad that everything drank or eaten whistled through the digestive system like the highball passenger train from Cincinnati and the body never had a chance to absorb any nutrition or liquids.  Dehydration can quickly kill a person and in hot weather those poor guys dropped like flies.  In short, they basically pooped themselves to death.  Maybe a minie ball would have been quicker and more humane.

Dealing With the Dead

The enormous numbers of dead from both battle and disease did spawn a new industry, embalming bodies.  At first, bodies were packed in ice and shipped home in railcars. 
Far too often the ice ran out several days before the train ran out of trip, resulting in the family picking up a loved one that was well into the decomposition process.  Someone figured out that bodies could be infused with certain chemicals such as arsenic or mercury that would greatly slow or nearly stop that unpleasant decomposition process.  Soon the process was more or less perfected and family a thousand miles from the battlefield could then actually have a traditional funeral that wasn’t interrupted by the odor of decay or coffins leaking liquids that had those attending the service puking up their guts.  A related existing industry that really boomed during the war was coffin making.  Yes, I know that sounds pretty morbid, but it was necessary and some people capitalized on that need.

For the lucky dead, after the battle local folk and sometimes soldiers from both sides would be on the battlefield at the same time placing their dead in mass graves, particularly in hot weather.  The hot humid weather common in the south caused corpses to “go bad” in a hurry.  Months later or even years later after the war was over, bodies in most of the mass graves were exhumed and those that were identified previously or could be identified were boxed up and sent home for burial or intured in military cemetaries.  So common was death on the battlefield that before going into battle, it became common practice for soldiers to pin a piece of paper onto their uniform with their name, company, etc so their body could be identified after they were killed.  (That was the days before dogtags.)  How’s that for a fatalistic attitude?  Still, sometimes bodies were unable to be identified.  It may have been from exposure to the elements and advanced decay or sometimes it was men that were recently killed but were literally blown into unidentifiable pieces by cannon “grapeshot”.  For “close” work, cannons were used like a shotgun and grapeshot was the term used for the numerous small balls that were fired from it.  If the cannoneers were short of ammo, they would load up anything thing that was available ranging from metal chain, horseshoe nails or even small rocks.  Propelled from a cannon, the ball, a rock, nail or chain link would tear completely through the human body.  If you were unfortunate enough to be up close and personal when grapeshot was fired, a wood chipper couldn’t do much worse to you.

Probably the absolute worst job anyone could ever have was the job of gathering up the remains of dead soldiers that had lain on the battlefield for days or weeks in hot weather.  All too often that job fell upon black men, who wearing cloths over their faces in an effort to quell the overpowering stench and keep the flies off their faces, would load up the bloated, distended decaying bodies of the recent dead and cart them off for burial.  For those bodies that had been there long enough for the flesh to have rotted away, they would literally gather up individual bones and skulls that oftentimes still had pieces of tattered, rotting clothing attached.  Sometimes the color of that cloth was the only way they knew which side that person was from.  In the Civil War, killing was the easy part but cleaning up afterwards was the grisly, stomach churning job that caused many a strong man to quiver, wretch and sob.

Joining Up

A concept that is difficult to conceive today is that at that time in our history, the military wasn’t the single cohesive unit made up of “Americans” we know now, but was instead made up of a number of singular state regiments (on both north and south sides.)  That separate but united part hadn’t changed since the Revolutionary War, when “America” consisted of separate, independant colonies fighting united.  In the Civil War, you had your Federal and Confederate armies fighting each other in a single expansive common battle, but more often than not the “whole” battle actually consisted of a number of smaller independent battles.  Illinois infantry moved against Alabama infantry, Ohioans clashed with Georgians, New Yorkers were beat back by Virginians and so on.

Initially, soldiers on both sides were all volunteers.  In Macoupin County, the sign up in Carlinville on September 4, 1862 was a big one and although I haven’t counted, I bet half or more of the men in the county that served joined up that day.  Some would “muster in” on that same day while others went in several days or weeks later, assumedly after they got their affairs at home in order.  After all were mustered in, no doubt the county was a completely different place, being nearly devoid of young men 18-25 years old.  In both North and South, men joined companies that were formed in their communities, as did nearly all of Charles W’s cousins (but not CW) in a company formed in Macoupin County, IL (the 122nd Illinois Infantry.)  Within their companies, they served beside relatives, friends, and neighbors.  Within their regiments, which were made up of ten companies, soldiers served with men from their own state.  Despite these ties, desertion was an ongoing problem for both sides (about 200,000 Union men and about 100,000 Confederates abandoned their posts), though it had a greater effect on the smaller Confederate army.  I guess seeing their fellow soldiers screaming in agony as their limbs were sawed off without the luxury of anesthesia could make a person wonder what kind of hell they were in for.  The bloody gore of severed limb in heaps 3 feet tall combined with seeing scores of men pooping themselves to death would certainly give a sane person reason to reevaluate his decision about joining up.

During the war, there were 14 battles intense enough to be on the list where 20% or more of the soldiers were lost as causalities.  The worst was Gettysburg, with over 30%.  Moral would be hard to maintain when you gathered up nine of your friends before a battle, knowing that only 7 or 8 would make it back more or less unscathed.  And before the next battle, a couple more of the original 10 would be gone.  Go through enough battles and pretty soon you're standing there all by yourself, if you happen to be the lucky one that is.

Pretty soon both sides began running short of people volunteering to get themselves killed, so both governments had to start forcing people to get themselves killed.  The Confederacy initiated a draft in 1862 and the Union in 1863, which they called the “Enrollment Act.”  As if giving it a fancy name actually made any difference.  After the draft was initiated, on either side if you had the money, you could buy your way out of military service, although it was more popular in the North.  If you found your name called in one of the four annual lotteries, you could pony up $300 to the government for “commutation”, which bought your way out of that lottery, although you were again up for grabs three months later.  The other option was to hire a substitute to take your place, which got you out of the lottery permanently.  Hiring a substitute could cost you $1,000 or more.  $300 was a huge amount of money ($8,173 in 2014 dollars), but $1,000 was like the Heavens opening up and raining dollars.  Eventually the government put a limit of $300 for either option to quell the bidding wars that would break out.  The substitution clause meant that many of the substitutes were fresh off the boat German or Irish immigrants.  Later on as manpower dwindled in the North, the $300 “bounty” was offered to blacks and the result was large numbers of blacks joined the fight.  The bounty also spawned crooks that would substitute over and over again, collecting the money and then going AWOL until the next draft lottery.  The “buy your way out” system was much like the draft system for the Vietnam War a century later.  If your parents were wealthy enough to send you to college, you could get a college deferment and go to school while the kids with poor parents had to go to war.  Likewise, during the Civil War more likely than not the average grunt jobbing minie balls into the business end of a musket was most likely a poor farm kid.  Some things never change.

Speaking of farm kids and farmers in general, many had problems adapting to military life.  Most farmers were used to setting their own schedule, doing what they wanted or needed to do when they decided to do it.  On the farm no one told them when to jump or how high and thus they were indifferent to the need to obey orders.  For most farmers, military discipline was a difficult concept to comprehend.  Most difficult to swallow was when the farmer-Private had to salute an officer that only a few weeks before may have been the hometown school teacher or postmaster.  Suddenly being subordinate to that person did not set well at all, and understandably why.

According to military records, Charles W Lair was a “D&S Recruit”, (defined as Drafted or Substitute Recruit) and substituting for a guy named Arron Hays was how he landed himself in the military.  I did find an Arron Hays buried in Oak Grove Cemetery, Modesto, Macoupin County, which is about 12-15 miles from the heart of Lair country.  In the 1870 plat book, I found an “A” Hays that owned around 710 acres just a few miles north and northeast of land owned by A.S. Lair (Austin?), J.M. Lair (James?) and S. Lair (Samuel?).  When you consider that I was able to scrounge up only one other fellow named Arron Hayes in the state of Illinois of potential military age, this Hays fellow is a very good candidate as the guy who ponied up the $300 to CW.  At the time (summer of 1864) Arron was 33 and had a 27-year-old wife named Cynthia or “Sina.”  He had at least three kids, sons 9 and 7 years old and a daughter 4.  (There may have been one more boy 6-7 years old that would have died before 1870.)  I’m sure by 1864 Aaron had seen plenty of bodies returned home in pine boxes as well as guys gimping around with missing limbs and other permanent injuries.  I was 42 years old when my two sons and youngest daughter were almost exactly the same ages as Arron’s kids and I know I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to risk widowing my wife and orphaning my children.  Sure, $8,200 would have been a chunk of money for me to come up with at that time (and still is), but how do you place a price on the welfare of your family?

One must keep in mind that back then there was no public safety net when the breadwinner of the family was sent off to war, pooped himself to death or got himself blown to pieces in battle.  For a woman with children, the husband being sent off to war presented an extreme hardship.  If she didn’t have any sons old enough to run the farm or work outside of home (like a coal mine), a woman basically had two choices; find herself a job or go beg for help from family.  All too often the former meant menial, low paying work such as a laundress or maid while leaving her kids unattended at home.  The latter meant showing up on a relative’s doorstep with her hat in hand and a passel of small children in tow.  Chances are the relative she was asking for help was barely able to support their own family and if that person happened to be a sister or sister-in-law, her husband could just as easily been off to war as well.  It was not uncommon for a woman in that situation to be unable to support her family and have to “farm out” her children to family and friends.  In that situation, the recipient family often times could only support one extra child and families were broken apart.  And if she was widowed, often times her only option was to marry some old dude 2-3 times her age that was too old to be drafted yet be financially secure.  The necessity of marrying some lecherous old fossil in order to keep her family together and her kids fed precluded any chances of marrying for love or happiness.

What I’m trying to say is don’t automatically brand Arron a coward for buying his way out of military service.  And if he was related to the land baron A Hays or the less barronish (170 acres) J Hays that owned land next door, the family may have been plenty well off.  The $300 that I’m sure looked like a fortune to CW may have been pocket change to the Hays family.  I haven’t found any sort of family or marital connection between any Hays and Lairs, so Aaron and CW’s transaction may have simply been a matter of buyer meets seller.  I’ll never know, but I wonder what happened to the $300 CW received?  Was it waiting for CW when he got home?  If so it would have been a nice nest egg for buying a farm and getting married.  Or did his parents have it all spent by the time he got home?  I’d love to know where it went; maybe there’d be a little left over for me.

Whereas the average age of a soldier at that time was 25, CW and a few other Lairs were still “boys” of 18.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, James Lair was 39 when he signed up.  The FIRST time that is.  The majority of Macoupin County men joined up in Carlinville, although some joined up at Palmyra, Alton or Springfield.  CW joined up October 1, 1864 and mustered in two days later in Jacksonville, located in the county to the north.  Several other Lairs were mustered in at Jacksonville but as far as I know, no Lairs lived there at that time.  At this point, it appears that all of the other Lairs joined voluntarily with Charles W being the only one in the official “D&S Recruit” category.

You’re In the Army Now

CW’s military career was very short and not very sweet.  The biggest problem at that late date in the war was that manpower was in very short supply.  The shortage of fresh troops resulted in most men being sent into battle inadequately trained for job, having only a few weeks of basic training.  Even for the earlier volunteers, basic training at that time was very basic and nothing like it is now.  To start with, military training was not uniform and the specifics of training were generally the regimental colonel’s call.  Unfortunately for the new recruits, all too often their training was a pitiful excuse for anything that would actually help them defend themselves or keep themselves from being killed.  A regiment normally consisted of around 1,000 men and most often any training they did get was the exact same tactics used by Napoleon.  Literally.  In fact, the training manuals used by the military were pretty much exact translations of the 50-year-old French manuals.  For soldiers on both sides, those outdated military tactics were woefully inadequate when facing the new, more efficient killing technology that was being developed, such as the minie ball (actually a bullet, not a ball), repeating rifles, revolvers and the superior accuracy of rifled cannon barrels.  Most training consisted of “drilling” and not much else.  Basically, drill consisted of teaching them how to maneuver on the battlefield, such as going from a column of men 4 wide and 250 long to more easily hit targets of 500 men wide and 2 deep.  In essence, drilling didn’t do much more than permit commanders to get their men into position quickly and efficiently so that they could be killed more quickly and efficiently.

The really idiotic part was that on both sides, soldiers received very little training on use of their weapons.  Many men were sent into battle literally not having fired more than a dozen rounds during training.  Then consider that it required 13 individual steps to load and fire a musket.

“To load a musket… the soldier needed to remove a cartridge from his cartridge box, tear the end of the paper cartridge containing the powder and minie ball, pour the powder down the muzzle of the barrel, insert the minie ball down the muzzle, remove the ramrod, ram the ball down with the ramrod, replace the ramrod, half cock the hammer, place a copper percussion cap on the nipple, fully cock the hammer, aim, and fire.“

It’s obvious that the military big shots in charge were absolute idiots that needed to have basic priorities beat into them with a club.  It’s a good thing that many of the soldiers were farmers who were familiar with guns and firing them, although maybe not at real live people that were trying to kill him before he killed them.  And when hunting squirrels, neither did you have noise, smoke, confusion and the horror of people dying all around you while the squirrels were shooting back.

“In battle, both sides were deficient in the use of the weapon. For example, there are many, many stories of weapons found after a battle with numerous charges in the barrel. In one instance at Gettysburg, one rifle was found with 27 bullets in the barrel. The men would forget a step in the loading process and the weapon would not fire, but they wouldn’t realize it because of all the noise and confusion of battle.”

As for the movies you see showing cavalrymen waving swords high in the air and gallantly lopping off heads, that’s an unrealistic portrayal of the real thing.  At the very beginning of the war it was maybe somewhat true, but it didn’t take long before cavalry horsemen fatally found that a musket had a much further reach than did a sword.  Pistols quickly replaced the sword and oftentimes a man carried three or four of them loaded up and ready to go.  A bayonet protruding from the end of a musket certainly looked formidable and it was capable of rendering a dandy hole through you under favorable conditions (for the guy wielding it that is), but it was about as effective as the sword with the same limitations.   In other words, the enemy shot you long before you a chance to impale him.  Advances in technology had rendered the traditional sword and bayonet more or less obsolete.  Edged weapons, namely knives, swords and bayonets, accounted for only about one tenth of one percent, (.01%) of all wounds in the war.  However, there were rare occasions when the bayonet did make the difference between life and death, a fact Charles W would come to appreciate at Franklin, Tennessee.