History Lessons from Live Artillery Firing

The more I study the Civil War, the more apparent it becomes that no matter how many contemporary accounts I read, I will never truly know—nor come close to knowing—what a battle was actually like. The noise, the smell, the death and destruction—none of it is fully comprehensible.

Every so often, though, we get brief, vivid moments that offer the faintest glimpse into that world: a powerful first-hand account, a walk across a battlefield where the terrain still matches what soldiers saw, or a living-history experience. I recently had one of the latter.

I won’t pretend that wearing a wool uniform for a few days a year mirrors what Union and Confederate soldiers endured from 1861 to 1865. But I have worn enough Civil War clothing and fired enough reproduction firearms to have caught a handful of these fleeting impressions. At the briefest instant, you can sense a single aspect of what a Civil War battle may have been like. Years ago at a Gettysburg reenactment, for example, so many muskets fired on a damp evening that thick smoke hugged the ground, hiding the opposing line except for the occasional flash revealing their position.

More recently, I attended artillery safety training in North Carolina. Learning each position on the gun was informative, but the multiday session culminated in a morning of live firing reproduction Civil War artillery at Camp Lejeune. It was there that I witnessed several battlefield phenomena I had only ever read about—and, fortunately, was able to capture some of them on video.

Bombarding the Burnside Bridge

The 51st Pennsylvania's Lt. Col. Thomas Bell
fell mortally wounded from a Confederate artillery
round within 50 feet of the Burnside Bridge
(digitalcommonwealth.org)

Standing at the Burnside Bridge makes one feel cut off from the rest of the Antietam battlefield. Antietam presents great vistas that allow visitors to examine large swaths of the battlefield at once. Not so at the Burnside Bridge. There, after a long drive from the Bloody Lane on the auto tour, visitors stand and look into two hillsides, their visibility limited to just a few hundred yards. At the bridge, you are down in a deep swale that you can hardly see out of when you are in it and you can barely see into it unless you are standing on top of the hillsides that surround it.

Then how, in this secluded low point on the battlefield, do numerous Union accounts at the bridge mention coming under Confederate artillery fire? No Confederate guns were perched alongside Henry Benning’s Georgians overlooking the bridge and Antietam Creek. What is to account for these Federal tales of being struck by enemy artillery shells?

At least two mentions of this made their way into Ezra Carman’s chapter on the fighting at the Burnside Bridge. First, when relating the attack of Crook’s brigade, Carman mentions the left-wing of the 11th Ohio Infantry being exposed to a “severe fire of infantry and artillery.”[1] Later, after the 51st Pennsylvania and 51st New York carried the bridge, “Confederate guns on Cemetery hill threw their shell and shrapnel into the ranks of the [Federals] lying in the road near the bridge, killing and wounding many…”[2]

McClellan's Guns of Position: Part 3

This post is Part 3 in a series. Click the hyperlinks to visit Part 1 and Part 2.

     Before posting modern images of the viewpoint of McClellan's guns of position, it would be best to examine those guns' impact on the Battle of Antietam from the Army of the Potomac's perspective. Part 2 discussed the guns' fields of fire and range on the Antietam battlefield before sharing quotes from the Confederate perspective of the damaging fire George B. McClellan's guns of position provided. Let's now discuss the Federals' perspective of that same damaging fire.
     Most, but not all, of McClellan's heavy guns constituted the Army of the Potomac's Artillery Reserve under the command of Lt. Col. William Hays. During the Maryland Campaign, that organization consisted of 27 commissioned officers and 716 enlisted men present for duty. Their armament comprised a total of 34 guns in seven batteries.(1)

Lt. Col. William Hays commanded the Army
of the Potomac's Artillery Reserve

     After deploying the guns of position on the elevation east of Antietam Creek, the gunners went to work picking their targets across the stream. Thanks to their positioning, the gunners were "afforded an ample opportunity to test the efficiency of these heavy field pieces," according to Capt. Elijah Taft.(2) Indeed, the guns of position posted on the Ecker Ridge were presented with an abundance of targets and used their location on the battlefield to their advantage. Francis Palfrey, an Antietam veteran and later author on the battle, wrote of the view from the positions of the artillery on the Ecker Ridge: "Standing among those guns, one could look down upon nearly the whole field of the coming battle, while the view was perhaps more complete from the high ground on the left of the road, where some of the Fifth Corps batteries were placed. From this point one could look to the right through the open space between the 'East and West Woods.'" He continued: "The conformation of the ground was such that these central Federal batteries could sweep almost the whole extent of the hostile front. Some of them had a direct fire through the space between the East and West Woods, and others of them could enfilade the refused left wing of the Confederate army."(3) Experienced artillerist Henry Hunt echoed Palfrey's assessment when he reported of the guns of position that "[t]heir field of fire was extensive, and they were usefully employed all day."(4)

McClellan's Guns of Position: Part 2

     In Part 1 of this series, I examined the makeup of the Army of the Potomac's "guns of position" during the Maryland Campaign before focusing on the core of that artillery grouping, the 20-lb. Parrott rifle. For Part 2, I will look at the effectiveness of these guns and their importance to the Federal army at Antietam.
     First, it is important to establish the fact that even though these guns remained on the east side of Antietam Creek for the entirety of the battle, they did not sit out the fighting. There is a tendency among people visiting the battlefield to think that Federal soldiers positioned east of the creek (with the exception being those around the Burnside Bridge) were merely spectators to the action on the other side of the creek. This is not true, especially in the case of the "guns of position." Even the Union infantry east of the creek fell victim to enemy artillery shells and did sustain minor casualties.
     With their extensive range and excellent fields of fire, McClellan's and Hunt's heavy guns played a large role in the battle and in McClellan's planning during the actions along Antietam Creek. According to the Table of Fire for 20-lb. Parrotts, they had a maximum reach of 4,400 yards or 2.5 miles. This distance could be reached by a shell fired at 15 degrees and would take the shell over 17 seconds from the time it was fired to reach its target.

McClellan's Guns of Position: Part 1

     When George McClellan reached the eastern banks of the Antietam Creek on the afternoon of September 15, 1862, one of his first orders was issued in person to his Chief of Artillery, Brig. Gen. Henry Hunt. He told Hunt near sundown "to select places for our guns of position."(1) These guns had a large role to play in the upcoming fight and in McClellan's battle plan.
     A few months ago, I had the pleasure of being able to walk the ground where many of these guns were positioned on September 17 on a ridge owned at the time of the battle by the Ecker family. The wartime Ecker house still stands. This prominent ridge, what I will refer to as the Ecker Ridge, stands prominently along Antietam Creek's east bank and has a commanding view of much of the Antietam battlefield. It is easy to see why it was prized by McClellan and Hunt and why the guns posted there were so effective.
     Since it was such a rare treat to visit, I took plenty of pictures, trying to capture the Federal artillerists' views as best as I could. But before posting those, in what will be Part 4 of this series, I first wanted to take a closer look at these guns of position.

Most of the guns of position can be seen overlooking Antietam Creek on the Ecker Farm Ridge in this map of the Antietam Battlefield Board.

Close and Concentrated: 9th Corps Artillery Conquers the Burnside Bridge

     I had always thought of the fight for the Burnside Bridge as one of infantry. The 2nd and 20th Georgia stoutly defending the bridge and the charge of the 51st New York and 51st Pennsylvania dominate our interpretation of the action there. It was not until today while hiking the Burnside Bridge sector of the Antietam battlefield with my good friend and artillery guru Jim Rosebrock (check out his excellent blog here) that I realized how crucial of a role Ambrose Burnside's and Jacob Cox's artillery played in cracking the conundrum of how to get their men across Antietam Creek.
     The 9th Corps had 53 guns at Antietam, according to Curt Johnson's and Richard C. Anderson, Jr.'s book Artillery Hell. At various points of the fight for the Burnside Bridge, anywhere from 21 to 29 of those guns fired directly on the Confederate infantry defending the bridge or the nearby Confederate artillery that supported the infantry.

     As attack after attack against the bridge and its Confederate defenders failed, there is a marked effort on the part of Burnside, Cox, and 9th Corps artillery chief George Getty to use artillery to drive the enemy away from the banks of Antietam Creek. While the 9th Corps' position always allowed it to converge the fire of its artillery onto the Confederate defenders, as the day wore on, 9th Corps batteries began shrinking their ring of fire, ensnaring the Confederates and ultimately helping drive them away.

"The numbers of cannoneers is so small"

 

Lt. Edward Williston (courtesy of Norwich University)

Lt. Edward Williston commanded Battery D, 2nd United States Artillery at the Battle of Antietam. While at the National Archives, I found this revealing letter about the issues Williston's battery encountered on the Antietam battlefield due to a shortage of men in the battery. The letter is transcribed as it was written, typos and all.

Edward Williston to Robert [Garvin?], September 21, 1862, Entry 4434, Record Group 393, Part 2, National Archives.

Arming the Army of the Potomac on the March: A Case Study

     In September 1862, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan not only faced the task of expelling Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army from Maryland but also of organizing and arming an army with which to do that. The Army of the Potomac was literally being built on its march towards an as yet unknown battle along Antietam Creek.
     Some corps and divisions fared better than others in the previous campaigns. The 1st Corps was in particularly rough shape as it trudged into Maryland. To resurrect it and restore its fighting spirit, McClellan appointed Joseph Hooker to command the corps. Of the troops under his command in September 1862, McClellan confided to his wife that the 1st Corps troops were "the only doubtful ones." They "are in bad condition as to discipline & everything else," he reported. "Hooker will however soon bring them out of the kinks, & will make them fight if anyone can."(1)

James B. Ricketts

     James B. Ricketts' 2nd Division especially needed a hand. In the recent Northern Virginia campaign, one member of the division speculated, "Our division probably done more marching than any other." The situation within the division was so bad that Ricketts' surgeons banded together and approached the commanding general with the ominous assessment that, in their opinion, "the division was physically unfit for duty."(2)
     The expediency of the dire situation forced by Lee's invasion into Maryland in September 1862 forced the Federals' hand. McClellan had to make use of what he could with what he had. The army's artillery arm was not in good shape. "Many had not been refitted since the August campaign; some had lost more or less guns; others were greatly deficient in men and horses, and a number wholly unserviceable from all these causes combined," wrote Brig. Gen. Henry Hunt, the man responsible for sorting out McClellan's artillery.(3) Certainly, one of those batteries Hunt dealt with was that belonging to Capt. James Thompson's Battery C, Pennsylvania Light Artillery.

Shamed at Sharpsburg: The Court Martial Case of Alfred Ransom Courtney

A postwar portrait of Alfred Ransom Courtney
(courtesy of George Seitz, findagrave.com)

As September 17, 1862, wore on, Robert E. Lee realized he would need as much help as he could find. Robert Chilton, a staff officer of Lee's, wrote a dispatch in the midst of the battle to artillery chief William Nelson Pendleton, requesting “fifteen or twenty guns, suitable for our purposes…with a sufficiency of ammunition.” Lee stressed to Pendleton: “We want ammunition, guns, and provisions” as the battle intensified.[1]

One artillery officer who had plenty of capacity to help Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia in this respect on September 17 commanded a battalion of artillery (four batteries)—Maj. Alfred Ransom Courtney. The 28-year-old major’s roots in North America dated back to 1620. “With an ancestry in whose veins flowed Scotch and English blood so pure,” wrote one of Courtney’s associates, it was no surprise that Courtney “developed in a high degree characteristics of intelligence, integrity and courage.” Courtney passed his bar exam before the Civil War began. He became a lieutenant in one Confederate battery at the outset of the war before receiving command of his own battery in July 1861.[2]