I’m sure that far more soldiers were killed by bullets and bayonets during the U. S. Civil War than by sabres. Were there any famous casualties? (As in, General so-and-so got his skull hacked in two by a sabre. Or by one of those big bowie knives that a lot of the Confederates carried into battle.) Just how often did the swords come into play?
As always, any info would be vastly appreciated.
Swords and bayonets were really important in the wars previous to the Civil War. In the revolutionary war and Napoleonic Wars, bayonets and swords accounted for roughly a third of all battlefield casualties. Changes in weapons and tactics made the good old fashioned bayonet charge obsolete, and in the Civil War bayonets and swords accounted for less than 1 percent of battlefield casualties.
Because they were used so little, bayonets went from being these great big long pointy triangular things that were primarily for stabbing people into knife-like things that were more utilitarian around the camp but could still be used to poke someone in a last ditch emergency.
Swords and sword bayonets were mostly issued to cavalrymen during the Civil War. These also disappeared in the years after the war. Even during the Civil War a lot of cavalry officers replaced their sabers with pistols as they became available. When they were used, they were often used more as a terror weapon than an actual weapon. A guy zipping along the lines on horseback waving a sword around in a menacing fashion did tend to make the guys on the other side stop and think a bit.
There was a fairly famous bayonet charge at Gettysburg, but that was more out of desperation than anything else. Col. Chamberlain and his men were defending Little Round Top (the high ground) and basically ran out of ammo. With nothing else to fight with, they fixed bayonets and charged.
There was also a cavalry battle on the third day at Gettysburg. There were hundreds of cavalrymen basically fighting right up in each other’s faces along a fence line. Some of them were fighting with carbines (short rifles) and pistols, but quite a few of them were using sabers.
Sabers were also used in the battle of Brandy Station in 1863. The confederates actually made fun of the northern cavalrymen for using them though. A proper cavalryman should use a pistol, or at least that was the thinking at the time.
Fine, lets see how well you reload while bouncing around on a damned horse.
<swish, poke, splort> That shut them up … 
A well armed Cavalryman circa 1864 would have at least 4 pistols.
Unless you are Rambo you got to run out of loaded weapons sometime …
One caveat I’ve seen applied to that figure is that the percentage comes from casualties who reached aid stations. There’s some question as to whether people who were killed outright are under-represented. And because swords and bayonets are hand-to-hand weapons, and therefore used inside critical distance,* where the fighting is unusually savage, anyone wounded by a bladed weapon is highly likely to be wounded multiple times in the encounter. The thinking is that this leads to a higher likelihood of fatality, and that such fatalities would not be counted at aid stations and field hospitals – therefore sword and bayonet wounding may have been significantly under-represented in the studies made on distribution of wounds.
*See John Keegan’s The Face of Battle for how the animal behaviorists’ term critical distance applies to human combat: cite
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In particular, both sides were using rifled muskets and Minie balls. This meant that a rifleman could hit a man-sized target as far away as 500 yards, and the rifles had sights intended for use up to that distance.
Prior to the rifled musket/Minie ball combo, the standard tactic of the day was to march up in a roughly shoulder-to-shoulder formation and fire a musket volley or two at the enemy formation (not at individual targets) from close range - 50-100 yards, and then follow up with a bayonet charge and hand-to-hand combat.
This tactic would be suicidal against rifles that could hit them from 500 yards away; they’d get shot to pieces long before they made it in range, and this did indeed happen many times in the early parts of the war.
So the few times that bayonets or swords did get used were more in the last-resort type situations, or the ocassional insane bayonet charge.
COL John Singleton Mosby’s men often carried 4, 6, or even 8 pistols, jammed in their boots, belts, holsters and in pommel holsters. They, and particularly he, distained sabers, and held to the wisdom of the wide spread quote: “Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?”
Other applicable (and approximate) quotes that come to mind, sans speaker, are, “I was all over the field and never saw a soldier that was killed with a saber.” (That may have been Henry Kyd Douglas), and
“It was on that occasion that I saw the value of thrusting with the point of a sabre as opposed to swinging it.” (That quote, in probably a completely different form, was in a book by Bruce Catton, complete with a contemporary illustration of one mounted officer skewering another.)
Swords and sabres were used but as the Civil War morphed into something approximating WWI and its trench warfare, their use became, “a custom more honored in the breach than the observance.”
There were several distinct types of cavalry, each with its own role. All but one requires years of training that a quickly-mobilized citizen army can’t supply
Heavy cavalry were used to break up formations of musket-shooting infantry. Both were made obsolete by rifles by the 1860’s. However, an Indiana infantry unit of German immigrants once formed square and drove off the Texas Rangers who attacked them with pistols.
Light Cavalry came in two subsets: hussars and lancers. Hussars delivered messages, kept enemy scouts away, and chopped away at scattered infantrymen whose formations had been smashed by the heavies. Lancers did most of this, too, but relied on long pigstickers for reach advantage. Pennsylvania actually had some lancers at the start of the war, but they couldn’t be replaced as fast as they were killed.
Dragoons didn’t need to learn how to attack in formation or regroup or how to sword fight or couch a lance or anything else fancy. Their horses didn’t need to be trained beyond not freaking out at gunshots. They rode as a way of getting to where they were needed, then fought on foot while somebody held the horses. Most Civil War cavalry was dragoon.
Still not easy. I read the memoir of a cavalry recruit who, like most people, had been too poor own a riding horse, and who recalled passing blood in his urine from traumatized kidneys for weeks until he found his seat.
This is an awesome bit of Gettysburg history. Joshua Chamberlain received the Medal of Honor for this action.
He was later shot through the hip at Rives Salient and stuck his sword into the ground and used it as a crutch so he would remain standing.
He was also chosen to preside over the surrender of Confederate forces at Appomattox. Leading to this poignant scene:
O.K. I found this quote when searching for confirmation of my “best recollection” from school, that artillery fire caused more deaths than anything else. I was surprised to read this;
Never bring a knife to a gunfight.
A true Officer and a Gentleman! Pity more officers couldn’t have been like him.
I have a friend who is a serious Civil War buff - he got into doing the reenactments and the absolute highlight of his vacation every year is going and recreating a different battle every year. He did Gettysburg about 5 years ago and had the time of his life touring the locations. I will admit that we have occasionally hit one of the battlefield parks while on vacation, especially when we were living in Virginia. One of my european friends was with us about 20 years ago when we visited a couple down in North and South Carolina and commented that if they set aside as much battlefield space as parks, they wouldn’t have anywhere to live. :dubious:
From the description of “a Vermont regiment survivor” at Gettysburg.
“There are bayonet thrusts, sabre strokes, pistol shots. . . men going down on their hands and knees, spinning round like tops, throwing out their arms, gulping blood, falling; legless, armless, headless.”
Geoffrey C. Ward, The Civil War, page 252.
I have read that Civil War cavalry rarely sharpened their sabers, preferring them blunt edged. The logic was that the sharper the edge the more likely it would be to embed in something while you’re charging and, best case scenario, you lose a sword- very likely you get dismounted as well.
An exception was Nathan Forrest, who- at least per legend- not only sharpened his saber but sharpened it on both sides.
I have several ancestors who were in Wheeler’s Cavalry and the term ‘cavalry’ is in some ways misleading. More often than not they were mounted infantry, meaning that they rode horses to battle but not into battle; once they got to the battle site they’d stake their horses (usually about 1 man in five would stay with the horses) and fight with pistols and short rifles. Their advantage over other infantry was, of course, that they could be quickly redeployed.
When attacking from horseback cavalry mostly attacked supply caravans and small units they could overwhelm. They did occasionally charge into pitched battle on horseback, but it was usually a desperation “shock and awe” maneuver, often during a retreat, and one that often had a high casualty and capture count for both horses and riders.
World War I was the first major large scale war where more soldiers died from battle than from disease. The number of soldiers who died from disease was still pretty large, though, roughly a third of all WWI soldier deaths (seems to vary a bit depending on whose statistics you use). By World War II the losses to disease had dropped rather dramatically.
Can anyone recommend a book on the history of cavalry? Also, if anyone knows a good one on the history of cannons that would be cool.
You might try this: http://www.amazon.com/Cavalry-History-Mounted-Military-Classics/dp/1844150968.
I haven’t read it but I’ve heard good things about it.
This will give you an idea
http://files.myopera.com/3sails/albums/811446/Sharpening%20swords.jpg
Addendum: these aren’t USA/CSA combatants. They’re the Queen’s Hussars. But the idea is a lot the same.