The Bloody Crucible of Courage

(ACW book)

by Tom Barkelow

The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War. My overall reaction can be given in one word - comprehensive. This book is much more than an extension of Nosworthy’s previous two studies of musket era tactics and developments. This work discusses pre-war developments and thought, primarily European, as well as myriad details on ACW tactics, grand tactics, weaponry, impact of “new” weaponry, development of the Monitor and Merrimac in respect to prior experiences with iron on warships, effectiveness of various doctrines and how those doctrines changed during the war, fortifications, hasty entrenchments, entanglements, and much, much more.

I highly recommend it to anyone interested in ACW warfare. It is not light reading. It’s hard for me to guess at how this book will be received by ACW enthusiasts. Several long cherished American beliefs are challenged, especially with regard to ACW “firsts” and why Europeans “ignored” the “lessons” from the ACW. One aspect I really liked was his even-handed approach to questions about the effectiveness of the rifled muskets as compared to smoothbore muskets and why ACW battles were so bloody and indecisive. Well some of his conclusions may not be well received, he does a great job of supporting them in a factual manner. I consider myself moderately knowledgeable about the ACW and found not a whole lot of surprises here. But there were some doozies, the first one being the the muzzle velocity for rifled muskets was lower than for smoothbore muskets.

I had always thought the looseness of ball fit to bore in smoothbores lowered the muzzle velocity by allowing gases to escape around the ball whereas rifled rounds fit nightly and better utilized the gas pressure. I never thought about the friction inherent in rifled rounds. The smoothbore had a muzzle velocity around 100 fps higher based on period measurements. The upshot is that smoothbore rounds had much more kinetic impact than rifled rounds and flatter overall trajectories. I had known about the relatively low muzzle velocity of the rifled musket and how this affected its trajectory, but never fully thought it through. One effect was the need for an individual firing a rifled musket to be an excellent estimator of range in order to use the proper sighting method - something that formed troops almost never had the chance to do (or were trained to do). So the vaunted accuracy of the rifled musket could only be fully utilized by well trained specialists operating in small pockets of skirmishers (sharpshooters).

What’s in here for the wargamer? Depends on your interest in the hobby. I found food for thought for some of the past discussions of this group, especially of command functions and just who the player represents. It’s a great source to either find how your favorite set of rules or right on OR how they miserably fail to represent the wide diversity of ACW warfare. Available from Carroll & Graf, $35 (768p) ISBN 0786711477

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