By Pat Leonard, 8-31-12
It was late afternoon on Aug. 30, 1862, the concluding day of the Second Battle of Bull Run, and the largest simultaneous massed assault of the Civil War was about to be unleashed. The Confederate general James Longstreet’s corps was in position on the left flank of the Union general John Pope’s unsuspecting Army of Virginia, and when the signal was given 25,000 Rebels surged forward, catching the surprised Federals in an immense “hammer on anvil” movement.
Leading the charge was John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade, a force of roughly 2,500 men that included Pvt. William Fletcher, Company F, 5th Texas Infantry. When Fletcher and his fellow Texans had advanced to within 150 yards, a line of Union soldiers stood and fired, then turned to run, precipitating a retreat that would nearly result in Pope’s annihilation.
The Federals’ parting volley was mostly ineffective, but one bullet struck Private Fletcher in the stomach, knocking him to the ground and momentarily rendering him unconscious. When he came to, he saw the “long and ugly wound” and guessed that his bowels had been pierced. Fletcher sat up and actually faced into the raging battle, hoping he “might be so fortunate as to get a dead shot” that would “put an end to his existence.”
Private Fletcher had good reason to wish for a mercy shot. Earlier battles had taught veterans like him that serious gunshot wounds to the head, chest and abdomen were most often fatal. But while the first two were very likely to kill quickly, abdominal wounds condemned their victims to agonizingly slow deaths. Fletcher cursed his fate but resigned himself to it.
In the history of armed conflicts, there has never been a good time to be wounded in battle, but the soldiers of the American Civil War were especially unlucky that their battles took place during the early 1860s. Those four years were a brief period when recent developments in arms and ammunition made battlefields far more lethal than they had been a decade before, while discoveries in medicine – which could have partially counterbalanced the awful effects of the new ordnance – were still a handful of years in the future.
Almost as soon as the war ended, historians began to study the factors that contributed to so much bloodshed – more than 200,000 killed and nearly 500,000 wounded – and concluded that the introduction of the rifle musket was the primary cause of the staggering casualty rates. And not without reason: the rifle musket combined the best features of the smoothbore musket and the Kentucky flintlock rifle. It could be loaded quickly and easily – an experienced soldier could load and fire up to four rounds a minute – while its long, grooved barrel gave it an effective range up to four times that of a smoothbore, with similar improvements in accuracy.
Many chroniclers noted that, unlike the tactics of the American Revolution, when defenders would hold their fire until they could “see the whites” of their attackers’ eyes, Civil War defenders armed with rifle muskets could aim at and frequently hit targets at 400 yards or more. It was the rifle musket, researchers determined, that had made the bayonet obsolete and drastically transformed the roles of cavalry and field artillery.
Statistics appear to bear out this theory. Of all the wounds treated by Union Army doctors throughout the war, nearly 95 percent were caused by small-arms fire, less than 1 percent were attributable to bayonets and swords, and all but a handful of the remainder resulted from artillery shells and shrapnel.
Several modern historians, however, have disputed the notion that the rifle musket alone deserves the credit — or rather the blame — for the Civil War’s incredible carnage. They note that many battles were fought at close quarters, effectively negating the superior range and accuracy of rifle muskets over smoothbores, and that in any case most Civil War soldiers lacked the training and practice to take advantage of the new weapon’s awesome killing capacity. Of the millions of rounds fired at the enemy during the war, far more sailed over the heads of their intended targets than actually struck home.
What these discussions tend to overlook, though, is that it was not just the accuracy or frequency of fire that killed and maimed so many men, but the characteristics of the ammunition that encountered flesh and bone. While a smoothbore musket could expel a solid ball with a greater muzzle velocity than a rifle musket, it was the projectile that the latter weapon fired – the slightly smaller Minié ball – that made all the difference.
The Minié ball (properly pronounced “min-YAY” after its developer, the French Army officer Claude-Étienne Minié, but pronounced “minnie ball” by the Americans) wasn’t a ball but a conical-shaped bullet. Popularized during the Crimean War, it was perfected in early 1850s America. An armorer at the arsenal in Harpers Ferry named James Burton simplified the design that had made Minié famous and developed a hollow-based, .58-caliber lead projectile that could be cheaply mass produced.
The first generation of rifled projectiles were hard to load, since they had to fit snugly within the rifling grooves inside the barrel. Minié balls were slightly smaller in circumference than the inside of the barrel, so they could be dropped in quickly. When fired, the base of the bullet expanded and gripped the rifle grooves, which imparted a spiral on the projectile and thereby gave it its greater range and accuracy. In 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis adopted the rifle musket and Burton’s improved Minié ball, or bullet, for the United States Army.
The intent of the designers of the rifle musket/Minié ball combination was to increase the firepower of the individual soldier, and in this quest they succeeded. But in developing a defender’s dream they also created a nightmare, not just for the men felled by the bullet, but for the medical corps stewards and surgeons who had to deal with its effects. The very attributes that increased the bullet’s range and accuracy also increased its destructive potential when it struck its target. Unlike a solid ball, which could pass through the human body nearly intact, leaving an exit wound not much larger than the entrance wound, the soft, hollow-based Minié ball flattened and deformed upon impact, while creating a shock wave that emanated outward.
The Minié ball didn’t just break bones, it shattered them. It didn’t just pierce tissue and internal organs, it shredded them. And if the ragged, tumbling bullet had enough force to cleave completely through the body, which it often did, it tore out an exit wound several times the size of the entrance wound. Civil War surgeons were quickly overwhelmed by the gaping wounds, mangled bodies and mutilated limbs they were asked to repair as the scope of the war broadened and casualties mounted. Though often accused of being too partial to their bone saws, amputating arms and legs as quickly as the men could be placed on their operating tables and subdued with chloroform or ether, the surgeons really had no choice. Even if they’d had the skills and resources to attempt reconstructive surgery, in the heat of battle they didn’t have the time.
Over all, Civil War surgeons did a respectable and generally successful job of trying to save lives, given the unrelenting slaughter with which they had to cope. They were notably less successful, however, in convincing the public of this fact, as cries of “Butchery!” continued to dog the medical corps throughout and after the war. As an editorial writer noted in the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer, following the Union victory at Gettysburg: “Our readers will not fail to have noticed that everybody connected to the army has been thanked, excepting the surgeons.”
As for Pvt. William Fletcher, he survived the abdominal wound he suffered at the Second Battle of Bull Run, thanks in part to a “Kentucky button” – a plug of dried oak he had whittled to hold up his pants. The minié ball that knocked him down fractured the button, dissipating enough of the bullet’s force to prevent it from penetrating too deeply. Fletcher recovered and went on to fight at the battles of Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and Chickamauga, where he was again wounded, this time in the foot.
Fletcher credited the care he received from the Sisters of Charity with saving his foot from amputation and enabling him to return to duty. Thirty-four years later, as a successful businessman in Beaumont, Tex., he acted on the gratitude he felt by donating the land and lumber to build the order’s hospital in that city, the Hotel Dieu. His memoir of the Civil War – “Rebel Private: Front and Rear” – was said by author Margaret Mitchell to be “her single most valuable research tool when writing ‘Gone With the Wind.'”
Sources: William A. Fletcher, “Rebel Private: Front and Rear”; Allan W. Howey, “Weaponry: The Rifle-Musket and the Minié Ball,” Civil War Times, October 1999; Earl J. Hess, “The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth,” Alfred J.Bollet, “Civil War Medicine: Challenges & Triumphs,”; Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein, “Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine.”
Pat Leonard is the editor and publisher of The Gold Cross, a magazine for volunteer E.M.T.s in New Jersey. He has written two novels, “Proceed With Caution” and “Damned If You Do.” His great-greatgreat uncle, Sgt. Jerome Leonard, 55th Pennsylvania Infantry, was wounded at the Battle of Cold Harbor and later died at Bermuda Hundred hospital after his leg was amputated.
Image: Paintings of wounds made by a conical bullet in a Civil War casualty: entrance wound at left, exit wound at right. F.A. Otis and D.L. Huntington, “Wounds and complications, Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion.”
From: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
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