Buck and ball rounds were not just early war in their use. I have seen a good number of ordnance reports in unit files for these rounds well into 1864. The comments about these rounds being of limited use in combat are also incorrect. Additionally, there were a number of units, the Irish Brigade being among them, that preferred the use of buck and ball rounds with their smoothbores and did so well into 1863 (for the Irish). There's a book on Shiloh that showed that this round was preferred in combat fought in wooded areas.

The majority of weapons at Antietam, for both sides, were still smoothbores firing these rounds. Yet this battle remains America's bloodiest day. Also, smoothbores fired at a higher muzzle velocity and, thus, a flatter trajectory than rifles did at the time. Rifles then, and now, had a parabolic curve in the flight of their rounds which made range estimation and back sight adjustments critical to accurate fire. Modern rifle rounds still have this curve but it is somewhat flatter thanks to higher muzzle velocity due to better and greater powder charges. Neither side did that for their infantry save for sharp shooter units. Thus, rounds went over enemy units, dropped before enemy units and sometimes hit enemy units. All of this information was well known to the British and US Army before the war based on their tests and the solutions to the problems were also well known - more time on firing ranges as soldiers do today along with range estimation. But neither side in the Civil War wanted to spend the time and money on training rounds.

Books by Paddy Griffith, Brent Nosworthy and Earl Hess have all but buried the rifle musket as being such an awesome weapon at the time and show the smoothbore to be more deadly than has been previously thought. Griffith's book, for one, shows that it was often not until 1863 when veteran Civil War units were actually given range time and, as it turned out, their shooting at targets was pretty lousy!

In terms of range, the rifle round could out range the smoothbore but smoothbores could still be deadly out to 150 yards especially with buck and ball rounds. Prussian and French tests with smoothbores in the early 1800s against man-sized targets showed a 50 per cent hit ratio at 150 yards that went up as you got closer to the target. So the smoothbore could reach out into what Paddy Griffith and others have determined to be typical Civil War combat range (and for that matter, as SLA Marshall showed for World War 2, typical combat ranges for that war as well). The wadding of the round helped the ball grip the barrel making it more stable than many think.

Keep one thing in mind - you do not have to kill a soldier to take him off the battle line. Wounding him does the same thing. A buck and ball buckshot hitting men in their hands, arms, etc. are more than enough to do this, especially when a man is loading his weapon and takes a round in his ramming hand. If you tended to aim high, as many in the musket era tended to do, then these rounds hit enemy soldiers in their hands (when loading), arms, shoulders and heads.

Greg Biggs