SABER vs PISTOL in the US Civil War CAVALRY 

A revolver and a cavalry carbine seems to have been a popular option.

This was what I was thinking the whole time. Sure, a sword is probably handier in a charge, but the reality of warfare of the day is that charging infantry was suicidal. Even with rifled muskets, they could get off at least one or two *accurate* volleys before you're even in range with your revolver. If they had breach-loading or repeating rifles? Don't even think about it. That's not to say that cavalry wasn't useful, but the charge was obsolete outside of very niche circumstances.

​@@m0nkEz charging prepared infantry from the front has never been a good idea. Why else would the square be all but impervious?

And in the case of many irregular cavalry, shotguns.

Gradually after the battle of Waterloo the cavalry were used less, especially as machine guns became more prevalent. That meant during the ACW the cavalry became more mounted guns. Due to sheer numbers of recruits arranging training with swords would become more difficult.

Mauser pistol was much better weapon, than any cap & ball revolver...

That was simply a case of having a absolutely the best weapon of the time at hand …the simple fact that it is ranged means you won’t be poked by a dervish with a pointy stick

The best weapon to have, is whatever will save your hide in a moment of crisis. In the melee of a cavalry action between swirling troops of Hampton's men fighting Custer's, often a shotgun was the preferred weapon of choice. The pistol and sabre were tools of last resort.

Are you kidding? You are calling the high-end luxury weapon as "almost any weapon" etc, seriously?

In WWI, Zeppelin's terrorized London, but Gotha bombers were more deadly.

@@DogWalkerBill The Junkers JU-87 also had sirens ('Jericho Trumpets') fitted to terrify the enemy. They would have made the aircraft easier to detect and avoid but the Germans valued the demoralizing effect over lethality.

I mean, making the enemy fear you would mean you save your resources on more important battles at hand. Forcing the enemy to surrender with terror would ease your logistics when done right

Once the enemy gets used to it you can use it to fake bombing runs yes? ​@@nathanaelsmith3553

Was just thinking of Mosby. I read somewhere that he said he had an English adventurer working for him, and that he always felt the man died because of his habit of going to his sword too early, while his revolvers still had a few charges.

@@robertvondarth1730 They sought to break each other's wrists & lower arm. How chivalrous. Many thought it odd when Nathaniel Bedford Forrest decided to put a fine edge on his. (Bad sport old chap.)

I think Col. Mosby said they might as well be holding a cornstalk or something to that effect in reference to the saber. His raiders rode with 2 revolvers and were so skilled they could wield them both while riding with only legs. those raiders of his were one of the first special forces units in history. He was on the wrong side of history but he commanded one bad @$$ bunch of operators, period. He used to walk in to D.C and drink at bars to get intel.

I mean, Mosby was almost cut down by Major William H Forbes' saber at Mt. Zion Church (July 6th, 1864 near Aldie, Loudoun, Virginia) and only survived because one of his soldiers threw himself between the pair, so he probably should have had a tad more respect for the weapon.

@@Gambitfan Yeah, but what happened after that? The Ranger in question Thomas Richards took a saber wound to the shoulder, and immediately after that, Mosby emptied his revolver shooting Forbes horse from under him.

You beat me too my comment about the pistol. I have both the Colt and an Ruger Steel Cap and Ball which as you know is based on the Remington Model. Also when shooting the Remington models, because of their top frames, the loss of caps is greatly reduced

The original percussion caps in the 1800s used thicker metal than the ones you can get now. The original hammer springs were stronger. Today with reproduction guns and modern caps you get more jams. The metal of the caps comes apart when it goes off and gets everywhere in the works preventing the cylinder from turning. Even today with the modern caps people shooting totally original Colt guns made in the 1800s find they don't jam as much due to the hammer tension holding it against the cylinder harder under fire.

Also because they did not have as many revolvers as the Union, nor could make them like that in the early war.

@@johnmoore8067 I read the same thing or heard it somewhere. Also, the idea that extra cylinders were not that available is also somewhat false, considering that when you bought the colt or Remington (which most Union officers did) you could also buy extra cylinders and belt holders.

Forrest required his troopers to have pairs of revolvers( he personally acquired them early on from the colt factory) ,to be able to hit a man sized tree at 50 yds at a gallop. He used his mounted troopers as dismounted fighters many times.

Cavalry from Texas often carried two shotguns for close-quarters combat. By the end of the war, most horsemen carried at least two pistols.

Lever action were also used by Confederate calvary

@@edstringer1138 The only repeating rifles used by the Confederates were ones they had captured from the Union. And even then, they would have problems getting ammunition for them.

@@Jelperman Forrest's men carried double barrel 10 gauge shotguns plus pistols.

@@richardstephens5570Your absolutely wrong , Virgina, Texas and Louisiana all had units, Confederate officers recruited and equiped units themselves .then donated these units to the Confederacy Google it , your lacking the history on these Henry equipped units

I mean, this is valid today. An 18th century revolver? I think I’d choose the sword. Guns at the time were way too slow and unreliable at the time.

It depends on which specific revolver and sword your referring to.

@@gwynbleidd1917 nah, I’d choose any saber over a gun of that era. Same as how, contrary to movies, in the Wild West, the Bowie Knife was the preferred weapon of self defense because the guns were too unreliable and slow to load.

@@gatorjohnny I'd take the revolver. A cap and ball Colt Army puts out .44 caliber lead balls that are dead on at 50 yards. Surprisingly accurate at 50 yards and effective beyond.

@@greyvr4336 you gotta modify the sights if you bought a pietta 1860 army Definitely not dead on. But you can make it that way with work.

Yes and both lost completely to the American's revolvers. Not a genius but your argument is irrelevant.

@@sgress in the battle of San Pasqual 6./7. December 1846 Mexican Lancers drove US Cavalry from the field. And in the battles Monterrey 21.-24. September 1846 and Sacramento 28. February 1847 the Mexican Cavalry with driven from the field by US Artilery with US Cavallry not engaging. As an development of the war the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry adopted the Lance until 1863, when breechloading carbines where avaible. The Comanche lost to a steadily loss of territory, not to the Cap and Ball Revolvers they could easily outrange with their bows.

A few cherry picked examples don't a successful rebuttal make.

@@sgressputting aside the fact that you are being needlessly argumentative, the original comment did not make the claim that lances are superior to revolvers. He simply stated that some armies preferred their use, and gave good examples in which their use was successful against a force which used firearms primarily. It is a very interesting fact indeed. Oh, and there is a great deal more that goes into winning a war than “hur dur they one because the pistol beats the lance”. The lance can be useful in a very specific scenario and still not turn the tides. The pistol could be an objectively worse weapon and still be used to win a war because of completely unrelated reasons.

Modern ones come in different sizes usually number 10 and 11 for the navy reproductions. You do need to develop mind your P and Q when reloading. They actually use to carry pre rolled cartridges for reloading the percussion would burn through the thin paper

often too, some might just have "stirrup bags" which is literally just a sack tied to your saddle or stirrups that carried a pistol or 2. You reach down, grab a pistol, shoot all 6 rounds, and put it back and grab another. I've seen some instances where cavalrymen would even carry multiple of these sacks to carry multiple pistols (depending on the era, pistols were expensive so owning multiple usually meant you were someone of import up until colt changed the game)

They both make good clubs. Just joking.

Probably closer to carrying an aluminum bat, albeit in a 19th century warzone here.

@@mpetrison3799 That would be better than a pistol with nothing else.

​@@user-bh4ge1pm2t: In 1934 the assassin of King Alexander of Jugoslawia and a french minister in Marseille was beaten down by a mounted officer with a saber..

You'd think so, but remember the importance of the thrust. There are sources (which I disagree with but still) which suggest giving cavalry straight swords with no edge, to encourage the use of the point! I kinda/sorta seem to recall someone back in the day wanted to remove swords with 'blades' entirely and wanted to go to a length of pipe with the end cut at a shape angle so people wouldn't even see them as "blunt swords" but as short spears. (I don't recall who that was, so if I'm not just misremembering a dream and someone knows the source, please share.) The last US saber, the 1913 Patton, is an entirely thrust oriented design.

The Judge knew a thing or 2 about war.

@@CSSVirginia And how!

Bloody Bill Anderson carried six.

Now to do my yearly Google search to see if Blood Meridian will ever be made into a movie. Looks like John Hillcoat is/was signed on to do it. If he can bring the grittiness of The Proposition to the film, it just might work.

Blood Meridian is violence porn and not history.

Real "While you farted about with your peashooters, I studied the blade" energy

Did he though I mean he knew the blood and guts reality of hoof on the ground and the crush of lines being thrown against eachother. But we have the benefit of statistics and historical overview there was exactly one more saber issued to the American cavalry and it was rapidly abandoned as were cavalry tactics in general with very minor exceptions, were we to equip a “modern horse cavalry “ they would assuredly not be armed with lances and sabers unless it was Lynn Thompson of cold steel or some other delusional who did the equipping

@@martins.4240 Yep. Exactly that. Heh.

As I’ve written in my own, separate comment, I think it’s worth noticing a huge caveat/hedge in the text, which concerns the phrase “when pressed home”. The claim that melee cavalry would successful when charges were “pressed home” was a standard trope and one that was also used to talk up bayonet attacks by infantry during the latter half of the 19th and early 20th century until being emphatically disproven in WWI. Sure, there were still some uses for the sabre in the mid to late 19th century, but the notion that a prime role for cavalry was to charge in, sabres swinging to scatter opponents like chaff to the wind was more of a romantic and nostalgic plea for the cavalry as the decisive striking arm (quite literally) than anything evinced by actual warfare during this time. But every time the cavalry failed to function in this way, the “cavalry conservatives”, who favoured melee attacks, would always claim that it was just because attacks hadn’t been “pressed home vigorously” enough. And they would then cherrypick any successful melee cavalry action as proof that melee attacks were not only viable, but should be the main role for cavalry.

Absolutely matches my research.

But the loss at Little Bighorn was due to the cavalry leaving their sabers behind

It would be a stretch to describe them as cavalry by European or British standards. They were mounted infantry.

​@@mattmiraglia3199And lack of training. Would a colonial force of a similar size met the same end?

@@mattmiraglia3199 I don't think sabers would have made much difference at Little Bighorn.

The Dreyse Needle gun was first introduced into service in 1841. By 1866 it's mechanism might have been old hat but in it's proper historical context it was bleeding edge technology. The fact that it was still a perfectly serviceable firearm thirty years later in time of rapid technological change speaks volumes for the fundamental soundness of the design.

regular civil war cavalry did not carry spare revovlers. The northren industry could not produce sufficient number of revolves to even make sure every cavalry man had even one... until 1864. And in the south the situation was even worse where plenty of cavalrymen did not even one for much of the war.

@@thomasbaagaardBreech loading and especially repeating carbines were rare in the South, so CSA cavalrymen relied upon muzzle loading carbines and double barreled shotguns. Thus, they carried as many pistols as they could afford and find for sale. A typical arrangement was a brace of belt revolvers and two saddle holstered pistols, ideally of the same models. Failing this, spare loaded cylinders had to suffice. Large calibers were favored, to compensate for lack of breech loading carbines.

@@mattbowden4996The Dreyse needle rifle was kept mostly under raps in the 1840s and ‘50s. It was issued to Prussian specialist troops, not line infantry or to cavalry in carbine form. The US army rejected it in favor of Minie ball shooting muzzle loading rifle muskets, as had Britain before the Crimean War. The US cavalry also had superior breech loading and repeating carbines in the Civil War. Some infantry regiments also had Henry repeating rifles and longer versions of some carbines.

There's nothing wrong with the Springfield Trapdoor, it was the cartridges that caused the problem. Once proper drawn brass cartridge cases were used it was an effective weapon. What it lacked in rate of fire it more than made up in hitting power, accuracy, and range. The trapdoor didn't really become obsolete until the advent of smokeless powder. Plenty of sportsmen shoot repros of them today.

Pistols( revolvers), and firearms in general caught on fpr the same reason crossbows did: easier to use. Easier to train men to use proficiently, and a big one: distance. Killing someone from distance vs hand to hand is Huge.

"A Uberti Colt replica is not a Colt!". The second and third generation Colt percussion guns literally are Ubertis. Second gen is made by Colt from Uberti parts. Third gen were made by the independent Colt Black Powder Company from Uberti parts. Also lots of period sources talk about cap sucking and cap jams which is typically the main source of unreliability with Colts.

@@jeffthebaptist3602 2nd & 3rd gens are not what he was referring to. I wish they kept & reported the frequency of malfunctions back then. All I know is that 'duelist1954' (Mike Beliveau) reported in several of his reviews that the modern Army & Navy Colt clones are not nearly as reliable as the originals were & still are. And he suggested ways of bringing the replicas 'back into spec.'

@@JimTempleman That typically has to do with the cap jams though as was stated above. The original Colts had lots of reliability problems, especially with the Walker cylinders exploding if they were overcharged. Also, colts were really expensive at the time and most troopers weren't paid enough, nor was the supply great enough for cavalrymen to just buy a half dozen colts at a time.

@@colbunkmust Walkers were the 2nd generation Colts. By the Civil War most troopers were using 4th gen, much improved Navy & Army cap & ball revolvers. Most of the Colts used by the South were: bought before the War,, stolen from captured facilities, POWs, or battlefield pick-ups. Remember the Southern forces won a lot of the early battles, but lost eventually due to attrition. As I stated earlier, cavalrymen during the Civil war carried as many revolvers as they could get their hands on. And yes, there was a lot of variation.

@@JimTempleman Regardless of the generation, the issue of reliability in modern repros are almost always due to modern cap primers, not the guns themselves. 19th century firearms including many Colts were made with inferior steel or in some cases wrought iron that weren't nearly as well made as the modern repros, especially in terms of quality control of materials and heat treatment.

Yes and no. Fouling and action seized was no less of an issue (in no small part why open tops persisted so long.) Nor should we don the rose tints; production of all and sundry in the mid-19thC was laughably sloppy by modern standards.

@@desburnett5406 I should clarify that I was mentally lumping in percussion repro revolvers (cap jams) with the flintlocks (soft frizzens, weak springs). The only thing that makes a repro percussion revolver worse than a period one is the lack of properly sized and hardened caps. They fall off (yes, you can pinch them) and the shatter far more readily than the originals appear to have. As for fouling, that isn't an issue in combat with pistols because you're not reloading - you're firing your six and drawing your sword. Manufacture might be generally sloppy by modern standards across the market as a whole, but precision engineered repros with wonderful metallurgy don't address these two issues. If period revolvers jammed as frequently as repros, they simply wouldn't have been used. In fact I'd like to see accounts of failure in period combat. So far I haven't come across any (but I haven't researched in any depth on that).

More than likely they didn't want to carry it or had no idea how to use it. Run out of ammo and get stuck with a knife which is far worse against the Lance. Firearms on Horseback probably weren't accurate and were only good at firing at large masses of people. Melee weapons would have been better in individual combat.

@@stevenoconnor3256 These guys knew what they were doing, believe me. On both sides. Many rangers were ex-army and many were officers and veterans of Texas war for independence, Civil War and other conflicts. It’s just we tend to assign edged and melee weapons too much significance and truth is they were losing relevance fast with advancements in firearms technology. Consider this: less than 1% of all casualties during the Civil War were by bayonet. Historically documented. Casualties by saber? Historians disagree. Some say very few. Some say none. Think about that.

@@leofedorov1030 The projectile weapon always kills more people even before firearms. The melee weapon is used when the projectile weapon fails and in contexts where it's superior. There are modern bayonet charges that worked. The bayonet outlasted every single firearm they used in warfare.

@@stevenoconnor3256 Look..I like blades and pointy things too, but US Army no longer train bayonets. I think Marines still do, but more as a tradition. The Israeli don’t. They don’t even issue knives to their troops. Trench warfare in Ukraine is all grenades and assault rifles. No bayonet in sight. The list goes on. So to state that bayonets outlasted firearms is just not very accurate. Peace.

@@leofedorov1030 Your reading comprehension is garbage, the Firearms they used. 1800 rifles are not in use. Bayonet charges were used in the Iraq War. What I hear is that you have to buy your own knives. Machetes are basic tools for Forest Warfare.

"caulking"

Cocking

@@asahearts1 🤣🤣🤣 talk to text is hilarious Thanks for the heads up

Probably noisy too, rattling in its scabbard and clanking against the body of a horse.

That may largely be due to the nature of warfare in the west. There were few instances (none come immediately to mind) in which Native American warriors could have been defeated by a saber charge. They would simply scatter and reform at a distance. Conversely, the Natives wouldn't charge saber-armed cavalry with just hand weapons, so it wasn't much use in defense either. It's true that occasionally some hand-to-hand action occurred, but it was the exception, and the soldier would probably be as well served with a tomahawk or Bowie knife. There is at least one instance of sabers being used in a surprise attack upon a Native encampment, but I think we can agree that its utility in massacring women, children, and old men isn't a strong argument for its issue.

@@itsapittie Also, it wasn't unusual for Indians to have better rifles than the military through illegal trade.

@@itsapittie It doesn't take a lot of skill to chase down old men, women and children.

Generally weren’t getting into sword fights with the natives.

not used as mounted infantry used as dragoons; tactically different

In the last year of the War the Confederates were fighting with worn out horses and they had been depleted by three years of fighting.

Bufords men did not have repeating carbiens at Gettysburg. It is a myth. The first spencer carbiens was not even delivered to the federal army until oktober/November 1863. They used Sharps, Burnsides and similar breechloaded carbines.

After the South had run out of everything

@@Geep615 Much of what happened to the Confederacy, in terms of the acquisition of modern arms and other military supplies from Britain and France, took place because of a singularly stupid and arrogant move by the cotton growers in the government. Rather than convert their cotton stocks to cash or into P53 Enfield rifle muskets, they decided that the smart thing was to do to boycott the European cotton industry to force the Brits and the French into recognizing the Confederate government. So they South withheld its one staple crop from market during a time that the Union maritime blockade was still porous. Of course, this forced the British to find other sources of cotton for their mills, which they shortly did, long staple from Egypt and short staple from India. By the time the Confederacy got around to seeing the need to sell cotton to make money to support their war, Europe didn't need their product any more. The Confederacy started off with almost no industrial capacity, and cut off from sources in Europe, they had to relay on what were basically artisan shops for the weapons they needed. That, and the pickups they could make from Union sources on the battlefield. By July 1863, the South was still fielding highly motivated cavalry and infantry armed with a hodgepodge of weaponry, from modern rifles to smoothbore muskets using buck and ball. The Union was fielding the Springfield rifle, along with repeaters like the Spencer and the Henry, modern rifled cannon in vast numbers, and every Union cavalryman was armed with revolvers and quick loading carbines of many makes. The other and maybe more telling factor in the late war was that, after Gettysburg, most of the core of Southern veterans under arms was dead on the field, especially on the fields where Lee won tactical victories. After Yellow Tavern, with Stuart dead and Gordon badly wounded, the Union cavalry under Sheridan manhandled the Southern cavalry from then on. In the Shenandoah Valley, he destroyed Jubal Early's cavalry and infantry forces while razing the entire valley to deny food supplies to Lee's army outside of Richmond. At Five Forks on 01 April 1865, he succeeded in cutting off the last supply line into Richmond, and defeated the attempt to force him to retreat under George Pickett, while inflicting 5,000 casualties on Pickett. Eight days later, Lee surrendered, blocked by Sheridan on his western track and pressed by Meade and the AOP on the east.

Bullshit many cavalry used the sword as the primary weapon like the Swedish or the British and it in fact it was the reason they dominated against western armies

Wouldn't the pistol be the pistol lol? You're talking about the golden age of the caracole

@@peterullrich9034 The pistol took the role of the lance in many armies because you could carry multiple, weren’t outranged by pikes, and probably just as (in)effective against heavy armor.

I shoot a Colt Dragoon regularly and you absolutely cannot speed load the cylinders. You have to take the whole pistol apart to change the cylinder. It is the Remington where you can change out the cylinder quickly. With Colts the only option is to carry two or more of them.

He was the first enemy we engaged.

We're not allowed to do that under range regulations. The best we can do is tip to the right hand side, which helps a little

at melee distances missing is not an issue and the soft lead balls would not over penetrate

From all I’ve read about Gorkhas, I’ve come to the conclusion, you just don’t mess with the Gorkhas.

If I had to carry one into battle, I'd choose the Remington. But the revolvers my ancestors carried into battle were Colts (or southern copies of Colts) so Colts have a special place in my heart

Sure, but in a CHARGE that's not actually useful, because the charge takes a fixed amount of time to hit the enemy lines. You don't stand there shooting, you charge, hit, exit. So as the author says, revolvers are great in skirmishing, but fairly bad in a charge. Even by WW1 militaries preferred the sword and lance for the charge, pistols not really working well for that role.

There's an account of some hapless reb having his CSA made sabre bend in half skirmishing with federals. The damned things didn't have fullers half the time.

IF you haven't, read Vegetius, do so, you'll love it. The following is from his book, De Re Militari, written in the time of Emperor Theodosius, condensing the military wisdom of Romans. 21. An escape-route should be offered to the enemy so that they may be more easily destroyed in full flight? Generals unskilled in war think a victory incomplete unless the enemy are so straightened in their ground or so entirely surrounded by numbers as to have no possibility of escape. But in such situation, where no hopes remain, fear itself will arm an enemy and despair inspires courage. When men find they must inevitably perish, they willingly resolve to die with their comrades and with their arms in their hands. The maxim of Scipio, that a golden bridge should be made for a flying enemy, has much been commended. For when they have free room to escape they think of nothing but how to save themselves by flight, and the confusion becoming general, great numbers are cut to pieces. The pursuers can be in no danger when the vanquished have thrown away their arms for greater haste. In this case the greater the number of the flying army, the greater the slaughter. Numbers are of no signification where troops once thrown into consternation are equally terrified at the sight of the enemy as at their weapons. But on the contrary, men when shut up, although weak and few in number, become a match for the enemy from this very reflection, that they have no resource but in despair.

Hmm... I was trying to post a quote from Vegetius on morale, but it seems not to be there. Maybe essays get deleted? Anyway there is an excellent quote in Vegetius about it, which he attributes to Scipio Africanus.