The Repeating Rifle in Hunting and Warfare [pp. 141-148]

The Repeating Rifle in hunting and Warfare.
dred yards without suffering severely
from a well directed infantry fire. With
the new arm at five hundred yards it
is probable it will not be necessary to
raise the back sight, or in other words
elevate the rifle, in order to make its
fire effective.
The importance of this flatness in trajectory may perhaps be better understood from the following - During the
Civil War, at the siege of Petersburg
and Richmond, where I was present as
an officer of the staff, I witnessed an assault made upon troops armed with repeating rifles. An outlying fort of the
chain of defenses around the city of
Richmond had been captured and held
by the Northern troops. On the next
day, during the afternoon, an attempt
was made to recapture this work. Before
this, however, and directly after its capture, a continuous line of intrenchments
had been thrown up on either side of
the fort by the Federal troops, and
occupied by them. If I remember correctly, the regiment immediately supporting the battery was armed with the
Spencer repeating rifle. But a few hundred Confederates formedfor the attack,
and to this day I wonder at the madness
of the Confederate officer who gave the
order for the assault, for besides being
behind intrenchments, the Union troops
supporting the battery could easily have
been reinforced had it been necessary,
so as to have outnumbered the Confederates more than three or four to one,
for close at hand and quite within supporting distance were other regiments
that could plainly be seen from the Confederate lines. Nevertheless this small
body of Confederate soldiers advanced
to the charge three several times; but
the gallant fellows, after reaching the
intrenchments and the line of abattis,
were driven back each time easily
enough by the fire of the Spencer repeaters. After being driven back they
would retire about three hundred yards,
reform their lines, and then come on
again. While they were thus reforming
their lines, the firing upon them from
the intrenchments ceased almost entirely, the battery and sharpshooters alone
keeping at work. This cessation of the
fire of the battery's supporters was not
on account of the Spencer's lack of
range, for these rifles could throw a bullet three fourths of a mile or more, but
because the officer commanding was
aware that the result of keeping up a
fire would not be commensurate with
the amount of ammunition expended,
and chose rather to save it for closer
quarters and for another charge, which
he saw would likely come; for comparatively few rounds of Spencer repeating ammunition were carried by the
soldiers. The caliber of this arm was
56, its bullet weighed 550 grains, and
its powder charge was 50 grains,- a
proportion of i i of lead to I of powder.
So small a charge of powder in proportion to the weight of the bullet gave anything but a flat trajectory, and the bullet's drop was great. On this occasion,
in order to have delivered an effective
fire with the Spencer repeating rifles
while the Confederates were reforming
their lines, it would have been necessary
that the Federal troops should have estimated correctly the interval separating them from the attacking force, and
then to have raised the back-sights on
their rifles to the proper notch. After
doing this, and while the Confederates
were advancing to the charge at the
double-quick, it would have been as necessary to lower the sights again. Theoretically this is easy enough, and perhaps it would be in practice to trained,
skillful, first-class riflemen,-and they
would have to be strictly first-class at
that,-but to expect it of the average
soldier is quite another thing. The more
simple the rifle and its appurtenances,
other things being equal, the more effective it becomes in the hands of troops on
the battle-field.
The Springfield rifle is of 45 caliber,
1892.]
147