Pistol Marksmanship in the Civil War

 In the hands of the Southern cavalry the revolver became their pet and pride. The terrible use to which it was put in broken ground, at close quarters, by Moseby’s troopers doubled its real efficiency by its moral strength.  (Whittaker, Volunteer Cavalry, p. 14.)

Shooting Technique

Cooke’s Cavalry Tactics and Whittaker’s Volunteer Cavalry give moderately detailed instructions regarding pistol shooting technique.  Cooke gives detailed instructions for the manual of arms (pp. 56-57) in which the trooper is taught to draw his revolver, hold it upright by the right shoulder with the trigger finger outside of the trigger guard, a position called “Raise Pistol,” and then to let it down into the left hand while the right thumb cocks that hammer.  He also says that “To cock the pistol rapidly without the use of the left hand, place the thumb upon and press down the hammer, throwing forward the muzzle with a rapid motion, to assist the action of the thumb.”  Whittaker does not even discuss holding the piece with the left hand to cock it, indicating that it should always be cocked one handed (p. 118).

Returning to Cooke, he says that after cocking the trooper should return to the Raise Pistol position, then, upon the command to fire, “lower the pistol to the front, the arm about three-fourths extended, the forefinger upon the trigger; aim with the right eye, the left eye closed.”  The weapon is then returned to the Raise Pistol position before each subsequent shot.  He does not say why to do this, however, modern practice has shown that doing so will reduce cap jams, the bane of the cap and ball revolver.  Whittaker’s drill (pp. 118-119) is virtually identical to Cooke’s, apart from cocking, except that he says the shooting arm should be extended until almost straight, which seems to indicate stretching the arm out more than Cooke recommends.

Marksmanship Practice

Unfortunately, there is little extant information from the period about military standards for pistol marksmanship.  No infantry manual I have found even mentions the subject, however, most cavalry manuals describe at least the manual of arms if no more.  Cooke includes a brief discussion of a program of target practice (pp. 98-100).  In his instructions, troopers were to shoot at a target eight feet high and three feet wide; a three-inch black band was painted across the target at a height of six feet, and a white square was painted in the center of the band to create an aiming point three inches square.  Troopers were to ride past this target at various ranges, starting at ten paces (for recruits) and working up to one hundred, and at various gaits from a walk through to a gallop.  No time limits are mentioned for the evolution, nor does he provide any minimum standards of accuracy, however, in Congdon’s Cavalry Compendium we are told that “A good shot with Colt's revolver can hit the size of a man's head at fifty yards” (p. 35); personally, I find that estimation to be somewhat optimistic, at least with regards to an average trooper, especially when mounted, and we can hardly take it as the expected standard of marksmanship.

Cooke includes instructions (p. 99) requiring each unit to participate in target practice every three months and to record the results for each trooper on a form, an exemplar of which is included (p. 100).  The form mentions both mounted and dismounted shooting, but the instructions only describe the mounted process.  Since the records form requires officers to record each trooper’s score at fifty and one-hundred paces, both for mounted and dismounted practice, this strongly suggests that the exercise was for the carbine, not the pistol, as those ranges exceed normal pistol effective range.  Still, we can borrow this process with some minor adaptations for our purposes since no other source discusses a process for target practice on foot with cap and ball revolvers.  Whittaker gives a somewhat more detailed evolution for practice (p. 120), but, again, it focuses entirely on mounted shooting.

According to Cooke’s instructions, each trooper (“not in capital punishment,” as he put it) was expected to engage in formal target practice each quarter, firing at least twelve rounds each, with the top shooters receiving unit distinctions.  Forty-eight rounds per year seems extremely limited compared with modern standards of training, but given that infantry units had no official practice at all (except for the sharpshooter regiments) this was still valuable, and there may well have been more informal practice.

For the purposes of modern practice a white sheet of paper cut to approximately twenty-four by forty-five inches was affixed to a target stand.  Two two-inch-wide strips of tape were laid across the paper about one-third of the way from the top edge, and the ends of the strips were separated by a gap of approximately two inches in the middle of the paper to create an aiming point approximately two inches square.  This is a smaller target than that specified by Cooke because of the shorter range to be used for the practice.

The “string” used for measuring accuracy (see below) was a cloth measuring tape to make the measurement easier to do.  The shooting was done one-handed in the manner prescribed by both Cooke and Whittaker.

 

String Test Measurement

According to the form Cooke published for quarterly qualifications, accuracy was determined by the “string test” measurement system also used for rifle practice by the Army’s Berdan sharpshooters.  Cooke did not explain the procedure for the string test measurement, but fortunately Heth did so in detail (p.61).

In Heth’s method, the end of a string was held at the center of the target and then the string was pulled to one of the bullet holes.  Pinching the string at the point where it reached the hole, that part of the string would be moved back to the center, and from that point the string would be stretched to another hole, pinching the string again at that point.  This would be repeated until the distance from the center was measured to each of the hits.  The total length of string would then be measured to determine the final score.  Alternatively, the string could be cut to a predetermined length so that it was instantly possible to identify non-qualifying scores without the bother of measuring; if you ran out of string before measuring each of the hits, that indicated a disqualification.   A demonstration of the string test measurement can be seen in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc86bNcD2hM.

According to Cooke’s instructions, any miss when dismounted counted as twenty-four inches, and any miss when mounted counted as thirty-six inches; conversely, Heth set a miss as equal to twenty inches with a rifle.  For this practice misses were to be counted as ten inches because of the shorter range.

The string test measurement gives a precise measurement of the difference between the Mean Point of Impact and the Intended Mean Point of Impact, and is thus an excellent way to track both shot grouping and zero in a single measurement using a historically accurate process.

The British army of the Victorian era used a different procedure called the “figure of merit” system to determine accuracy, a similar but far more complicated procedure which tracks the X and Y axis location of each hit then graphs them for analysis.  Comparing the string test measurement to the figure of merit system, the latter seems much more complex and laborious and is only capable of judging grouping, not grouping relative to aiming point, as the string test measurement does (although Rob Enfield expands the system to address that in the video shown here: https://youtu.be/zAntq2M0o30).

After each firing table conducted for this project the total number of shots was recorded along with the string test measure for that phase.  Although not shown on the form in Cooke, the number of shots can be divided into the total number of inches to arrive at a score for that table.  For the purposes of experimental tracking, the date, temperature, weather conditions, and load information were also recorded in a Range Log.

Sample Record:

5/24/20 Dry, 75 deg., light wind from 3:00.
Arm:  Remington New Model Army.
Load: .44 Kerr bullet, paper cartridges, 25 grs. 3F Goex.
Firing Position:  Sitting Supported @10 yards.
Rounds: 12, String: 31.25” = 2.6”/rd. 

Cooke’s form does not include this level of detail, however, both Heth and Blunt describe the importance of environmental factors in detail, and Blunt provides a sample form for recording practice results (p. 328) with places to record all of it.  This information is valuable and serves both to provide experimental information about various bullet weights and loads and to track improvements in the shooter’s marksmanship over time.

It is truly unfortunate no record exists of the evolutions used to conduct target practice on foot during the period.  Both Cooke and Whittaker made it plain that pistols were often used on foot for skirmishing, so it seems possible some kind of walking or running target practice—akin to that describe for mounted practice—would have been valuable, but if such practice was conducted no records of it survive.

Sources:

Blunt, Stanhope E.  Instructions in Rifle and Carbine Firing for the United States Army.  New York: Chas. Scribner & Sons, 1885.

Cooke, Philip St. George. Cavalry Tactics, or Regulations for the Instruction, Formations, and Movements of the Cavalry of the Army and Volunteers of the United States. Vol. I. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1861.

Congdon, James A. Congdon's Cavalry Compendium: Containing Instructions for Non-Commissioned Officers and Privates in the Cavalry Service.  Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott & Co., 1864.

Heth, Henry.  A System of Target Practice for the Use of Troops When Armed with the Musket, Rifle-musket, Rifle, or Carbine.  New York: D.’ Van Nostrand, 1862.

Whittaker, Frederick. Voluntary Cavalryman: The Lessons of the Decade by a Volunteer Cavalryman.  New York: private printing, 1871.