Civil War Cannon. By James R. Cotner. The field artillery of the Civil War was designed to be mobile. When Union or Confederate troops marched across country, the guns moved with them.

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During battle, the guns were moved to assigned positions and then were switched from place to place, pulled back or sent forward as fortune demanded. The field batteries went galloping off to support an advance or repel an attack. When they withdrew, they contested the field as they went.

Movement was everything. The guns could fulfill their essential function only when they could be moved where they were most needed. At the time of the Civil War, such movement required draft animals–horses, mules or oxen. Mules were excellent at pulling heavy loads, but they were not used in pulling the guns and caissons of the field artillery.

No animal liked to stand under fire. In the fury of battle, horses would shy and rear and flash their hooves; but mules carried their protests to the outer limits. When exposed to fire, mules would buck and kick and roll on the ground, entangling harnesses and becoming impossible to control.

An exception to the rule against using mules was their role in carrying small mountain howitzers. These guns were light enough to be broken down, with the component parts carried on the backs of pack animals. They had been developed for use in country that was mountainous and heavily wooded, with only trails or wretched roads.

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Strong, surefooted animals were needed, and mules were the obvious choice. The danger of using mules in battle is vividly depicted in Confederate Brig. Gen. John D. Imboden’s account of his seriocomic experience at the Battle of Port Republic in June 1. In that engagement, Imboden, a colonel at the time, commanded a band of cavalry with a battery of mountain howitzers, carried on mules, in the army of Maj. Gen. Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.

At Port Republic, Jackson ordered Imboden to put his battery in a sheltered place and be ready, upon the enemy’s withdrawal, to advance to a point where his guns would have a clear field of fire. Watch Kill Kane Online (2017) more. Watch The Jack Bull HD 1080P. Imboden took his men and the mules, carrying the guns and ammunition, into a shallow ravine about 1.

Captain William Poague’s Virginia battery, which was hotly engaged. Within a few minutes, Union artillery shells were screaming across the ravine well above the sheltered men and mules. Imboden, in his account of the action, recalled: ‘The mules became frantic. They kicked, plunged and squealed. It was impossible to quiet them, and it took three or four men to hold one mule from breaking away. Each mule had about three hundred pounds weight on him, so securely fastened that the load could not be dislodged by any of his capers.

Several of them lay down and tried to wallow their loads off. The men held these down and that suggested the idea of throwing them all to the ground and holding them there. The ravine sheltered us so we were in no danger from the shot or shell which passed over us.’The use of mules to carry mountain howitzers was a choice based on their fitness for the task, not due to any shortage of horses.

The Manual for Mountain Artillery, adopted by the U. S. Army in 1. 85. The superiority of mules in rough country outweighed their notorious contrariness under fire.

Plodding oxen obviously were not well suited for hauling field artillery, since rapid movement was often needed. Oxen were strong–their name is synonymous with strength and endurance–but they were too slow. Nevertheless, oxen were sometimes pressed into service during the Civil War. In November 1. 86. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s force was detached from the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg, then besieging Chattanooga.

Longstreet’s troops moved north through eastern Tennessee to confront Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Federal force at Knoxville. It was a long, harsh journey for the Confederate artillery. As the Southern army neared Knoxville, the Confederate caissons carrying ammunition for the field artillery were being pulled by oxen, a choice dictated by the scarcity of horses in the region. All movement of field artillery was done with limbers. Guns, caissons, battery forges and wagons were all fastened to a limber.

None, under ordinary circumstances, moved independently. A limber was an ammunition box mounted on an axle between two wheels, with a forward projecting pole, to which the team was hitched.

Underneath and at the rear of the limber was a bent iron piece called the pintle. At the end of the gun trail or at the tip of a short pole on the caisson was an iron piece, pierced through, called the lunette. The gun trail was lifted and the hole in the lunette dropped over the pintle, making the piece and the limber a four- wheeled unit. The piece was joined to the limber at a pivot, giving the unit a short turning radius. The capacity of a healthy horse to pull a load was affected by a number of factors.

Chief among these was the nature of the surface over which the load was being hauled. A single horse could pull 3,0. The weight dropped to 1,9. The pulling ability was further reduced by one- half if a horse carried a rider on its back. Finally, as the number of horses in a team increased, the pulling capacity of each horse was further reduced. A horse in a team of six had only seven- ninths the pulling capacity it would have had in a team of two. The goal was that each horse’s share of the load should be no more than 7.

This was less than what a healthy horse, even carrying a rider and hitched into a team of six, could pull, but it furnished a safety factor that allowed for fatigue and losses. John Gibbon finished the war as a major general in the Union Army. Before the war, he had served as an instructor at West Point and had written a textbook called The Artillerist’s Manual that was used by cadets at the academy. In his textbook, Gibbon described what was desired in an artillery horse: ‘The horse for artillery service should be from fifteen to sixteen hands high…. To these qualities he should unite, as much as possible, the qualities of the saddle horse; should trot and gallop easily, have even gaits and not be skittish.’Gibbon carefully described what was wanted, but horses with these qualities were not always available. Horses became scarce and stayed in short supply in areas of continuing conflict. Both North and South soon began to take horses that belonged to enemy sympathizers.

This was often done not out of necessity but simply to deprive the enemy of horses.