American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Hi, Bill,

I believe the standard combat deployment for a regiment in the Civil War was a two-rank line. If you figure two feet/man that would give you 300 men/100 yds frontage. At Gettysburg, a lot of the regimental frontages are marked with a stone for each flank, so it would be easy to calculate if you knew the strength of the regiment and the distance between the markers. I suspect those markers are based on the recollections of the soldiers at a reunion, so they should be fairly accurate.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

Hi, Bill,

I meant to say 300 men would occupy a 100 yds of frontage in two ranks of 150 men/rank if each man took up two feet of frontage. The two feet is a guesstimate, but I can't imagine a man needing less than two feet to load and fire his rifle. Again, if you could retrieve the Gettysburg regimental frontage data you could probably get a more accurate picture. If I ever get back out there I will bring a tape measure with me.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

This is based on a British battalion of 640 men but should apply to a Civil War regiment since they were organized similiar. In a Br. battalion only about 512 privates made up the 640. The rest were officers and noncommissioned officers. They didn't crowd shoulder to shoulder because companies were generally separated by a space with the company officers between them so there would be some control over their movement. In addition file closers and other officers were deployed in a third line behind the front two ranks. This resulted in two approximately 300 man ranks covering 233 yards. Or, 600 men able to fire in a 233 yard front which comes to about 260 men on a 100 yard front. I haven't found any references yet that indicate in the ACW higher densities were used for a firing line.

The problem in a game using a hex 120 yards wide is that the line isn't across the center of the hex but rather the perimeter. Depending on whether you consider the regiment deployed across one hex side or up to three changes the numbers quite a bit. I could probably justify a number somewhere between 350 and 450 as the maximum that should be able to fire out of a hex. The more correct method would probably be setting the number that can fire out of a hexside.

Likewise the stacking we use is a compromise. It is probably chosen more to reflect the largest regiment in the game than the actual number of troops who could fit in a hexagon size piece of land or for that matter to fire out of that assuming they weren't in square. If you really packed the lines together, say regiment in line at quarter distance (~6 yards) you could get some five thousand men into a hex size piece of land. In the attack on the salient at Spotsylvania Hancock fromed up 20,000 men in column of attack.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
1/1/III AoM (CSA)

War of 1812 and American Civil War training manuals at this link:

http://www.usregulars.com/

Lot's of information on this discussion.

MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos

The Union Forever! Huzzah!