A Post About A Post

When people start shooting at you it is generally a good idea to find some sort of cover. Tree, fence, big hole in the ground, whatever works. Early in the Civil War the armies matched up in the  Old World Style, line up shoulder to shoulder, get as close as you can and shoot in the general direction of the enemy.

Today we look at the paintings and read the descriptions of such battles and wonder what the heck they were thinking doing that. It is however the only way it would work. See guns at the time, for most of the “black powder” era, were incredibly in accurate. Mainly because they were smooth bore. Basically every time you fired it there was no way to tell where the shot would go. So your only hope of hitting anything was to have a lot of people shooting at it.

As the accuracy progressed and the armies started seeing more rifles (grooved barrels) the idea of standing in lines, getting close and shooting started to be a losing proposition for all sides.  As such more fighting started being done from cover, this would eventually evolve into the precursor of trench warfare that made WWI such a joy.

The pic above is a fence post that has become a bullet catcher. In battles all over the country trees and fences absorbed more lead than a five-year old eating paint chips. Think for a second what it would have been like to be on the other side of the fence. Hearing it whittled down more and more with each shot.  I count seven bullets, how many do you see?