For years, one of the standard manuals used in the US Army had been an 1835 translation by General Winfield Scott of a French work. As such, officers typically failed to realize the power of rifles and continued to launch massed attacks against fortified enemies, which invariably resulted in heavy losses. However, most American army officers in 1861 had been schooled in obsolete Napoleonic tactics, especially since many of them had served in the Mexican War, which was still fought in the old way with smoothbore muskets and linear formations. Linear formations were thus rarely seen any more (although it did occur in the Battle of Brawner's Farm the evening before Second Bull Run). In Civil War battles, infantry typically fought in a widely-spread out line, with the men using trees, rocks, buildings, etc. Rifles made this type of fighting obsolete because of their much greater range. These tactics developed because smoothbore muskets were only accurate at short ranges. When one side gained the upper hand, they would finish off the attack with a bayonet charge. Since the 17th century, infantry normally fought in a tight shoulder-to-shoulder line and fired volleys at each other. In addition, most existing military doctrine was based around the smoothbore musket. The invention of the MiniƩ ball solved the slow loading problem, allowing smoothbore muskets to be replaced by rifles in the decades just before the civil war. Military leaders therefore preferred the faster loading smooth bore weapons over the more accurate rifles. Black powder also quickly obscured the battlefield, which led military leaders of the time to conclude that the greater range of rifles was of little value on the battlefield. Round balls did not fit so tightly into the barrel, and therefore did not suffer from the slow loading problem common to rifles. The black powder at the time quickly fouled the barrel, making reloading slower and more difficult. Rifles had been in use for many years, but prior to the civil war had been rare in military use. The flintlock, which had been in use for almost two hundred years, had been replaced by the caplock in the 1840s. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, numerous advances had been made in weapons.
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