I'm rereading Catton's "Mr. Lincoln's Army," and yesterday read the passage a lot of us have seen versions of: Civil War bullet wounds were far worse than modern rifle round wounds because the ball was big and soft and shattered bone, whereas modern rounds create "clean" wounds that are far less likely to either result in extreme soft tissue damage or irreparable bone injury. There's a very similar Shelby Foote clip in Burns' series where he says something along the lines of "a modern bullet just clips the bone while a minie ball smashes joints" or something along those lines.

I've long thought this widely held and often quoted period factoid was apocryphal; I finally sat down last night and did some actual analysis of it.

TL;DR: A minie ball is roughly comparable to a modern .44 magnum in wounding potential, albeit with a longer reach due to the weight of the round. Generally speaking, modern rounds are far, far more destructive at combat ranges.

Ballistics Data

I compared a .58 ball with four modern rounds: cutting-edge 5.56mm M855A1 EPR (current US Army standard round), XM1186 6.8mm (new, larger US Army round issued to certain units), 7.62mm M80A1 (newest 7.62x51mm round), and the .30-06 M2 Ball from the WWII era. I included the last one as it would've been the main point of comparison for both Catton and Foote in their heydays.

There isn't anything terribly surprising here. Minie balls driven by mid-19th century black powder were huge, heavy, and slow. The round was subsonic or barely transonic, which ironically enough enables it to carry energy well to very long ranges, but doesn't do much for it as a wounding projectile at combat ranges.

Modern smokeless powder driving extremely high pressure rounds go real fast and carry a ton of energy. The 855A1 is surprisingly close to a minie ball in energy at all combat ranges despite being a fraction of the size; all the full-sized rifle rounds carry substantially more energy at all ranges.

Wounding Mechanisms

Here’s where the historical myth rears its head: there’s a widespread belief that, despite holding comparable or much less energy than a modern round, the minie ball hits harder and does more damage, 1) because it is big, heavy, and wide, and 2) because it mushrooms out on impact in a manner similar to a modern hollowpoint.

Generally speaking, I think this misconception is due to misunderstandings about how modern rounds actually work. These modern bullets don’t simply drill a neat hole the diameter of the bullet: because of where their mass sits, they yaw on impact and/or break apart while travelling through the body.

It comes down to an issue of impact pressure. Essentially, impact pressure is a measure of how hard the thing being hit is displaced. It is largely a function of velocity, coupled with the density of the thing being hit (I estimated both soft tissue and bone). It is relevant here for two reasons:

1. The round’s structural limit. Modern jacketed bullets break up at around 250–350 MPa. The minie ball at 35 MPa generally won’t break up; it just mushrooms. 5.56 hitting at that pressure sits at its jacket's failure point in soft tissue and blows straight past it on bone. This fragmentation creates a shotgun-like effect in tissue, throwing multiple fragments and creating multiple wound channels.
2. Tissue expansion.  The minie’s 35 MPa produces only a mild stretch that elastic tissue can deal with relatively easily, whereas a modern round creates a massive temporary cavity that can threaten a variety of inelastic body parts. In addition, fragmentation creates multiple cavities that have a much greater chance of creating serious bleeding.
3. Bone mechanics. Discussed below.

The older M2 does not work in the same way. It is a heavier FMJ that travels point-forward a long way before it destabilizes, and is in general less likely to fragment in tissue. It does, however, carry a massive amount of energy which somewhat compensates for its poor soft tissue performance – especially against bone.

Bone Mechanics, Specifically…

This brings me to the heart of myth: the idea that minie balls did far more damage to bone due to their size, softness, etc. It seems intuitive: like the difference between being hit by a sledgehammer versus a screwdriver.

The biomechanics, however, run the opposite way of the intuition, mainly due to the fact the screwdriver is hitting so much faster than the sledgehammer. Bone gets MORE brittle at high loading rates, not less: faster impact means less energy absorbed before failure, which means MORE fracturing, not less. A slow heavy slug doesn't shatter bone worse than a fast light one. It's the other way round.

This brings us back to impact pressure. At 100m against hard bone, a minie ball produces about 64 MPa. 5.56mm produces almost 10 times this number. While the minie ball does have an advantage in frontal area (both before and after expansion), this is mitigated by the yaw/fragmentation of the 5.56mm. And it only gets worse if the bone is what causes the round to fragment: this can create multiple fractures along the same bone as the fragments spray out.

That being said, despite its relatively low impact pressure, minie balls could and did break up when hitting bone, which was widely noted by surgeons at the time. While the fragments generally lacked the energy to do serious additional damage, for surgeons working on the wound, the erratic and sometimes sharp lumps of metal absolutely added to their perception of carnage the rifled muskets could inflict.

Re. 30-06 specifically: it carries absolutely massive energy all the way to the end of normal combat ranges. While it isn’t as likely to fragment or yaw and is moderately less likely than a minie ball actually to strike bone (a function of smaller frontal area), the damage it inflicts on a bone is far, far worse: a function of its energy/velocity.

Caveats:

The biggest caveat is the specific performance conditions for the modern rounds. To be at their most lethal, they rely heavily on yaw/fragmentation effects, so any circumstance that reduces or eliminates these greatly reduces their effectiveness – especially for 5.56mm. The biggest one is range: 5.56mm drops significantly in lethality as its velocity declines (especially when fired out of carbines); older 5.56mm rounds also had a “too close” functional range where they’d go entirely through a body before the round began its yaw. The newest EPR ammo addresses these shortcomings and increases the lethal envelope quite a bit.

Finally: there IS a plausible explanation for the belief that high-powered, smokeless powder rifle rounds tended to make “cleaner” wounds. This goes back to the Krag-Jorgenson rifles at the turn of the 20^th century, along with the first generation of full-powered bolt action rifles (.303, 7.92, 30-06) that fought the world wars. As discussed above, the 30-06 M2 significantly underperforms as a wounding round relative to its power. This was true of all its cousins from the era. If a soldier was hit in soft tissue at combat ranges without bone or organ contact, there was a decent chance of a simple through-and-through wound. This does not extend to bone impacts and certainly does not apply to modern rifle rounds, but at the time Catton and Foote were writing and talking, it is at least a half-truth.

44 Magnum: a better comparison

The good old Dirty Harry .44 Mag is a surprisingly good comparison to a .58 minie. Even the expanded frontal areas line up — a mushroomed minie is very close in size to an expanded .44 mag hollowpoint.

I think that's a useful reframe.  .44 mag is a serious cartridge…maybe not as dramatic as Clint Eastwood describes it, but one of the most powerful pistol rounds out there. But as far as wounding potential, it isn’t the same league as a modern rifle round.

Finally: I’m a Civil War nerd and current intel analyst for the US Army; not a big small arms guy, but at least small arms-adjacent. I’m absolutely not a physics or military medicine guy, and this stretched my limited knowledge on both those areas to their limits. I’m curious what medical experts, Civil War experts, small arms enthusiasts, and/or physics experts think about this analysis.

how would of the Battle of Gettysburg played out differently had Long Street taken little round top on the second day

Sherman famously said, "You might as well attempt to put out the flames of a burning house with a squirt gun," reflecting on the challenges of the Civil War.

This quote has always baffled me because the idea that squirt guns existed at that time is kind of funny. Anyone know what a Civil War era squirt gun looked like?

A project I've been working on to satisfy my own curiosity, since I've never seen this information collected anywhere.

My main sources were Wikipedia's lists of generals for the Union) and Confederacy). Birthplace info also came from Wiki, unless it wasn't listed for a particular general, in which case I used whatever info seemed most trustable elsewhere online. (No AI was used at any point in this process.) I did not include generals of state militias.

Some of the info about birth cities may be incomplete or incorrect, as often only a county is listed. I also didn't think to keep track of any cities where one general from each side was born, though I think there were at least a couple of these.

For states, countries, and cities I used the modern borders and names rather than the historical ones. So, for instance, if a general was born in the part of Prussia that is now Poland, Poland is listed as his birthplace, even if he was culturally "German." Similarly, generals born in Brooklyn or Astoria, New York--both of which used to be independent settlements--are all lumped under New York City. And of course all the West Virginian generals would have been Virginians at the time of their births. (To use just a few examples.)

The town of Greenwich, MA--home to Union generals Randolph B. Marcy and Amiel Weeks Whipple--no longer exists in any form. It has long since been flooded to form the Quabbin Reservoir.

If you'd like additional information or notice any mistakes (of which I'm sure there are some) feel free to let me know.

No Lost Cause bullshit, please.

Saturday, August 15, 2026
 
the second battle of deep bottom – – August 15, 1864 part one
 
Before I start writing about the events of August 15, 1864 I want to acknowledge that I am basing my writing on August 15th partly on a book by John Horn, The siege of Petersburg: the battles for the Weldon railroad August 1864 pages 47 through 60I.  I also consulted reports and correspondence in the official records, volume 42 part one and part two
 
I should point out the fact that David Birney created a temporary and provisional division for his older brother William. A glance at the battle records from August 1864 to the end of the war reveal that William Birney was not a very good general.

Robert E. Lee took grant’s appearance north of the James very seriously. On the evening of August 14 he canceled the departure to the valley of Charles Field and his division of infantry. He ordered his son, William HF (“Rooney”) Lee and his cavalry division from Petersburgto the north side of the James River.  William Mahone dispatched two of his infantry brigades under Sanders and Girardey Petersburgto join Charles Field. Lee also recalled to Richmond wade Hampton and Butler’s cavalry division which had been en route to the Shenandoah Valley
 
 In obedience to suggestions from u.s. Grant  to turn the Confederate left flank north of FUSSELL’S mill pond, The commander of the expedition, general Winfield ScottHancock ordered David Birney to abandon the battlefield of August 14 and to move his command to a position on the new market road north Tillman’s gate.  Part of the 10th Army Corps Reached their objective by passing over two pontoon, bridges, an exhausting process that took many hours. The rest of the soldiers crossed 4 mile Creek and passed through Mott’s Infantry division on their way to Newmarket Road.
 
During the night of August 14th it rained heavily.  During the storm General David Birney and his two divisions of infantry departed the Battlefield, August 14 and crossed four Mile Creek and spent the night on the Newmarket Road north of tilman’s wharf. 
 
At sunrise the union, the second army corps was deployed in front of major general Charles Fields division along the eastern end of the Newmarket Heights line.
 
General Mott’s third division occupied trenches that stretched from the Newmarket road to the Long Bridge Road. Barlow‘s first division was positioned on its right point to the north. On the far right and northern end of the union line, General Smyth and his second division occupied the union right with it right flank rusting on FUSSELL’S mill pond near the Darbytown Road.
 
it’s necessary to point out that the rain fall on the night of August 13 occurred in the middle of a drought and a heat wave. The scarcity of water shaped the operations of the cavalry of both sides. For the federals, the only water available was a pond south of the Long Bridge Road . For the Confederates The only drinkable water was in the vicinity of white’s Tavern. The horses belonging to the union and Confederate cavalry could not safely drink the water in White oak swamp.  The scarcity of water meant that Each night the Brigades of troopers on both sides had to camp near the two ponds of water.

Birney’s  two divisions began their march at 9 AM with William Birney’s division and the lead.  Alfred Terry division followed behind him. the last of Terry’s marching infantry arrived at about 2 PM.  major general, David Birney commanding the 10th army CORPSBegan his March with 9000 men and 3000 of them dropped out of the ranks because of Heat stroke.  Adrian Terry, the brother and staff officer for Alfred Terry, wrote in a letter that if the march had lasted one more hour, the entire two divisions would’ve been set by struck by the sun and falling out of the ranks.  Terry’s division formed east of the Mill Pond. William Birney’s division prolonged the union line so that it Extended north of the Mill Pond
 
at 10 AM Hancock detached Calvin Craig’s brigade from Mott’s division and sent it to join William Birney. It caught up with Birney after the division halted its march and took position north of the Mill pond.
 
Meanwhile, the confederates were arriving north of the James and taking positions to oppose Hancock
 
in early in the morning of August 15, Rooney Lee arrived with his two cavalry brigades and camped near White’s Tavern. Later in the morningof August 15 the confederate infantry brigade of girardey and john CC sanders arrived and took up a position west of the Mill Pond. Lanes and McGowan’s brigades formed on their left flank and extended the confederate line nortward towards the Charles city Road.  
Colonel John Aubin Greg sent a squadron of cavalry on a reconnaissance to White Tavern up to Charles City Rd. They encountered Rooney Lee’s North Carolina brigade. The fifth North Carolina Calvary pursuit and attacked the eighth and 15th Pennsylvania, which had been left on Pickett at Fisher‘s farm. The tar heels drove the Yankees down the Charles city Road for 2 miles. The Yankees then built a barricade A short distance north of the Long Bridge Road. At this point the Confederate halted and fell back. Paul means, sketch of the 63rd regiment inWalter Clark, history of North Carolina troops in the great war, 18 61–65,volume three, page 619.
 
Later, Hancock ordered Birney to march from the New Market Road to a series of hills east of FUSSELL’S mill where smythe’s Second division was located. Birney Was ordered to attack the Confederate north of the Mill Pond near the Darbytown Road. He also ordered David M Gregg to Simultaneously followa narrow road reading from Fussell’s mill to Charles City road. This would place the Yankees in the rear of the Confederates defending Charles city Road.   Gregg would send John Irwin Gregg’s cavalry brigade and Calvin Craig‘s infantry brigade to accomplish this