How do you dig rifle pits?

[Charles Heath]

Re: How do you dig rifle pits?

As just one example, the remaining rifle pits on the South Anna River battlefield (primarily west of the extant CSXT masonry piers) are still visible, deep, and retain a purposeful, angled, appearance. Several of the online engineering and field fortification books, as well as HL Scott's work may go into definitional differences between hasty field fortifications and more long term minor works, yet they haven't been referenced thus far in this thread for some reason.

[sauguszouave]

Re: How do you dig rifle pits?

Here is a scan of the page describing rifle pits from Henry Lee Scott's "Military Dictionary." (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1861.) I haven't checked my 1864 edition to see if it is any different. Apologies for scanning it upside down, but you can flip it in your reader.

Regards,

Paul Kenworthy

[hiplainsyank]

Re: How do you dig rifle pits?

Don't forget there is a famous sketch (by perhaps Waud?), which shows a Union soldier laying down and looking forward, with his musket on his left side and his right hand scooping up dirt with either a tin plate or canteen half. Obviously not a rifle pit as it has been defined here, but an interesting image of a soldier digging while presumably in the presence of the enemy.

[Kevin O'Beirne]

Re: How do you dig rifle pits?

Here is a scan of the page describing rifle pits from Henry Lee Scott's "Military Dictionary." (

Good item to post here!

That said, like a lot of military manuals of the day, one thing is defined in a book and sometimes something else was actually done in the field. I've read numerous accounts--particularly (but not exclusively) about the Spotsylvania campaign--where attackers wrote of overrunning things like, "two lines of enemy works until we were unable to penetrate their third line", and similar stuff. In some cases, that type of assertion is referring to simply overrunning a line or "rifle pits" which I believe to be a continuous trench, albeit not as stoutly built as the "main line of defense". In other cases at Spotsylvania, where Confederates pulled back from a main line (i.e., the Mule Shoe) in favor of a more distant, new main line, pickets must have been manning the former main line, in effect using "full works" as rifle pits.

How they were dug, their arrangement, and location depended on the military situation on a given battlefield and the time that opposing forces spent on the ground.

Still, the dictionary-definnition from the era is a darned interesting read, and thanks for posting it! :)

[sauguszouave]

Re: How do you dig rifle pits?

How they were dug, their arrangement, and location depended on the military situation on a given battlefield and the time that opposing forces spent on the ground.

Still, the dictionary-definnition from the era is a darned interesting read, and thanks for posting it! :)

Kevin,

You're welcome.

West Point in the 19th century was an engineering school. Dennis Hart Mahan is known among re-enactors for his "Out-post" but he also wrote a book on field fortifications. Cadets spent far more time studying how to design and construct fortifications than they did studying tactical theory. The number of references to rifle pits and other small constructions in period texts is actually very few. Most of the text books start with redans and lunettes and work up from there. One of the distinguishing characteristics of regular army officers in counterdistinction to volunteers is that all the regulars would know how to calculate how many men it would take to move how much earth in how much time to construct a ditch and parapet of a given size. They would also know how thick the wall would have to be depending on the weapons it was expected to defend against.

By the way, one thing I noticed in Henry Lee Scott's rifle pit is the step at the back to allow the men to get in and out of it easily.

Regards,

Paul Kenworthy

[Kevin O'Beirne]

Re: How do you dig rifle pits?

West Point in the 19th century was an engineering school. Dennis Hart Mahan is known among re-enactors for his "Out-post" but he also wrote a book on field fortifications.

Indeed! :) A copy of his "Treatise on Field Fortifications" is online at www.civilwarfortifications.com.

Cadets spent far more time studying how to design and construct fortifications than they did studying tactical theory.

Very true!

The thing is, in the Civil War, comparatively few officers on either side were graduates of West Point or other military schools (for example, VMI) compared to the number of volunteer officers, who usually had little or no training in field fortifications. Hence, the somewhat haphazard location of many lines of works (with engineer officers often having to correct the alignment of the line after troops started digging) and the sigificant differences in how "rifle pits" and other elements of a field fortification system were actually built. Well, that and the terrain, soil conditions, and availability of materials for revetments and headlogs and obstructions, and the military situation on a given battlefield...

One of the distinguishing characteristics of regular army officers in counterdistinction to volunteers is that all the regulars would know how to calculate how many men it would take to move how much earth in how much time to construct a ditch and parapet of a given size. They would also know how thick the wall would have to be depending on the weapons it was expected to defend against.

I must admit that I'm not familiar with what the typical Regular (or ex-Regular) knew in the Civil War. What I do know, however, is that not all officers in the Regulars were West Point graduates, and certainly the U.S. Regulars expanded significantly during the Civil War from 25,000 or so prior to the war (about a third of whom I believe "went South" at the start of the conflict) and the end of the war. I'd imagine that the wartime expansion of the Regulars, while not as significant a proportional increase as the total U.S. Army as a whole (due to the huge number of volunteer regiments), somewhat diluted the pre-war skills, ability, and even discipline of the Regulars.

[Greg Renault]

Re: How do you dig rifle pits?

It seems that Americans were not overly concerned with the distinction between rifle pits and trenches during the ACW. See the entries for "Rifle Pits" and "Rifle Trenches" in the dictionary portion of the Civil War Field Fortifications site. The evolution of the use of rifle pits in European warfare (apparently they started out as offensive field-works) is discussed in the second article.

[styler]

Re: How do you dig rifle pits?

Regarding tools, I've heard mention of plates, pans, and bayonets (sounds like the title to a good article someone should write). In the Cold Harbor exhibit at that NPS site there is (or was several years ago when I last visited) an example of a cartridge tin used as a digging tool.

Necessity is the mother and all that.