When do we start to switch back to hardee?

[bill shack]

When i started 4-5 years ago in civil war re-enacting we learned Hardee or Casey's . Then when Bull Run 150th was coming we all dropped that and went with Gilham's Manual. It was difficult to unlearn one manual and learn a new one. I looked last night at my Hardee manual and saw that it was printed in 1862. There must has been some lag time between the writing of the manual and the conversion to Hardee.
When do we start to switch back to hardee?

[lincolnsguard]

Depending on the unit you're representing at a given event, the correct answer could be never. Whatever the historical reference is for the unit you are portraying, the correct answer is which ever manual is the historically correct manual for the unit you're portraying at said time.

It is what it is.

Blue will have an easier time of it than gray.

[Anders]

Depends on which Hardee's.....honestly....I tend to lean towards fall of 62, but its all a guess really. There have been thousands of words typed regarding this....

If it is Hardee's REVISED, then fall of 62 is my humble opinion, and not all units...

Pards,

[Silas]

Last year is when. The title page to Hardee's Rifle and Infantry Tactics - revised and improved - does not provide a date specific year. It just says, "First Year of the Confederacy." That's different. Link : http://archive.org/stream/rifleinfan...ge/n9/mode/2up

I'm curious who published the 1862 version you're using as it sounds like someone's reprint. It's in the summer of '62 that Casey's Tactics becomes the manual for Federals. Before that, you had Secretary Cameron's US Tactics of 1861.

Are you talking about the North Carolina version of Hardee's Revised? It was published in 1862.

[Curt-Heinrich Schmidt]

Hallo!

In my heresies, and travels through Scott's, Hardee's 1855, Gilham's, Hardee's "1861," Hardee's 1862, and Casey's... it can be complicated by what manual the unit being portrayed was researched and documented as using. The more "Units du Jour" one does, the more flip-flopping back and forth one can be exposed to. (The left-shoulder can be seem "weird" until learned, for example)
Or, what one's over-arching organizational (battalion or brigade) structure decides to use.
Or, what one's unit commander or unit decides they want to use.

Or, when I was just a wee lad... in the Pre WWW Era, and reprint era... reproduction 1855 Hardee's was all we could find.. period.

"Ideally," but not always so... remember "Hardee's Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics" in 1855 was designed for riflemen and light infantry/skirmishers armed with M1841 or M1855 Rifles. Hardee rewrote that for "three banders" in 1861.

Curt

[vbsharpshooter]

It appears all of the ANV units were trying to get on board with Hardee's revised in late '62, early '63 in an attempt to standardize the drill amongst units. NC troops were using their version of Hardee's revised in 62 (NC drill manual).
It is extremely hard to find out which manual "your unit"was using at what time, unless someone specifically wrote about it.

Mike Dougherty

[mississippian]

A friend of mine doing research on newly organized Mississippi Militia/State Troops in the fall of 1862 came across an account of them using Hardee's with Flintlock muskets! Hardees might have been the official manual for Mississippi units throughout the war.

Will MacDonald

[johnduffer]

Mindless babble that doesn’t answer the original question but here goes anyway: Except for the left shoulder carry versus the right shoulder carry there’s not a huge difference in the books. The general trend was not so much a migration from manual to manual as a change in tactical philosophy. You had heavy / line infantry using the left shoulder and light infantry / riflemen using the right. As far back as SCOTT’S 1829 ABSTRACT riflemen marched faster and used the right shoulder (I haven’t seen it stated other than inferred evidence but I think the right shoulder is more stable at a quicker pace). SCOTT 1835 is the standard for line infantry with muskets and HARDEE 1855 is to be used for light infantry with rifles but the trend becomes to do away with the heavy/light distinction and have all troops trained to move more quickly and act as skirmishers. CASEY uses right shoulder but still thinks in terms of eight line companies and two flank (that part of his book wasn’t adopted). You have a period of hybrid manuals like US TACTICS with separate MOA for musket and rifle but the three band musket and/or rifled musket becoming the norm does away with that when you get to CASEY and Goetzel HARDEE.

[Regular3]

Mileage varied, even in the Regular Army. Augustus Meyers wrote in "Ten Years in the Ranks" that his company of the Second Infantry in Minnesota received model 1855 rifles in late 1855 - he described them in detail, short barrel & saber bayonet - and began immediately to learn Hardee's manual.

Across the continent in Texas, as late as November 1860 the Third Infantry had not fully made the transition according to an inspector general's report, and the five companies that fought at First Bull Run used Scott's. They were equipped with the model 1855 rifle musket. Those five companies, and two that were captured in Texas and spent the winter in New York on parole before coming back to the army on the Peninsula, completed the change to Hardee's over the winter of 1861. Meanwhile two companies that had been at Fort Pickens, Florida, from April 1861 to April 1862 arrived in the regiment's camp on the Peninsula still using Scott's.

From the end of 1862 forward, the Third followed Casey.