How come soldiers in old wars like the American Civil War did “line” battles? Would it be better if that have taken cover?

Question

Title. I’m really confused about this thing. While I can see how it can improve accuracy and all that, isn’t it better to take cover?

In: Other

Answer 1

Most soldiers at the time were using muskets. Muskets were inaccurate and slow to reload. Additionally, ammunition was heavy and expensive, so soldiers were only able to carry a limited number of shots and got very little marksmanship practice. In a battle most soldiers would only get off a few shots and were unlikely to actually hit anything.

The biggest threats to soldiers wasn’t musket fire from other soldiers. It was being ridden down by enemy cavalry, hand to hand combat as a result of an infantry charge, and cannons.

Forming up into lines allowed a group of soldiers to volley fire, which helped to offset the poor accuracy and slow fire speed of their guns. Volley fire like this was the only practical defense against a cavalry charge and significantly reduced the danger of an infantry charge.

Infantry that dispersed into cover on the own were fairly easily killed by cavalry that could literally stomp them to death.

Forming up into a line made infantry more vulnerable to cannon fire, but cannons suffered from the same problems that muskets did – they were inaccurate, fired slowly, and their gunners had a very limited amount of ammo. Cannons were really only effective at point blank range when they could use grapeshot (basically a shotgun shell but for a cannon). As long as the infantry didn’t charge into a cannon line, they were more or less safe from long range cannon fire.

What this all means is that infantry weren’t really an offensive weapon at the time – that was what cavalry were for. Infantry were mostly there to hold ground that cavalry had taken, or to exploit opportunities that cavalry created. But for the most part they were just there to stop enemy cavalry.

That doesn’t mean that infantry didn’t take cover – they did when there was some sort of obstacle that could stop cavalry from getting to them, such as a building or very a heavily wooded area. But if they were fighting on open ground then the only practical way to deal with cavalry was to form up into a line and march out into the open so that they could volley fire at a cavalry charge.