Rifle Trench

Rifle trenches were probably the single most common form of field fortification constructed during the American Civil War. This type of field work was very similar in structural form to the trench and embankment profiles of the first parallel and boyaux employed in attacks by regular approaches. Rifle trenches differed from rifle pits by their extension; rifle pits were intended to provide shelter for 1 to 20 men while rifle trenches could extend anywhere from a few tens of yards to a few thousand yards and cover the entire front of a position. Although there were no standard dimensions for the profile of this type of field work, rifle trenches generally combined a shallow trench with a low embankment to provide bullet resistant cover for deployed infantry. To provide adequate cover for a man standing to fire his musket the combined trench and embankment had to have a height of 4 to 5 feet from the bottom of the trench to the top of the embankment; to intercept hostile musket fire the embankment had to be about 3 feet thick. Rifle trenches also required a minimum width of 4 feet at the bottom of the trench to both give sufficient space for troops to line the embankment and allow free circulation of troops passing through the trench, but were often made much wider to form a covered way that allowed wagons and artillery to pass behind troops manning the work.

Rifle trenches were used extensively throughout the course of the Civil War to improve all types of positions from those temporarily assumed by troops on the march or in the presence of the enemy to fixed systems of semi-permanent field works protecting strategic points. These low profile works had several recommending advantages over more elaborate field works that greatly contributed to their popularity. First and foremost rifle trenches were conceptually and structurally very simple; digging a trench and throwing the extracted dirt to one side did not require complex explanations or very explicit instructions. There was no need for troops trying to gain cover from hostile fire as rapidly as possible to stand around cooling their heels while waiting for engineer officers to stop by and set up profiles or finely trace the trench line on the ground.

Just as importantly, this type of field work could be adapted to strengthen almost any ground where infantry could be deployed in line of battle. If the ground happened to be full of rocks, the rocks could be thrown into piles and soil scrapped out of a shallow trench thrown on the pile. On ground where trees could be cut or rail fences dismantled, these could be thrown into piles along the line of battle and soil from the trench thrown on top. Although straight sections of line might be preferred, the trench could be roughly traced to conform to the contour of ground, with, of course, re-enterings traced around the heads of low ground or ravines intersecting the general direction of the line. If it happened that a position strengthened by a simple rifle trench had to be occupied for more than a few hours or days, the trench could be adapted for prolonged habitation and further strengthened into a formidable earth work by constructing various forms of obstacles to its front. As the war progressed even the slightest rifle trenches became powerful psychological barriers that could render even the strongest attacks abortive when a trench line was defended by enough troops who refused to be intimidated into abandoning their cover.

In prepared systems of semi-permanent field works rifles trenches were generally used to defend the intervals between semi-permanent enclosed works sited on commanding points of ground. In these cases trenches could be sited to cover ground that was not seen from enclosed field works and could be used to create re-enterings over-looking low ground where an attacking enemy force might be tricked into believing that it could pass through an undefended gap between the nearly unassailable enclosed fortifications. Having connecting trenches laid out and constructed prior the occasion of their necessity imparted a certain degree of flexibility in the use of the defenders' reserve forces: once the point of attack was recognized troops could occupy prepared trenches them rapidly and be ready to repel the attack before the enemy reached the position.

Before leaving this subject it seems appropriate to note that rifle trenches were often referred to as rifle pits or breastworks during the Civil War. In fact, many modern battlefield markers describe long lines of rifle trenches as rifle pits. To clarify the distinction between a rifle pit and a rifle trench (to the point of absurdity, perhaps) a rifle pit was a relatively small field work intended for the protection of a few men. It might be anywhere from 1 to 20 yards long and was quite often scratched out of the ground by an individual sent out to do picket duty in front of a line of fortified by a rifle trench. A rifle trench, on the other hand, was an extended linear field work that might cover a distance of several hundred or several thousand yards with, of course, a few narrow gaps to allow vehicles or cavalry to pass through the line. These trench lines were generally constructed by large groups of individuals working side by side. Both rifle pits and rifle trenches, like siege parallels, generally had trench and embankment sectional profiles.

Although British engineering manuals of the period described the proper structural form to be given rifle pits, American manuals (most notably D.H. Mahan's) did not and neither described the form or function of rifle trenches. In his Journal of the Sieges in Spain (edition of 1846) Sir John Jones suggested that infantry exposed to mass artillery fire on a battlefield might be covered by works resembling siege parallels and that these works could also be used to connect lines of redoubts. Sir Charles W. Pasley noted in the first volume of his work on the Practical Operations of a Siege (third edition, 1853) that the idea of using individual pits to protect troops advancing an attacking army's siege works came from having seen the French do just this during the Siege of Stralsund in 1807. These pits were denominated "musket pits" (until rifled muskets came into general use when the name was changed to "rifle pits") by British engineers and were considered a sort of offensive siege work. When the Russians established sharpshooters in small one man field works (called embuscades by the French and Russians) in front of their main line of works at the Siege of Sebastopol for the purpose of harassing allied working parties, the British already had the conceptual framework to absorb this supposedly new type of field fortification and knew more or less exactly what to call it. Americans generally acquired the term from newspaper and journal articles and applied it to any kind of field work that involved a trench and embankment intended for the protection of infantry without concerning themselves over the difference between a pit and a trench.

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January, 2004