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[56]

The organization of the Confederate field-artillery during the Civil War was never as symmetrical as that of the cavalry and infantry, and its evolution was slow. This was due in part to the lack of uniformity in the equipment of single batteries, and the inequality in the number of men in a company, running all the way in a 4-gun battery from forty-five to one hundred, and also to the tardiness with which the batteries were organized into battalions with proper staff-officers.

The disposition of the Government was to accept all bodies which volunteered for a particular branch of the service, and this did not tend to due proportions between the different branches. Outside of a limited number of smooth-bore guns in possession of certain volunteer associations, the Government had no equipment of field-artillery to start with. What was found in the arsenals in the Southern States which fell into the hands of the Confederate Government, consisted of old iron guns mounted on Gribeauval carriages, manufactured about 1812, but there was not a single serviceable field-battery in any arsenal.

The few guns belonging to the different States were short of harness, saddles, and other equipment. Not a gun or guncarriage, and, except during the Mexican War, not a round of ammunition had been prepared in any of the Confederate States for fifty years. When hostilities began, the only foundry for casting cannon was at the Tredegar works in Richmond, and with the exception of a battery of Blakely guns, imported by the State of South Carolina, and a single battery

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