Artillery Brigade - 3rd Army Corps - NEW

Item DOC-12059

Description

Original Civil War document, 3 pages written in period ink.

Artillery Headquarters
Army of the Potomac
March 14, 1864
 
Commanding officer
Artillery Brigade
3^rd Army Corps
 
Sir,
 

1. You will at once take the necessary steps to put your Brigade in condition to take the field. And for this purpose, direct requisitions for the necessary number of horses and other materials to be made out.
    
2. Should you consider it advisable, the number of horses may be carried up to 116 for a six-gun and 88 for a four-gun battery. But the number of spare horses should not be carried beyond the possible wants, as the supplies for the number of horses are limited.
    
3. The ammunition should, so far as practicable, be made to conform to the proportions directed in General Order Number 5 of 1863. From these headquarters, these are 12 to 16 solid shot, 12 to 8 shrapnel, 4 shell, four canister to each chest for 12-pounders, 15 to 30 shell; 20 to 15 shrapnel; five canister to each chest for rifle guns.
    
4. Care should also be taken that both Hotchkiss and Schenkel or M and S shrapnel should not be used in the same battery. When such mixtures have taken place, the battery should exchange with each other and with the train, and reduce as far as possible the kind of ammunition which they do not habitually use.
    

There is scarcely any occasion on which the percussion fuse is not superior to the timed fuse shell. It would be a good rule to use only the percussion. Every effort is now being made to provide a concussion shell for the light 12-pounders to supersede the time fuse.

 

5. When requisitions are hereafter made for one kind of ammunition, another kind will not be received until it is ascertained that the artillery reserve train cannot furnish it; nor, even in very urgent cases, will they accept a different kind of ammunition than that asked for.
    
6. By a circular from these headquarters, dated December 17, 1863, paragraph one, you were notified that a supply of new canister for light 12-pounder had been ordered, 72-ounce balls to the canister. You were requested to make requisitions for it at a rate not to exceed 10 rounds per gun. Will you please state in your report of your train if such canister has been received and call special attention to it with a view of obtaining a report as to its efficiency in our next battle.
    
7. When proper ground can be found in the vicinity of a corps, a course of target practice should be entered upon of which careful records should be kept and a copy sent to these headquarters. See article XI, page 16, revised regulations. In this practice, batteries should only use the kind of ammunition they used in battle. Application must be made to the chief of artillery for permission to practice, stating the day and hour at which it is to commence in order that notice may be given to the other Corps, and to prevent alarm.
    
8. The trains will be immediately inspected, and a report of their condition and that of the ammunition made to the chief of artillery, and if there are deficiencies, that steps be taken to supply them.
   
   The allowance of wagons is as follows:
    

Brigade Headquarters                               2 wagons


Medical Department                                 1 wagon
 
Transportation of Subsistence                  1 wagon
 
Each 4 gun battery                                    4 wagons


Each 6 gun battery                                    5 wagons
 
There were every 25 ammunition wagons, 5 additional ones for transportation of forage for the teams.
 
By order of
Brigadier General Hunt
(signed) John N. Craig
Assistant Adjutant General
 
 
Headquarters
Artillery brigade
3^rd Army Corps
March 16, 1864
 
Official
 
P. S. Jastram
A. A. A. General