Stick ‘Em with the Pointy End: Bayonet Wounds in the Civil War

The “gleam of bayonets” is a term one often finds when reading descriptions of Civil War soldiers marching onto the field of battle. It might come as a surprise to learn, then, that bayonet wounds made up less than one percent of wounds treated during the Civil War.[1]

Diagram of socket bayonet (WorldBayonets.com)

The most common type of bayonet used by both North and South was known as a “socket bayonet.” This was a triangular-shaped blade about 18 inches in length which attached over the muzzle of the rifle and locked into place with a ring. This turned the rifle into a lance that could be used for fighting in close quarters.[2] Soldiers were trained in the use of the bayonet as part of their regular drill—learning various thrusts, parries, and formations. However, the actual use of the bayonet in combat was very rare. This was mainly due to the more common use of rifled muskets, which increased the range of fire, making a bayonet charge obsolete as the charging soldiers would be under fire before they even reached the enemy line. During the Civil War, most bayonet charges occurred when soldiers ran out of ammunition and were in a desperate situation, such as the famous charge by the 20^th Maine Infantry at Gettysburg. Bayonets were sometimes used in hand-to-hand fighting situations, as seen at the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania or the Breakthrough at Petersburg, but more often in those situations the soldiers would use their rifles as clubs.

Bayonet charge as depicted in Harpers Weekly, July 12, 1862 (Winslow Homer drawing)

While facing an advancing line of gleaming steel pointing in your direction could be terrifying, many soldiers did not consider the bayonet a deadly weapon. Confederate General John B. Gordon stated in his memoirs: “The bristling points and the glitter of bayonets were fearful to look upon as they were leveled in front of a charging line, but they were rarely reddened with blood.” And Confederate surgeon Simon Baruch stated that “Bayonet wounds are almost harmless when compared to the ploughed tracks which the terrible minie ball bores through the tissues.”[3] However, despite this opinion and the rarity of bayonet wounds, soldiers that did receive them risked serious infection, due to the penetrating nature of the wound and the tendency of it to form pus, as well as “the chance of injury to blood-vessels, nerves, and viscera, and the possibility of pyaemia, gangrene, and tetanus.”[4] The triangular blade also created a wound that was difficult to suture shut.

The Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War documents 922 cases of saber and bayonet wounds, with the fatality of bayonet wounds exceeding that of saber wounds by 2.7 percent.[5] However, not all documented wounds were mortal. Private William Tinkler, Co. G, 3d Battalion, South Carolina Infantry, was wounded in a bayonet charge at Spotsylvania, May 8th, 1864. He was taken to a Confederate hospital and examined. According to the report:

Two apertures were discovered, one a triangular, ragged opening in the back, about one-half inch to the right of the tenth dorsal vertebra, and the other a small puncture, three inches below the right nipple, near the angle of the ninth rib. The patient stated that while in a stooping posture he was transfixed by a bayonet, and he asserted positively that he distinctly felt the withdrawal of the weapon. When admitted to hospital, his face was pallid and anxious and nostrils distended. Skin cool, pulse weak, but somewhat excited, breathing difficult and labored. There was slight oozing of blood from the posterior orifice, which was contracted, and bloody expectoration similar to that occurring in gunshot injuries of the lungs. These symptoms, conjoined with the direction of the wound, led to the belief that the right lung was transfixed.[6]

The next day, Tinkler had some bloody mucus and pain in the right lung “but little cough.” By May 13^th the wound had developed a scab and bloody mucus had ceased. By May 16^th, “the patient was doing finely” and there were “no physical symptoms of lung disease.” Tinkler was then sent to a general hospital where it was recorded that he was “in fine spirits.”[7]

Pvt. Lewis Francis suffered a bayonet wound to his knee and his leg had to be amputated (Medical and Surgical History, Vol. XI, page 154)

A private in the 12^th United States Infantry was stabbed in the abdomen by a bayonet in November of 1862. Surgeons were able to close up the wound in a non-conventional way:

The edges of the wound were approximated by metallic sutures, the surface was then dried and covered with a few shreds of charpie [scraped lint] arranged crosswise, after the manner of warp and woof, and, upon this, a few drops of collodion were poured.

The report stated that “the dressing remained intact until the wound was entirely healed, a period of a few days only. The patient recovered without symptoms of peritonitis.”[8]

Your average Civil War soldier would not have experienced a bayonet wound. Bayonets were probably used as candleholders or skewers for roasting meat more often than as weapons. But for one Union soldier, the bayonet was dangerous in an unconventional way. Private S. Millard of the 52^nd Pennsylvania was on guard duty when a bolt of lightning struck his bayonet, traveling down the rifle into his body. As described in the Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War, Millard’s belt buckle and watch were melted, the hair on his chest burned away, the soles of his boots blown off, and “the woolen shirt which he wore at the time was also much burned and was still smoking.”

It is clear that although bayonet wounds were rare, bayonets could be a dangerous thing during the Civil War—in many different ways.

Sources

[1] The Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War, Volume II, Chapter XII.

[2] CivilWarAcademy.com

[3] Ibid.

[4] The Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War, Volume II, Chapter XII.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War, Volume II, Chapter V, Section I.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

About the Author

Tracey McIntire earned her BA in English at Rivier College in Nashua, NH. She is Lead Educator at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, site manager of the Pry House Field Hospital Museum, and an interpretive volunteer at Antietam National Battlefield. She is also an active Civil War living historian, where she portrays a woman soldier in various guises.