Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk X

[fusilier]

The exact same was said and done of the Canadians during WWI, but none of those opinions of their discipline seemed to matter to their efficacy. The fact is, given two camps of ill disciplined, poorly trained, rancorous militia, the one with experience at all, is still going to be a more effective force at least through morale than the ones that are ill disciplined, poorly trained, rancorous militia that haven't had any experience on a battlefield. In any event, I wouldn't consider the relative minor (in terms of loss comparisons) losses in the west, and the victories in the east as having much to do with the commanders chosen on either side. No one can boast have having had any truly brilliant or revolutionary leaders during the war (Not even Lee IMO), and I don't think any of them were atrocious lemons either (Not even Hooker). I think the actual troops, or if not that then the weapons they used must have played some factor in the difference.

It's also not as though the approximately 50,000 militia from the Mexican American war would have been entirely insignificant in terms of numbers. The Union and Confederate armies at the start of the war weren't breaching even say, 500,000 men, or they were at the very least exceeding a 1 in 10 ratio. They were certainly not so few that they couldn't have even trained the soldiers they were recruiting, that claim is ludicrous.

By 63, certainly the Confederates were running on raw recruits as much as the Union, but you don't find people introducing sweeping doctrine changes in a 2 years time span during the course of a single war. I am still confident that the idea to avoid close combat was due in a large part to earlier experience from the Mexican theater rather than the weapons of the time. (and even without, the raw recuits wouldn't have been better off doing bayonet charges anyway.)

Case in point, over 40 years later, the world concluded that close combat was to be the deciding action against entrenched defenses when they observed the Russo-Japanese war, partly causing the god awful doctrine of human wave assaults during the onset of WWI. By then, the weapons were more advanced, not less so.

Did they send the Canadians home after a few months service in WW1, and basically disband the CEF? It's a rhetorical question -- the efficacy of the volunteers in the Mexican-American War was at the heart of the issue. Some of the better units, as I recall, were from northern states like Illinois (New York units had a good reputation too, but they didn't get anywhere near their quotas!)

However, more importantly, I'm not convinced that those militia men, could have made much of a difference. First, what are the statistics? How many veterans of the Mexican War did the Confederacy recruit, and how many did the Union recruit?

Second, what impact can be discerned? This is the first time I've heard anybody argue that rank-and-file Mexican War veterans contributed to confederate victories. [Either that, or I've put up a mental block] Do you have sources for some of these claims?

The Confederate draft is almost never mentioned in detail, but it was authorized in April of 1862. The Union draft came later in the year, but most states were able to avoid implementing it for sometime.