Joe Brown's Pike As An Effective Weapon

D

Dread Mogus

Active member
This weapon was used in the American civil war. It was also known as the Georgia Pike. In a day when armies were being equipped with modern repeating rifles and in the era of the Gatling gun, the Governor of Georgia (Joseph E. Brown) published instructions about how to manufacture these pikes. He thought that every man, woman, and child could be equipped with one of these pikes. They were to be used against the approaching Union Army. He apparently reasoned that when the union soldiers ran out of ammo, their bayonets would not be effective against these longer pikes.
I don't know if they were ever actually used but what do you think about their possible effectiveness against the soldiers of the day?

Oh here's a link I found.
http://www.hsgng.org/pages/joebrownpike.htm
 
I don't believe they would have a chance, against a union army, as you saw sherman marched basically unoposed through Georgia.
 
I don't think they'd have defeated the Union Army either. I wonder how many people were actually equipped with those pikes? Pitted against a soldier with only a rifle mounted bayonet though, I'd rather have a pike than nothing and I think that was Gov. Brown's whole idea. From the article it sounds like he was trying to arm everyone with something easy and cheap to make.
 
If used properly as was suggested it "might have" worked.

The theory was to have the pikemen march behind the musket infantry. After the infantry exchanged shots and the bayonet charge comenced, the pikemen who were behind the muskets where to charge instead of the musket infantry. Then the pikes could easily defeat the enemy infantry because they were only armed with bayonets.

Sounded like a good theory, could have worked, maybe?

For this to have worked you would have had to drill two different units of men to work as one. This is probably the hardest part of trying to accomplish this. I'm guessing it would have worked if they trained any units well enough, you could say this is a combined arms thing.

Another hard part is having your men have any confidence in carrying a pike in battle in the age of muskets and rifles. I'd hate to be the one with the pike.

Another problem was you'd end up having half as many men carrying muskets reducing your firepower by alot. In the end giving everyone muskets is probably better, but thats not to say this might have worked if use properly.
 
That's true gladius but I think Gov. Brown's concept was to equip the civilian populace of Georgia against the inevitable "invasion" by the Union Army. The idea was to have them pop out from the woods along the roads and ambush a Union soldier with the pike. I think that considering the relative lack of resources that the South had that this pike was a desperate measure. As someone already mentioned, it didn't have any effect against Gen. Sherman's march.
All this would have occured long after the age of the musket had passed into history.
 
would have been wiser to equip every 10th civilian with the chapest musket/pistol/revolver you could get....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top