alternatehistory.com

7 June

After a delay due to engineers being sent to Canada to work on the Grand Trunk, the first train journey the full length of the London Metropolitan Railway takes place. The journey from Paddington (Bishop's Road) to Farringdon Street takes place without incident, and William Gladstone is heard to remark to Charles Pearson (the original promoter of the concept) that the convenience is marvellous - though it is rather smoky.

At about the same time, Cleburne arrives at the camp of the Army of Northern Virginia. He has twenty or so of his Rifles with him (men referred to as cronies or apprentices, depending on who is doing the describing) and asks to see the shooting figures of the regiments of Lee's army.
When he is informed no such records exist, he has his Rifles pick a half-dozen regiments at random and run them through basic shooting evaluation - twenty rounds each, including file firing and individual firing at both single and area targets. This consumes much of the day (including a half-hour argument with the quartermaster over providing ~70,000 rounds for the evaluation) and when the results are in Lee and Cleburne examine them.

8 June

The Kentucky's keel is laid in Gosport. This ship is part warship and part prestige project, intended to be the greatest ship ever built in the Americas, and is based off the Franklin class frigates with some alterations. In particular, her draft is reduced slightly from the original Franklin class, and she is also designed from the start as a broadside ironclad - one to be fitted with both sail and steam. She is also slated to receive Tregedar iron and engines, and Brooke rifles - in short, to be an entirely domestic product.
The Kentucky will not complete under that name, and will undergo a total of three alterations before becoming simply the Confederacy. Changes made while she is under construction will also give her a total of eight 110-lber Armstrong rifles purchased from Great Britain, thus slightly marring her domestic credentials.

Cleburne makes a suggestion to Lee, which is accepted. The Army of Northern Virginia does not have time to put the entire force through the wringer, nor can Lee be certain of getting the ammunition - however, training a subset of the army is considered quite possible. As such, Cleburne's Rifles will each test a regiment a day, identifying the men who are good at guessing ranges already, and once the top ten percent or so are identified in each regiment they will be quickly trained to deliver accurate aimed fire at 200-300 yards. (MacGruder, also present, comments that this is 'better than the Yankees, anyway'.)


For his part, McClellan is insisting on better artillery - and more of it - to counter his perceived (and, indeed, real) inferiority in small arms quality. The conflicting demands of the Union's war effort (needing to provide guns to the Eads boats, to coastal forts, to the armies facing the British and others facing other Confederate forces, and to build inland forts to improve the strategic situation in general) mean that he is not getting as many rifled artillery pieces as he would like.