In particular in the American Revolution. I am studying up on my American Revolutionary War in the South in prep for my next project and I am not a military historian by any means.
For instance, at the battle of Cowpens Lt. Col Tarleton had two 3lb artillery pieces with him.
What purpose would this have served? To my untrained eyes it just seems like it would be two bigger guns firing slowly.
What would the tactical use of these guns be?
This question applies more broadly to the war as a whole. Where lots of little operations are dispatched with one or two guns.
Thanks for the insight. Military history has never been my strong suit.
Ironically, those three pound guns are very small. While I can't speak much on the American use of artillery in detail, I can explain artillery usage in the 18th Century.
In respect to artillery in the 18th century, here are two major divisions, artillery before Frederick and after Frederick. Before Frederick, artillery was slow and cumbersome, only used against large formations of troops or against enemy artillery but always at the rear in a lesser and supporting role. This artillery was made of large, heavy guns of twelve, twenty four, and thirty six pound varieties that would be more akin to siege guns of the Napoleonic era rather than field guns. They took a lot of time to load, aim, and fire the guns but didn't have much of effect for the rate of fire.
Frederick changed this by using science, literally. During the mid a Eighteenth Century, there were advances in casting that allowed for artillery to be made lighter, stronger, and with less metal, allowing smaller guns to be made, such as a six pound gun which Frederick attached to horses and invented horse artillery. Artillery was pulled into a semi aggressive roll where it could be charged into the front and support the infantry with canister fire.
Soon, the world saw Prussia as the leader of military science and adopted or improved their own militaries in respect to their ordeal with the Seven Years War, including the introduction of small calibre guns such as your three pound gun that would have been small enough for men to pull in foot and keep up with an infantry battalion. The gun would support the battalion with small shot or small canister rounds meant to bolster the morale of the line.