One of the most beloved myths of the American Revolution is that of the Minuteman, the volunteer soldier who left his plow standing in the furrow while he marched off with his neighbors to shoot down the Redcoats with unerring aim. This canny warrior concealed himself behind any available scrap of cover to enhance his ability to fight, while the clueless British stupidly wore brightly colored coats and stood in neat lines while waiting to be shot down.
Unfortunately, this view of the volunteer Patriot soldier is indeed a myth. Very few men ever belonged to the organization called “Minutemen,” and those who did were not noted for marksmanship. In October 1774 the Massachusetts Assembly authorized the formation of special militia units that would include men who would respond to an alarm in “a minute’s notice.” These organizations were disbanded in April 1775 when the assembly authorized the formation of an army of 18,000 men who would serve for eight months. The name Minutemen was in use for only seven months. At the opening skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, there were 3,763 Minutemen present. If it is assumed that they fired an average of eighteen shots each from the time the fighting began just at sunup until the fracas ended at dark, then the Patriot forces fired 75,000 shots. In the process they hit only 273 British soldiers, or about one hit for each 300 shots fired. Although the Minutemen, and other Patriot forces, did fight from behind cover, these tactics were usually not effective. It was not until the Continental soldiers learned traditional European linear tactics, including how to deliver a bayonet charge, that they were able to defeat the Royal Army.
Another legend says the Minutemen were adequate as soldiers but were hampered in their efforts because they were armed with technologically inferior weapons. The smoothbore muskets with which the men were armed are often pictured as so grossly inaccurate as to be more dangerous to the person firing them than they were to the person being fired at. This is also a myth. Both sides had more or less the same weapons.
The shoulder weapon commonly used by both sides during the Revolutionary War is properly called a smoothbore, muzzle-loading, flintlock musket. All were single-shot weapons that had to be reloaded after each discharge. Smoothbore means the inside of the barrel is smooth. A rifle is called a rifle because the inside of the barrel has grooves (rifling) cut into the metal. When the weapon is fired, these grooves cause the bullet to spin, giving a rifle greater accuracy and range. Because the inside of the barrel has no grooves, a smoothbore is less accurate than a rifle and doesn’t have its range, but the smoothbore weapon could be manufactured easily using eighteenth-century technology, unlike rifles, which were slow and difficult to produce.
The musket is called “muzzle loading” because each time the weapon is loaded the gunpowder and shot must be poured into the muzzle of the gun and then rammed tightly into the breech with a ramrod.
The ignition mechanism of the musket is called the “lock.” It consists of a small, hollowed out piece of metal called the “pan,” which is attached to the side of the barrel and connected to the inside of the breech by a small hole through the metal of the barrel. A piece of metal called a “frizzen” is snapped down over the pan, and a set of jaws (the “cock”) is positioned to strike the frizzen with a piece of flint when the trigger is pulled. The cock is powered by a spring.
ANTOINE LAURENT LAVOISIER never set foot in America, but his work for the French government produced a formula for a superior type of gunpowder that helped America win the war.
To load his weapon a soldier on either side in the Revolutionary War held his musket in his left hand. With his right hand he reached into a leather cartridge box, which was worn slung from his left shoulder to his right side, and withdrew a paper cylinder that contained the proper amount of powder and a lead ball. Raising the cylinder to his mouth, the soldier used his teeth to tear open the paper cartridge. The lead ball was often held in the soldier’s mouth while a little powder was poured into the pan and the frizzen was snapped down to hold it in place. The rest of the powder was then poured down the barrel, the bullet was spat into the muzzle, and the crumpled paper of the cartridge pushed in on top. The whole mass was then tamped down the length of the barrel with the ramrod and firmly seated at the breech, just opposite the tiny hole that connected with the pan.
Once this cumbersome loading process was complete, the soldier was ready to fire. Bringing the musket to his shoulder, he pulled back the cock containing the jaws clamping a piece of flint and pulled the trigger. The cock sprang forward, driven by the spring; the flint struck the steel of the frizzen, uncovering the pan and allowing sparks from the impact of flint on steel to fall into the gunpowder in the pan; the fire flashed from the pan into the breech, setting off the main charge; and the gun fired—sometimes.
Wind might blow the powder out of the pan; rain, snow, or fog might make the powder too damp; the flint might fail to throw off a spark; or the tiny hole connecting the pan to the interior of the breech might become obstructed. The amazing fact is that a trained musketman could load and fire his weapon three times in a minute, with some experts able to load and fire six shots per minute.
The musket issued to the British forces and carried by the Minutemen at the beginning of the war was called the Brown Bess. The design for this weapon had been developed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and the barrel was finished in a brown color, hence the name. There had been improvements in the ignition system since the time of “Good Queen Bess,” but the weapon had always had a .75-caliber bore and fired a .69-caliber ball. The difference between the diameter of the bore and the diameter of the ball was called “windage.” The windage made the Brown Bess easy to load, because the ball would literally fall down the barrel to the breech, but the lack of a snug fit caused the flight of the bullet to be somewhat erratic, especially at a range of more than 75 or 80 yards.
During the course of the war, imports caused most of the Patriot forces to be equipped with the French Charleyville musket, which was .69-caliber and fired a .65-caliber ball. With less windage, this weapon was somewhat more accurate than the Brown Bess.
The Minuteman’s modern reputation as an inaccurate shot has more to do with his training than with the technology of the weapon. Soldiers were not trained to pick and to fire at individual targets but to fire at the mass formation of the enemy directly in front of them. Battles were not won by accurate gunfire but by delivering enough fire that the enemy ranks were disordered. At the moment the disorder became evident, a bayonet charge would be delivered, and the shaken ranks of the enemy could not withstand it. The Minuteman was not expected to be a good shot, nor was he ever trained to be a marksman. The Minuteman was taught to load and fire as rapidly as possible and then to charge home with his bayonet. Ultimately, his musket was to be transformed into a spear when the bayonet was attached. Lacking bayonets in the early days of the war, the Minuteman never had a chance to develop into a truly effective battlefield operative.