6. THE CIVIL WAR AND THE RISE OF THE RIFLE

AMERICA’S BLOODY CONFLICT SPAWNED A NUMBER OF NEW WEAPONS, INCLUDING THE SPRINGFIELD MODEL 1861 RIFLED MUSKET, PRECURSOR TO THE MODERN RIFLE.

In 1861, after the Civil War began, Union soldiers posed with bayoneted Springfields.

A New Course for Weaponry

FEDERAL ARSENALS WERE ABLE TO PRODUCE BETTER LONG GUNS AND REVOLVERS IN FAR GREATER VOLUME THAN FACILITIES IN THE LIGHTLY INDUSTRIALIZED SOUTH.

A Union soldier posed with his nine-pound, .58-caliber Springfield.

1861 MODEL SPRINGFIELD RIFLE-MUSKET

Country: United States

Date: 1862

Barrel Length: 40in

Caliber: .58

Made at the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts, this percussion weapon was widely used throughout the Civl War. The Springfield pictured above was test fired but never issued.

REMINGTON NEW ARMY MODEL

Country: United States

Date: circa 1864

Length: 13 3/4in

Caliber: .44

This six-shot revolver debuted about two years after the Colt 1860 Army. The Colt, which had early military contracts, dominated sales.

SPENCER LEVER ACTION CARBINE

Country: United States

Date: mid 1860s

Barrel Length: 22in

Caliber: .52

John Wilkes Booth was captured and killed with a seven-shot Spencer carbine in his hand.

The American Civil War inspired advances in firearms that in turn redefined armed conflict and reshaped American society. Referred to as the first truly “modern war,” because of its brutal tactics and industrial-scale carnage, the clash between North and South saw the introduction and initial widespread use of breech-loading infantry firearms, repeating rifles, and rudimentary rapid-fire guns. Though disease and infection were the war’s most insidious killers, more effective weapons also contributed to a combined death toll of some 700,000—more fatalities than in all other American wars combined. Firearm innovations associated with the Civil War set patterns that continued during the late-19th-century westward expansion of European-descended American settlers and contributed to the slaughter of indigenous Native Americans.

The Union and Confederacy both entered the war unprepared to arm massive military operations, but the North rapidly gained a devastating advantage by using its superior industrial resources to produce weapons. Northern government arsenals, such as the one in Springfield, Massachusetts, and numerous other factories in New England turned out long guns and revolvers of better quality—and in far greater volumes—than facilities in the lightly industrialized South.

The Union’s Advantage

Still, it took a while for the North to gear up. In the first years of the war, many Union troops went into battle with antiquated .69–caliber flintlock muskets. Gradually, many of these old long guns were overhauled with percussion-cap firing systems. The North gained a distinct lead in the arms race when the Springfield Armory began churning out the Springfield Model 1861 rifled musket, a reliable weapon that came as close as any to serving as a standard-issue firearm for Union forces. Smaller factories and workshops across the North also made the Springfield 1861 under license arrangements.

Equipped with a bayonet, the Springfield weighed more than nine pounds and measured 58 inches, about the height of a typical soldier of the era. Although unwieldy by modern standards because of its size, the rifled Springfield musket proved far more accurate than its smoothbore predecessors. It fired a lead bullet, typically .58 caliber, and had an effective range of 200 yards. In recognition that even men of ordinary skill could actually aim the Springfield and hope to hit their target at some distance, Northern manufacturers began adding rear sights to Springfields, which further improved accuracy.

Union quartermasters issued ammunition that made the standard Springfield 1861 more deadly. Known as the Minié ball, after its French inventor, Claude Minié, the heavy bullet expanded as it traveled down the barrel, resulting in a tighter fit in the rifle grooves, and more rotation. Swifter rotation translated into steadier flight and greater precision.

All of these improvements made infantry units, even those manned by raw recruits, far more capable of inflicting death and destruction. Rather than charging across open fields, riflemen could establish defensive positions behind natural or man-made cover, firing several rounds a minute with far more effect. Commanders on both sides, however, were slow to absorb the potential advantage of “digging in” defensively, and that led to many battles, particularly during the first half of the Civil War, in which unwitting soldiers charged in large numbers only to be mowed down by increasingly accurate rifle fire.

The Union enjoyed a further edge by exploiting the next generation of long guns: breech-loading and repeating rifles and carbines designed by gunsmiths such as Benjamin Henry, Christian Sharps, and Christopher Spencer. Rather than stuffing ammunition down the barrel, an awkward, centuries-old procedure, a soldier with a breech-loader inserted his bullet into a chamber that was part of the rear portion of the barrel. Breech-loading weapons were particularly useful to cavalrymen who struggled with old-fashioned muzzle-loaders.

The Spencer carbine, introduced in 1860, featured both breech-loading and repeat firing. The rifle came equipped with a tubular “magazine,” or ammunition container, located in its stock, which could hold seven .56-caliber copper-jacketed cartridges. The Spencer was the first repeat-fire carbine to be officially adopted by a major army; the Union bought more than 100,000, which were mostly issued to elite infantry and cavalry units.

With the advent of more accurate rifles and carbines, long-distance sniping became a more common tactic. Both sides in the conflict formed specialized platoons of marksmen, the best known of which was Berdan’s Sharpshooters, a Union outfit named for its commander, Hiram Berdan. The term sharpshooter may well have referred to the particular gun that many of Berdan’s men carried: a breech-loading rifle designed by Christian Sharps, who began his career in the 1830s at the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal in what’s now West Virginia.

Claude-Etienne Minié: Designing a Better Bullet

Officer Claude-Etienne Minié  (1804–1879) fought for France in colonial campaigns in Africa before turning his attention in the late 1840s to designing a bullet that later became known as the Minié ball.

Fired from a rifled barrel, Minié’s cylindrical projectile had a conical point and resulted in noticeably improved accuracy. It featured an iron cup inserted in the hollow base of the bullet; when fired, the cup moved forward, expanding the base for a snug fit against the grooves of the rifling. In recognition of Minié’s contribution, the French government awarded the officer a generous bonus and a position at the prestigious Vincennes military academy. He retired from the French army in 1858 with the rank of colonel and later served as a military adviser in Egypt and migrated to the United States, where he worked in a supervisory capacity at the Remington Arms Company.

Guns of the North

IN THE FIRST YEARS OF THE WAR, SOME UNION FORCES CARRIED OLD FLINTLOCK MUSKETS.

COLT MODEL 1861 RIFLED MUSKET

Country: United States

Date: 1865

Barrel Length: 40in

Caliber: .58

HARPER’S FERRY MODEL 1841

Country: United States

Date: circa 1841

Barrel Length: 33in

Caliber: .54

Dubbed the “Mississippi rifle,” for the U.S. regiment that prevailed in the Mexican-American War.

ALFRED P. JENKS & SON MODEL 1861 PERCUSSION RIFLED MUSKET

Country: United States

Date: 1861

Length: 40in

Caliber: .58

REMINGTON-BEALS NAVY

Country: United States

Date: 1861–1863

Barrel Length: 7 1/2in

Caliber: .36

This was Remington’s first military revolver.

Though the North was more heavily industrialized than the south, Union soldiers still were forced to scrambled to find guns for battle. Some brought their own long guns from home, but in time, the Springfield Armory began creating the Model 1861 rifled musket, and other small weaponmakers stepped up to produce the gun under a license arrangement.

Benjamin Tyler Henry: Repeat Performance

Benjamin Tyler Henry (1821–1898) invented the first reliable lever-action repeating rifle, widely known as the Henry rifle, and worked for several legendary figures in the 19th-century firearms industry.

In the 1850s, he helped design a rifle called the Volitional Repeater for entrepreneurs Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson of Smith & Wesson fame. He also worked for Oliver Winchester.

As the years passed, Henry became a respected designer in his own right and in 1860 obtained a patent on a .44–caliber breech-loading repeating rifle that saw action during the Civil War alongside the more prevalent muzzle-loading Springfield Model 1861. Later in the war, Henry and Winchester clashed over Henry’s pay and the amount of recognition he received for his design work. Frustrated, Henry quit the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and was eclipsed by its owner, who had Henry’s design overhauled and renamed the Winchester Model 1866. The .44–caliber Winchester 66 became one of the most widely used guns in the American West during the last third of the 19th century.

Portrait of a Union

CAPTURING BATTLEFIELD ACTION WAS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FOR CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHERS, BUT SOLDIERS OFTEN POSED WITH THEIR WEAPONS.

The Civil War became the first conflict in history to be thoroughly recorded in photographs. Because the technology was new, it was difficult to capture movement, and photographing battlefield action was almost impossible. Photographers turned to still subjects, and hundreds of soldiers headed off to war after posing for portraits so their loved ones would have a record.

Hiram Berdan: Marksman and Leader

AN INVENTOR RECRUITED ELITE UNION SOLDIERS TO JOIN THE SHARPSHOOTERS. CCUS IUSCIET

New York sharpshooter Hiram Berdan scoured the Northern states to find proven marksmen who specialized in scouting, skirmishing, and sniping.

Hiram Berdan (1823–1893), a New York engineer and inventor, was a renowned marksman and guiding force behind the U.S. Volunteer Sharpshooter Regiments during the Civil War. He was the inventor of the Berdan repeating rifle, the Berdan centerfire primer, and numerous other weapons and accessories.

Recruits in Colonel Berdan's units had to pass marksmanship tests, wore distinctive green uniforms, and carried repeating rifles and carbines designed by Christian Sharps. The men frequently were deployed to skirmish and harass Confederate forces from a distance, and fought at some of the most important battles of the war, including the Second Battle of Bull Run, Shepherdstown, and Chancellorsville. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Berdan’s Sharpshooters helped slow Confederate assaults on Devil’s Den and the Peach Orchard. After the war, Berdan returned to military inventing, and his creations included a submarine gunboat and a torpedo boat.

A Berdan recruit cradles his Sharps rifle. Touted as “superior to any other arm in the service, ”it cost $45, nearly four times as much as the Army-issue Springfield.

Christian Sharps: Aim High

As a boy, Christian Sharps (1810–1874) apprenticed to a New Jersey gunsmith and in the 1830s worked as a laborer at the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal in Virginia. Not content to be a hired hand, Sharps taught himself about breech-loading rifle designs and became an expert on the use of interchangeable parts. By the 1840s, he had refined what became known as the Sharps rifle, a gun known for its long-range accuracy, and received a U.S. patent for it in 1848. Sharps’ Model 1849 became the first breech-loading rifle to gain wide acceptance. A smaller, lighter carbine version was especially popular with the Union Army. Jealous of the rapid, accurate firing capacity of the Sharps carbine, the South tried to reverse-engineer the gun, but Confederate knockoffs functioned poorly. After the war, Sharps continued designing firearms and launched a trout-farming business in Connecticut before dying of tuberculosis in 1874.

Christopher Spencer: Weapon Entrepreneur

Spencer reentered the arms business in Windsor, Connecticut, in the 1880s. His workers produced slide-action repeating rifles.

SPENCER MODEL 1860 RIFLE

Country: United States

Date: 1863

Barrel Length: 30in

Caliber: .52

The Spencer rifle and carbine were both highly valued on the battlefield.

Born in Connecticut, Christopher Spencer (1833–1922) learned about making guns in Samuel Colt's Hartford factory. He went on to invent a repeating rifle that bore his name and was one of the first lever-action long guns widely used in the United States.

Like so many other weapon entrepreneurs of the era, Spencer struggled at first as a businessman. Hoping to get a contract to produce rifles for the Union, he embarked on an audacious lobbying effort. Striding into the wartime White House one day in August 1863, Spencer made his way past sentries and gained access to the office of President Abraham Lincoln. This led to a subsequent meeting during which Spencer and Lincoln, joined by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, tested Spencer’s creation. The presidential party relocated to the nearby National Mall, where Lincoln personally fired the rifle and declared it worthy.

The Union began ordering Spencer rifles and carbines, and none other than General Ulysses S. Grant declared them “the best breech-loading arms available.” After the war, many veterans kept their rifles, and Spencer arms became popular among Western settlers. The proliferation of military surplus dampened sales for the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company, however, and the company slipped into insolvency in 1868. The following year, its assets were acquired by another prominent figure in the gun trade, Oliver Winchester.

Arming a Breakaway Nation

UNTIL THE UNION NAVY’S BLOCKADES CUT SUPPLY LINES FROM EUROPE, THE SOUTH IMPORTED ARMS FROM SUCH SOURCES AS ENGLAND AND AUSTRIA.

ENFIELD RIFLED MUSKET

Country: Great Britain

Date: 1853

Length: 55 1/2in

Caliber: .577

The 1853 rifled Enfield and the U.S. Springfield could use the same ammunition. Union troops also relied on this musket.

LEMAT REVOLVER

Country: France

Date: circa 1860

This 14-inch revolver stacked two barrels: The top fired nine .42-caliber bullets; the bottom .63-caliber barrel threw buckshot.

LORENZ MUSKET

Country: Austria

Date: 1854

Barrel Length: 37 1/2in

Caliber: .54

This musket, used by Southern and Northern troops, was carved from one piece of wood.

In an imbalance that played an important role in the war’s outcome, the Confederacy lacked the workshops and factories that powered the Union Army. The South scrambled to arm itself creatively —by building knockoffs of successful guns used by the North or scavenging them from battlefields. In 1861, for example, Confederate forces captured the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in what was then Virginia. That raid yielded an immediate boon—the armory’s store of rifles—and also a trove of tools and machinery that Southern military officials used to establish smaller factories elsewhere.

The secessionist states also turned to Europe for help. Though the British government officially maintained neutrality and the Royal Arsenal at Enfield was not permitted to supply the Confederacy, small private factories were eager for the business and sold the Confederacy hundreds of thousands of Enfield .577-caliber rifled muskets. Austria, too, provided arms, selling a limited number of Model 1854 Infanteriegewehr, or infantry rifles.

Yet the South never came anywhere close to matching the manufacturing capacity of the North, and the guns they did make were often inferior. When makers tried to imitate breech-loading Union weapons like the Sharps carbine, their mechanically inferior version, called the “Richmond Sharps,” failed frequently in battle. Confederate general Robert E. Lee disparaged the gun as “so defective as to be demoralizing to our men.” The South was further disadvantaged in the arms race once Union blockades of Southern ports cut supply lines from Europe.

In early-model guns, shooters measured out the right amount of powder propellant and placed it in the barrel along with a bullet (known as a ball) and some wadding to secure the powder and projectile in place and put a percussion cap on the nipple for the hammer to strike. This system was referred to as cap-and-ball, and was used in the first revolvers designed by Colt in the 1830s. The new revolvers had the advantage of allowing shooters to fire off a succession of five or six shots but still required the gunman to laboriously reload each chamber with loose powder and a lead bullet and then place a percussion cap on the nipple of each chamber.

At about the same time, European gunsmiths were developing a more efficient shooting system that relied on self-contained paper cartridges with a metal base that contained primer, powder, and bullet in one unit. By 1846, Benjamin Houllier of Paris had created a cartridge pressed from copper or brass—all metal and a single piece. In 1860, the American Benjamin Tyler Henry improved on the same basic design by adding a hollow rim that contained the chemical primer. Such “rim fire” cartridges tended to be delicate and subject to accidental discharge. Still, rim-fire ammunition enabled repeating weapons, such as the Spencer rifle, to fire a dozen rounds in a minute. Hiram Berdan later developed a one-piece brass case that contained primer in a percussion cap at the center of the cartridge’s base, a more stable and reliable design that became standard for weapons of all sorts.

Southern Industry

FACTORIES OPENED ACROSS THE CONFEDERACY, AS MAKERS SOUGHT TO CATCH UP WITH THEIR NORTHERN FOES.

As Union forces approached Richmond, Viginia, Confederate soldiers were ordered to torch anything of military value, including the state armory.

S.C. ROBINSON SHARPS CARBINE

Country: United States

Date: circa 1862

Barrel Length: 22in

Caliber: .52

A largely agrarian society, the American South suffered a terrible disadvantage when it came to arms manufacturing. Southern gunmaking operations were small and inefficient compared to their Northern rivals. In New Orleans, for example, Ferdinand W.C. Cook and his brother, Francis, both English citizens, opened a rifle factory on Canal Street in June 1861. They initially supplied Alabama militias and then won a substantial contract from the Confederacy for 30,000 arms. But the fall of New Orleans in 1862 forced them to relocate to Athens, Georgia. The state of Tennessee operated armories at Columbia, Memphis, Nashville, Gallatin, and Pulaski that converted flintlock muskets to percussion-cap weapons. The Pulaski and Gallatin facilities made new carbines and rifles.

In Memphis, Leech & Rigdon, also known as Memphis Novelty Works, made imitation Colt revolvers of dubious quality, which they sold to the Confederacy. The Shakanoosa Arms Company of Dickson, Alabama, manufactured so-called Mississippi rifles (Model 1841) and bayonets. It had to relocate and ended up in Dawson, Georgia, in 1864. Some of the larger Confederate arms operations were captured federal facilities. In April 1861, North Carolina forces seized the U.S. arsenal at Fayetteville. This victory added some 36,000 muskets and rifles to Confederate stores. Machinery captured from the takeover of the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal was shipped to Fayetteville, which soon began rifle production of its own.

Confederate Firearms

PRODUCTION PROBLEMS PROVED HARD TO OVERCOME FOR THE SOUTH.

CHARLES INGRAM VOLUNTEER PATTERN RIFLE

Country: Scotland

Caliber: .52

Crafted by Scottish marksman Charles Ingram, these imports were prized by Southern sharpshooters.

FAYETTEVILLE MUSKET

Country: United States

Date: 1864

Length: 49in

Caliber: .63

Based on the Springfield, this musket was made from machinery and tools pilfered from the Harper’s Ferry armory.

TARPLEY CARBINE

Country: United States

Date: 1863

Length: 40in

Caliber: .52

Only a few hundred of these Confederate-made breech-loaders were produced.

RICHMOND MUSKET

Country: United States

Date: 1861

Length: 56in

Caliber: .577

The Richmond Armory also cobbled together Springfield knockoffs with equipment raided from Harper’s Ferry.

The South not only lacked factories to make guns when the war broke out, but it did not have a ready supply of crucial materials such as steel. Sometimes iron was substituted, and sometimes brass—thanks in part to churches which donated their brass bells “for the Cause”—which was melted down for use in pistol frames.

Portrait of the South

LIKE THEIR BRETHREN IN THE NORTH, CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS POSED WITH THE WEAPONS THEY USED ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

Photographic equipment and chemicals were harder to come by in the South, but some Confederate photographers still managed to record the war. George S. Cook of South Carolina, who studied under famous Northern photographer Mathew Brady, moved to Charleston just before the war began and captured early images of the Battle of Fort Sumter. Portraits also were popular with soldiers.

KILLING FIELDS

Breech-loading infantry firearms, repeating rifles, and rudimentary rapid-fire guns led to a staggering death toll during the Civil War.

1861 February: Confederate States of American formed; Jefferson Davis sworn in as president.

1861 April: Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. President Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of Confederate ports.

1861 July: The Battle of First Manassas (Bull Run), Virginia, claimed 4,900 casualties.

1862 August: The Battle of Second Manassas (Bull Run), Virginia, claimed 25,000 casualties.

1862 September: The Battle of Antietam Creek, Sharpsburg, Maryland, totaled 23,000 casualties in a single day.

1863 January: Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

1863 July: The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, had 51,000 casualties

July 1 to 3: Seige of Vicksburg, Mississippi had 50,000.

1864 July: The Confederate raid on Washington, D.C., ended with 9,000 casualties; the battles for Atlanta had 20,000 casualties.

1864 November: Lincoln reelected.

1865 March: Battle of Petersburg, Virginia.

The Confederacy authorized the arming of slaves as rebel soldiers.

1865 April: Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

Five days later, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln in Washington, D.C.

The Birth of Rapid-Fire Weapons

HOPING TO REDUCE THE TOLL OF INFECTIONS, A NONPRACTICING PHYSICIAN CREATED A MORE EFFECIENT GUN.

PATENT MODEL OF THE GATLING GUN

Designed by Richard Gatling in 1862, this wooden patent prototype was 36 inches long, with six 11 1/2–inch barrels. An improved model was officially adopted by the U.S. ordnance department four years later.

Another innovation spurred by the Civil War was the rapid-fire gun, a precursor to the modern machinegun. Manually operated by means of a crank, these weapons had multiple barrels and were capable of unleashing 100 rounds a minute—assuming, of course, they didn’t jam. Richard Gatling, an eccentric inventor and nonpracticing physician, introduced the best-known model in 1861. Gatling’s original creation had six barrels and fired paper-wrapped cartridges. The action of the crank caused the barrels to revolve around a cylindrical shaft as cartridges dropped into place from above and were struck by the firing pin.

Union military leaders rejected the Gatling Gun in 1862 because they thought it was too heavy and complicated to operate. It didn’t help the weapon’s reputation that Gatling, who lived and worked in Indianapolis, was rumored to be a Confederate sympathizer because he had been born in North Carolina. Individual Union commanders bought a handful of Gatling Guns on their own, and the weapons played a role, albeit limited, during the Union siege of Petersburg, Virginia, in 1864.

Later 10-barrel Gatling variations fired metallic cartridges from a drum-shaped magazine at a rate of up to 1,000 rounds a minute. The U.S. Army used them to deadly effect in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898.

RICHARD GATLING: FATAL FIRE

Inventor Richard Gatling (1818–1903) not only designed machines for planting rice and wheat, he transferred those concepts to the field of firearms, developing the precursor to the machinegun.

As the Civil War unfolded, Gatling noted that more men were dying from disease than weapon fire. He came up with the unusual notion that a rapid-fire gun would require fewer men to pull the trigger, reducing the toll of fatal infections. “If I could invent a machine—a gun—which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred...it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies,” he wrote.

As it turned out, Gatling’s gun did more to multiply death by bullet than to reduce fatalities attributable to disease. In 1870, he sold his patents for the machine to Colt.