List of weapons in the American Civil War

Hawken rifle and bowie knife

American Civil War weapons refers to weapons that were used during the American Civil War by Union and Confederacy soldiers during the years 1861-1865. During the war, a variety of weapons were used on both sides. These weapons include edged weapons such as knives and swords, firearms such as handguns, rifled-muskets, breech loaders and repeating weapons, various field guns such as artillery, and new weapons such as the early grenade and machine gun.

The Civil War is often to referred as the first "modern" war in history as it included the most advanced technology and innovations of warfare available at the time. Some of the innovations and advances of the Civil War included mass production of war materials, rifling of gun barrels, the advent of repeating firearms and metallic cartridges, ironclad warships, advances in medicine, communication, and transportation, and the gradual decline of tactics from previous centuries.

Personal weapons

Edged weapons

Jeb Stuart with cavalry saber

1832 Artillery sword

1860 saber

A marmeluke sword

Regulation infantry officer's sword

• Artillerymen were issued the Model 1832 Foot artillery sword, based on the Roman gladius.
• Model 1832 Dragoon Saber
• The Model 1840 Light Artillery Saber was issued to mounted artillery
• Model 1840 Army Noncommissioned Officers' Swords were issued to infantry sergeants. The Marines had their own version
• Model 1840 Cavalry Saber
• Model 1860 Light Cavalry Saber
• The M1860 Cutlass was issued to naval boarding parties. Sailors also had access to axes, harpoons and grappling hooks.
• The regulation officer's sword was the Model 1850 Army Staff & Field Officers' Sword though in practice most officers used cavalry sabers. Southern officers sometimes carried ancestral blades from the War of 1812 or even the American Revolutionary War.
• Mameluke swords were carried by Marine officers.
• Confederates would carry Bowie knives instead of bayonets, including the Arkansas toothpick which could be used as a sword in combat, a hatchet to chop wood, a razor and a paddle in emergencies.
• Native Americans fighting for the Confederacy used traditional weapons like the Tomahawk, spear or bow.
• Early in the war Robert E Lee proposed issuing pikes to the Confederate army to compensate for the shortage of guns. A few were made and used for training but were never issued for combat.

Handguns

Colt Army Model 1860

• Colt Army Model 1860- The most popular Colt handgun in the Union Army was a .44 caliber six-shot revolver. Stocks were made that could be screwed onto the butt of the pistol allowing it to be held at the shoulder, increasing range and accuracy. Some had a second function such as a liquor flask or storage for cartridges.

Colt 1861 Navy

• Colt M1861 Navy Similar in size and appearance to the Colt Army, the main difference of the Colt Navy was the change in caliber from .44 to .36 and the fact that it was primarily issued to the US Navy.

Colt 1851 Navy

• The Colt 1851 Navy Revolver was the preferred weapon of the Confederacy and copies were made all over the South in former cotton mills.

Colt Dragoon and Pocket Revolver

• The US Cavalry were issued the .44 caliber Colt Dragoon Revolver: a heavy large-caliber pistol invented during the Mexican War and designed for killing the mounts of charging enemy troopers.

Remington Model 1858

• Remington Model 1858- Colt's chief competitor, Remington Repeating Arms Company, also made revolvers during the Civil War. The most common was the Remington Model 1858. This pistol was highly favored by troops. The Remington had a quick cylinder release catch which made reloading much faster. It was also cheaper than the Colt. It was used in large quantities during the war.

S&W Revolver

John Wilkes Booth's derringer

• Smith & Wesson Model 1 revolvers were used as an alternative to the Colt and Remington. These fired brass rimfire cartridges.
• The double-action Starr revolver was briefly used in the western theater of the war, until the U.S. Ordnance Department persuaded Starr Arms Co. to create a single-action variant after the discontinuation of the Colt. The company eventually complied, and the Union acquired 25,000 of the single-action revolvers for $12 each.

Beaumont-Adams

LeMat revolver

• Beaumont-Adams Revolver - This reliable double-action British handgun was privately purchased by many Northern and Southern officers.
• The 5-shot back-action Kerrs Patent Revolver made by the London Armoury Company was used by Confederate cavalry.
• LeMat Revolver- This revolver was perhaps the most well-known foreign-designed revolver during the Civil War. It had two barrels, one on top of the other. The top barrel could fire up to nine .42 caliber balls while the bottom could fire a 16 gauge shotshell, making it a deadly weapon in theory. The creator, a French doctor living in New Orleans, Jean Alexandre LeMat, moved back to France to create more revolvers for the Confederacy. The French-made revolvers, however, proved unreliable and difficult to manufacture.
• Another pinfire revolver was the Lefaucheux, imported from France by Union and Confederate officers.
• Derringers, pepper-box pocket pistols and small revolvers like the Colt Baby Dragoon or teat-fire were often carried by enlisted men as a backup gun for close-quarters fighting.
• The Elgin Cutlass pistol was issued to navy personnel but proved unpopular with the men and was quickly replaced with the M1860 Cutlass.

French naval pistol. A similar weapon was issued to the USN

• Single-shot caplock pistols copied from the prewar French model were issued to the United States Navy. These had brass barrels to prevent corrosion. Some Confederate cavalry units were equipped with single-shot percussion cap or even flintlock pistols early in the war which were sometimes fitted with stocks to improve accuracy. These had been issued to the US Army in the 1840s but were obsoleted by the time of the Civil War due to the introduction of the Colt revolver.

Rifles

File:P216.jpg

Springfield Model 1861

Lead Minnie bullets for the Enfield and Springfield including (4) a Williams cleaner bullet

File:Springfield1855RifleMusket.JPG

1855 Springfield Musket

• Springfield Model 1861- The Springfield Model 1861 was the most widely-used shoulder arm during the Civil War. It was favored for its range, accuracy, and reliability. The barrel was 40 inches long, firing a .58 caliber Minié ball, and the total weight was approximately 9 pounds. The Springfield had an effective range of almost 600 paces, and used percussion caps to fire rather than the flintlocks of the 1700s. (The last U.S. flintlock musket was the M odel 1840.) The most notable difference between the Model 1861 and the earlier Model 1855 was the elimination of the Maynard tape primer for the Model 1861. The Maynard primer was a self-feeding primer system that was unreliable in damp weather and the priming mechanism was expensive and time-consuming to produce. Further, unlike the Model 1855, the Model 1861 was never produced in a two-banded "rifle" configuration.The Springfield Rifle cost $20 each from the Springfield Armory where they were officially made. Overwhelmed by the demand, the armory released its weapons patterns to twenty private contractors. The most notable producer of contract Model 1861 Springfields was Colt, who made several minor design changes in their version, the "Colt Special" rifled musket. These changes included redesigned barrel bands, a new hammer, and a redesigned bolster. Several of these changes were eventually adopted by the U.S. Ordnance Department and incorporated into the Springfield Model 1863 rifled musket.

2-band Enfield Musketoon

Pattern 1853 Enfield

• Pattern 1853 Enfield- The Enfield 1853 rifled musket was used by both the North and the South in the American Civil War, and was the second most widely used infantry weapon in the war, surpassed only by the Springfield Model 1861 rifled musket. The Confederates imported more Enfields during the course of the war than any other small arms, buying from private contractors and gun runners when the British government refused to sell them arms after it became obvious that the Confederacy could not win the war. It has been estimated that over 900,000 P53 Enfields were imported to America and saw service in every major engagement from the Battle of Shiloh (April, 1862) and the Siege of Vicksburg (May 1863), to the final battles of 1865. At the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry, led by Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain, were armed with Enfield 1853 rifled muskets during their bayonet charge against Confederate forces attempting to destroy their left flank on Little Round Top.

• The Pattern 1861 Enfield Musketoon was a carbine used by artillerymen.

File:Lorenz Musket.jpg

Austrian Lorenz Rifle

• Lorenz Rifle - This Austrian gun was the third-most common musket and was imported by both sides. It fired the same .58 caliber Minie ball as the Enfield and Springfield.

• The 2-band M1841 Mississippi Rifle with sword bayonet was issued to Confederate NCOs.

• The "Richmond" or Fayetteville rifle was a Confederate copy of the Springfields.

• Whitworth rifles sometimes fitted with brass scopes were used by Confederate sharpshooters

Sharps rifle

• Sharps rifle- The Sharps rifle (also known as the Berdan Sharps rifle) was a falling block rifle used during and after the American Civil War. It used a standard percussion cap, the Sharps had a fairly unusual pellet primer feed. This was a device which held a stack of pelleted primers that flipped one over the nipple every time the trigger was pulled and the hammer fell. This was much easier to operate from horseback than individual percussion caps.

• • The Sharps Rifle was used in the Civil War by the U.S. Army sharpshooters known popularly as "Berdan's Sharpshooters" in honor of their leader Hiram Berdan. The Sharps made a superior weapon of higher accuracy than the more commonly issued muzzle-loading rifled-muskets. This was due mainly to the higher rate of fire of the breech loading mechanism and the fact that the quality of manufacture was superior. It was produced by the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut.

• • The carbine version was very popular with the cavalry of both the Union and Confederate armies and was issued in much larger numbers than the full-length rifle. The falling block action lent itself to conversion to the new metallic cartridges developed in the late 1860s, and many of these converted carbines in .50-70 were used during the Indian Wars in the decades immediately following the Civil War.

Colt Revolving Rifle

• Colt revolving rifle - A few of these experimental guns were issued to Berdan's Sharpshooters but due to their unreliability were replaced with Sharps Rifles.

Burnside Carbine

• Burnside carbine - A breech-loader invented by Ambrose Burnside and issued to the US Cavalry.

• Tarpley carbine - A Southern breech-loader which was not widely-produced due to mechanical flaws.

• Smith carbine - patented by Gilbert Smith in 1857.

Henry Rifle

• Henry rifle - The Civil War precursor to the Winchester Rifle based on early lever-action rifles made by Volcanic Repeating Arms Co. These highly-prized weapons were privately purchased by those who could afford them.

File:Spencer-rifle.JPG

Spencer repeating rifle

• Spencer repeating rifle - The Spencer repeating rifle was a manually operated lever-action, repeating rifle fed from a tube magazine with cartridges. It was adopted by the Union army, especially by the cavalry, during the American Civil War, but did not replace the standard issue muzzle-loading rifled muskets in use at the time.

• • The Spencer carbine was a shorter and lighter version. The design was completed by Christopher Spencer in 1860, and was for a magazine-fed, lever-operated rifle chambered for the .56–56 rimfire cartridge. Unlike later cartridge designations, the first number referred to the diameter of the case at the head, while the second number referred to the diameter at the mouth; the actual bullet diameter was .52 inches. Cartridges were loaded with 45 grains (2.9 g) of black powder. To use the Spencer, a lever had to be worked to extract the used shell and feed a new cartridge from the tube. Like the Dreyse breech-loader, the hammer then had to be manually cocked in a separate action. The weapon used rimfire cartridges stored in a seven-round tube magazine, enabling the rounds to be fired one after another. When empty, the tube could be rapidly loaded either by dropping in fresh cartridges or from a device called the Blakeslee cartridge box, which contained up to ten tubes with seven cartridges each, which could be emptied in the magazine tube in the buttstock.

• • There were also .56–52, .56–50, and even a few .56–46 versions of the cartridge created, which were tapered-down versions of the original .56–56. Cartridge length was limited by the action size to about 1.75 inches, and the later calibers used a smaller diameter, lighter projectile and larger powder charge to increase the power and range over the original .56–56 cartridge, which, while about as powerful as the .58 caliber rifled musket of the time, was underpowered by the standards of other early cartridges such as the .50–70 and .45-70.

File:Hall Rifle.jpg

Hall rifle

• M1819 Hall rifle - A single-shot breechloader invented in 1811. A few were used by the Confederacy.

File:Kentucky's.jpg

The Kentucky rifle is an example of a hunting weapon adapted for military use by Confederate sharpshooters.

• Early in the war Confederates would use civilian arms including shotguns and hunting rifles like the Kentucky or Hawken due to the shortage of military weapons. These remained in service as late as 1863.

.69 caliber 1842 musket

• Old smoothbore muskets converted from flintlock to Caplock mechanism were also used, especially by the South, and had calibers as large as .74 which fired buck and ball ammunition: the Model 1816 Musket, Model 1822 Musket, Springfield Model 1835, Springfield Model 1840 Flintlock Musket, Springfield Model 1842, remnants from the War of 1812 like the Brown Bess and Model 1795 Musket, and surplus British Brunswick rifles and Minié rifles.

Grenades

File:1 lb box ketchum.jpg

Ketchum grenade

The Civil War did have crude hand grenades equipped with a plunger that would detonate upon impact. The North relied on experimental Ketchum Grenades, with a tail to ensure the nose would strike the target and start the fuse. The Confederacy used spherical hand grenades that weighed about six pounds, sometimes with a paper fuse. They also used Rains and Adams grenades, which were similar to the ash Ketchum in appearance and mechanism.

Crew weapons

Rapid-fire weapons

Gatling gun at Fort Laramie in Wyoming

The Gatling gun was a multi-barreled, .58 caliber rapid-fire repeating ☺☻gun that was capable of firing 300 rounds per minute that was created by Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling. As the crank was turned, a barrel revolved into place before the breech, a cartridge was inserted and fitted, and the empty shell was extracted in a continuous cycle. As there were multiple barrels, a Gatling gun could be fired for long periods of time without overheating. It was not as popular as common rifles, and saw very little action in the Civil War.

Similar weapons included J.D. Mill's Coffee Mill Gun. Like the Gatling Gun, the cartridges of Mill's invention were fed by a hand crank, and this is why some people believe that President Lincoln called it "the coffee grinder gun". Other infantry support weapons included the .58 caliber Agar gun with a hopper on top and steel guard, and the Billinghurst Requa Battery which had eight banks of cartridge chambers that were rotated into alignment behind the row of 25 barrels.

Chief of Ordnance, General James Wolfe Ripley was against issuing repeating rifles and machine guns to the Union army as he believed it would waste ammunition. Nevertheless several generals including Butler and George B McClellan purchased Gatling Guns. Some were captured by the Confederates after they seized Harper's Ferry arsenal.

The Confederates also used the hand-cranked single barrel Williams Gun and the Vandenburgh volley gun, a volley gun similar to the French Mitrailleuse.

Artillery

Main articles: Field artillery in the American Civil War and Siege artillery in the American Civil War

See also

• French weapons in the American Civil War

References

• Myatt, Frederick (1994). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of 19th Century Firearms: An Illustrated History of the Development of the World's Military Firearms During the 19th Century. Crescent Books. p. 216. ISBN 0517277867.
• Ricketts, Howard (1964). Firearms. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 128.

External links

• Weapons of the Civil War at Smithsonian
• Small Arms of the Civil War
• Artillery, small arms and edged weapons
• Field Artillery of the Civil War
• Civil War Small Arms. National Parks Service. Accessed 14 July 2008.
• Weapon: Burnside Carbine. Antietam on the web. Accessed 15 July 2008.
• Henry rifle

[Category:Military equipment of the American Civil War]]