Weapons of the Civil War

1. Weapons of the Civil War

2. Activity Using the information on the next few slides create an advertisement describing a weapon from the Civil War. Each of you must create a poster, and if you create a commercial to perform in front of the class there is extra credit, this can be done as a group.

3. Types of Weapons All firearms larger than small arms are known as artillery or cannon. Although there were dozens of different types of cannon used during the Civil War, they all fell into one of two categories: smoothbore or rifled cannon.

4. Smoothbore vs. Rifle

5. Artillery Names Designated by the weight of their projectile (12-pounder, 24-pounder, 32-pounder, etc.) The caliber or size of their bore diameter (3-inch, 8-inch, 10-inch), Method of loading (breech or muzzle) Inventor or the factory in which they were made (i.e. Dahlgren, Napoleon, Rodman, Parrott, Whitworth).

6. A further distinction involved the path of their trajectories: • guns had a flat trajectory • mortars a high arching path • howitzer a trajectory between the other two. • Civil War artillery was also classified according to its tactical deployment, including field, seacoast, and siege artillery.

7. The favorite artillery piece in both the Union and the Confederacy was the Napoleon • a smoothbore, muzzle-loading, 12-pounder "gun-howitzer." • Developed for Louis Napoleon of France, it first appeared in the American artillery in 1857. • Relatively light and portable, the Napoleon was used as both an offensive and defensive weapon by both armies. • Initially made of bronze, Napoleons were cast from iron when the South ran short of the other metal. Its maximum effective range was about 1700 yards, but it was most effective at about 250 yards or less

8. The most used rifled guns were the 3-inch Ordnance and 10-pdr Parrott rifles. These cannon were more accurate and had a longer range - up to about 2,300 yards - than their smoothbore counterparts. During most battles, however, the longer range was unnecessary and relatively ineffective. During this period, a gunner had to see his target in order to shoot with any accuracy, and the shorter range Napoleons were adequate for that purpose.

9. Small Arms • Any weapon smaller than a cannon and carried by a soldier was known as a small arm. • During the Civil War, small arms included: • muskets, which were smoothbore, long-barrelled shoulder arms • rifles, shoulder guns with spiral grooves cut into the inner surface of the barrel • carbines, short-barrelledrifles • handguns, including pistols and revolvers.

10. Like artillery, small arms also were designated by their caliber, mode of loading (breech or muzzle), and maker. The principal small arms on both sides were the .5 8 caliber Springfield musket and the .69 caliber Harpers Ferry Rifle, both muzzleloading arms that fired the deadly mini ball.

11. Breech load

12. Muzzle Load

13. New shapes of load Before the introduction of what soldiers commonly called the "minnie ball"-even though it was indeed bullet-shaped-the use of rifles in battle was impractical and largely limited to corps of elite marksmen. Expensive, tight fitting projectiles had to be jammed into the grooves of the rifle's muzzle, a time-consuming process.

14. Minie Ball In 1848 French army Captain Claude F. Minie created a smaller, hollow-based bullet that could far more quickly and easily be rammed into the bore, expanding when the weapon was fired to catch in the rifling and be shot spinning out of the barrel. That spin made the mini ball, like other, more expensive and unwieldy rifle bullets, a highly precise and far traveling projectile. They could reach a half-mile or more, and an average soldier could easily hit a target 250 yards away.

15. Ball Shot v. Minie Ball

16. Edged Weapons Bayonets, sabers, swords, short swords, cutlasses, Bowie knives, pikes, and lances, classified as "edged weapons," appeared in considerable profusion during the Civil War. Although they served to decorate their original possessors and delight modern collectors, they inflicted few casualties. In Regimental Losses Fox points out that of the approximately 250,000 wounded treated in Union hospitals during the war only 922 were the victims of sabers or bayonets.

18. Edged Weapons Swords until recent years in America were the symbol of an officer's authority, and served this primary function in the Civil War. The short artillery sword with which the gunners were supposed to disembowel the horse that had overrun their position and then dispatch the rider-was among the most useless of weapons The lance: serious weapon in the hands of a trained trooper. the weapons shortage in the South led its leaders to give serious consideration to arming troops with lances and pikes.