The Rifle Into The Federal Army

The history of firearms has changed dramatically since the late 1700’s. A rifle is no longer defined as a single shot, muzzle loading musket. Should

The Union army, unlike the Confederates, had multiple companies that provided simple, yet devastating weapons. One of these weapons was the .52 caliber breech-loading Billinghurst-Requa battery; it was produced only 50 times. This weapon consisted of 25 rifled barrels side by side that, when primed, were set off by a lanyard to inflict massive damage over a small range of territory.7

     Riffles were another major contribution to the war, as far as weapons were concerned. The union forces had One of the most popular riffles was the Model 1861 Springfield Musket. The Springfield Musket weighed 9.25 pounds, had a twenty-one inch socket bayonet, and fired a .58 caliber mine ball traveling 950 feet per second. Riffled Muskets, which were also known as Enfields, were the second most popular riffles in the war. These Enfields, had a bore diameter of .557 inches, and weighed nine pounds three ounces. They were accurate at 800 yards, and could travel up to 1,100 yards without any difficulty. During the course of the war, 400,000 Enfields were sold to the Union troops, whereas a mere 20,000 were purchased by the confederate army. Although this weapons wasn’t as popular as the Springfield, the Enfield still packed a powerful punch at 1,100 yards (Ripley 43).

Prior to the Civil War during the Napoleonic era, artillery was a smoothbore weapon system primarily forged with bronze. These systems were very large, cumbersome, horse drawn and difficult to move into battle. However, near the end of the Napoleonic Era the Gribeauval system would improve cannon systems by casting them out of a solid piece of bronze, and boring out the center. This new Napoleonic invention increased range and accuracy, ultimately, establishing the cornerstone of rifled artillery.1

On February 25, 1932, the Army Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur, put an end to the caliber issue, stating "this change will introduce an element of chaos, confusion and uncertainty which, when magnified under war conditions, would more than counteract the beneficial effect of any semi-automatic rifle." With this statement, MacArthur ordered the development of a .30 caliber rifle. This did not delay Garand's work because he had already developed a design to fire the .30 caliber on his own time in anticipation of such an event. Two more years would pass before the rifle was adopted as the United States Rifle, M1 on January 9, 1936. The United States became the first country in history to adopt a semi-automatic rifle as its standard military rifle after this event. Problems beset the M1 as it was first being issued. They occurred in the area where expanding gases of the fired bullets were tapped from the barrel to operate the rifle and the rifle suffered stoppages after firing only seven of the eight rounds in its clip.

Colt’s Impact on Society Through Samuel Colt’s simple invention of the revolver, he gave Americans the ability to defend themselves with accuracy, improved military power against the world, and impacted gun laws in today's society. Many people believe the .45 Peacemaker was the gun that started the expansion out west. Giving the average Joe an opportunity to defend and protect their own freehold. Although it gave the ability for self defense, it also offered a militaristic advantage, producing a more advanced weapon then the opponents were capable of creating.

Next in the development of machine guns came the Maxim, the machine gun with only one barrel. This gun with a belt of bullets that fed in one side and the empty belt came out the other side. It used the explosion from the bullets firing to load the next bullet. With the use of different

During the time of the Civil war, Pistols, and other basic handheld, guns were very popular, for a soldier to have. It was known for its capability of hitting a target from a short distance. Before people started changing the way weapons were, a small handheld pistol gun, that held one bullet, was considered, “the best” before, innovations, were performed. infantry soldiers would use muskets with one bullet at a time, shooting as far as 250 yards. However, if exact persistent location for the bullet to hit is needed, 80 yards would be the furthest distance to shoot from. If a soldier had a pistol as his main weapon, commanders, and generals, taught them different war tactics on getting closer, to your target to be within the 80 yards, with a pistol.

A firearm is one of the weapons that may be used when hunting. A firearm utilizes pressure produced from the burning of gunpowder to create gas. The pressure produced from the burning powder propels a projectile out of the barrel at a target. In rifles and most handguns the barrel has rifling on the inside of the barrel to make the projectile spin to travel better in the air. Rifling are groove that spin as they go through the inside of the barrel. Shotgun barrels are smooth and can fire “slugs”, a single projectile, or “shot”,

Calcium floodlights were mainly used by the Union soldiers as made it easy to see and they soldiers were able to blind Confederate soldiers (8 Unusual Civil War Weapons"). One of the more creative weapons was a blanket used by Confederate soldiers (8 Unusual Civil War Weapons"). As strange as this sounds, the Confederate soldiers used the blanket to catch explosives and throw it back in the enemy's direction. My personal favorite weapon used was a hot air balloon. It was shocking when it say that hot air balloons were used to give a large view of the battlefield. (Appendix A) This was more commonly a Union weapon as the Confederacy lacked good, quality materials to build a durable balloon (“8 Unusual Civil War Weapons"). Like the machine guns and swords, rockets were actually used in the Civil War (“8 Unusual Civil War Weapons"). Although there were very few appearances from rockets, they still did help play a part by doing their job! The Confederacy used Congreve rockets as well (“Weapons”). They were around three feet and two inches long and filled with gunpowder. Although they could be powerful, they missed quite often and were pretty useless (“Weapons”). Used by both the Confederacy and the Union, underwater mines were useful to blow up the opponent's ship. Although the Union tried the underwater mines, the Confederacy had more success as they blew up dozens of the Union’s ships while the Union blew up only six Confederate ships (“8 Unusual Civil War

The Union soldiers were more likely to carry the U.S. Model 1861 Springfield Rifle-Musket than any other weapon. These guns were not the easiest or most convenient weapons even if they were the most common. The Model 1861 was a .58 caliber gun, was 58.5 inches long, and weighed in at a heavy 9.25 pounds. This rifle was nicknamed "The Widow Maker." This nickname was made with great thanks to the minie` bullet which was an integral part of this rifle-musket. The combination of the rifle-musket and the minie` bullet forever changed the face of warfare; thus because for the first time ever, men could aim at a distant target, and have a decent chance of hitting it. This luxury allowed the gun-bearers to hide in a safe place, yet still be able to knock down their target. Colonel George Hanger, an American Revolution officer, wrote in 1814:

In wars prior to the Civil War, soldiers wielded weapons such as the musket which shot only one bullet at a time. Though these types of weaponry could shoot as far as 250 yards, they were inconvenient and wasted time. To even aim at the target accurately one had to be 80 yards away. Similarly to muskets, rifles were inconvenient because they took a while to reload because the bullet was almost the same size of the barrel and again, wasted time. Bullets with a pointed tip were created in 1848 by Claude Minie. Because the diameter of the bullets were smaller than the barrel, soldiers could put them into the gun quicker and more effectively. With Minie’s bullets, rifles were simpler to reload but still had to be reloaded with one bullet at a time. That unprotected gap of time made soldiers more vulnerable so in 1849 a repeating rifle called the Volitional Repeater was patented by Walter Hunt. They were popularized in 1863 during the Civil War. By this time many models were being sold but the most common one was the Spencer Carbine which could shoot seven bullets in just 30 seconds. These, like most Civil War era weapons, were produced and used by the North, but not

A pistol, at times, could have decided whether a soldier would live or die in combat depending on the situation. Another factor which made the pistol a very important weapon was the fact that the pistol could be reloaded much faster than a rifle (Slayton 12).

Muzzleloaders are the weapons that Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone carried afield with them during their bear hunts, Indian fights, and battles. Today there are two basic types of muzzleloaders used for hunting—primitive and in-line. Both are based upon the premise that the shooter pours powder down the end of the gun barrel, and then rams a slug or ball down on top of it to load the gun.

The long range infantry weapon of the 1700’s was the musket. The musket is stronger than the bow and arrow. The kinetic energy and momentum of an 18mm musket ball shooting from a Brown Bess musket are 1460 joules and 9.36 kg*m/s. The kinetic energy and momentum of an arrow being shot from a bow are 16.5 joules and 1.15 kg*m/s. The musket ball clearly has a much stronger momentum and kinetic energy than the arrow, which means it has more stopping power. Firearms of the 1700’s also have much greater maximum range than bows and arrows. If a Brown Bess was fired at a forty five degree angle in a frictionless environment, the musket ball would travel 9783 meters. If a bow fired it’s arrow at forty-five degrees in a frictionless environment, it would travel only one hundred and nineteen meters. The musket has more than eighty-two times the maximum range of the bow and arrow. Some might say that bows and arrows are stronger than muskets, but that is not entirely true. Most people refer to muskets and rifles of the eighteen and nineteenth century only as smooth-bore barrel muskets. Muskets barrels later became rifled in the nineteenth century and are much more accurate than their smooth-bore relatives. Not only are muskets more lethal than bows and arrows, but cannons and artillery are more lethal than medieval catapults.