American Civil War individual weapons

The American Civil War was a modern war, in many ways, first of all

it was fought by armies of Citizen, first enlisted as volunteers,

then enlisted with the conscription. The industrialized north produced

most of the weapons that armed its army, while the south depended above all

from the importation of weapons from Europe and from the use of weapons captured to the enemy.

The war was fought by infantries armies which were armed almost entirely by muzzle-loading

rifled musket of the cap-lock type, the main weapon of the Union Army was the Springfield M1861 rifle,

while the Confederate army mainly used the English rifled musket Enfield M1853, which was imported by the Union too. The cavalry was armed with carbines, short versions of the muskets of the infantry, or breech-loding rifles and caps-locks with cartridge rolling or with metallic cartridge like the Burnside Carbine, and even repeating rifles like the Henry rifle.

 

At the beginning of the war the Confederate also used old smooth-bore muskets, sometimes also flintlocks,

moreover some arsenals of the Confederation produced muskets of the Spingfield type with machinery looted from Harper's Ferry Armory at the beginning of the war.

 

One of the cruelest aspects of the war was the adoption of the Minié ball, invented by a French officer,

this heavy soft lead bullet, designed to fit the rifle rifling, without having to be forced

with the use of the ram-rod and a mallet, unlike the round lead balls of the Napoleonic era,

had devastating effects on the human body, shattering bones and tearing tissues, thus this ball increased the severity of the wounds and moreover it caused severe mutilations to the wounded who survived.

The horrendous effectiveness of this bullet was proved in the French-Piedmontese war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly in the battle of Solferino and San Martino fougth in 1859, at the end of the fighting, which lasted fifteen hours, more than 6000 dead and 40,000 wounded remain on the field. It was on this occasion that a Swiss witness,

Mr. Dunant, saw a terrible spectacle: thousands of soldiers were brought back from the battlefield with terrible wounds, often without arms or legs, only to be left to fend for themselves, as there were no doctors and nurses to lend them the first care, and decided to found the organization of the Red Cross.

 

 

Among the weapons designed, the Morse,the Tarpley carbines and the Mississippi Rifle were used only by Confederate soldiers,

along with the Lefaucheux revolver imported from Europe, the other weapons were used by the Union army or by both the armies like the Enfield pattern 1853 rifled musket.

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