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Field artillery in the American Civil War refers to the artillery weapons, equipment, and practices used by the artillery branch to support infantry and cavalry forces in the field. It does not include siege artillery , use of artillery in fixed fortifications, coastal or naval artillery .
The 3-inch ordnance rifle, model 1861 was a wrought iron muzzleloading rifled cannon that was adopted by the United States Army in 1861 and widely used in field artillery units during the American Civil War.
Heavy artillery during the Civil War consisted of siege artillery, garrison artillery, and coastal artillery. Siege and garrison artillery were larger versions of field artillery, mounted on heavyweight carriages which allowed them very limited mobility: the M1839 24-pounder smoothbore was the largest one which could still be moved by road.
A few years before the American Civil War, gun manufacturers wrestled with problem of rifling cannons. Bronze was too soft of a metal for rifling, while cast iron was hard enough but too brittle. Parrott attempted to solve this dilemma by inventing a cast-iron rifled cannon that had a wrought-iron reinforcing band wrapped around the breech . [ 3 ]
The M1841 6-pounder field gun was a bronze smoothbore muzzleloading cannon that was adopted by the United States Army in 1841 and used from the Mexican–American War to the American Civil War. It fired a 6.1 lb (2.8 kg) round shot up to a distance of 1,523 yd (1,393 m) at 5° elevation.
Accordingly, Secretary of War John B. Floyd wrote Lieutenant Colonel William J. Hardee on 14 December 1860, "I have to state that the results of trials of rifled cannon and projectiles, under the direction of this department, indicates a superiority of James expanding projectiles for such cannon. The regulation 6-pounder, with a rifled bore ...
Pages in category "American Civil War artillery" The following 42 pages are in this category, out of 42 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. 0–9.
This type of "canon obusier", commonly called in English the 12-pounder Napoleon Model 1857, was the primary cannon used in the American Civil War. [2] [3] Over 1,100 such Napoleons were manufactured by the North, and 600 by the South. [4] At Gettysburg, 142 out of 360 Union guns (39%) were Napoleons.