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There were a wide variety of weapons used during the American Civil War, especially in the early days as both the Union and Confederate armies struggled to arm their rapidly-expanding forces. Everything from antique flintlock firearms to early examples of machine guns and sniper rifles saw use to one extent or the other.
The 6-pounder field gun was well represented by bronze Models of 1835, 1838, 1839, and 1841 early in the war. Even a few older iron Model 1819 weapons were pressed into service. Several hundred were used by the armies of both sides in 1861. But in practice the limited payload of the projectile was seen as a shortcoming of this weapon.
During the American Civil War, an assortment of small arms found their way onto the battlefield.Though the muzzleloader percussion cap rifled musket was the most numerous weapon, being standard issue for the Union and Confederate armies, many other firearms, ranging from the single-shot breech-loading Sharps and Burnside rifles to the Spencer and the Henry rifles - two of the world's first ...
In spite of this, few of the carbines were immediately ordered by the government, but this changed with the outbreak of the Civil War, when over 55,000 were ordered for use by Union cavalrymen. [3] This made it the third most popular carbine of the Civil War; only the Sharps carbine and the Spencer carbine were more widely used. [ 4 ]
The Mississippi rifle was the first standard U.S. military rifle to use a percussion lock system. Percussion lock systems were much more reliable and weatherproof than the flintlock systems that they replaced, and were such an improvement that many earlier flintlock rifles and muskets were later converted to percussion lock systems.
The Confederate States Army was the army of the Confederate States of America while the Confederacy existed during the American Civil War. Companies appearing in this list were manufacturers of arms within the Confederate States.
Ripley disobeyed the order and continued to use the old single-shooters, causing him to be replaced as head of the Ordnance Department later that year. [9] The Spencer repeating rifle was first adopted by the United States Navy and later by the United States Army. It was used during the American Civil War, and it became a popular weapon. [19]
The Model 1861 had a general effective range of 200 to 400 yards (180–370 m) but could reliably hit man-sized targets out to 500 yards (460 m) when used by marksmen, and used percussion caps which were much more reliable and weather resistant to fire (rather than the flintlocks of the 18th century; the last U.S. flintlock musket was the ...