List of weapons in the American Civil War

merican Civil War weapons refers to weapons that were used during the American Civil War by Union and Confederacy soldiers during the years 1861-1865. During the war, a variety of weapons were used on both sides. These weapons include edged weapons such as knives and swords, firearms such as handguns, rifled-muskets, breech loaders and repeating weapons, various field guns such as artillery, and new weapons such as the early grenade and machine gun.

The Civil War is often to referred as the first "modern" war in history as it included the most advanced technology and innovations of warfare available at the time. Some of the innovations and advances of the Civil War included mass production of war materials, rifling of gun barrels, the advent of repeating firearms and metallic cartridges, ironclad warships, advances in medicine, communication, and transportation, and the gradual decline of tactics from previous centuries.

Edged weapons

Model	Notes
Model 1832 Foot Artillery Sword	Issued to artillerymen. Based on the Roman gladius.
Model 1832 Dragoon Saber
Model 1840 Light Artillery Saber	Issued to mounted artillery.
Model 1840 Army Noncommissioned Officers' Sword	Issued to infantry sergeants. The Marines had their own version.
Model 1840 Cavalry Saber
Model 1860 Light Cavalry Saber
M1860 Cutlass	Issued to naval boarding parties. Sailors also had access to axes, harpoons and grappling hooks.
Model 1850 Army Staff & Field Officers' Sword	The regulation officer's sword, though in practice most officers used cavalry sabers. Southern officers sometimes carried ancestral blades from the War of 1812 or even the American Revolutionary War.
Mameluke sword	Carried by Marine officers.
Bowie knife	Often carried by Confederates instead of bayonets, including the Arkansas toothpick which could be used as a sword in combat, a hatchet to chop wood, a razor and a paddle in emergencies.
Jeb Stuart with cavalry saber 1832 Artillery sword 1860 saber A Mameluke sword Regulation infantry officer's sword

Early in the war Robert E Lee proposed issuing pikes to the Confederate army to compensate for the shortage of guns. A few were made and used for training but were never issued for combat.

Handguns

Model	Notes
Colt Army Model 1860	The most popular Colt handgun in the Union Army was a .44 caliber six-shot revolver. Stocks were made that could be screwed onto the butt of the pistol allowing it to be held at the shoulder, increasing range and accuracy. Some had a second function such as a liquor flask or storage for cartridges.
Colt M1861 Navy	Similar in size and appearance to the Colt Army, the main difference of the Colt Navy was the change in caliber from .44 to .36 and the fact that it was primarily issued to the US Navy.
Colt 1851 Navy Revolver	The preferred weapon of the Confederacy. Copies were made all over the South in former cotton mills.
Colt Dragoon Revolver	Issued to the US Cavalry. A heavy large-caliber pistol invented during the Mexican War and designed for killing the mounts of charging enemy troopers.
Remington Model 1858	Colt's chief competitor, Remington Repeating Arms Company, also made revolvers during the Civil War. The most common was the Remington Model 1858. This pistol was highly favored by troops. The Remington had a quick cylinder release catch which made reloading much faster.It was used in large quantities during the war.
Smith & Wesson Model 1	Used as an alternative to the Colt and Remington. These fired brass rimfire cartridges.
Starr revolver	A double-action revolver which was briefly used in the western theater of the war, until the U.S. Ordnance Department persuaded Starr Arms Co. to create a single-action variant after the discontinuation of the Colt. The company eventually complied, and the Union acquired 25,000 of the single-action revolvers for $12 each.
Beaumont-Adams Revolver	A reliable double-action British handgun was privately purchased by many Northern and Southern officers.
Kerrs Patent Revolver	A 5-shot back-action revolver made by the London Armoury Company was used by Confederate cavalry.
LeMat Revolver	Perhaps the most well-known foreign-designed revolver during the Civil War. It had two barrels, one on top of the other. The top barrel could fire up to nine .42 caliber balls while the bottom could fire a 16 gauge shotshell, making it a deadly weapon in theory. The creator, a French doctor living in New Orleans, Jean Alexandre LeMat, moved back to France to create more revolvers for the Confederacy. The French-made revolvers, however, proved unreliable and difficult to manufacture.
Lefaucheux	A pinfire revolver imported from France by Union and Confederate officers.
Elgin Cutlass pistol	Issued to navy personnel but proved unpopular with the men and was quickly replaced with the M1860 Cutlass
Colt Army Model 1860 Colt 1851 Navy Colt 1861 Navy Colt Dragoon and Pocket Revolver Remington Model 1858 S&W Revolver John Wilkes Booth's derringer Beaumont-Adams LeMat revolver French naval pistol. A similar weapon was issued to the USN

Derringers, pepper-box pocket pistols, and small revolvers like the Colt Baby Dragoon or teat-fire were often carried by enlisted men as a backup gun for close-quarters fighting.

Single-shot caplock pistols copied from the prewar French model were issued to the United States Navy. These had brass barrels to prevent corrosion. Some Confederate cavalry units were equipped with single-shot percussion cap or even flintlock pistols early in the war which were sometimes fitted with stocks to improve accuracy. These had been issued to the US Army until the 1840s but were obsolete by the time of the Civil War due to the introduction of the Colt revolver.

Rifles

Model	Notes
Springfield Model 1861	The Springfield Model 1861 was the most widely-used shoulder arm during the Civil War. It was favored for its range, accuracy, and reliability.
Pattern 1853 Enfield	The Enfield 1853 rifled musket was used by both the North and the South in the American Civil War, and was the second most widely used infantry weapon in the war.
Pattern 1861 Enfield Musketoon	A carbine used by artillerymen.
Lorenz Rifle	This Austrian gun was the third-most common musket and was imported by both sides. It fired the same .58 caliber Minie ball as the Enfield and Springfield.
M1841 Mississippi Rifle	A 2-band rifle with sword bayonet which was issued to Confederate NCOs.
Fayetteville rifle	A Confederate copy of the Springfield rifle.
Richmond Rifle	Confederate copy of the Springfield Model 1861
Whitworth rifle	Sometimes fitted with brass scopes were used by Confederate sharpshooters.
Sharps rifle	The Sharps rifle was a falling block rifle used during and after the American Civil War. The carbine version was very popular with the cavalry of both the Union and Confederate armies and was issued in much larger numbers than the full-length rifle.
Colt revolving rifle	A few of these experimental guns were issued to Berdan's Sharpshooters but due to their unreliability were replaced with Sharps Rifles.
Burnside carbine	A breech-loader invented by Ambrose Burnside and issued to the US Cavalry.
Tarpley carbine
Smith carbine	Patented by Gilbert Smith in 1857.
Henry rifle	The Civil War precursor to the Winchester Rifle based on early lever-action rifles made by Volcanic Repeating Arms Co. These highly-prized weapons were privately purchased by those who could afford them.
Spencer repeating rifle	The Spencer repeating rifle was a manually operated lever-action, repeating rifle fed from a tube magazine with cartridges. It was adopted by the Union army, especially by the cavalry, during the American Civil War, but did not replace the standard issue muzzle-loading rifled muskets in use at the time. The Spencer carbine was a shorter and lighter version.
M1819 Hall rifle	A single-shot breechloader invented in 1811. A few were used by the Confederacy.
Springfield Model 1861 Springfield Model 1861 Lead Minnie bullets for the Enfield and Springfield including (4) a Williams cleaner bullet 1855 Springfield Musket 1855 Springfield Musket 2-band Enfield Musketoon Pattern 1853 Enfield Austrian Lorenz Rifle Austrian Lorenz Rifle Sharps rifle Colt Revolving Rifle Burnside Carbine Henry Rifle Spencer repeating rifle Spencer repeating rifle Hall rifle Hall rifle The Kentucky rifle is an example of a hunting weapon adapted for military use by Confederate sharpshooters. The Kentucky rifle is an example of a hunting weapon adapted for military use by Confederate sharpshooters. .69 caliber 1842 musket

Early in the war Confederates would use civilian arms including shotguns and hunting rifles like the Kentucky or Hawken due to the shortage of military weapons. These remained in service as late as 1863.

Old smoothbore muskets converted from flintlock to Caplock mechanism were also used, especially by the South, and had calibers as large as .74 which fired buck and ball ammunition: the Model 1816 Musket, Model 1822 Musket, Springfield Model 1835, Springfield Model 1840 Flintlock Musket, Springfield Model 1842, remnants from the War of 1812 like the Brown Bess and Model 1795 Musket, and surplus British Brunswick rifles and Minié rifles.

Grenades

File:1 lb box ketchum.jpg

Ketchum grenade

The Civil War did have crude hand grenades equipped with a plunger that would detonate upon impact. The North relied on experimental Ketchum Grenades, with a tail to ensure the nose would strike the target and start the fuse. The Confederacy used spherical hand grenades that weighed about six pounds, sometimes with a paper fuse. They also used Rains and Adams grenades, which were similar to the Ketchum in appearance and mechanism.

Crew weapons

Rapid-fire weapons

Gatling gun at Fort Laramie in Wyoming

The Gatling gun was a multi-barreled, .58 caliber rapid-fire repeating gun that was capable of firing 300 rounds per minute that was created by Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling. As the crank was turned, a barrel revolved into place before the breech, a cartridge was inserted and fitted, and the empty shell was extracted in a continuous cycle. As there were multiple barrels, a Gatling gun could be fired for long periods of time without overheating. It was not as popular as common rifles, and saw very little action in the Civil War.

Similar weapons included J.D. Mill's Coffee Mill Gun. Like the Gatling Gun, the cartridges of Mill's invention were fed by a hand crank, and this is why some people believe that President Lincoln called it "the coffee grinder gun". Other infantry support weapons included the .58 caliber Agar gun with a hopper on top and steel guard, and the Billinghurst Requa Battery which had eight banks of cartridge chambers that were rotated into alignment behind the row of 25 barrels.

Chief of Ordnance, General James Wolfe Ripley was against issuing repeating rifles and machine guns to the Union army as he believed it would waste ammunition. Nevertheless several generals including Butler and George B McClellan purchased Gatling Guns. Some were captured by the Confederates after they seized Harper's Ferry arsenal.

The Confederates also used the hand-cranked single barrel Williams Gun and the Vandenburgh volley gun, a volley gun similar to the French Mitrailleuse.

Artillery

Main articles: Field artillery in the American Civil War and Siege artillery in the American Civil War

See also

• French weapons in the American Civil War

References

• Myatt, Frederick (1994). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of 19th Century Firearms: An Illustrated History of the Development of the World's Military Firearms During the 19th Century. Crescent Books. p. 216. ISBN 0517277867.
• Ricketts, Howard (1964). Firearms. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 128.

External links

• Weapons of the Civil War at Smithsonian
• Small Arms of the Civil War
• Artillery, small arms and edged weapons
• Field Artillery of the Civil War
• Civil War Small Arms. National Parks Service. Accessed 14 July 2008.
• Weapon: Burnside Carbine. Antietam on the web. Accessed 15 July 2008.
• Henry rifle