CHAPTER 4 The Rifle, The Primer, The Ball

The rifle was the major tactical weapon of the war. Rifles were issued to armies both North and South. These were mainly new weapons, of novel pattern. Basic to both fighting forces were Springfield rifles Models 1855 and 1861, and the British 1853-56 Enfields bought by the hundred thousands from abroad. Despite the scarcity of many goods in the South as the conflict dragged on, rifles were usually in ample supply.
But the significant thing was that the rifle, as a weapon of war, was brand new. A rifle could fire a bullet with man-killing accuracy over 800 yards, much farther than the effective range of the smoothbore muskets which had been supplanted by rifles in the infantry for only a half dozen years. And the battles of the War were fought with tactics adapted to musketry engagements. The slaughter created by this mixing of old and new patterns of fighting was terrible, and resulted in making the American Civil War the bloodiest conflict of modern times.

Rifle Effect at Fredericksburg

In Burnside’s assault on the high ground south of Fredericksburg, Union troops with fixed bayonets charged a fortified position occupied by 6,000 Confederate troops and 20 guns. Many of these were riflemen. While some troops, notably Meagher’s brigade, reached the stone wall at the base of the hill, they were cut to pieces on the way. Meanwhile their supporting columns had become exposed to the longer range canister and case fire of Confederate artillery batteries. The whirling balls delivered in a cannon burst at a thousand yards cut the troops down. Joe Hooker was ordered by Burnside to renew the assault. Hooker’s report claimed the fire of the enemy now became still hotter. The stone wall was a sheet of flame that enveloped the head of the column. Officers and men fell so rapidly that orders could not be passed. Officers with flashing sabers (cost $20, deducted from the officer’s pay) and enlisted men with rifles and bayonets fixed (stand complete, $20) charged at the run, as their ancestors had done a century before in Europe, offering to cool marksmen targets two feet wide and five feet high. Only sheer weight of numbers allowed part of the Union lines to reach the emplaced Confederates, and the assault failed. Fredericksburg rated as one of the greatest slaughters of the war.

Rifle Capabilities Already Known

Yet the awful capabilities of the rifle were not unknown to men on both sides. The papers enjoyed publishing incidents of marksmanship matches. The Baltimore Sun in March, 1856 recounted an anecdote of the War of 1812. Colonel William Stansbury’s First Rifle Regiment amused themselves in shooting, Captain Ezekiel Burke frequently cutting off small bird’s heads, and in a match with a great shot from Kentucky, for $100 at sixty yards off-hand. Burke won, putting three balls in the same hole so that until they were cut out of the tree all thought his last two shots had missed the mark. Unfortunately, wide issue of rifles was not at that time accompanied by any scientific study of the change in field tactics they dictated.
Rifle shooting was popular in some areas of the country. German settlers in the Ohio Valley—men who later were to make up a large part of Franz Sigel’s beer-drinking soldiers—were expert riflemen. At a meeting of an Ohio rifle club just before the Civil War, 30 men put 10 shots each inside a 10-inch circle at 300 yards. It is also recorded that at a distance of threefourths of a mile, many shots had been put inside a flour barrel without a miss.

Examples of Effect of Rifle Fire During the Civil War

There were plenty of individual opportunities for combatants to learn the range of rifle fire. From a distance of nearly half a mile the Rebel sharpshooters drew a bead on us with a precision which deserved the highest commendation of their officers, but which made us curse the day they were bom, wrote William Henry De Forest in A Volunteer’s Adventures.
One incident proves, I think, he continued, that they were able to hit an object further off than they could distinguish its nature. A rubber blanket, hung over the stump of a sapling five feet high, which stood in the center of our bivouac, was pierced by a bullet from this quarter. A minute later a second bullet passed directly over the object and lodged in a tree behind it. I ordered the blanket to be taken down, and
then the firing ceased. Evidently the invisible marksman eight hundred yards away had mistaken it for a Yankee.
Even more graphic in the clash of battle is De Forest’s description of a fire-fight involving his Twelfth Connecticut opposed by the Second Alabama:
We laid a line of logs along the crest of the knoll, cut notches in them, and then put on another tier of logs, thus providing ourselves with portholes. With the patience of cats watching for mice the men would peer for hours through the portholes, waiting for a chance to shoot a rebel; and the faintest show of a hat above the hostile fortifications, indistinguishable to the naked eye, would draw a bullet. By dint of continual practice many of our fellows became admirable marksmen. During one of the truces the Confederates called to us, ‘Aha, you have some sharpshooters over there!’
“After the surrender an officer of the Second Alabama told me that most of their casualties were cases of shots between the brim of the hat and the top of the head; and that once having held up a hoe handle to test our marksmanship, it was struck by no less than three bullets in as many minutes. The distance from parapet to parapet was not great; our men sighted it on their Enfields as one hundred and fifty yards. . . Several of our men were shot in the face through the portholes as they were taking aim. One of these unfortunates, I remember, drew his rifle back, set the butt on the ground, leaned the muzzle against the parapet, turned around, and fell lifeless. He had fired at the moment he was hit, and two or three eyewitnesses asserted that his bullet shivered the edge of the opposite porthole, so that in all probability he and his antagonist died together. It must be understood that these openings were just large enough to protrude the barrel of a musket and take sight along it.
Firing from a parapet rest, protected by trench or decline, was something new to ways of War in 1861. Traditional officers, striving to make their volunteers fight like Regulars, often contributed to the deaths of their command by blind stupidity in obedience to the rule book. De Forest’s Twelfth Connecticut were on one occasion ordered to Halt! Fire by File! Commence Firing!
The men could not wait to fire by file, remarked De Forest, which is a gradual discharge running from right to left of each company; they leveled those five hundred rifles together and sent a grand, crashing volley into the hostile line of smoke which confronted them; for as yet we could see no other sign of an enemy. In the next second everyone was loading his piece as if his life depended on the speed of the operation.
“… It was the last stop or pause in our advance. We had been drilled long enough under fire, and we broke away from the lieutenant colonel. Once he tried his utmost to make us halt, dress the line and give a volley, as Regulars are said to do in battle. But he might as well have ordered a regiment of screeching devils to halt. On we swept in the teeth of canister and
musketry, every man loading and firing as last as possible. There was such a pressure inward toward the colors that some of my lightweights were crowded out of place, and we were three ranks deep instead of two.
The effect of two charges against hidden riflemen was bloodily typical of such attacks. At the battle of Seven Pines, Townsend requested permission of General Meagher to view the battlefield and relics. Meagher said, in his musical brogue, that I need only look around, wrote Townsend in Rustics in Rebellion.
‘From the edge of that wood,’ he (Meagher) said, ‘the Irish brigade charged across this field, and fell upon their faces in the railway cutting below. A regiment of Alabamians lay in the timber beyond, with other Southerners in their rear, and on both flanks. They thought that we were charging bayonets, and reserved their fire till we should approach within butchering distance. On the contrary, I ordered the boys to lie down, and load and fire at will. In the end, sir, we cut them to pieces, and five hundred of them were left along the swamp fence, that you see. There isn’t fifty killed and wounded in the whole Irish brigade.’
But Yankees as well went down before the withering fire of skilled riflemen. While the excitement of battle may have thrown many an untrained soldier into a panic, it also served to steady many an eye and aim by the*realization of the earnestness of the business at hand. Especially with the Southern troops, active participation in fire fights was the rule. More than their mechanic and workman counterparts in the Yankee forces, Johnny Rebs were outdoor men, accustomed to eking out their meager livings on poor ridge farms, with the capabilities of their squirrel rifles. They, as infantry soldiers, had a predisposition to shoot, and did.
Townsend gives another example of rifle-fire effect during the Civil War: A large number of Southern riflemen threw themselves into a corner of wood, considerably advanced from their main position. Their fire was so destructive that General Banks felt it necessary to order a charge. Two brigades, when the signal was given, marched in line of battle, out of a wood, and charged across a field of broken ground toward the projecting corner. As soon as they appeared, sharpshooters darted up from a stretch of scrub cedars on their right, and a battery mowed them down by an oblique fire from the left. The guns up the mountainside threw the shells with beautiful exactness, said Townsend, who was an Englishman and could view the annihilation of Union men with equanimity, and the concealed riflemen in front poured in deadly showers of bullet and ball. As the men fell by dozens out of line, the survivors closed up the gaps, and pressed forward gallantly. The ground was uneven, however, and a solid order could not be observed throughout. At length, when they had gained a brookside at the very edge of the wood, the column staggered, quailed, fell into disorder, and then fell back. Some of the more desperate dashed singly into the thicket, bayoneting their enemies, and falling in turn in the fierce grapple.
Others of the Confederates ran from the wood, and engaged hand to hand with antagonists and, in places, a score of combatants met sturdily upon the plain, lunging with knife and sabre bayonet, striking with clubbed musket, or discharging revolvers. But at last the broken lines regained the shelter of the timber, and there was a momentary lull in the thunder.
Just how typical were these two charges of standingup infantry against concealed riflemen is shown by the vital—really vital—Federal statistics of the battle at Cedar Creek.
Our casualties at Cedar Creek were 569 killed, 3,425 wounded, 1,429 prisoners, and 341 missing, in all 5,764. Early (Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early, CSA) conceded a loss of 1,860 killed and wounded, and we took about 1,200 prisoners, making a total of near 3,100, reported De Forest.
It must be confessed that we bought our victory at a dear rate, he continued. For instance, we had 4,000 men hit to the enemy’s 1,800, although we were fully double their number, and presumably used twice as many cartridges.
“As I have said before, they were obviously the best shots, and their open-order style of fighting was an economical one. Moreover, when they retreated, they went in a swarm and at full speed, thus presenting a poor mark for musketry. We, on the contrary, sought to retire in regular order, and suffered heavily for it.

Characteristics of the Rifle

What was this wonder weapon of the day? What strange power possessed this not-at-all secret weapon which the United States Army had been considering for some years, and on which the Ordnance Department had comprehensive studies embracing the use, design, and manufacture in detail? Perhaps the power was so simple that military minds did not grasp the full importance of it: with a rifle, a trained marksman could hit where he aimed.
Fundamentally, a rifle is a gun with grooves in the barrel. These grooves run the length of the barrel from breech to muzzle. In very primitive rifles, these grooves may have been straight. Later, the grooves became cut in a spiral so that the bullet spun as it left the bore. The word itself is derived from from an old German word, riffeln, to groove.
The reasons behind the development of rifles are twofold—the first is a self-evident reason; the second, accidental. Straight rifling was created in an attempt to reduce bore friction in charging a muzzle-loading weapon. Old smoothbore muskets were loaded with round balls of lead. The diameter of the bullet was smaller than the diameter of the bore. For example, the common infantry musket of .69 caliber used a bullet .64 inches in diameter. This reduction permitted the gun to be loaded, even though it had a coating of black powder fouling on the bore surface from preceding shots. But as the fouling became heavier from shooting, the muzzle-loading routine became more difficult.

Development of the Rifle and its Bullet 

The matchlock muskets used in European warfare in the 1650’s were loaded with wooden ramrods. After a number of shots, the wooden ramrods broke and the guns were rendered useless. The employment of a stiff, strong iron ramrod was a distinct invention, and gave the troops of Swedish ruler Gustavus Adolphus supremacy in the field when he first tried steel or iron ramrods. This was one step forward. Another step was to cut away a part of the bore to permit the fouling to collect in the grooves. This was the first straight rifling.
Bullets that were undersized had the habit of bounding down the barrel on discharge, striking first one point on the bore and then another. When the bullet left the muzzle it might strike yards off the target, in any direction, depending on the last bounce it made in its hectic journey from breech to muzzle. This was wholly unpredictable and resulted in poor accuracy. With the grooved barrel, bullets that more closely fitted the bore could be used, with a consequent increase in musket accuracy.
But the straight grooved barrels, occurring very early in arms development in middle Europe, were quickly obsoleted by spiral rifling. The spiral acted on the flight of the bullet as the fletching does to the arrow. By causing the bullet to rotate in the air, a fresh angle of the front of the bullet was constantly exposed to the wind, resistance. The rotation of the bullet about its own axis kept the bullet from drifting off its path. The tight fit achieved with part of the rifling cutting into the bullet gave more force by confining the powder for better combustion, high compression, and by avoiding the bounding of the bullet in the barrel, balloting.
While commercial arms, notably the Tyrolean Long Jaeger and the American Kentucky sporting arms, were rifled in the early 1700’s, the adoption of rifling by the military powers of the world was put off for more than a century. There was good reason. Rifling was impractical under battle conditions, using solid round bullets. The bullet wrapped in greased cloth patches, like that for the Jaeger or Kentucky rifle bullet, was too slow for military field fighting. When the backwoodsman could select his targets, the Kentucky was supreme. In the melee of the battlefield it was of limited use. Captain Minie made the rifle practical for war. The minney ball was the standard rifle bullet of both sides in the conflict.

The Minie Ball 

Captain Minie’s invention was quite simple, yet it had the advantage of being the first of its kind. Such a thing is patentable, and indeed the astute Frenchman did patent the bullet. As a consequence the British Government paid M. Minie £ 20,000 for the rights to a simple shaping of lead—a bullet of modern conical form, with a hollow base and an iron cup in the base.
Minie’s principle was simplicity itself. Round bullets balloted or were too difficult to load. Conical bul-

Many tests were conducted under Jefferson Davis’ tenure as War Secretary to apply the Maynard tape primer to patent arms of different types. Shown is Symmes under-lever breechloader with dropping block somewhat like the Sharps. Two-band musketoon was styled for dragoons and Navy; few were made.

lets were heavier for the same caliber, and thus would range farther and with more force. Conical bullets were more accurate than round bullets. The problem: to load a conical bullet that would, on firing, completely seal the bore. Minie used the hollow base and iron cup design, built into a bullet that was much smaller than the bore and dropped easily down a clean barrel and a little more stiffly down a dirty barrel.
When gunpowder is ignited in a gun chamber, a very abrupt pressure rise occurs. A peak pressure is reached almost immediately, and then the pressure drops as the bullet travels out the barrel. This pressure rise is so rapid as to be a blow on the base of the bullet. With the Minie ball this blow drove the cup into the soft lead, expanding the skirt of the bullet to bore diameter. The wedge shape of the cup, and the speed at which this happened, kept the bullet centered for accuracy, and yet gave maximum force by completely blocking the rush of gas past a too-small bullet.
Minie was not the first to try this. In 1841, shortly after the adoption of the round-ball Brunswick rifle by the British, a Birmingham gunmaker named W. Greener invented an expanding bullet. It was a round ball with a tapered hole in the surface. A plug was stuck in the hole. On loading, the plug was driven down with the last motion of the ramrod, and this expanded the bullet, sealing the bore. Greener’s design was published in his book on shooting, in 1841, and the Greener people are of the belief that Captain Minie saw this and copied the expanding plug idea from Greener. In token of his claims to priority, the Crown later awarded Greener a tardy £ 1,000, probably to shut him up rather than as an award for an invention of merit. The truth was that Greener in 1841 was behind the times, designing a round ball for rifles. Here Minie had the advantage, and the Frenchman used a conical or picket bullet.
During the War there were two major minney muskets, the Enfield built in England, and the Springfield pattern of 1855, with wartime modifications.

Jefferson Davis’s Influence

It was under Secretary of War Jefferson Davis that the small arms program of the United States underwent a complete transformation. He found the Army’s weapons to be muzzle-loading muskets; when he left office, rifled muskets had been developed, mechanical cap-primers built into the lock mechanisms, and extensive trials with breechloaders conducted. Not one to play excessive favorites among manufacturers, he procured sample lots of hundreds each of a number of revolvers and new carbines, to test them in terms of their patentee’s claims and the actual needs of the several services.
Davis eventually owned quite a representative collection of small arms, many of them military. Some were received as gifts from arms makers; others he undoubtedly bought or received from friends. One gift survives only in part: a handsome brace of Colt Ml851 Navy revolvers complete with detachable shoulder stock. This set very likely was received by him during his tenure as Secretary of War, and was a personal gift from Colt. The outfit was a display for the desk or mantelpiece, constituting, as it did, a set of arms for service, for it was put up in the special glass-topped casing, without partitions, which Colt reserved for very special clients and friends. A complete set like this is a cased rifle and Navy pistol en suite which Colt gave to Elisha Root; this handsome outfit is still preserved in the Colt collection in Hartford. The set of pistols owned by Davis has been scattered; one gun, fitted with the stock studs in the frame, is in the Confederate White House memorial museum in Richmond. In another room, the Florida room, is the glass-topped special box, smaller than the Elisha Root chest and without the gold lettering, but unmistakably of the same workmanship. I tried to get Miss India Thomas, the gracious custodian of these items to rejoin the pistol and the case, but she stated this could not be done. Of much greater interest to the collector would be the location of an experimental carbine about which Colt wrote in 1855, saying to Root that he must push along the work on the model arms including the carbine with Maynard tape primer to please the fancies of the present Secretary of War. If Davis had any favorite, it was the application of the novel Maynard tape primer to musket, pistol, and carbine.

The Maynard Tape Primer

Forerunner of today’s toy paper cap for children’s pistols, the roll of varnished detonating pellets Dr. Edward Maynard invented made more money for him
than a lifetime of pulling teeth. Maynard’s title of doctor was evidently as a doctor of dental surgery. Why or how he came to invent his priming device is not recorded, but pelletizing the detonating compound recalls the pelletizing of dental amalgam before the hearty doctor jams it into the tooth cavity he has chopped out, and peens it down with his tools. The musketeer used a small brass cap shaped like a plug hat, with four or six petals in the brim. The inner top was spread with priming, varnished to make it moisture proof in storage. To prime the gun, the cap was placed on the nipple and the hammer snapped from full cock. Since this miniscule item was not easily pulled from its fleece-lined cap pouch by a man with cold or clumsy fingers, the design left much to be desired. Sportsmen solved the dilemma by inventing a turnip-sized brass magazine to carry 20 or 50 caps which, driven by an internal spring, popped into steel spring fingers at the exit of the magazine. The gunner could easily slip the cap over the nipple and, upon withdrawing the cap magazine, the cap pulled easily free of the retaining fingers. But few military men had the opportunity to acquire such an item and it was not Government issue. Maynard’s conception allowed the soldier to charge the musket lock itself with a supply of spare priming, avoiding both the extra operations and the hazards of individually capping for each shot.
Individual prime pellets were stuck on strong paper tape. A thin top layer of tape was glued over this, all well varnished to make it waterproof. The tape was coiled, with 25 primers for pistols and carbines, or 50 primers for the larger locks of muskets and rifles.
Attached to the lock plate forward of the hammer, or built into the lock plate itself if the plate was forged big enough, was a round cavity closed by a swinging trap door. Such a priming magazine was fitted to many of the Sharps guns, 1853 and ’55 models, and to the Massachusetts Arms Company revolvers designed by Joshua Stevens. When the hammer is cocked, an attached pawl or hand like in a common revolver moves the cap tape one pellet space and upon pulling the trigger, the hammer in falling shears off the exposed cap shoved out a slit in top of the priming box and explodes it on the nipple. With good caps and a sharpedged hammer, the Maynard tape primer is a decided improvement upon common musket caps. Perhaps Jefferson Davis thought of the troubles his men had with common caps, in loading their Mississippi Rifles during the Mexican War. At any rate, he was a firm booster of the Maynard primer. Further, he had the approval of past years to guide him, for Maynard’s invention had already been applied to Government muskets and sums of money paid out to him for the royalty rights.
In March, 1845, the Ordnance Department contracted with Maynard for the right to apply his lock to 4,000 muskets, paying him $4,000. The contract included the right reserved to the Government to put Maynard locks on 10,000 additional arms for payment of $7,500; or to 20,000 arms for payment of
$10,000; or 100,000 arms upon payment of $25,000. If any greater number were desired, the price was to be negotiated, but in no case was to run over 25$ per arm.
The first lot of guns so altered was 200 Model 1840 flintlock muskets, converted by Daniel Nippes of Philadelphia to percussion (drum conversion) with special flat-shanked hammer and Maynard box attached to the lock plate. These arms were issued in the Ninth Military Department for field trials. On February 9, 1848, Nippes contracted to modify 1,000 muskets to Maynard primer percussion at $4 each and on November 22, 1848, an additional 1,000 at $3. The cover of these primer mechanisms is stamped, Maynard’s Patent Washington 1845 or Edward Maynard Patentee 1845.
When Jefferson Davis assumed office he felt the Maynard primer deserved a little greater test and accordingly sewed up Maynard by payment of an additional $50,000. For this sum, to be paid in three equal installments (except for the odd penny), Maynard on February 3, 1854 sold to the Government the right to use his design without restriction on Army or Navy small arms.
Remington Arms Company in Ilion having faithfully filled its earlier contracts for U. S. Rifles M1841, the Government again turned to them for the primer conversions. Always an under bidder, Remington received a contract to alter 20,000 muskets to tape primer at $3.15 each, on September 9, 1854. The alteration included a new, somewhat longer lock plate, marked Remington’s/ Ilion, NY/ 1857/ US, behind the hammer. Though the hammer spur of this Remington Maynard Primer lock is relatively rabbit eared, that is to say, long, the form of hammer, hinged Maynard magazine door or cover, and cone seat on the barrel, are all quite similar to that shape shortly afterwards standardized by Jefferson Davis when he approved the new model U. S. Rifle Model 1855.

Credit Harpers Ferry Arsenal

No one now can be credited for developing this important design which was to be the basis for production of some million pieces during the war. Probably it took form under direction of Master Armorer Anderson or his assistant, James H. Burton, at Harpers Ferry, though Colonel H. K. Craig, Chief of Ordnance, superseding Talcott, may have had something to do with its styling. The forms of the lock adapted to the Remington conversion entered into it, and the backwardcurving hammer was necessary to surround the shape of the Maynard primer magazine. Harpers Ferry Arsenal was preferred in this period to Springfield as a place of development (the U. S. Rifle 1841 had first been developed there) because of its closeness to Washington. To Harpers Ferry Arsenal in Virginia, then, belongs a rather dubious dual credit. It was this arsenal which originated the new standard rifle of the Union. It was this Arsenal that supplied, at first, tools and know-how from which Springfield Armory set up its production lines. It was this arsenal also that supplied the machinery which by capture went to the Richmond Arsenal for use by the Confederacy and it was this arsenal which supplied, in the person of Assistant Master Armorer James H. Burton, a man whose technical skill contributed materially to the strength of the South. As a site for experiments by Ordnance officers acting on direct orders from Washington, it was ideal.

Huger’s Tests

Colonel Benjamin Huger (later General Huger, C.S.A.) conducted tests in the winter of 1853-4 with a representative selection of then-modern rifles and muskets from several countries. Some were specially-constructed United States experimental arms applying the a tige principle of the Thouvenin system, and others. The experiments by Huger and Lieutenant J. G. Benton both at Harpers Ferry and at Springfield, together with technical extracts from the writings of L. Panot, instructor in riflery at Vincennes, and experiments by Colonel Gordon conducted at the Enfield Royal Small Arms Factory in England in 1853, were ordered printed by Colonel H. K. Craig, for the use of the Army, and for distribution to the militia, not doubting that it will afford information useful and interesting to both . .
For Huger, seven rifles were made at Harpers Ferry in 1852-53 of musket caliber .69, and three of regulation .54 rifle bore. All were rifled with five grooves, commencing at the breech .02 inches deep and lessening in a slight choke to the muzzle at .0125-inch depth. Twists short as one in 4 feet were tried, to one in 6 feet; uniform twist and gain twist. Each rifle had a tige fitted inside to the breech plug; and the Thouvenin or Delvigne type solid conical bullet was used, as well as the cup-based bullets of the Minie form.
Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, were musket barrels cut to 33 inches (same length for all guns). Nos. 8 and 9 were special barrels, a little heavier, each weighing nearly one pound more than the others. No. 5 rifle had a cast steel barrel from the U. S. 1841 rifle, reamed up to musket caliber, and weighed 4 Vi ounces more than the first type. Nos. 6 and 7 were also rifle barrels, prepared for the test. Gun No. 10 was a regulation rifle (1841) barrel, without any alteration in its construction. The rifling depth of this bore was uniform, .02-inch, from breech to muzzle. Guns 6 and 7 (rifle caliber .54), were very little used. They were not fitted with the tige nor tried with the original Minie bullet which was .69; the first modification of the Minie bullet did not answer in the smaller caliber so these rifles are not listed in the table of experiments.
The five-groove bore was chosen, said Huger, because with expanding bullets there should be an odd number with a groove opposite each land; for when the ball is forced or expanded into the rifling, “each land tends to push the opposite part of the ball into a groove, consequently the ball is less deformed than where the number of grooves is even, when a land would be opposite a land, and a groove opposite a
groove.
Though modern-day rifle barrel maker G. R. Douglas, whose shop is not far away in Charleston, West Virginia, might be surprised at this technical information (his ultrarifled super-accurate barrels are 8-groove), the odd-groove idea was widely believed in the 1850’s. Conclusions from these shooting tests, at ranges from 200 to 880 yards, affected the design of the ultimately-adopted 1855 rifle.
It was discovered that a twist greater than 1 turn in 6 feet increased the lateral deviation of the ball at the target. A twist spinning the ball from left to right caused the bullet to go to the right of point of aim; a left twist sent the ball to the left. In the rifles having twists of one turn in 4 or 5 feet, it was found necessary to adjust the sights to compensate for this drift at long distances. Using the regulation 1841 rifle, one in six, the derivation as the French called this drift, was not appreciable at 500 yards range. Gain twist, long a favorite of picket-ball riflesmiths for match shooting, and of Sam Colt in his revolvers, did not show up to advantage in these experiments. In the gain twist, the rate of the rifling curve increases rapidly at the muzzle, while seeming to be almost straight at the breech. The idea presumably was to allow the bullet to get well started in the rifling before giving it the rotary motion necessary for top-like stability in flight.
Huger considered the tige, while serving to expand the bullet, was inconvenient when cleaning the arm. Fouling would lurk about the tige and since the cleaning rod or wiper could not pass all the way to the bottom of the bore, it presented a problem in handling the gun. He also discovered that the ball must not be rammed too much, for deforming it would make it unstable. Too little ramming of course defeated the purpose of the tige. The French tige projected into the barrel 1.49 inches, with a diameter of .35 inches— presumably those in the U. S. rifles tested measured the same.
Having studied the tige system, Huger next turned to the bullet of Captain Minie:
The balls of this kind, made according to the description of those used in France, did not succeed in our experiments. The cup was often driven so forcibly into the ball as to cause the ball to break. Mr. James H. Burton, the acting master armorer, who conducted the experiments, contrived a different method of expanding the ball by a plug of hard metal. This plug answered the purpose, and the firing at 200 yards was very good. The plug was cast of a mixture of lead and tin and was easily made. The objections to it were that this piece fell out easily after a short flight, and might do injury in firing over our own men; it required a little greater elevation than with the tige at the same distances; and the paper of the cartridge around the bottom, forming the patch to the ball, was nipped by the plug being driven up suddenly. Efforts were made to find a better form of plug, and this bullet was not tried at ranges exceeding 200 yards.
A compound bullet, having a plug at the tip which was tapped down by the ramrod, upon seating the projectile, was next tried. The plug expanded the soft lead of the bullet into the rifling. This bullet also gave fairly good results, but the two-part construction was an objection, and the ramming tended to cake the powder. If the gun was fired at once, this was no problem, but if the gun remained loaded for any length of time, the crushed powder tended to attract moisture through the nipple vent and a misfire or weakened explosion resulted, causing inaccuracy.
Huger concluded that a conical bullet with the musket caliber was too much; the bullet would weigh about 1% ounce, too much for the soldier to carry ammunition in quantity, and the cost of transportation of supplies to the frontier was increased. With that caliber bullet, the charge must be limited by the practical recoil which the soldier can bear. While this is compounded of form of buttstock, mass of musket, height, weight and shooting style of the soldier, and the excitement of battle or hunt, there were limits. The French rifle charge was about 1/11th the weight of the bullet; with the modified Minie bullets tested the charge was 1/10. Using the rifle caliber (.54) arm, 1/8 weight of the projectile was found the most efficient charge.
Considering the advantages of using the smaller caliber, Huger and Burton now tried to develop a modified Minie for the 1841 rifle, .54. After several trials to contrive a plug that would act with certainty, Mr. Burton hit upon the expedient of hollowing out the bottom of the bullet, and making the edges thin enough to be forced outwards by the action of the gas at the instant of the explosion of the charge, thus causing it to fill the grooves and receive its rotary motion. This plain bullet, used without patch or paper of any kind, became standard for North and South, in many calibers, in the war. Shooting at over 200 yards revealed that this bullet did not hold up well; consequently it was made a little longer. The original short-ogive ball weighed 310 grains, and grouped best with 38 grains musket powder at 200 yards. The improved Burton bullet (all .54 caliber) weighed 400 grains, fired with 50 grains coarse-grained musket powder. It was found that this charge, in the old ratio of 1:8, shot more regularly and fouled the bore less than finer rifle powder.
To be entirely fair in their evaluation of these rifles, Huger and Burton fitted up a new musket, smooth-bored exactly true, with the same rear sight and front sights as used on the test rifles. This musket, fired in the same way against the shoulder and with the forestock on a rest, what today is called bench rest shooting, proved their work on the rifles worthwhile. The table of firing, Huger reported, shows that, at 300 yards, the musket is not so accurate as the new rifle bullet at double the distance; and at 400 yards, the fire of the musket is so uncertain as to be useless.
Huger provisionally concluded these tests with suggesting that if new sights and large-headed ramrods suitable for centering the conical bullet were prepared, muskets could be easily altered to rifles with no more work than the rifling of the bore. Writing from Pikes-
ville Arsenal in Maryland, now (1962) home of the 110th Field Artillery but once the site of extensive small arms development work, Huger on March 18, 1854, indicated that rifles with new ramrods and breech sights arranged for 150, 300, and 450 yards range, with a supply of cartridges and extra bullets, are submitted for examination and further trials. By direction of the Colonel of Ordnance [Craig], a rifle is also submitted with a sword bayonet attached; the sword to be worn habitually as a sidearm, and in case of need it can be promptly and firmly attached by a very simple lock to the muzzle of the rifle, and used as a bayonet. In this modification of the Harpers Ferry 1841 rifle lay the genesis of the new standard rifle.
About this time, Burton and Huger obtained a copy of tests done at Enfield in England in 1852, prior to adoption of the new British Enfield, .577-inch bore Model 1853 Long Rifle. The British had concluded with three important points: reduction of bore from .69-.70, of their old muskets to .577, making the bullet hollow based without patch or wad, and to use coarse grained powder which seemed to reduce fouling. The improved bullet was smooth, and in actual practice the cartridge paper surrounded it not as a wad to hold it into place, but as a carrier for grease for lubrication. Without allowing the lead to touch the barrel inside, there could be no opportunity for lead fouling to build up, destroying accuracy until cleaned and, if not cleaned, serving to hide destructive rust.
The new English bullet was called the Pritchett, after the inventor. In further tests at Harpers Ferry that October, 1854, Colonel Huger determined that the Harpers Ferry ball by Burton was better to a degree than the Pritchett ball or a modified French bullet, and all were far superior to the round ball. Also, most importantly derived from this series of tests, was the conclusion that the number of rifle grooves could be reduced, if the width of each groove be increased, and its depth diminished. This was a reversal of the traditional belief that the deep grooves held the black powder fouling and so permitted loading a greater number of shots before having to stop and clean the gun. In practice, the fouling built up on top of the lands as well as in the grooves. Three or five grooves were suggested, and during the War that followed, rifles having both numbers of grooves were widely issued in certain makes. The form of grooves was discussed; those having rounded comers seemed to offer advantages, and further trials were ordered.
Mr. Burton spent the winter getting further model arms ready. Springfield Armory now took a share of the work, and commenced to build a lock for the Maynard primer. The Government having bought the full rights to this invention the preceding February, 1854, immediate use was to be made of the idea. The new series of tests to be held in the spring of 1855 were under direction of Lieutenant J. G. Benton, an officer who survived the War and distinguished himself in the Ordnance Corps until his retirement. His project was to reveal four main facts: determine the best mode
of rifling the smooth bored arms already on hand; decide if the musket caliber of .69 could be reduced for new muskets and to see if this reduced caliber could be made uniform with all arms, including pistol, and to determine the best form of cavity for the Harpers Ferry bullet. To help him in these tests a special shooting machine was built to hold the rifles and carbines uniformly from shot to shot, avoiding human error. Initially 19 different barrels were tried, with various dimensions of lands and grooves. Most were 1 turn in 6 feet; two had increasing twist, the first ending up with one turn in 2 feet at the muzzle, the second starting with a turn of once in 6 feet and ending with one in 3 feet. New arms were also prepared for the tests; following these patterns:
Altered musket, .69 with Maynard primer lock, Remington pattern, 42-inch barrel, weight 10.87 pounds.
Trial gun No. 1, .6 caliber, a reduction of about 1/10 inch.
Six of these arms were prepared, each with 40-inch barrel, to test the merits of rounded grooves vs sharp cornered grooves, 3 and 5. Improved socket bayonet having a clasp. Weight 11.19 pounds.
Trial gun No. 2, .54 caliber, 40-inch barrel thinner at the muzzle than No. 1 but fitted for sword bayonet. Weight 9.75 pounds.
It is believed Trial Gun No. 1 and 2 had Maynard tape primer locks; the illustration of the shooting machine shows such an arm in place.
Trial carbine, 22-inch barrel, .54 caliber. Four of these were made, to test circular vs square rifling. It is thought these did not have Maynard locks, in view of their most probably resembling the lateradopted Carbine Ml 855, which did not have the Maynard lock.
Pistol: four of these were prepared. The first, .546 caliber, had an 8-inch barrel rifled with 3 grooves 6 foot twist, rounded. The second was identical, except rifled 4 foot twist. Two more pistols were made, possibly having the Maynard primer, in .58 caliber. One had a 10-inch barrel, the other 12 inches, 3 grooves, 4 foot twist. A cadet musket, percussion type 1852, caliber .57, was also tried.
The pistols proved to be very worthwhile; though they could not be fired from the rest, Benton recorded that It is shown that the principles of the rifle and expanding ball can be applied to the common cavalry pistol, whose barrel is only 8 inches in length, so as to increase its efficiency from 100 to 500 yards, thus making it a serviceable arm for mounted troops and foot artillery.
The rifle of .6-inch bore having proved quite accurate, while the .54-inch seemed to give moderate recoil, A size between these two, it is thought, would be most suitable for a uniform caliber. Barrel length of 40 inches was preferred for the new musket, while the 12-inch pistol barrel was not found incon¬
venient to handle.
A large cavity was recommended for the pistol bullet so as to ensure complete expansion and bore sealing in the shorter bore; this meant two bullets would be in service, but as they were the same externally, they could be used in an emergency, each in the other gun. Tolerances in rifling the bore were reduced. Smoothbore musket variations from the drawing would be accepted if they were as great as .01 inches above true caliber; with the new rifled arms, tolerance was set at .0025 inches, a fourth as great.
Springfield Armory’s master armorer E. S. Allin and master machinist Buckland prepared the model trial arms. The model rifle was made at Harpers Ferry, using the Maynard primer lock which was not finished at Springfield until quite late in the winter, the completion of this model has been somewhat delayed . . . By the summer, Colonel Craig was at last able to inform Mr. Davis of the final state of development for the Army’s new small arms. A complete program had been started including percussioning of old flint muskets, alteration to Maynard primer of later arms, rifling, and the construction of rifle musket, and pistol with shoulder stock for artillery or cavalry, to all use the Washington dentist’s priming pellet tape.

Ordnance Office 

Washington, June 26, 1855

To Hon. Jefferson Davis Secretary of War

Sir: I have the honor to submit the report of the proceedings and recommendations of the Ordnance Board, in regard to the establishment of new models for the small arms of our military service. For reasons assigned by the board, which I think conclusive, a smaller caliber than that of our present musket, but greater than that of our rifle, viz: .58-inch, is proposed for all our small arms; 40 inches is recommended as the length of the musket barrel, 26 inches as that of the sappers musketoon, which will be provided with a sword bayonet, and 10 inches for the barrel of the pistol, which barrel, being also provided with a suitable stock, will answer for a dragoon or artillery carbine, for which a range of 500 yards fits it. One lock, with magazine for 50 Maynard primers, will answer for either musket or musketoon, a smaller lock, with magazine for 25 primers, will serve for either the pistol or artillery carbine. All the barrels of .58 inch caliber to be rifled with three grooves, decreasing depth; the musket and musketoon to have a six-feet twist, and the carbine and pistol barrel a twist of four feet ... It is recommended by the board, that our present rifles be enlarged in caliber to .58-inch, but no proposition has been made for a new model of this particular arm, in the belief, it is supposed, that the sapper’s musketoon may be substituted for it. Concurring as I do with the board in its other recommendations with regard to a new model, and the details which I submit for your sanction, I cannot agree with it in opinion as to the propriety of ceasing the fabrication of the arm now called the rifle. To arrange a new model of this arm in accordance with the main features of the other arms, it will only be necessary to enlarge the calibre from .54 to .58, and arrange the stock for the Maynard musket lock, the other points remaining nearly as at present. For such an arm we have a factory and extensive machinery capable of turning out at least 3,000 per annum. I cannot, therefore, recommend the omission of this arm in our future fabrication.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. K. Craig,

Colonel of Ordnance

Adopted model of pistol carbine had detachable brass-yoke stock, though pistol barrel was increased to 12 inches from 10 inches. Hinged rammer was attached by swivel similar to those on 1842, 1836 Army pistols.

Within the following ten days, Secretary Davis responded with a specific critique of what Craig had reported, recapitulating the important points, enlarging on some, and approving all:

July 5, 1855

… The calibre of .58 of an inch for all small arms, the length of 40 inches for the musket barrel, and of 10 inches for the pistol barrel, with the details of the lock and other component parts, are approved as recommended . . .
The present rifle, modified by the adoption of the new calibre and primerlock, will be continued, and will be issued to the sappers instead of the musketoon, the manufacture of which will be discontinued.
The pistol will be provided with a movable stock, by the application of which, it may be used as a carbine by light artillery and mounted troops.

Jeff’n Davis

Secretary of Warv