Long Arms For Lee

The Confederate Rifles and Rifle Muskets were of eight basic categories. Early in the War both the U. S. Rifle and Musket Model 1855-61 became standard issue as made in Southern armories. Copies of the Mississippi Rifle in .58 caliber, often adapted to take a sword bayonet, were another state ordnance favorite. The British Enfield, of both imported and domestic-made origins, had its influence. And to a limited extent the continental features appeared in some long guns, such as the Texas “Tyler” Rifle known as “Austrian.” In front band-nose cap assembly and details of lock form and cone seat, it appears this gun (from one surviving specimen) was inspired in design by the Austrian Lorenz Rifle mated with a light French Minie. Such a cross of types also appeared in the Tallassee Carbine manufactured in Tallassee Armory, Alabama, and adopted in 1864 as the standard pattern for Confederate cavalry. In lock and fittings, it resembled the Enfield; but in the small of stock to butt plate it was U. S. Musket in form. A fifth “type” of Confederate long gun was the breech-loading cavalry carbine. Excellent copies of the Sharps slightly modified were turned out in Richmond, Virginia, and limited numbers of novel breechloaders of several descriptions were forged by eager and talented mechanics to arm the beloved Southland. Such were the so-called Confederate Perry, the still-unidentified “Rising Breech” model, and the simple and fundamentally excellent Tarpley cavalry arm.

The sixth group of Confederate arms is the imported rifle and rifle musket. Among these popularly tabbed as “Confederate” are such arms as the Calisher & Terry, a limited issue British gun passed over in the United Kingdom service in favor of the Westley Richards. The “worthless Belgians” had their share in arming the Stars and Bars. The finest Enfields ever made were regularly consigned to the blockaded posts in defiance of the Anaconda. Austrian rifles completed the score.
Battlefield salvage and reconstructions may be considered a seventh sub-type of C. S. long gun, if done officially and in the time period of the War. Numerous standard U. S. guns must be lumped in this category.
An eighth group is the standard U. S. musket and rifle, flint and percussion, of patterns from 1798 to
1861. Many of these were on hand in Southern state arsenals as a matter of course. These were issued to the militia under the Act of 1808 for equipping and arming them. Prior to the National Guard legislation subsequent to the Civil War, the organized militia of the several states were issued arms according to quotas. The quotas were based on the number of ablebodied men in the state, in respect to its population, as that population related to the total population for all the states. While the value of the arms quota was expressed in terms of U. S. Muskets, states could requisition artillery, cavalry harness, uniforms, or whatever other military stores, regularly adopted by the United States, they might desire, and the Chief of Ordnance would cause contracts or purchases to be made to the value of that state’s quota, and charge the Militia Act appropriation. Annually since 1808, $200,000 had been appropriated for this purpose; after 1861 the amount had increased to $600,000. Some years, it was the custom of a state to let its quota “ride” for the next fiscal year, to increase the value it could draw against. Thus a state could allow its money to remain with the Ordnance Corps until it could afford, say, a complete battery of cannon; or enough arms of uniform type, to equip a regiment.
The importance of this Act in the arms history of the antebellum South is recognized; less recognized is the transition from Federal Arms Appropriations to the fiscal problems of equipping the state itself, through the means internally of its own citizens. This transition occurred abruptly, and at different times throughout 1860-61, as the several Southern states passed or signed their Ordinances of Secession. Suddenly freed from the obligations of Federal taxation and revenues, the South was initially in a prosperous condition. The cotton crop looked good. And martial fervor was everywhere.