Effect of Minie Ball

But to the large, easily-probed holes gouged out of living flesh by round slow-moving blobs of lead of 3/4-inch diameter, a new dimension had been added— the Minie ball.
At nominal ranges, velocities were higher and were better sustained than with the round bullets. Terminal velocity—which is the dispassionate name that the ballistician gives to the “thwack” that to the living is the sound of death—terminal velocities were higher. Methods of preserving cadavers from the battlefield for study did not exist; nor would it have been a socially acceptable practice to explore the bloated mounds of flesh for causes of death. Better to bury them, sometimes without identification in mass graves, and turn your talents toward succoring the living, Doctor.

It was on the living, those who survived the trauma that the Richmond Laboratories or the bullet-stamping machine at Crittenden and Tibbals or Frankford Arsenal sought to inflict; on the living that the research was carried out to determine why they were the lucky ones, and their partners, the dead.
So it is that the literature of the era speaks of “Gunshot wounds” as if no one had died; the carefully detailed illustrations in the Medical & Surgical History of the War are of living targets, men who, broken in body, still lived. Perhaps because less extensive exploration was done than pure science might have wanted, the literature of the period is incomplete. The effect of a small missile suddenly introduced into the living system was described in extrinsic detail, but the phenomena of the wounding process itself remained much of a mystery until many wars later.
For the nature of the Minie ball wound was often so terrible, so blasting to tissue, that the cry arose “The (Rebels, Yankees; cross out one) are using explosive bullets.” A shot in the extremities would, on being cleansed, reveal fragments of shattered bone several inches distant from the source of the injury. What should have been a penetrating wound (some as neatly as if a lancet were thrust between radius and ulna) became a terrible, crippling, smashing invasion of the sacred machine, splitting bones like green twigs and extravasating blood in a vast volume of tissue about the path of the projectile. War, in the Wilder-

The sacred machine stopped. Ballistic shock, hemorrhage, brought life’s end to unknown Confederate soldier of Ewell’s Corps during attack of May 19, 1864. Bad luck, not bad armament, caused death, for his fine Enfield long rifle, good as the North’s best, lay near when Brady took this photo.

ness, at Pittsburgh Landing, at Manassas, was indeed hell.

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CHAPTER 17 The Starr Rises

From the catalog of Wallis and Wallis, British gun auctioneers ( 1962 ) at Lewes in Sussex, we read of the sale of a Starr revolver: Lot 1060 ... A 6 shot .44 Starr SA Army Perc Rev 14", brl 8", No. 51594, the top strap bearing old engraving Col. Colt Address New York, Good Condition but action As Found & frame screw not orig . Eben T. Starr of Yonkers, New York, might not have smiled at this latter day whimsey. Marking his re volver with the name of the man he dared challenge by launching a new revolving pistol business in 1858 was to him not funny. Though the modern gun bug who fraudulently marked this in the hope someone would bite on it as a hitherto unknown Colt double action revolver we trust was unsuccessful in his piracy, per haps the buyer at the Wallis and Wallis auction cherishes his purchase for what it is: one of the best and most modem revolvers of the Civil War era. Though complex inside at first glance, its parts are well thought out and reveal Star...

CHAPTER 6 Rifle Muskets: Civil War Scandals

You place me in a most embarrassing position, Mr. Secretary. How is that, Mr. Wilkeson? the gaunt-faced Penn sylvanian queried, the lines of his expression amplified by the fatigue and, somewhat, disappointment with which he laid down his role as Secretary of War for Mr. Lincoln. Because, Mr. Cameron, the newspaperman re sponded, your contract for rifle muskets with the Eagle Manufacturing Company of Mansfield, Connecticut is for only 25,000 arms, and my friends there, whom I induced to engage in this business in expectation of your issuing a further order, as your assistant Mr. Scott assured me you would, will be sorely embarrassed in their operations on this small amount. Indeed this is bad news to me, Mr. Wilkeson, War Secretary Simon Cameron sympathetically observed, as he stuffed papers from his desk drawer into a large portfolio, scanning them briefly, consigning some to the waste basket. But as you can see, I am leaving office today; I believe Mister Stanton, who repla...

French and Belgian Arms

French and Belgian materiel was considered next best to the Enfields, though the types and calibers were more varied than either Enfield or Austrian Lorenz arms. Basic pattern for the best rifles of both France and Belgium was the “carabine” of Captain Minie. Minie’s designs had exerted profound changes in the world’s small arms armament. That change was ably summed up by lexicographer Thomas Wilhelm after the War when he prepared his military dictionary. Said Wilhelm, “Minie Rifle. A species of fire-arm, invented by Capt. Minie, from whom it receives its name. It is certain in aim, and fatal in its results at 800 yards.” The claim was, if anything, inferior to the real capability of the Minie rifle. France in 1861 possessed a surplus of many arms. During the 1840 ’s the temporary procurement of guns designed by Thouvenin, Pontchara, Minie, and others kept the arsenals busy and the soldiers active testing them. Then came the Crimean War and France’s involvement on the side of Gr...

Civil War Guns

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