Narrative Essay: Weapons Of The Civil War

Lori Robinson
HIS 226-IN1
Module 4

Weapons of the Civil War

I have to load a weapon? Oh no! Let’s see, first I have to get my cartridge out of the box. I really hate the taste of gunpowder in my mouth when I rip open the cartridge with my teeth. Then I have to pour that powder into the barrel of the gun. What next? Remove the rammer, ram the barrel to set the ammo, and then return the rammer. Then to prime the gun, I have to set my cap, and now I can finally fire a single shot. Am I really expected to remember to do all these steps, for every shot, while at the same time people are shooting at me? What about all the smoke and noise? The noise of the guns and people next to me screaming in pain, or breathing their last breath.
The both use anywhere from six to thirty-two pound projectiles for ammunition. Just as with muskets there are smoothbores, rifled barrels and breech-loaded cannons. The rifled barrel cannons were used less often because as the barrels were made of bronze, a softer metal than the iron of the musket, the rifling was often worn smooth with continuous use. The field gun has a longer barrel and is usually fired straight ahead, or maybe a slight 5 degree upward angle. The howitzer has a shorter barrel, used larger ordnance but a small charge. By the way, ordnance is just a military term for cannonball. The field gun had a longer range, but the howitzer was more accurate, with a higher arc. The longer range of the field gun is not even fully used most of the time, as the gunner must be able to see his target in order to adjust his
Or course not! There are the “edged” weapons. In most cases all edged weapons, are nearly negligible in as far as how many causalities these weapons accounted for. These include sabers, swords, bayonets and military cutlery. Military cutlery is just another fancy term for hand-to-hand weapons, such as the Bowie knife. I heard a funny story that was passed down from a Georgia boy about another type of edged weapon, the pike. It seems the Georgia governor, Joe Brown, at a time when there was a shortage of firearms, ordered 10,000 pikes. He imagined that he could create effective soldiers to defend themselves on a battlefield with this mid-evil type of weapon that was actually nothing more than a two-foot knife attached to a six-foot pole. The soldiers were trained using these weapons, but I wouldn’t want to go to a gunfight with nothing more than a knife, no matter how long the knife was. In fact, the 34th Georgia regiment was close to mutiny at the thought of going into battle armed with only the pike. Governor Brown wants his men to charge the enemy with “terrible impetuosity”. He told him men; about the pike “at least it will never misfire or waste a single charge of powder.” The pikes were only meant as a last-ditch effort to arm the men with whatever could be found until more firearms could be