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Muskets, Rifles, Pistols & Bayonets

Charleville Rifle with Bayonet Modeled after the French 1763 musket this famous rifle was used extensively throughout the American Revolution. Stamped St. Etienne on the lock plate this impressive piece measures over 72" with bayonet attached.

During the American Revolutionary War, weapons and equipment were often in short supply. Iron foundries, such as Hopewell Furnace, produced weapons for the Continental Army. However, many soldiers and officers provided their own weapons and household items. They also carried the equipment needed to fight, such as shot molds, tinder lighters and cartridge boxes.

The flintlock musket was the most important weapon of the Revolutionary War. It represented the most advanced technological weapon of the 18th century. Muskets were smooth-bored, single-shot, muzzle-loading weapons. The standard rate of fire for infantrymen was three shots per minute. The rifle, although slower to load, was more accurate than the musket. However, riflemen were at great disadvantage in close-quarters fighting against disciplined infantry armed with muskets and bayonets.

The bayonet was the most widely used edged weapon of the war. It transformed the musket into a spear. It was a terrifyingly effective weapon when used by an experienced soldier. Inexperienced troops often fled in the face of bayonet charges. Cavalrymen and officers used pistols. Pistols were effective only at close range.

The first Army muskets - the old smoothbores of 1795 - went west with Lewis and Clark. For over half a century there was little change in this arm. In 1842 it was converted from flintlock to percussion, but otherwise it continued to be much the same old smoothbore right down to the Civil War. As the basic infantry weapon it was taken to practically every military post in the West. It helped Subdue the frontier. It helped fight the Mexican War and thereby add all of that country west of the Rocky Mountain Divide and south of Oregon - what is generally called the Far West - to the union. If any one gun won the West, it was the sturdy old workhorse U.S. Musket Model 1795. In all some 850,000 were produced between 1798 and 1848.

The First Rifles

Not that the Army didn't believe in rifles. After the performance of the Kentucky in the Revolutionary War, the rifle could not be ignored. But it was viewed by the military as a special arm for limited sharpshooting or scouting functions. Rifle battalions were organized in the U.S. Army as early as 1792, and in the 1820's infantry regiments often had "light" companies armed with U.S. Flintlock Rifles, successors to the Model 1803 which Lewis and Clark's men carried. The military escort which accompanied Santa Fe traders in 1829 included one company armed with rifles; but most military formations were still of the mass type, with engagements at close range, so the Army in general continued to equip most of its units with the simpler, cheaper muskets.

Flintlock rifles were converted to the percussion system in 1841, just a year before the Model 1795 muskets were changed, and as such earned the name of "Mississippi rifles" when Jefferson Davis' Mississippi Regiment used them with such good effect at Buena Vista in 1847. They were, incidentally, the last service rifles to fire a round ball.

A new projectile was being developed. It was called the Minie ball and was the invention of Captain C. E. Minie of the French Army and James H. Burton, Assistant Master Armorer at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Instead of being round it was roughly cylindrical in a shape later associated with bullets.

The importance of the Minie ball to the rifle was the fact that it did away with the old "patch" in which round balls had to be wrapped in order to make them fit the barrel. A Minie ball - not a ball at all - was smaller than the gun's rifling so could be dropped down the barrel. It had a hollow base plugged with an iron stopper. The explosion of the charge drove the plug forward expanding the lead of the bullet until it "took" the grooves of the rifling. Burton discovered that the iron plug was unnecessary and that the "take" would occur with the use of the hollow base alone.

With the Minie ball a rifle could be loaded as quickly and easily as a musket. All the shooter needed to do after pouring in his powder was to drop the Minie ball on top of it. From now on all newly designed military shoulder arms would be rifles.

Two such arms, one called a "rifle," one a "rifle musket," were adopted in 1855 for use with the new Minie ball. The difference between the two was a matter of barrel length. Both were .58 caliber. One had a barrel five feet long while the barrel of the other extended a mere fifty inches. The long-barreled "rifle musket" became the chief infantry weapon of the Civil War, and the shorter-barreled model was little used. About two million of the long "rifle muskets" were produced before the war was over, far more than any other arm employed, and these were carried into the West by foot soldiers stationed there as well as by soldiers discharged after the war.

U. S. Repeating Rifles

The Civil War was the great developer of weapons. Lincoln himself took a hand and the results were quickly apparent. The breechloader, for example, had been a recognized, but seldom used, military arm since 1819. Some Hall rifles and carbines were still in use at the time of the Civil War, but Lincoln insisted that a sluggish War Department equip a regiment of sharpshooters with the newer and better Sharps breech-loading rifle.

Some say the term "sharpshooter" derives from this 1st Regiment of U. S. Sharpshooters. But the word was in use long before, deriving from the German scharfschutz, and first appeared in English print about 1802 to describe a group of straight-shooting Tyrolians in the Austrian Army. The federal government purchased 80,000 Sharps rifles and carbines before the war was over. However, the breechloaders were never completely satisfactory chiefly because of the gas leakage at the breech-chamber joint. It was the metallic cartridge and repeating rifle that the Civil War brought into its own.

Lincoln was personally responsible for the Army's adoption of the seven-shot Spencer. He test-fired it and whittled an improvised sight for it. Some 94,000 Spencer carbines and 12,000 rifles were produced for the Union Army. Cavalrymen liked these repeaters but laughed at the noise which newfangled metal shells made when carried in the regulation tin-lined cartridge boxes designed for the old wax-paper cartridges. "When a horse trots it sounds like hail on a tin roof, don't it?"

Lincoln also encouraged adoption of the Henry rifle, which, as we have seen, was already in production when hostilities started, but the Army's high brass considered it too complicated and unproven. However, some two thousand Henrys were purchased by the War Department, and two regiments of Sherman's "bummers" carried them during his march across Georgia. Southern writers referred to the Henry as "that damned Yankee rifle that is loaded on Sunday and fired all week."

Samuel Colt had gotten back into the repeating-rifle picture in 1855 with an eight-shot, revolving-cylinder model. It was experimented with by units and individuals in both the Federal and Confederate armies. As the war progressed, the demand for new and better guns was keen. Individuals and detachments often provided their own Spencers, Sharps, Henrys and Colts in preference to government-issue arms. Of all the repeaters the Spencer proved the most popular, far outselling Henrys and Colts. It was also the lowest-priced to the taxpayer, costing the government twenty-five dollars each, as compared to thirty-seven dollars for the Henry and forty-four dollars for the Colt.

Military arms produced or used by Confederates during the war and passing west with its troops and civilians were substantially the same as those of the North: Springfields, Sharps, Henrys, Colts, regulation muskets and rifles. In addition, the South as well as North purchased a quantity of foreign arms, and these exotic models, such as the British Enfield and the Prussian needle rifle, found their way to the plains and mountains when the struggle ended.

The Allin Conversion

In 1865 a new rifle was adopted by the U.S. Army, one that in various forms was to be used for a long time. It was called the Springfield Model 1865 or the "Allin Conversion," after its inventor E. S. Allin, Master Armorer at the Springfield Armory. He devised a scheme whereby the huge surplus of muzzle-loading rifles remaining after the war could be converted to take cartridges. The barrels were sawed off at the breech end so that a cartridge could be inserted. A rising breechblock sealed it in place.

These first Springfield Model '65's were .58 caliber. Later the caliber was reduced to .50 and finally to .45, to become, in conjunction with a powder charge of 70 grains, the long-enduring Springfield .45-70. This arm was to be standard for infantry, and as a carbine for cavalry, until Spanish-American War days. Despite what happened at the Custer fight, despite the fact that the repeater was clearly here to stay, the Army refused to budge from the single-shot Springfield for twenty-five years. The only substantial gesture made during that period toward adopting a new rifle was the Hotchkiss, or U. S. Magazine Rifle Model 1878, the first bolt-action service magazine rifle. It was a .45 caliber with a five-shot magazine in the butt. A few thousand were manufactured by the Winchester Company under army contract before the Hotchkiss was deemed inadequate. Not many found their way West. The .45-70 single-shot Springfield that let Custer down at the Little Big Horn (many of them were found with expanded cartridge cases stuck in their chambers as result of the heating from rapid fire) continued to be the issue weapon.

The Krag

In November 1890 the Army finally convened a testing board to select a new service rifle that would be a repeater and have a much longer range than the old Springfield .45-70. Smokeless powder would be a determining factor in the new gun. It burned more slowly than black powder, therefore the force of its explosion increased even more drastically as the bullet sped down the barrel, thus achieving greater velocity. A newly developed heat-treated, low-carbon steel for barrels could withstand this high pressure, so that the new gun, instead of being heavier, could be lighter in weight. Velocity and range were increased still further by making the caliber of the bullet one-third smaller and changing the straight metal cartridge to a "bottleneck," thus compressing the charge and increasing its power - a device that would be used extensively on sporting rifles of the future.

The result of all these considerations was the U.S. Magazine Rifle Model 1892, known as the Krag-Jorgensen after its Norwegian inventors. It was substantially the same weapon used in the Danish and other Scandinavian armies. Through modified several times the U.S. Krag remained .30 caliber, center-fire, with a total length of forty-nine inches and weight of about nine and one-half pounds. The stock extended nearly the full length of the barrel as was customary with military rifles. This feature distinguished them from sporting arms and was designed to protect the soldier's hands when the barrel grew hot from rapid firing. It also gave him a heavier weapon to use as a club or in bayoneting.

The Krag had a unique side-constructed, box magazine, the right face of which could be swung out and down to act as loading gate. The cartridge employed, known as the .30-40 Krag or Caliber .30 U.S. Army, was our first smokeless service cartridge. It fired a hard, cupronickel jacketed bullet, considered more humane than the lead Minie ball and its lead successors, all of which mushroomed on impact. However, United States soldiers during the vicious fighting of the 1902 Philippine Insurrection often filed crosses in the ends of the new pencil-shaped bullets to achieve mushrooming effect on the hated Moros, and their favorite war song contained the lines:

This gun was strong and reliable. Great emphasis had been placed on its ability to act as either a repeater or single-shot rifle. The latter was considered important when the gun was to be handled by privates who were considered low in intelligence. It should be remembered that this rifle was designed for the post-Civil War Army, which had a large percentage of foreign immigrants and semi-literate Americans who were willing to soldier for fifteen dollars a month while the United States boomed with growing prosperity.

The repeating mechanism of the Krag was simple but so slow it proved a real disadvantage in battle. Each cartridge had to be put, one at a titne, in the gun's box magazine. Westerners - Roosevelt's Rough Riders and others - at the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War found the Krag sadly lacking in firepower when pitted against the Spaniards' 7 mm. Mausers. These German-designed rifles were loaded with clips containing five cartridges. Thus a Spaniard on the firing line could reload five times faster than an American. This helps explain why 700 Spaniards racked up more than 1,400 American casualties before being overwhelmed.

The Springfield

The "Springfield," or U.S. Rifle Caliber .30 Model 1903, was the result of unpleasant experiences in the Spanish-American War. It was unabashedly a copy of the clip-fed, bolt-action Mauser. In fact the United States purchased the manufacturing rights from the Mauser Company. After early modifications, the weapon's length was fixed at 43 1/5 inches, its barrel at 24 inches, its weight at 8 3/5 pounds. It fired a clip of five cartridges. At first these were rimless with a 220-grain bullet propelled by 43 grains of smokeless powder (a grain being a unit of weight based on the weight of a grain of wheat), but in 1906 the bullet was given a sharper point and reduced in weight to 150-grains, and powder was increased to 49 grains, resulting in an increase of muzzle velocity to 2,700 feet per second. This is the cartridge that became famous as the .30-06, the "06" representing the year of its adoption.

The "Springfield" remained substantially unchanged through two world wars, more than redeeming any shortcomings of its rather infamous predecessors, the Springfield .45-70 and Krag-Jorgensen. Embodying the strength and conviction which came from the winning of the West, plus the wisdom of chastening Spanish-American War experiences, the sturdy Springfield with its .30-06 cartridge was aimed forward with the United States toward a new destiny of world power.

Military Pistols

The first official U.S. military pistol appeared in 1799. Like the first army shoulder arm it was copied from a French model. Made by Simeon North of Berlin, Connecticut, it was a smoothbore flintlock with an eight-and-a-half inch, round barrel, .69 caliber, walnut grip, and weighed three pounds four ounces. North made about 2,000 and sold them for six dollars each. A hundred and fifty years later they were rare collectors' items bringing upward of $2,400.

Between 1799 and the Civil War, the United States services developed their pistols through government armories as well as private firms. A number were single-shot flintlock models both smoothbore and rifled. Most of them resembled North's original model, with eight- to eleven-inch barrels though the caliber was gradually reduced to about .55. The first government-made pistol, the U.S. Model 1806, was produced at Harpers Ferry. Also called the Model 1805 and Model 1807 it was a .54-caliber sixteen-inch weapon weighing two-and-a-half pounds. Another pistol made by Simeon North at this time bore the inscription "U.S. Pistol Model 1808, S. North Navy." This gun with its .64 caliber was the first to bear the "Navy" label.

The first U.S. percussion ignition pistol, a single-shot smoothbore like its predecessors, appeared in 1842. This was followed in 1843 by a rifled version. The 2nd U.S. Dragoons carried these rifled pistols in March, 1846, when they rode into disputed territory south of the Nueces River in Texas, clashed with Mexican patrols, and started the Mexican War.

And this brings us to a famous Colt, the U.S. Army Model 1847 - not to be confused with the 1836 which we will discuss later on or with subsequent Colts used by civilians. The Army, while considering multishot rifles, had also considered adopting multishot hand guns, but rejected them as too complicated, dangerous and newfangled. Young Sam Colt, as has been said, went broke producing revolving-cylinder rifles and pistols, which the Army failed to accept. Now the Army put him back in business with an order straight from a battlefield.

Some of Colt's early revolving-cylinder rifles and pistols had been purchased by the Republic of Texas soon after it declared its independence from Mexico in 1836. The weapons were part of the armament of the Texas Navy but eventually the pistols were turned over to the Texas Rangers. In 1846, units of these Rangers were attached to the United States forces which marched to the Rio Grande during the Mexican War. The Rangers' effective use of their Colt "Navy" pistols so impressed General Zachary Taylor that he dispatched Ranger Captain Sam Walker to Washington with orders to buy Colt revolvers.

Walker and Colt got together and the result was the U. S. Repeating Pistol Model 1847, or "Walker Colt," a .44 caliber, rifled, percussion six-shooter, nine inches long, weighing four pounds. One thousand Walker Colts were ordered by the U.S. War Department. They were manufactured at Eli Whitney's factory in Whitneyville near New Haven, Connecticut. (Colt didn't even have a factory. Some say he didn't even have a model gun to base the Walker on, but made up the design from memory with Walker's help.) A second order, also for a thousand, resulted in the 1848 Model Dragoon Colt, produced at the new Colt factory at Hartford. Sam Walker and Zach Taylor had put Sam Colt in business in a big way, and stage drivers, express guards and other Westerners with heavy shooting to do began using the big new heavy Colts, as the Texas Rangers and Army were doing.

The terms "Navy" and "Colt Navy" were soon used for any big pistol. Surely the oddity of pistols for the Republic of Texas' Navy being carried by dry-land Rangers hundreds of miles from the seacoast must have tickled the westerners' fancy. Perhaps, the name alone carried satiric appeal in the arid reaches of the Great Plains. At any rate "Navy" was a good word to add to a pistol.

In 1851 came an officially designated Colt Navy revolver; in 1860 a lighter Army model; and in 1861 a still lighter Navy. Lincoln thought so highly of the Colt Army 1860 Model that he gave a gold-and-silver inlaid pair to Charles XV, the liberal and popular King of Sweden and Norway who was friendly to the Union cause.

A host of other pistols besides Colts were used by the Army and Navy before and during the Civil War. The most popular calibers were .36 and .44 with smaller sizes for pocket weapons. This wide variety of hand guns continued to be produced after the Civil War - the best known was Colt's first center-fire cartridge revolver, the .45 Colt Army of 1873, also called the Peacemaker and the Frontier Model, described later. This famous sixshooter was the cowboys' and gunfighters' pistol and was carried by both military and civilian personnel. Custer's officers and men were armed with them.

In 1878 the Army adopted a Colt .45, known as the Double-Action Army or Frontier Double-Action or Omnipotent. "Double-action" meant that if the trigger was released after firing and then given a long, or double, pull it would recock the hammer and fire the gun again. Presumably this double pull recocked the hammer faster than the thumb could do on single-action pistols, which had to be manually cocked for each shot.

Good marksmen complained that it was impossible to hold steadily on a target while making the long pull necessary to recock a double-action weapon. However, the Army's first such gun was followed by a variety of double-action models in the 1890's and early 1900's, in .32, .38, .38 special and .41 calibers. Smith & Wesson and Remington also made pistols in various calibers that were used by the Army.

The .45 caliber models among these various military revolvers were always fairly effective man-stoppers, but the .38's and smaller calibers led by default to a new-style army pistol when they proved woefully unable to stop beserk Moros during the Philippine Insurrection. The Moros, warlike Mohammedans, would work themselves into a murderous religious ecstasy, perhaps with the aid of drugs, bind the vulnerable parts of their bodies tightly with kogan, the long native grass, thus deadening their nerves, then grabbing a creese they would charge down the thatched-hut street carving unbelievers. A .38 slug wouldn't stop them. True they might die in a minute or two from the effects of three or four such slugs, but meantime they might do a lot of damage. Even an undrugged Moro was hard to stop, so murderous were his intentions. The result was the army .45 automatic Colt. This struck a blow of 414 foot-pounds (equal to dropping 414 pounds one foot), and knocked a man over even when hit in the arm or leg. The muzzle energy of the old .38 Smith & Wesson, by contrast, was only 172 foot-pounds - sufficient to kill in a vital spot but not to fell instantly.

The Army's .45 automatic pistol appeared first in 1905 and was refined into the Model 1911 Colt, still in use half a century later. It utilized powder gases to achieve semiautomatic action, an idea patented by John Browning, the famous inventor and gun designer.

Few if any Colt 1911's saw action in the West. With the Springfield '03 they were pointed forward with the United States toward a new and different world.

Jay Monaghan. U.S. Army Guns. The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster New York, NY 1969.

Model 1851 Navy Pistol This famous revolver was used extensively throughout the U.S. Civil War by both Union and Confederate troops. Its 7.5" octagonal barrel and strong frame made for a reliable, handsome sidearm. The barrel and frame feature elegant scroll engraving while the cylinder is engraved with tall sailing ships.

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