Arms of the Confederacy The Approach of musket in the proceeding five years in the national armories at War: Arms in Springfield Armory and at Southern Hands Harper’s Ferry Armory had With Civil War beginning in allowed older smooth-bored and April 1861, the South found rifled muskets as well as rifles to itself unprepared for a long be transferred to state arsenals. conflict. Prewar open-market In 1859-60, Springfield Armory purchases, combined with alone transferred 104,000 such sizeable stocks that had older arms to southern arsenals. accumulated over the years in These same weapons were state and local arsenals under the among those rushed into the Militia Act of 1808, allowed the fight for the Confederacy. South to possess from 285,000 to 300,000 military firearms. Still, most of the weapons This was an ample supply for a available to the South were short war. heavy, outdated arms and civilian arms like those seen in Pvt. Hockensmith, Missouri Production of the modern rifle the photograph to the left. Courtesy: private collection From the Collection of Springfield Armory* Springfield Armory NHS archives, US NPS Springfield Armory NHS houses the largest collection of Confederate shoulder arms in the world. Most of these weapons were added to the collection in the first six months of 1866 from former Confederate arsenals on orders of the US Ordnance Department. A large proportion of the cache is made up of former Federal weapons stored in Southern arsenal prior to the war, battlefield pick-ups, and captures (as are possibly the 645 US M1861 rifle muskets in the “Organ of Muskets”), European weapons (principally British and Austrian), older flintlock muskets adapted to percussion ignition by the Confederate armories, and Confederate-manufactured shoulder arms. A good collection of Confederate swords and cutlasses are to be found here, too.

Among those arms on display and in storage are: Clapp & Gates (box lock type 1 rifle); Richmond Armory (rifle muskets and carbines); Morse (inside lock musket and breech-loading carbine); Mendenhall, Jones & Gardner rifle; Virginia Manufactory (1st model musket); Read & Watson rifle; J.C. Peck rampart gun; Cook & Brother (rifles & carbine); Robinson “Sharpes” carbines; Bilharz & Hall (carbines & vertical rising breech carbines); Keen, Walker & Co. carbines; Tarpley carbines; Tallasee Enfield Pattern carbine; Palmetto Armory muskets; M.A. Baker rifle; Fayetteville rifles; Calisher & Terry carbines; Enfield (rifle muskets & carbines); Kerr rifle (London Armoury); and Jefferson Davis’ personal rifle. ______*text by Richard Colton, Historian, Springfield Armory National Historic Site, US NPS source: Springfield Armory archives, Springfield Armory National Historic Site, US NPS

Fayetteville, North Carolina. the exception of the machinery The Richmond Armory, led by seized by Virginia state troops Brig. Gen. Gorgas (pictured at Harper’s Ferry on April 17, here), used rifle musket-making 1861, most of the modern arms- machinery destruction of that making equipment and most of Federal salvaged from Harper’s the raw materials were located Ferry Armory following the in the industrialized North. first few weeks of the war. The Richmond Armory rifle musket While the North functioned was a close copy of the US rifle with a system of well-defined musket. Fayetteville Armory federal powers, such was not received machinery from the case in the Confederacy. Harper’s Ferry Armory for Southern state leaders often manufacturing a copy of the US assumed control of critical Model 1841 rifle. Along with resources. In order to the machinery came many manufacture rifle muskets for skilled former Harper’s Ferry the Confederacy, Gorgas had to Brig. Gen. Josiah Gorgas Armory workmen who added get the Harper’s Ferry Courtesy: Lib. Of Congress their skills to the Confederate machinery away from the state war effort. By the end of the of Virginia. war in April 1865, an estimated Arming the Confederacy 107,000 shoulder arms had The priority of Confederate Southern arsenals had approximately been manufactured throughout states was the arming of local 175,000 modern shoulder arms on the Confederacy. militias. With little cooperation hand at the beginning of the war. Of from the states, Gorgas these, about 140,000 were smooth- The Confederacy had acquired the needed arms. His bored, not including arms provided precipitated a civil war at many sources included from private citizens. During the war, a time when the United States domestic manufacture, arms were supplied through reigned as the leading firearms European purchases, captured manufacture, importation, and from producer in the world, weapons from Federal arsenals, the battlefield. especially in the techniques of and battlefield pick-ups. The mass production and Confederacy imported over The greater part of Confederate rifle standardization of parts at 340,000 European arms. production was in armories at Springfield Armory. With Richmond, Virginia, and at ______Confederate dead and weapons, December, 1862- Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg, Va (courtesy: Lib. Of Congress)

*recommended reading: Hartzler, Daniel, and James Whisker, The Northern Armory, and The Southern Armory, Old Bedford Village Press, Pa, 1996. Frasca, Albert, Robert Hill, edit., 1909 Catalog: Springfield Armory Museum Arms & Accoutrements, Whitlock Printing Co., Springfield, Ohio, 1995.