In the early 1850's the smoothbore musket was the primary infantry weapon of the world's armies.   It had slowly evolved from the late 1400's when a shoulder stock was invented to mount a small cannon barrel.  Over the centuries production methods had improved along with constant refinements of the ignition system.  Muskets tended to be about 57 inches in total length and weigh about 9 pounds.  A musket was loaded by pouring a charge of black gunpowder down the bore and pushing a lead bullet on top of the powder with a ramrod.  The hammer on the weapon was then pulled back and the weapon was then 'primed' by placing either a small amount of powder (in matchlocks and flintlocks) or a  metal cap coated with fulminate of mercury ( in later percussion weapons) below the hammer.  The gun could then be aimed at the target and then fired by pulling the trigger.

       Despite its early and universal acceptance among modern armies of the period the smoothbore musket did have competition.  In the 1500's and early 1600's many infantrymen still used pikes (long spears) as the ability to mass-produce firearms did not exist and the musket had limited utility in close quarters combat, particularily against cavalry, until the bayonet was invented in the early 17th century.  Once the bayonet was developed the world's most modern armies began trading their close order formations of pikemen for close-order formations of musketeers.

       Even while the musket was replacing the pike the more advanced rifle had also made an appearance.  As early as the 16th century experiments were made with rifling- the cutting of spiral grooves on the inside of gun barrels- which would cause the projectile to spin upon leaving the muzzle.  It was found that this spin allowed a projectile to achieve greater range and better accuracy than a shot from a gun with a smooth-bored barrel.   Soon it developed that cannons and small arms that had grooves cut in their barrels were classified as 'rifles' while those that did not were called 'smoothbores.'

      In the 1840's two French officers, Captains Minie and Tamasier, came up with a new lead bullet design which was adopted by the French government in 1846.  This design is known as a 'cylindro-conoidal bullet' from the fact that the base was essentially an elongated, hollow cylinder while the head of the bullet was shaped like a cone. 

     This shape allowed the diameter of the bullet to be significantly less than the diameter of the bore, which meant that the rifle could be loaded as fast as the smoothbore.  Upon firing the gas from the combusting gunpowder would push into and expand the projectile's hollow cylindrical base into the grooves on the inside of the barrel as the bullet moved forward, which would confer spin to the bullet. 

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      Between 1849 and 1855 the United States Army experimented with different rifle designs to utilize the new bullet.  The standard issue rifle for the elite skirmisher units at that time was the 48.75" long Model 1841 .54 caliber 'Mississippi' rifle.  It had a shorter barrel than its brother, the 57.75" long .69 caliber smoothbore Model 1842 musket because a rifled weapon does not need as long a tube to make the ball fly true upon leaving the muzzle and also because the tight fit of the old round balls in rifle bores made it favorable to have as short a barrel as possible to reduce the amount of time and effort it took to load them.

     The adoption of the Minie ball eliminated the problem of the bullet becoming stuck in the bore and .54 caliber Minies were soon cast for use with the 1841 rifle.  After testing these it was decided that the .54 was underpowered for general service.  It was also found that the short barrel of the rifle was undesirable for infantry use as when a standard 'angular' bayonet with a 16" blade was attached the rifle would be outreached if it came to hand-to-hand combat with a unit armed with the nine-inch longer muskets.  Long sword bayonets had been used with the 1841 rifle but they were cumbersome, poorly balanced and not popular.

      The experiment was made of rifling the .69 caliber Model 1842 musket but it was found that the rifled .69 musket was not as accurate as smaller-bored rifles.  Much of the army's existing stock of .69 caliber smoothbores was rifled in the years preceding the Civil War, but these, often called 'rifled muskets' to reflect the fact that their rifling was a later modification, were considered second-class weapons and were usually kept in reserve at arsenals or issued to militia units. 

       In 1855 the army finally approved the design of a series of rifled weapons which were all to use a standard .58 caliber round- a long infantry 'rifle musket,' a slightly shorter 'cadet musket,' a still shorter 'rifle' and, finally a 'pistol-carbine' that was issued with a detachable shoulder stock.  Despite the differences between them, one often sees the terms 'musket,' 'rifle,' 'rifle musket' and 'rifled musket' used interchangeably in both contemporary Civil War documents and modern history texts. 

      Besides their caliber all four of the 1855 family of arms shared the Maynard priming system which made use of a roll of percussion caps which were kept in a cavity in the lock plate and automatically fed over the nipple every time the hammer was cocked.

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The Rifle Musket

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      The most important of the 1855 weapons was the rifle musket which was the most widely produced arm of the series and established the form that future U.S. Army long arms would follow even into the breechloader era.  Despite the finding that a shorter barrel would give good accuracy with a rifle it was decided to use a 40" long barrel with the rifle musket (only two inches shorter than that of the old .69 caliber smoothbore musket) in order to give the new infantry arm a good reach with a bayonet without having to use the heavy sword bayonet of the true rifle.

      It was this long barrel that gave the arm the name of 'rifle musket' as it combined the length of a smoothbore musket with the grooved bore of a rifle.   To compensate for the slightly shorter length of the 56" long Model 1855 rifle musket in hand-to-hand combat it was issued with a bayonet- 2" longer that that used with the smoothbore musket (23" long, 18" blade length).  This difference in bayonet length was the cause of some dissension in the Civil War as some arsenals were forced to issue old  bayonet scabbards with the 1855/1861 rifle musket.  The soldiers who received these scabbards found that the base of blade would protrude several inches from the short scabbard .

      The Model 1855 rifle musket first went into production in 1857 at the Springfield Armory.  Later on in 1859 the Harpers Ferry Armory would also begin to turn out rifle muskets.  At the start of the Civil War Confederate troops captured the Harpers Ferry Armory and sent the equipment found there for making rifle muskets to Richmond, Virginia where the weapons continued to be produced with the omission of the door for the Maynard primer magazine and having "C.S. Richmond" stamped into the lock plate.

      In the North the Springfield Arsenal produced the Model 1855 rifle musket until mid-1861 when the more familiar Model 1861 rifle musket went into production, to be followed by the subsequent Models of 1863 and 1864- all of which used the .58 caliber 40" barrel. Many private contracts were also let out for the 1861 rifle musket.  Production ceased after the war as the peacetime reduction of the army left arsenals packed with immense stocks of surplus rifle muskets.  Tens of thousands of these were later converted to breech loading by cutting a 'trapdoor' into the breech and sleeving the barrel to .50 caliber.

      There are several variations in the design of the approximately 59,273 Model 1855 rifle muskets manufactured between 1857 and 1861.  Part of the problem in classifying the arms comes from the United States' adoption of a highly sophisticated set of machining tools for its armories in the 1840's.  Many of the component parts used in the 1855 arms were interchangeable between the other weapons of the series and many components could also be exchanged with the Springfield models of  1861, 1863 and 1864 (some screws were even interchangeable with the 1873 Springfield breechloader).  It is not uncommon to find that unscrupulous antique dealers have 'built up' rifle muskets from parts of several different vintages as a 'complete' rifle musket is worth more than a damaged or incomplete specimen.   The resulting hybrids have found their ways into public and private collections- but do not match the characteristics of any single regulation arm and are worse that useless as references when trying to establish typologies.

      Mutant hybrids aside, historians generally divide the 1855 rifle musket into two classes- the 'Type I' and 'Type II.'   The first batch of 1855 rifle muskets was produced at the Springfield Armory between 1857 and 1859 is the 'Type I.'  A difference in the type of sight issued with the weapon further divides the approximately 24,721 Type I's produced into two further subcategorizes.

    The most distinctive feature of the Type I 1855 is its brass stock tip, similar to that used in the contemporary British Enfield rifle muskets.  In the Type II this stock tip was changed to 'malleable iron,' a feature which was continued through the 1861, 1863 and 1864 models.

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      The distinction between the two sub-groups of the Type I rests on the design of the rear sight.  The early Type I's produced from 1857 until the latter part of 1858 are distinguished by a long-range 'side wall' type rear sight.  This rather complicated sight could be set to ranges all the way up to 900 yards, depending on how one of two notches was configured to align with the forward sight.  Starting in 1858 this design was discarded and a smaller, simpler, 'leaf sight' was used.  This sight was ranged only to 500 yards and, in a modified form, was used on all the Civil War versions of the rifle musket.

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      The Type II 1855 rifle muskets were produced at both the Springfield and Harpers Ferry Armories.  Of the estimated  34,552 Type II's made between late 1859 and mid-1861 Springfield claims 22,394 and Harpers Ferry 12,158.   Besides the malleable iron stock tip and leaf sight, the Type II 1855 rifle musket also possessed a hollowed out space on the right side of the stock which was closed with an iron door.   Known as a 'patch box,' this cavity was used to store a greased rag for lubricating the weapon. 

     All told an estimate of 1,496,146 .58 caliber rifle muskets were produced by and under contract for the United States government between 1857 and 1864.  Of these only 59,273 were Model 1855's.  The rest consists of 756,567 Springfield Model 1861 (of which 491,438 were made under private contract), 152,001 'Special Contract' Model 1861 produced by Samuel Colt (75,000) and other contractors (77,001), 273,265 Springfield Model 1863 and 255,040 Springfield Model 1864.

         As the M1855 only accounts for 4% of this production it can be seen that the M1855 is hardly a 'typical' weapon of the Civil War.  The presence of the M1855 in the war is further reduced by the large number of older muskets which were dragged out of various arsenals early in the war, the huge amount of weapons purchased in Europe and the guns produced by the Confederacy. 

       Despite being almost insignificant in numbers the M1855 is important in the Civil War as it was the prototype of the .58 caliber rifle muskets manufactured by both the Union and the Confederacy and has similar ballistic properties to the British .577 M1853 Enfield which also saw much service with both North and South.

      It is often expressed in popular studies of the Civil War that the advent of the Minie rifle made the close order tactics of the post-Napoleonic era murderously obsolete.  This is supported by the period assertion that a .58 rifle musket could put 10 consecutive rounds through a "4-inch bullseye at 100 yards.  9-inch bullseye at 200 yards. 11-inch bullseye at 333 yards.  18 1/2-inch bullseye at 400 yards. 27-inch bullseye at 500 yards."

       It is informative to compare this unsubstantiated claim to an 1860 report of a U.S. Army Board of Inspection convened at the Washington Arsenal to experiment with several types of arms, including the rifle musket.  In this experiment a group of 10 marksmen in open skirmish order firing the M1855 rifle musket 5 times each (50 rounds total) at a series of 10' square targets were able to hit the target 50 times at 100 yards.  At 200 yards 41 hit.  At 300 yards only 29 rounds struck.  At 500 yards 21 rounds hit but by this time a "wind fresh from right & front" was blowing.

      When the same test was repeated with the old .69 caliber smoothbore musket it was found that at 100 yards 48 rounds hit the 10' square target.  At 200 yards 24 hit.  At 300 yards only 7 struck and no attempt was made at a target at 500 yards.

     These results show that in the hands of a trained marksman the .58 rifle musket had a decided advantage over the .69 smoothbore, even if the rifled weapon did not quite meet the "bullseye" claims cited above.  In this test the .58 rifle musket demonstrated that it was almost twice as accurate as the .69 smoothbore at 200 yards and over four times as accurate at 300.  Over 300 yards rifled weapons were in a class all their own.

     Before writing off the smoothbore altogether, however, it should be mentioned that it had another ability that was never, apparently, adapted for use with the rifle .  The only type of smoothbore longarm in common use today is the shotgun.  In the 19th century it was realized that as the old muskets were smoothbores they could also be used as shotguns and a popular variant round of ammunition for them consisted of a .69 caliber ball and three buckshot, known as 'buck n' ball.' 

     When firing buck n' ball in close order volleys at the 10' square targets it was found that at 100 yards 36 balls and 79 buckshot (53%) hit the target.  At 200 yards 18 balls and 31 buckshot (21%) struck, including several spent buckshot that did not penetrate the target.  No attempt was made at firing buck n' ball over 200 yards.  It can be seen from these statistics that at ranges of less than 200 yards an infantry line firing buck n' ball could put out a significant wall of lead.  In the scenarios detailed above five volleys from 10 riflemen could put 50 rounds in a 10' square target at 100 yards, while the same number of buck n' ball fired from smoothbores could put 115 pieces of lead (36 balls and 79 buckshot) in the same target (by 200 yards the buck n' ball's edge decreases to just 49 over 41).   Whether the buckshot (especially at 200 yards) would have enough force to actually injure a soldier is open to debate, although the argument could be made that just being pelted with the shot would help snap the enemy's nerve.

     Several army officers of the period commented on the greater utility of the smoothbore and buck n' ball for close-range work.   Major G. L. Willard, for one, cited the difficulties in sighting rifled weapons against cavalry charges.  Officers who doubted the rifle's capabilities such as Willard were condemned both in their time and often even today for being foolishly conservative in their attachment to an obsolete weapon.   Ironically their critics see the adoption of the Minie rifle as the act that rendered cavalry charges obsolete, overlooking traditional American resistance to heavy battle cavalry and the often unsuitable nature of Civil War battlefields to cavalry tactics in the manner of Napoleon's Europe. 

     The failed charge by a company of Texan lancers in the seldom-studied battle of Valverde in New Mexico has often been written off as the inevitable result of using obsolete cavalry tactics in the face of modern weaponry.  Further study reveals that in reality the company of Colorado infantrymen who stopped the Texan charge carried .69 smoothbores and were firing buck n' ball.  In fact, in the small battle of Valverde most of the Union troops engaged were armed with rifled weapons and were unable to force a decision on the threadbare Confederate force that was equipped mainly with civilian shotguns and revolvers.  The Confederates went to ground in the face of the Union rifles, finally rising to charge to close range where their supposedly "inferior" weapons won the battle with their wide shot patterns (shotguns) and higher rates of fire (revolvers).  Obviously there is more to firepower than just range.

     It would appear, however, that the .58 rifle musket also had the potential to fire multiple projectiles.  In the collection of documents issued as the Reports of Experiments with Small Arms for the Military Service by Officers of the Ordnance Department, U.S. Army, 1856, there is an essay regarding the "fire of three balls," (.525 caliber) part of which reads as follows:

      "The fire of two round balls in the smooth-bored musket has been considered to possess great advantages, when used against masses of troops at short distances; but its practical application has been very much restricted in warfare by the large size of the bores of military arms, requiring the use of a charge which was too severe in its effects on the soldier, and very injurious to the arms themselves.  The reduced caliber of the new rifle-musket, and the increased weight of its barrel entirely remove these objections.

      "A few trials were lately made at the Washington Arsenal to test the effects of firing two and three round balls at a time from the new rifle-musket, and were attended with very satisfactory results ; in fact, they demonstrated that the ordinary muzzle-loading musket possesses all desirable power of throwing round balls accurately and rapidly to a distance of 200 yards-- beyond which the trials did not extend."

     My studies are nowhere near complete, but so far I have encountered no references to the intentional firing of multiple rounds from .58 rifles in any Civil War firefight.  One can only wonder what the results would have been if this method had been systematically used to essentially triple the volume of fire an infantry unit could put out at ranges under 200 yards. 

     When placing all this in context of the Civil War it must be remembered that the armies in the War Between The States were most often composed of volunteer troops relatively inexperienced in the art of war.  Despite the greater familiarity with firearms the rural American of the period is assumed to have, this experience would have consisted almost exclusively of hunting which did not require loading, aiming and firing in close ranks at an enemy who was returning fire.   Very few units during the Civil War spent any time on the firing range and estimating distance remained a mostly academic exercise which was soon forgotten in the heat of battle.  With the leaf site on almost all of the .58 rifle muskets the weapon could be sited at 100, 300 or 500 yards.  Between those marks the soldier would have to guess as best as possible.  Given the low muzzle velocity of the .58 rifle muskets (about 950 feet per second, compare to the >3,000 feet per second of most modern rifles) it required a significant amount of elevation to hit any target over 100 yards.  It is the "admittedly somewhat random" estimate of historian Paddy Griffith in his Battle Tactics of the Civil War that on average the war's infantry firefights were fought at a range of 127 yards:

 "It is particularly striking that out of a sample of 113 references I have encountered only 17 which mention ranges longer than 250 yards, and none beyond 500... Where we find a reference to both the 'maximum' and the 'decisive' range of fire, furthermore, we usually find that the later is very short indeed.  Out of my fourteen examples the average is 33 yards." 

        It must be kept it mind that many battles took place in broken terrain and/or wooded areas which limited fields of fire and that many soldiers (particularly in the Southern armies) were armed with old smoothbores in the early part (if not the entire) war as rifles could not be obtained in sufficient quantity.  In short, the argument can be made that the cause of the indecisive and bloody nature of so many Civil War battles is not to be found in the theoretical long-range killing power of the .58 caliber rifle musket.  The Minie rifle could indeed produce impressive results in the hands of skilled marksmen on the firing range, but not when it was used by volunteers in the heat of battle against similarily-armed opponents.

      A true revolution in infantry firepower would have to await the higher rates of fire coincident with the adoption of the breechloader and repeater for line troops.  The North and South may have missed an early opportunity to increase their close range (<200 yards) volumes of fire in their abandonment of the .69 smoothbore firing buck n' ball and failure to exploit the even more potent capability of the standard .58 rifle musket to fire three .525 round balls in a single load.  The army's faith, perhaps blind, in the Minie ball forced the limitation of the volume of fire to one round per discharge.   By this thinking the only way to increase a soldier's firepower was by accelerating the number of discharges per minute.  This stepped-up rate of fire was only practical with the breechloader and repeater.

      In U.S. service the first breechloaders for line infantry were .58 rifle muskets converted to breech-loading in the years following the Civil War.  Such was the ultimate legacy of the M1855 rifle musket; a weapon that spanned the gap between the smoothbore musket and the rifled breechloader. 

     ( Modern scholarship is slowly whittling away at the long-held assumption that accurate long-range fire dominated Civil War battles.  I'd refer any interested parties to one of the most ground-breaking studies in this process- Paddy Griffith's Battle Tactics of the Civil War.  In addition to studying the weapons Griffith examines the tactical doctrine used during the war at great length.   For another on-line article that looks at Civil War combat ranges from a more hands-on aspect, I'd recommend "Shooting Accuracy of the Troops During the War for Southern Independence" by Tony Beck.)