Civil War Archaeology---Secret Weapons Testing, West Point, and the Russians

Civil War Espionage, Andrew Slayman, Archaeology Magazine, May 1995 (48:3), page 18.

Archaeologists investigating a Civil War era iron foundry near the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York found evidence of a possibly secret weapon program. The discovery, excavation and conservation of a a 12-foot, square, oak and cast iron platform within the foundry site has intrigued industrial archaeologists. Records reveal that a 13 ton, rifled cannon that could project shells five miles was mounted and tested at the foundry during the war. It fired shells containing a 19th century mix of chemicals that would, later in the 20th century, come close to the recipe for napalm. There is a possibility that the shells were used during the July-August 1863 assault on Charleston, South Carolina.

Foundry director R. P. Parrott accepted credit for developing the cannon but hearings on the project by the Joint Committee on Ordnance and the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War revealed that Russians working in England obtained plans for a similar British cannon that was being secretly developed for the Royal Navy. The Czar, who had recently defended Russia from France and Great Britain in the Crimean War considered the U.S. as an ally.

Among 150,000 artifacts were found that related to the testing platform and workers' barracks that point to a community of highly skilled munitions experts. The range of artifacts within the barracks are not those of unskilled workers but of highly skilled researchers using at that time state-of-the-art scientific equipment. Many of these artifacts were imports from Europe. From the 1950s through the 1970 was used by the Marathon Battery Company that supplied cadmium batteries for Nike missiles. In 1983 the Environment Protect Agency ordered the site cleaned and hired the industrial archaeologists to excavate the site.

Image Source: Parrott Cannon

Forthcoming---The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth

The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth, Earl J. Hess, Modern War Studies Series, University Press of Kansas, 288 pp., $29.95. September 9, 2008.

The Civil War's single-shot, muzzle-loading musket revolutionized warfare--or so we've been told for years. Noted historian Earl J. Hess forcefully challenges that claim, offering a new, clear-eyed, and convincing assessment of the rifle musket's actual performance on the battlefield and its impact on the course of the Civil War.

Many contemporaries were impressed with the new weapon's increased range of 500 yards, compared to the smoothbore musket's range of 100 yards, and assumed that the rifle was a major factor in prolonging the Civil War. Historians have also assumed that the weapon dramatically increased casualty rates, made decisive victories rare, and relegated cavalry and artillery to far lesser roles than they played in smoothbore battles.

Hess presents a completely new assessment of the rifle musket, contending that its impact was much more limited than previously supposed and was confined primarily to marginal operations such as skirmishing and sniping. He argues further that its potential to alter battle line operations was virtually nullified by inadequate training, soldiers' preference for short-range firing, and the difficulty of seeing the enemy at a distance. He notes that bullets fired from the new musket followed a parabolic trajectory unlike those fired from smoothbores; at mid-range, those rifle balls flew well above the enemy, creating two killing zones between which troops could operate untouched. He also presents the most complete discussion to date of the development of skirmishing and sniping in the Civil War.

Drawing upon the observations and reflections of the soldiers themselves, Hess offers the most compelling argument yet made regarding the actual use of the rifle musket and its influence on Civil War combat. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, his book will be of special interest to Civil War scholars, buffs, re-enactors, and gun enthusiasts alike.

Text: From Publisher

Forthcoming--- Roll Call To Destiny: The Soldier's Eye View of Civil War Battles

Roll Call to Destiny: The Soldier's Eye View of Civil War Battles, Brent Nosworthy, Basic Books Inc., 336pp. $27.95. Release Date: March 2008.

Brent Nosworthy' last three books—The Bloody Crucible, The Anatomy of Victory, and With Musket, Sword, and Cannon—are each considered classic on the subject of military tactics and weaponry and how they affected warfare between the 17th and 19th centuries. In his new book, he takes a slightly different approach, choosing to focus more on the actual experiences of soldiers (in this case, concerning the American Civil War), and less on tactics and strategies from a command point of view; rather than provide a bird's-eye view of battle, he conveys a ground-level account of what the average soldier saw, smelled and felt.

Weaponry, tactics, strategy and the experience of combat are, of course, all interconnected, and Nosworthy doesn't lose sight of the fact. He has not created a simple miscellany of disconnected firsthand combat accounts. Instead, he begins Roll Call to Destiny with an enlightening chapter about Europe in the mid-19th century—a particularly progressive period when it came to weapons technology and military doctrine. America wasted no time learning about and creating new weapons and tactics, and then putting them to deadly use in the Civil War.

Having sifted through mountains of firsthand accounts (many never previously published), Nosworthy pieces together his relevant findings to paint a crisp, clear picture of the Civil War frontlines, from the perspective of soldiers standing on them. Nosworthy's subjects of interest here are infantry, artillery and cavalry. What was it like to stand behind a cannon and beat back an infantry charge? To take part in a chaotic, fast-paced cavalry raid? To confront the enemy face to face in thick, forest foliage? Nosworthy puts us in the middle of it all.

To illustrate the average soldier's experience, Nosworthy uses a number of case studies, including Burnside's advance during Bull Run, the Marye's Heights artillery battle at Fredericksburg, cavalry versus cavalry on the third day at Gettysburg, and the defense of Fort Sanders during the Knoxville campaign. He includes three lengthy sections under the rubric “Tactical Observations,” which function as mini chapters examining how the soldiers' experiences covered under the previous chapter are connected with certain issues concerning tactics, training and weapons that made their appearance during the fight, along with the terrain on which the battle took place. These sections are typical of the author's detailed, insightful and original thinking, and will be of great value to Civil War scholars and buffs.

With Roll Call to Destiny, Nosworthy has honed his characteristic approach to military history into an extraordinarily detailed study that is both supremely informative and inviting to read. This is a fascinating, superbly researched work that belongs on the shelves of anyone interested in the Civil War.

Source: Text from Publisher

Other Voices---Black Powder: Then and Now

Black Powder: Then and Now--- A note from the Civil War Discussion Online Group member and author Joseph Bilby

"The main differences between black powder today and black powder of the Civil War era and, especially, the post-CW late 19th century, is the availability, upon the commercial or sporting market of the era, of a number of different types of black powder, with differences in fouling reduction and 'clean' shooting, often due to the type of wood used in the charcoal element and the purity of the postassium nitrate.

Actually, we have seen, in recent years, a return to that sort of choice, with cleaner burning black powder, like the imported Swiss powder now available to shooters again. The differences between today's GOEX powder, the most common available, which uses the old Dupont formula, and Civil War era military powder are, I believe, minimal, although an exact comparison is impossible. Ballistics tests I conducted with a modern chronograph give the same velocity to a Minie ball reported at the time, when they used a ballistic pendulum.

Having said that, there were problems with different lots of powder supplied to the Union army during the war, with some seeming to foul more than others, and give a bit more or less velocity than others. Both sides agreed that Confederate powder made at the Augusta mill was the best powder in service, and shot the cleanest. For more on this, see my forthcoming (plug -plug)Small Arms at Gettysburg out at the end of the month." ----Joe Bilby Small Arms at Gettysburg: Infantry and Cavalry Weapons in America's Greatest Battle, Joseph G. Bilby, Hardcover, 288 pages, Westholme Publishing, $29.00, Release date December 18, 2007