Civil War Bullet and Questions

[Smyrnagc]

I have hunted for and collected Indian artifacts/arrowheads for many years. I have several shadow boxes in my office full of them. I had a friend stop by yesterday and he gave me a bag full of Indian artifacts that his father who had passed away had. In the bag were two civil war bullets he had found in middle Tennessee (see pic).

Got me to thinking...How did solders in the Civil War load these bullets? In the second bullet you can see a cavity. Is this where the powder filled in? Did they use wads?

I have seen several era specific loads they used that were paper patched to load at one time instead of pouring powder. Were these bullets put in paper patches with just powder?

 

[Olde NE Hunter]

To my understanding...
Premeasured powder charges where wrapped in paper and a bullet was included in the paper roll. The shooter would bite off the end of the paper wrap, dump the powder down the barrel, and jam the paper into the barrel followed by the bullet, the paper acting as a wad, everything was rammed home and the addition of the percussion cap completed the reloading process.

 

[Saxtonyoung]

I've seen it load and shot just as you described. They weren't paper patched in a manner as were accustomed to seeing. Think of the paper as the vessel that's holding powder and bullet much like today's speed loaders.They also used a minie bullet that was undersized because they didn't have time to be swabing between shots.

 

[Dave951]

I'll chime in here since I compete with Civil War era guns in North South Skirmish competition. We shoot all manner of Civil War arms including artillery.

In the War, a cartridge was a paper tube containing powder and bullet. To load, the soldier bit off the end of the paper tube, poured the powder into the barrel, placed the bullet in the barrel and rammed the bullet home. He would then put a percussion cap on the nipple to be ready to fire.

The hollow base Minie design is the last iteration of the search for the best military muzzleloader system and was invented by a frenchman, Claude Minie. The theory is that the "rings" around the bullet would hold lube and serve to scrape fouling from a previous shot from the bore. The bullet was slightly undersized to the bore for ease of loading. The powder charge would expand the base, called the skirt, to seal the bore and grip the rifling. It can be a finicky system to get working correctly but when it's setup properly, you can shoot till you run out of ammo, shoulder or daylight WITHOUT wiping. I have personally gone for about 60 shots with no loss of accuracy. Since the system requires the powder charge to force the bullet to seal the bore (obturation), an excessive charge will ruin accuracy. The skirt also has to be perfect to work correctly and if not, it might not even be possible to load that bullet.

 

[Smyrnagc]

Do you know what caliber this is (and what was the popular caliber in the CW)? How large of a powder charge did they use?

 

[Dave951]

Do you know what caliber this is (and what was the popular caliber in the CW)? How large of a powder charge did they use?

Appears to be 58 or 54cal. Service charge was 60g 2f.

As for caliber in the ACW, it was a logistic nightmare with multiple types of weapons from all over the world and also domestically produced. All the European powers were dumping the older stuff here and moving on to the next thing. Calibers ranged form 69 down to 36. Probably the most common was 58 (575 nominal). The US Springfield and English Enfields were about that size and close enough that the ammunition was interchangeable in that case. In revolvers, 44cal was probably most common followed by 36.

Small arms during the War were in flux as breech loading guns were just becoming more common and fixed ammunition started to gain in usage. The Spencer and Henry rifles being good examples of guns using fixed ammo, ie a rimfire cartridge. In handguns there was the awesome LeMatt, but a design deadend. And there were the Colt and Remington revolvers and others. After the War, the government started to modernize the arms. Much of the arms inventory was sold off or converted to some form of breechloader like the "Trapdoor" Springfield. A number of Sharps carbines were converted to 50-70. The rest was sold off and was in surplus circulation into the 20th century with Bannerman's as a prime example.

 

[sdporter]

Very interesting. Thank you.