The Gatling Gun: A Civil War Innovation

By A.B. Feuer, 12-16-15

“If war was made more terrible, it would have a tendency to keep peace among the nations of the earth.” - Richard Gatling, Inventor of the Gatling Gun

Richard Gatling was born in Hertford County, NC, on December 12, 1818. His father was a prosperous farmer and inventor, and the son was destined to inherit the “invention bug.”

After three of his sisters died at a young age from disease, Richard Gatling decided to study medicine, and graduated from the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati in 1850. He moved to Indianapolis the same year, and in 1854 married the daughter of a prominent local physician. There is no evidence that Richard Gatling ever practiced medicine after leaving medical school, but he was always referred to as “doctor.”

Gatling was a born inventor. Between 1857 and 1860 he patented a steam plow, a rotary plow, a seed planter, a lath-making machine, a hemp rake, and a rubber washer for tightening gears. One day in 1861, with the Civil War only a few months old, Dr. Gatling’s inventive fervor suffered a shock that would turn his mind from machines of peace to machines of war. From his Indianapolis office window, Gatling watched in horror as wounded and maimed soldiers were unloaded from a train—casualties from the southern killing fields.

The doctor was aware that the conflict was being waged in Napoleonic fashion. Men faced each other in solid ranks—aimed, fired, reloaded—and, on command, charged headlong into the blazing guns of the enemy. For several nights Richard Gatling could not sleep. A single idea occupied his thoughts. What if a few soldiers could duplicate the firepower of a hundred men? Troops would no longer be able to stand still and shoot at each other. And the running charge would be impossible, because the attacking force would be mowed down like tall grass.

Gatling reasoned that if he were able to invent a machine that could plant seeds swiftly, accurately, and in precise rows, he should be able to devise a mechanical gun that would spray bullets like water from a garden hose.

Invention of the Gatling Gun
Within a few weeks, the doctor had completed the drawings for his innovative weapon, the “Gatling gun,” and took the sketches to a machinist to manufacture.

The first Gatling gun consisted of a cluster of six rifle barrels, without stocks, arranged around a center rod. Each barrel had its own bolt, and the entire cluster could be made to revolve by turning a crank. The bolts were covered by a brass case at the breech. Cartridges were fed into a hopper, and as the cluster revolved, each barrel was fired at its lowest point, and then reloaded when the revolution was completed.

The gun was mounted upon a wheeled carriage. Two men were required to operate the weapon—one to sight the target and turn the crank, the other to load the ammunition.

A working model was completed within six months, and a public demonstration was held across Graveyard Pond in Indianapolis. The abrupt, rapid noise of gunfire could be heard for five miles and, at 200 rounds per minute, the bullets cut a 10-inch tree in half in less than 30 seconds.

Dr. Gatling patented his gun on November 4, 1862, but he had a difficult time selling it to the Army. General James Wolfe Ripley, chief of ordnance, was not impressed with the weapon and remarked: “You can kill a man just as dead with a cap-n’-ball smooth-bore.”

Gatling was unperturbed, however, and took his diagrams to a manufacturing company in Cincinnati. Twelve of the Gatling guns were built, and a few of them were sold to General Benjamin Butler for $1,000 each. Butler later used the Gatlings to hold a bridgehead against Confederate cavalry at the James River.

In early trials of the Gatling gun, it was regarded by the military as a supplement to artillery. The tests that were conducted compared the range and accuracy of the machine gun with the range and accuracy of grapeshot fired by artillery pieces.

Richard Gatling continued to modify and improve the weapon, and in 1865 patented a model that was capable of firing 350 rounds per minute. A demonstration was held at Fortress Monroe. This time the ordnance department was impressed and ordered a hundred guns. The Gatling gun was officially adopted by the U.S. Army on August 24, 1866. It was first manufactured by Cooper Arms in Philadelphia, and later by the Colt Arms Company of Hartford, Conn.

Europe and Abroad
Dr. Gatling traveled throughout Europe selling his weapon, and new models were continually being designed. A short-barrel variety was purchased by the British and mounted on camels. This so-called “camel gun” was also used by the U.S. Army and Navy.

As settlers moved west after the Civil War, Army garrisons in forts along the frontier housed Gatling guns. Gatlings were also attached to cavalry expeditions. A Gatling detachment under Lieutenant James W. Pope accompanied General Nelson A. Miles’s campaign into west Texas. On August 30, as an advance party of Army scouts entered a trail that led between two high bluffs, about three hundred Indians charged down the cliffs. At the sound of gunfire, Pope quickly brought up his Gatling guns. The rapid, withering fire scattered the attacking warriors, and they fled in confusion.

During the same year, a battalion of 8th Cavalry, commanded by Major William R. Price, was ordered out to suppress an uprising by several Indian tribes, including Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa. Price was able to successfully fight off several surprise attacks by hostile bands with two Gatling guns.

“If war was made more terrible, it would have a tendency to keep peace among the nations of the earth.” - Richard Gatling, Inventor of the Gatling Gun

But in the most famous battle of the Indian Wars, the Gatling was strangely absent. On June 22, 1876, Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry rode out from their Powder River camp and headed for the Little Big Horn River. Custer had been offered three Gatling guns but refused them. He felt that the Gatlings—mounted on horse-drawn carriages—would slow his cavalry troop down in rough country. Custer also believed that the use of such a devastating weapon would cause him to “lose face” with the Indians. Whether or not the Gatlings could have saved Custer and his 200 men is questionable. Some accounts report the column of Indians that retreated after the battle as being three miles long and a half-mile wide.

During the next few years, the Gatling gun participated in a number of battles, including those with the Nez Perce. The warriors under Chief Joseph fought 13 engagements against the U.S. Army, many of which were standoffs. Finally, on September 30, 1877, in the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana, General Nelson Miles, with 600 men and a Gatling gun, attacked Chief Joseph’s camp. After four days of bitter fighting, Chief Joseph could hold out no longer. As he surrendered his rifle to Miles, the valiant Indian leader said, “My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

The Gatling Gun In Africa
During the latter part of the 19th century, Gatling guns became more and more popular, and were used in the many wars that flared during the 1880s and 1890s. The 1879 war between England and the African Zulu tribes was the first major land action in which the Gatling gun proved to be a deciding factor. A small British army, commanded by Lord Chelmsford, defeated a much larger Zulu force under King Cetywayo. In one encounter, a single Gatling mowed down more than 400 tribesmen in only a few minutes.

After his victorious campaign, Lord Chelmsford wrote: “They [Gatling guns] should be considered essentially as infantry weapons. They can be used effectively, not only in defense, but also in covering the last stage of an infantry attack upon a position—where the soldiers must cease firing and charge with the bayonet.”

By the time Dr. Gatling died in 1903, the automatic machine gun had arrived on the scene. It was powered by the discharging gases of its fired cartridges, and was simpler and more economical to use than the manually operated guns. In 1911, the U.S. Army declared the Gatling gun obsolete.

But Richard Gatling’s legacy did not die with him. In September 1956, the General Electric Company unveiled its 6-barrel aerial cannon called the Vulcan. For several years, General Electric had made a detailed study of every rapid-fire gun, and its engineers had found that Dr. Gatling’s original patents offered the most promise for the development of firepower necessary for fast jet fighter aircraft. The Vulcan was also put to use on attack helicopters and gunships.

From: warfarehistorynetwork.com

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Captain Minié’s Deadly Invention at Inkerman

By Victor Kamenir, 1-22-16

The force multiplier that allowed the outnumbered British to stand up to the overwhelming numbers of Russian attackers at Inkerman was the Minié bullet (not ball). The Russian soldiers, still armed with smooth-bore muskets, faced the daunting task of advancing into the muzzles of British Minié bullet-firing Enfield rifled muskets. The rapid-firing, deadly accurate British musketry literally mowed down the Russian ranks.

Since the Napoleonic Wars, European infantry had faced the dilemma of choosing between slow-firing but accurate rifles and faster firing but less accurate muskets. The ball fired by a smooth-bore musket did not have a tight fit, and upon leaving the musket’s muzzle it often went astray. On the other hand, the grooves inside the rifle barrel tightly gripped and spun the bullet, giving it range and accuracy.

In 1849 a French armory captain, Claude-Etienne Minié, an inspector of musketry at the military academy at Vincennes, found the solution to merge the two. The Minié bullet, made out of soft lead, was not really a ball, but rather a cylindrical bullet. Being smaller than the diameter of the barrel, the Minié bullet could be easily dropped inside the barrel. Shaped like a cone with a cavity in its base, the Minié bullet had three angular grooves on its body. When the powder charge exploded against the cavity in its base, the bullet would expand the grooves and create a tight fit in the rifled barrel. The cavity in the bullet’s base also helped to a degree in cleaning out the barrel of the black-powder fouling.

Before the advent of rifles, the artillery was the primary arm used to strike an enemy at a distance. The numbers of rifle-armed specialists were too few to seriously alter the makeup of the battlefield. But when regular infantry units became armed with rifled muskets firing Minié bullets, the artillery suddenly found itself within the range of hostile infantrymen. At the Battle of Inkerman, Russian artillerymen suffered greatly from British infantry fire.

The invention of the Minié bullet also changed the way infantry was employed in battle. The dense infantry columns of Napoleonic times were replaced with troops fighting in lose line formations and volley fire gave way to fire-at-will. To their dismay, the large Russian columns were decimated by British rifle fire during the Battles of Alma and Inkerman. Similar weapons were also used with devastating effect during the American Civil War a decade later.

Minié bullets significantly helped in removing cavalry as a decisive force on the battlefield, as well. During Napoleonic times, the infantry had to form a bayonet-bristling square to protect itself from cavalry. Now, the infantry was able to bring fire on the advancing cavalry at much longer distances and with much greater accuracy. The advent of the Minié bullet thus signified a turning point in military technology, marking the end of massed formations and the beginning of more decentralized operations by smaller units.

From: warfarehistorynetwork.com

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Dead Cattle and Greek Fire

By Jeffrey B. Roth, 3-25-14

The American Civil War was a conflict that sat astride two phases in military history: It began with generals on both sides employing timeworn Napoleonic-era strategies and ended with horrific trench warfare and violence against civilian populations that foreshadowed World War I. It was also a crucible in which new combat technologies were tested, among them ironclads, machine guns and submarines. And while scientists had not yet fully grasped the germ theory of disease, it was also one of the first conflicts to see chemical and biological agents tested, and even used, as weapons.

Disease was everywhere during the Civil War. By far, the biggest killer during the conflict were communicable illnesses caused by unsanitary conditions at camp and in the field. As Andrew M. Bell of the University of Virginia has documented, early in the fighting military leaders on both sides of the war began to grasp the concept of disease vectors, as weapons.

Union planners knew that among other things, the blockade against Southern ports would exacerbate the spread of disease in the South by restricting access to food, clothing and medical supplies. Malaria was still rampant across the Deep South, and quinine was in high demand before the war. “Some parts of the South experienced shortages of quinine as early as the first summer of the war, and prices climbed each year thereafter,” Bell said. “Southern civilians suffered most of all from the quinine shortage because the Confederate government requisitioned whatever little bit made it through the blockade.”

Others sought to turn disease into an offensive weapon. One Southern planner proposed shipping clothing worn by yellow fever patients to Union military units, hoping to cause an epidemic. In 1862, R.R. Barrow, a Southern farmer, suggested taking bodies of yellow fever victims, along with contaminated clothing, to New Orleans, which was occupied by Union forces. There is no evidence that either plan was put in action.

In 1863, Dr. Luke Blackburn, a Southern sympathizer and later governor of Kentucky, plotted to infect clothing with the smallpox virus and sell it to Union troops in Washington. There may have been one Union victim of the scheme, a lieutenant in the 17th Vermont named Charles W. Randall, who believed he became ill after purchasing some undergarments from a store. Later, the store was identified as a possible recipient of an infected clothing consignment.

Another approach to biological warfare was the contamination of drinking water by retreating soldiers. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman reported that Confederate troops retreating from Vicksburg, Va., had driven animals into ponds and then shot them. In response, the Union War Department issued General Orders No. 100, on April 24, 1863, stating: “The use of poison in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms, is wholly excluded from modern warfare.”

The Civil War also saw significant use of chemical weapons, at least in an incipient form. Union forces used variants of Greek fire, essentially incendiary mixtures that were hard to extinguish and could, in some cases, float on water. “I classify Greek fire as a chemical weapon because the formulations, when ignited, released large volumes of noxious fumes, and this was considered a useful collateral effect,” said Guy R. Hasegawa, a Civil War researcher. Greek fire was used most notably during the sieges of Vicksburg, Miss., and Charleston, S.C.

Long-range artillery shells were used as the delivery system for the incendiary compounds. There were technical problems, such as the projectiles exploding too early or not at all, doing little damage. The South also developed Greek fire weapons, but how extensively they were used in the field is unclear.

Confederates had their own ideas about chemical warfare, though none were actually employed. In one case, a commando team was given chloroform for a planned raid on the Monitor ironclad, which they would use to overwhelm sleeping sailors, but the raid never took place. The South tested a shell laden with a chemical agent that would release intense noxious gases, to be fired into Union positions. The Confederates also developed another fume-producing device to be fired into tunnels. A June 4, 1861, article in The Richmond Daily Dispatch noted: “It is well known that there are some chemicals so poisonous that an atmosphere impregnated with them, makes it impossible to remain where they are by filling larges shells of extraordinary capacity with poisonous gases and throwing them very rapidly into” an enemy position (in this case Fort Pickens, a holdout Union post along the Gulf Coast).

But the most rapid innovation took place in the North. President Lincoln exhibited great interest in the development of new weapons technology. During the war, the president would often visit the Navy Yard and consult with John A. Dahlgren, head of the ordnance department of the Navy.

Yet because there was no coordinated, systematic effort to take advantage of such innovations, many ideas remained undeveloped. Nowhere was this more true than in the realm of chemical and biological weapons, where thinking got far ahead of actual doing, and the horrific implementation of things like germ warfare and chemical agents had to wait for a later, even more barbaric conflict.

Sources: Guy R. Hasegawa, “Proposals for Chemical Weapons During the American Civil War”; Jeffrey K. Smart, “Chemical and Biological Warfare Research and Development During the Civil War”; James M. Schmidt: “The Arts of Death,” The Civil War News, November 2010.

Jeffrey B. Roth is a freelance writer.

From: opinionator.blog.nytimes.com

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Effects of the Minie Ball on Civil War Combat

by Mike Rinehart

During the Civil War the generals of both sides used old battlefield tactics which called for the men to march in tight formations (shoulder to shoulder) and attack the enemy across open ground.  This made the attacker an easy target for the defender.  These tactics worked great during the Revolutionary War when rifles were only effective under 100 yards.  The Civil War changed that.

The French army officer Claude-Etienne Minié invented the bullet that would bear his name in 1849. The Minié bullet, a cylindrical bullet with a hollow base that expanded when fired, proved lethally accurate over relatively long distances, and was soon used to devastating effect by the British army against Russian forces during the Crimean War. After the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, both Union and Confederate soldiers used the "minnie" bullet (as they called it) in their muzzle-loading rifles.

This bullet had a devastating effect on troops.  When it hit a soldier it often shattered or splintered bones in the process.  Here is the actual bone of a Civil War soldier that was struck by a Minie Ball. Notice how the bullet penetrated the bone rendering the bone useless and unhealable.

Since the bone could not recover, if a bone was stuck in the way above, a surgeon had no choice but to remove the wounded limp be it a arm or a leg.  If the limb was not removed the patient would automatically suffer a infection and die anyway.

The KEY thing to understand is the weapons of the Civil War were way ahead of the tactics (battle strategies) that the generals used.  Look at the sketch below.  This was the usually attack formation that both sides used.  The plan is for these men to march (walk) across a open field to an enemy waiting for them on the other side of a field.  This formation worked fine in the American Revolution or even in the Mexican War when armies used smoothbore muskets which were ineffective at any target over 100 yards away.  The Minie Ball gave the advantage to the defenders because by adding the accuracy and range this formation will soon be eaten alive by enemy fire.  This led to many of the high casualties of Civil War battles.

Here is a actual photograph of some Civil War surgeons posing how an amputation would take place.  Usually more people would be utilized to hold the patient down while the limb (a leg in the photo) would be SAWED off.  This process was dangerous and sometimes would kill the patient since in these days or primitive technology the surgeons would not clean their tools.  This would spread infections.  More soldiers would die of disease in the Civil War than via any other method. Some of them perished because of infections resulting from amputations.

Civil War medical kits looked like the following.  Notice the saw that today somebody would use to saw wood with.  Imagine that cutting into your bone!!  Yes I know it is a dreadful thought!

Hopefully you see now that war isn't all glory like it is portrayed in movies and in video games.  War means death, mutilation and suffering.

From: rossfordschools.org

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Bullet Wound

From: livescience.com

Private Eben Smith, Co. A, 11th Maine Volunteers was wounded at Deep Bottom, Va., by a conoidal ball on Aug. 16, 1864. Primary amputation was done by acting assistant surgeon J.C. Morton on Sept. 14, 1864; the amputation at the hip was performed by acting assistant surgeon John H. Packard on Jan. 19, 1865.

Conoidal bullets were cylindrical soft lead bullets that became widely used in the Civil War. They were large-caliber, so they did a lot of damage and were responsible for many amputations. Illustration by Baumgras.

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The Bullet That Changed History

By Pat Leonard, 8-31-12

It was late afternoon on Aug. 30, 1862, the concluding day of the Second Battle of Bull Run, and the largest simultaneous massed assault of the Civil War was about to be unleashed. The Confederate general James Longstreet’s corps was in position on the left flank of the Union general John Pope’s unsuspecting Army of Virginia, and when the signal was given 25,000 Rebels surged forward, catching the surprised Federals in an immense “hammer on anvil” movement.

Leading the charge was John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade, a force of roughly 2,500 men that included Pvt. William Fletcher, Company F, 5th Texas Infantry. When Fletcher and his fellow Texans had advanced to within 150 yards, a line of Union soldiers stood and fired, then turned to run, precipitating a retreat that would nearly result in Pope’s annihilation.

The Federals’ parting volley was mostly ineffective, but one bullet struck Private Fletcher in the stomach, knocking him to the ground and momentarily rendering him unconscious. When he came to, he saw the “long and ugly wound” and guessed that his bowels had been pierced. Fletcher sat up and actually faced into the raging battle, hoping he “might be so fortunate as to get a dead shot” that would “put an end to his existence.”

Private Fletcher had good reason to wish for a mercy shot. Earlier battles had taught veterans like him that serious gunshot wounds to the head, chest and abdomen were most often fatal. But while the first two were very likely to kill quickly, abdominal wounds condemned their victims to agonizingly slow deaths. Fletcher cursed his fate but resigned himself to it.

In the history of armed conflicts, there has never been a good time to be wounded in battle, but the soldiers of the American Civil War were especially unlucky that their battles took place during the early 1860s. Those four years were a brief period when recent developments in arms and ammunition made battlefields far more lethal than they had been a decade before, while discoveries in medicine – which could have partially counterbalanced the awful effects of the new ordnance – were still a handful of years in the future.

Almost as soon as the war ended, historians began to study the factors that contributed to so much bloodshed – more than 200,000 killed and nearly 500,000 wounded – and concluded that the introduction of the rifle musket was the primary cause of the staggering casualty rates. And not without reason: the rifle musket combined the best features of the smoothbore musket and the Kentucky flintlock rifle. It could be loaded quickly and easily – an experienced soldier could load and fire up to four rounds a minute – while its long, grooved barrel gave it an effective range up to four times that of a smoothbore, with similar improvements in accuracy.

Many chroniclers noted that, unlike the tactics of the American Revolution, when defenders would hold their fire until they could “see the whites” of their attackers’ eyes, Civil War defenders armed with rifle muskets could aim at and frequently hit targets at 400 yards or more. It was the rifle musket, researchers determined, that had made the bayonet obsolete and drastically transformed the roles of cavalry and field artillery.

Statistics appear to bear out this theory. Of all the wounds treated by Union Army doctors throughout the war, nearly 95 percent were caused by small-arms fire, less than 1 percent were attributable to bayonets and swords, and all but a handful of the remainder resulted from artillery shells and shrapnel.

Several modern historians, however, have disputed the notion that the rifle musket alone deserves the credit — or rather the blame — for the Civil War’s incredible carnage. They note that many battles were fought at close quarters, effectively negating the superior range and accuracy of rifle muskets over smoothbores, and that in any case most Civil War soldiers lacked the training and practice to take advantage of the new weapon’s awesome killing capacity. Of the millions of rounds fired at the enemy during the war, far more sailed over the heads of their intended targets than actually struck home.

What these discussions tend to overlook, though, is that it was not just the accuracy or frequency of fire that killed and maimed so many men, but the characteristics of the ammunition that encountered flesh and bone. While a smoothbore musket could expel a solid ball with a greater muzzle velocity than a rifle musket, it was the projectile that the latter weapon fired – the slightly smaller Minié ball – that made all the difference.

The Minié ball (properly pronounced “min-YAY” after its developer, the French Army officer Claude-Étienne Minié, but pronounced “minnie ball” by the Americans) wasn’t a ball but a conical-shaped bullet. Popularized during the Crimean War, it was perfected in early 1850s America. An armorer at the arsenal in Harpers Ferry named James Burton simplified the design that had made Minié famous and developed a hollow-based, .58-caliber lead projectile that could be cheaply mass produced.

The first generation of rifled projectiles were hard to load, since they had to fit snugly within the rifling grooves inside the barrel. Minié balls were slightly smaller in circumference than the inside of the barrel, so they could be dropped in quickly. When fired, the base of the bullet expanded and gripped the rifle grooves, which imparted a spiral on the projectile and thereby gave it its greater range and accuracy. In 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis adopted the rifle musket and Burton’s improved Minié ball, or bullet, for the United States Army.

The intent of the designers of the rifle musket/Minié ball combination was to increase the firepower of the individual soldier, and in this quest they succeeded. But in developing a defender’s dream they also created a nightmare, not just for the men felled by the bullet, but for the medical corps stewards and surgeons who had to deal with its effects. The very attributes that increased the bullet’s range and accuracy also increased its destructive potential when it struck its target. Unlike a solid ball, which could pass through the human body nearly intact, leaving an exit wound not much larger than the entrance wound, the soft, hollow-based Minié ball flattened and deformed upon impact, while creating a shock wave that emanated outward.

The Minié ball didn’t just break bones, it shattered them. It didn’t just pierce tissue and internal organs, it shredded them. And if the ragged, tumbling bullet had enough force to cleave completely through the body, which it often did, it tore out an exit wound several times the size of the entrance wound. Civil War surgeons were quickly overwhelmed by the gaping wounds, mangled bodies and mutilated limbs they were asked to repair as the scope of the war broadened and casualties mounted. Though often accused of being too partial to their bone saws, amputating arms and legs as quickly as the men could be placed on their operating tables and subdued with chloroform or ether, the surgeons really had no choice. Even if they’d had the skills and resources to attempt reconstructive surgery, in the heat of battle they didn’t have the time.

Over all, Civil War surgeons did a respectable and generally successful job of trying to save lives, given the unrelenting slaughter with which they had to cope. They were notably less successful, however, in convincing the public of this fact, as cries of “Butchery!” continued to dog the medical corps throughout and after the war. As an editorial writer noted in the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer, following the Union victory at Gettysburg: “Our readers will not fail to have noticed that everybody connected to the army has been thanked, excepting the surgeons.”

As for Pvt. William Fletcher, he survived the abdominal wound he suffered at the Second Battle of Bull Run, thanks in part to a “Kentucky button” – a plug of dried oak he had whittled to hold up his pants. The minié ball that knocked him down fractured the button, dissipating enough of the bullet’s force to prevent it from penetrating too deeply. Fletcher recovered and went on to fight at the battles of Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and Chickamauga, where he was again wounded, this time in the foot.

Fletcher credited the care he received from the Sisters of Charity with saving his foot from amputation and enabling him to return to duty. Thirty-four years later, as a successful businessman in Beaumont, Tex., he acted on the gratitude he felt by donating the land and lumber to build the order’s hospital in that city, the Hotel Dieu. His memoir of the Civil War – “Rebel Private: Front and Rear” – was said by author Margaret Mitchell to be “her single most valuable research tool when writing ‘Gone With the Wind.'”

Sources: William A. Fletcher, “Rebel Private: Front and Rear”; Allan W. Howey, “Weaponry: The Rifle-Musket and the Minié Ball,” Civil War Times, October 1999; Earl J. Hess, “The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth,” Alfred J.Bollet, “Civil War Medicine: Challenges & Triumphs,”; Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein, “Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine.”

Pat Leonard is the editor and publisher of The Gold Cross, a magazine for volunteer E.M.T.s in New Jersey. He has written two novels, “Proceed With Caution” and “Damned If You Do.” His great-greatgreat uncle, Sgt. Jerome Leonard, 55th Pennsylvania Infantry, was wounded at the Battle of Cold Harbor and later died at Bermuda Hundred hospital after his leg was amputated.

Image: Paintings of wounds made by a conical bullet in a Civil War casualty: entrance wound at left, exit wound at right. F.A. Otis and D.L. Huntington, “Wounds and complications, Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion.”

From: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

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Surviving a Musket Ball Wound

From: collectmedicalantiques.com

Cpt. “S” of the 29th New York volunteers was wounded by a musket ball on May 2, 1863 at Chancellorsville. With his lung collapsed, he walked 1 1/2 miles to a field hospital where physicians unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the hernea, which contained lung and “some portion of the alimentary canal.” The following day, hostilities forced Cpt S to be evacuated and he subsequently had to walk another 1 1/2 miles. The musket ball passed in his stool on May 7th, and the wound, which contained lung and stomach, eventually granulated in.

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The Minie Ball

Amputation was the most common surgery during the Civil War. Most amputations owed their unfortunate necessity to the minie ball.

The smoothbore musket had been the standard American infantry weapon throughout the 1850s. It fired a round ball and was reliable at close range in an era when the main military tactic was the massed infantry attack.
Civil War battlefields hosted a new generation of rifled weapons. Grooves inside the barrel of the gun gave the ammunition greater velocity, penetration and long-range accuracy. The ammunition of choice was the new, deadly minie ball.

Designed in France by Captain Claude-Etienne Minie, the ball was adapted by American manufacturers and was the most common ammunition used in the Civil War. The minie ball changed the face of warfare and of battlefield wounds.

The American version of the bullet was a large ellipsoid made of lead with a hollow cavity at its base. The cavity expanded when the powder was ignited, to fill the grooves of a rifled musket barrel. The grooves, or rifling inside the gun barrel caused the bullet to revolve as it left the muzzle.

The 0.58-caliber conical minie ball tore an enormous wound on impact, in part because the soft lead deformed, enlarging its dimensions. The ball was so heavy that head and abdominal wounds were almost always fatal; wounds to the extremities ripped through the tissues and shattered the bones.

As the missiles broke through the skin, they usually carried dirt, skin and fabric into the body. The wounds almost always became infected.

The minie ball caused massive tissue destruction and crushed the bones. This type of battlefield wound had never been seen before in America. Huge numbers of casualties and a lack of time, equipment, supplies and surgical experience made amputation the most rapid and effective technique to save the largest number of lives. Despite the frightening destructive power of the minie ball, an astonishing 75% of the Civil War amputees survived their surgeries.

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