HIS 131 - American History I: Civil War Weapons

The conduct of war changed as a result of three technological advances during the Civil War--the rifled musket, the electric telegraph, and the railroad. Moorehead discusses how these advances changed the nature of war and how the US Army can learn from it.

At least it was the United States that fought the first truly modern war, and this squares with our current views about how the American Army can apply its overwhelming technological advantage tradition, which began in the Civil War, to dispatch any other main force army on the face of the planet in a matter of weeks. [...]this popular view explaining Civil War combat has remained fixed in the American mind for the last twenty years or more.

Guttman features the Austrian-made Lorenz rifle-musket, the third most numerous infantry weapon of the American Civil War. The weapon was developed by Viennese gunsmith Josef Lorenz, the Austrian Model 1854 percussion rifle was intended to replace the Austrian .71-caliber Model 1842 infantry musket, which was a flintlock converted to percussion with an unwieldy "tubelock" ignition system. Its bullet was based on a British design, the Wilkinson, which featured a slightly convex base and two deep groves that allowed the bullet to expand by collapsing in upon itself when fired.