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These are authentic rounds from the battlefield at Gettysburg. They only cost me a couple of dollars each back in the 1970's, and might not be very expensive today either. Over 3,000,000 were fired during the three days of battle by both forces, and gawd nose how many more were fumbled and dropped without firing. These were likely the later kind, judging from their good shape. A round fired that struck anything stiffer than a pillow was apt to be squashed right out of shape, or might even fragment. (Hence the terrible wounds of Civil War battles, that tore chunks out of arms and legs and shattered bones so badly that amputation was the only option.) Not only are the rounds soft lead that you can mark with a fingernail, their .58 calibre sizeis enormous. Almost 6/10 of an inch and they weigh about an ounce. Most soldiers carried with them a bullet mold, much like a candle mold. It was hinged at one end, and when closed you poured lead melted over a fire into the opening. Wait a couple of minutes and pop out a bullet! Unlike today's round the civil war mini ball was dropped (or spat) into the muzzle after powder and wad had been tamped down by the ramrod. There were also ready made rounds. They only looked as though they should be loaded from the breech as with a modern gun. However, the proper use was to tear the round out of the paper wrapping with their teeth. The powder contained in the paper wrapping was the poured into the rifle and everythng else was the same as with the hand-made variety. Some soldiers, terrified or mesmerized by the battle, forgot to pull the trigger, and loaded and re-loaded several times... Once in a while they forgot the ramrod and fired that at the enemy as well as the round.
Mini balls are not small, as you noticed, so why are they called that? The name has nothing to do with size -- it's the name of a French officer who invented the type, and would have been pronounced Meen-nay in French probably. Both Union and Confederate troops just called them mini-balls. They were an advance over the old literally round bullet in that they were pointed and had a hollow base, and is banded. (Not really evident in this image. Trust me, the blunt end is hollow.) The force of the powder exploding expanded the hollow base and the bands incised around it against rifling in the barrel, imparting a spin. This gave the mini-ball more than twice the range of an old fashioned round, and far more accuracy. One reason Civil War battles were so bloody is that tactics still estimated loses on the basis of Revolutionary War battles, when most rounds went anywhere but into their targets. In the Civil War, far too many rounds found soft flesh and brittle bone. The left hand round is still coated in an oxide, and is more or less how it would have been found on the field. The round on the right has been cleaned (with viniger) and looks more as it would in use. There's even a trace of grease in the grooves between bands. This grease helped the round travel the length of the rifled barrel without getting stuck I would imagine. One of the biggest problem with early rifled muskets and soft lead rounds was that the lead literally scraped off the bullet and stuck to the rifling. A rifle would become fouled in short order, and have to be cleaned with a stiff spiral brush that fit down the barrel. If it became too foul to fire in a battle, you might have an interesting few minutes ahead of you...
Mini balls are not small, as you noticed, so why are they called that? The name has nothing to do with size -- it's the name of a French officer who invented the type, and would have been pronounced Meen-nay in French probably. Both Union and Confederate troops just called them mini-balls. They were an advance over the old literally round bullet in that they were pointed and had a hollow base, and is banded. (Not really evident in this image. Trust me, the blunt end is hollow.) The force of the powder exploding expanded the hollow base and the bands incised around it against rifling in the barrel, imparting a spin. This gave the mini-ball more than twice the range of an old fashioned round, and far more accuracy. One reason Civil War battles were so bloody is that tactics still estimated loses on the basis of Revolutionary War battles, when most rounds went anywhere but into their targets. In the Civil War, far too many rounds found soft flesh and brittle bone. The left hand round is still coated in an oxide, and is more or less how it would have been found on the field. The round on the right has been cleaned (with viniger) and looks more as it would in use. There's even a trace of grease in the grooves between bands. This grease helped the round travel the length of the rifled barrel without getting stuck I would imagine. One of the biggest problem with early rifled muskets and soft lead rounds was that the lead literally scraped off the bullet and stuck to the rifling. A rifle would become fouled in short order, and have to be cleaned with a stiff spiral brush that fit down the barrel. If it became too foul to fire in a battle, you might have an interesting few minutes ahead of you...
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Reading about this stuff always gives me chills. I can't imagine actually being out on the battlefield, and especially a Civil War battlefield. I've studied just enough about it to have some idea of how truly horrible that was. Still, it's interesting stuff, too, and I hadn't actually know where the name fort the mini balls came from. I have one, or something like it, which came from the Perryville Battlefield, but I think it's a replica, rather than the real thing.
Replicas usually look too good -- no dents, no scratches, and a shiney look when they're new. (They do turn dull though, in a couple of years.) I have at least a couple of relicas I bought in Baltimore once. They were sold next to the 18th. century frigate Constellation, on the apparent principle that all old guns are the same. In Constellation's day, mini-balls hadn't been invented yet...
I also found a replica once, on the steps leading down into a subway station here in Toronto. I'll never know, but I presume someone who bought it as a souvineer (similar to the ones I bought at some historical site), and dropped it.
I also found a replica once, on the steps leading down into a subway station here in Toronto. I'll never know, but I presume someone who bought it as a souvineer (similar to the ones I bought at some historical site), and dropped it.
For a real bone-chilling experience, visit Gettysburg. There are a lot of Civil War battlefields, but most are just that... fields. Gettysburg has unforgetable features. You can stand on the very ground at the end of Cemetary Ridge where Joshua Chamberlain's men fought off the overwhelming numbers of the a Texas regiment. Looking down the hill it isn't at all hard to picture several hundred scruffy men with muskets and bayonets running up at you to spill your guts out. It isn't at all hard to imagine it, because the rock you're leading one almost certainly once shielded a Maine man from musket rounds, and if he was shot his blood flowed below your very feet. At once time you could have found loose rounds lost among the rocks. (Now, of course, they've all long since been picked up and you need a metal detector to find relics in more out of the way places.)
I'd like to see it, if I ever manage to get up that way again. I've never actually been on any Civil War battlefields, but I have been on one from the American Revolutionary War that's not too far from my home. It's pretty much just a field, but there's still a sense of lingering horror there. Not that I'm comparing the two, but there are some indications left of what happened there, too.
I've been to a battlefield of the War of 1812. It was where General Isaac Brock fell. It can well be argued that without Brock, Canadians would be lining up at the polls in November to vote against the Republicans. Pity he fell early in the war. Had he lived he might have stood with Tecumseh and defeated Zach Taylor's advance from Detroit toward London. It could have been a very different war. Perhaps if Brock had lived, so would have Tecumseh, and Ohioans and Hoosiers would NOT be voting against the Republicans this November.
That is a pity, though I can't say I'm too sorry that we wound up with Ohio and Indiana. If nothing else, we need all the votes against the Republicans that we can get. I need to do some more reading on that war someday, too. I know less about it than I do about the American Civil War.
If interested, I strongly suggest Pierre Berton's two volume history, "Flames Across the Border" and "The Invasion of Canada". They're a very personable and easily read account of the war of 1812, so don't be deterred by the length. I reccomend the books because they're different from the standard American accounts in an important way. In most American books I think all you're likely to find is what a splendid American victory it was, how it was practically one triumph after another bar some very minor setbacks, and then the hero Andrew Jackson who ended the war with a crushing defeat of the hated English.
The Berton books are from the Canadian point of view, and discuss a lot of things that don't fit into that glowing scenario well. To the Canadian, the War of 1812 was a defining moment in which events and issues made it clear we weren't Americans. Before that moment, the border was porous, and identities amorphous. Afterward we had grudges, and knew we weren't the people who entered our country and burned our farms and towns. The war went very well for the British at first, and even at the end it was a draw, with Britain forces still a threat and most American attacts thwarted. The war was not popular in many parts of the United States bordering Canada. (As usual, the war party was from the South.) New England was openly trading with the British and threatening succession. When Jackson did beat the English at New Orleans, the war was already over, and a peace treaty signed that re-established the exact state of affairs that had existed before the war, so it was no gain for either side technically. But because of the War of 1812 it was clarified that the Ohio valley would become part of America (despite the strong presence of French Canadian traders that had been ther for two centuries), and that Upper Canada wouldn't drift into the United States.
The Berton books are from the Canadian point of view, and discuss a lot of things that don't fit into that glowing scenario well. To the Canadian, the War of 1812 was a defining moment in which events and issues made it clear we weren't Americans. Before that moment, the border was porous, and identities amorphous. Afterward we had grudges, and knew we weren't the people who entered our country and burned our farms and towns. The war went very well for the British at first, and even at the end it was a draw, with Britain forces still a threat and most American attacts thwarted. The war was not popular in many parts of the United States bordering Canada. (As usual, the war party was from the South.) New England was openly trading with the British and threatening succession. When Jackson did beat the English at New Orleans, the war was already over, and a peace treaty signed that re-established the exact state of affairs that had existed before the war, so it was no gain for either side technically. But because of the War of 1812 it was clarified that the Ohio valley would become part of America (despite the strong presence of French Canadian traders that had been ther for two centuries), and that Upper Canada wouldn't drift into the United States.
There's also Fort York, nearby where I live. The battle there wasn't too ferocious but the British laid a fuse to the magazine store before abandoning the fort, and the resulting explosion was so massive it killed a couple of hundred "visiting" American troops. That was more than had fallen in the fighting by far.
I went to the Perryville reenactment a couple years ago with my Boy Scout troop. It was one of the round-year anniversaries, so it was a big deal that year. I thought it was interesting that it was, and still is, farmland. Not much changed in that part of the nation.
Perryville, if I recall, was important that despite it being a Confederate tactical victory, it was a Union strategic victory and lead to the Confederates giving up trying to take Kentucky. If Kentucky had fallen, the bridges and ferries in Louisville could have lead them to a major depot in Jeffersonville, which today is City Hall and a trendy commercial district.
Perryville, if I recall, was important that despite it being a Confederate tactical victory, it was a Union strategic victory and lead to the Confederates giving up trying to take Kentucky. If Kentucky had fallen, the bridges and ferries in Louisville could have lead them to a major depot in Jeffersonville, which today is City Hall and a trendy commercial district.
Ummm... a breech loader if I recall, from which I think the Henry rifle derived? Tendency to jam? If that's it, there's speculation that the piece contributed to Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn. The rifles there overheated and jammed. A lot of the troopers had torn their fingers to shreds trying to pry the expaned, jammed brass shells out of the breech before they got a tomahawk to the head or where shot through the gut. Not that I wouldn't value having a Spencer of my own. It would be a marvelous piece of history.
actualy most of the 7th was still using sharps and only officers or sargents if they carried a rifle was issued repeaters because it was still too expencive for the common foot soldier or calvary to wield such a costly gun at the time... The first actual lever action rifle was the yellow boy lever action rifle which was still using black powder shells...
One wonders why a thief would do with them? Did he have the imagination to picture selling them. Would he bother at half a buck each? Or did the moron spend all night trying to jam one into his Saturday Night Special?
It would almost be funny if somebody held up a gas station with an antique muzzle loading musket. "Don't you all git outta range of mah muskit, y'hear, or ah is gonna stick yo with mah bay'net!"
It would almost be funny if somebody held up a gas station with an antique muzzle loading musket. "Don't you all git outta range of mah muskit, y'hear, or ah is gonna stick yo with mah bay'net!"
Over in New Jersey some years ago, where it's hard to legally acquire a cartridge pistol, a guy murdered two people with a firable replica Colt .36 revolver he got mail-order, because black powder guns aren't regulated by the federal government. One side effect of this oversight, is that guns firing black powder charges of ANY size are legal, as long as they don't use fixed ammunition. I know a fellow who owns a Krupp 75mm fortress gun from the late 1880s, and it's a non-regulated firearm that will throw an exceptionally large bullet several miles.
The element of that battle that chilled me the most was the written accounts of the air over the firefight of the moment visibly greyed or dimmed like a heavy rain from all the bullets in the air at any given moment. -quite apart from the normal smoke haze. This is the kind of hail that charges were suicidally run into (especially Pickett's Charge) And very young neutral battlefield observers from then became the pigheaded sot generals of WW1 ordering equally suicidal stuff! Idiots!
I don't know what was wrong with Lee that afternoon. When somebody on the Rebel side said "no 16,000 men could ever cross that field and live", he was dead on. I don't think any 30,000 men could have done it. A few handfuls made it to the stone wall at the foot of the ridge, but they couldn't have held it long and didn't. Reinforcements swamped them almost immediately. Standing at the top of the ridge you aren't so much impressed with your height agove the level of the charge as you are of the vast distance and total vulnerability of the ground. I'm only surprised the casualties were only about 1 in 3 instead of 2 in 3. With repeating rifles and a few gatling guns the numbers could easily have been 3 in 3.
I've seen apologies for Lee's blunder. One recent book makes an argument that Lee had meant for Stuart to attack from the Union rear. But this won't hold water. Lee had no idea where Stuart was, and was desparate in his anxiety to establish contact with his cavalry commander the first day or two. Yet once Stuart was available, he stayed near the main force, and did nothing to move around the Union flank, though Lee could easily have ordered him to do so. Worse, Longstreet had urged Lee to let his troops do just that. Longstreet wanted to move around the Union left flank and attack from the rear as early as the second day, but Lee repeatedly refused the suggestion. So it seems irrefutable that the mistake was all Lee's, and he admittedly to it manfully every after.
I've seen apologies for Lee's blunder. One recent book makes an argument that Lee had meant for Stuart to attack from the Union rear. But this won't hold water. Lee had no idea where Stuart was, and was desparate in his anxiety to establish contact with his cavalry commander the first day or two. Yet once Stuart was available, he stayed near the main force, and did nothing to move around the Union flank, though Lee could easily have ordered him to do so. Worse, Longstreet had urged Lee to let his troops do just that. Longstreet wanted to move around the Union left flank and attack from the rear as early as the second day, but Lee repeatedly refused the suggestion. So it seems irrefutable that the mistake was all Lee's, and he admittedly to it manfully every after.
I suppose what you mean is that sometimes all six rounds in an old cap and ball pistol will fire simultaneouly. That's true. The tolerance was low and sparks from the ignited chamber could easily ignite the powder in one or more of the other chambers. So if you were smart you stuffed some grease into the chamber after the bullet, to keep out sparks. Modern pistoles with brass cartridges and far tighter tolerances don't need it.
Of couse, with a one-shot muzzle loader, this was no problem.
Or were you referring to multiple loads in a rifle barrel going off? That too is possible. It would be likely to rupture the barrel I'd think, but maybe only two or three loads might successfully discharge. I'd sure hate to be anywhere near someone trying...
Of couse, with a one-shot muzzle loader, this was no problem.
Or were you referring to multiple loads in a rifle barrel going off? That too is possible. It would be likely to rupture the barrel I'd think, but maybe only two or three loads might successfully discharge. I'd sure hate to be anywhere near someone trying...
Yes. It's very rare of course, but inevitably it would happen. And it if happend ten times in a battle, mabye only one would be actually found. I imagine modern bullets are more likely to bounce off, being harder. Those old lead rounds are almost as soft as chewing gum.
There were so many of them fired, and others dropped without firing, that its entirely likely they were real, even after 30 or 40 years of selling them from battlefields as souvenirs. Estimates place the number of musket rounds fired at Gettysberg as 3,000,000. That doesn't count those lost while handling, or those left with casualties.
I actually found a replica mini-ball on the steps of a Toronto subway station once. The best guess I can make is that it was bought by a tourist and dropped there when he returned home to Toronto. The metal was so bright you could see the crystalization from cooling. It's been many years since I found it, though, so now it's nearly indistinguishable from a genuine ball.
I actually found a replica mini-ball on the steps of a Toronto subway station once. The best guess I can make is that it was bought by a tourist and dropped there when he returned home to Toronto. The metal was so bright you could see the crystalization from cooling. It's been many years since I found it, though, so now it's nearly indistinguishable from a genuine ball.
Then again, those I bought in Gettysberg in the '60s were covered with a lead oxide glaze. It comes off if soaked in viniger, but that's probably how they ought to appear if right out of the ground. Dark grey balls, if genuine, were likely cleaned of the oxide layer.
I have one of those from the Vicksburg battlefield and I have fired them (at a metal target) and surprisingly, my Enfield firing a 60 grain load has very little recoil as opposed to my '03 Springfield (never use 225 grain loads, they hurt).
No matter which battlefield I go to, be it, Gettysburg, Antietam, the Alamo, Chalmette, the Little Bighorn, Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Fort Sumter, Olustee (north Florida, Confedrate victory), or the Dade Massacre sight, I always get a chill down my spine knowing what happened there. There's no doubt that if i ever go to Pearl Harbor or Normandy I will get that same feeling.
In correction of the above comment about the Spencers at the Little Bighorn, it wasn't the Spencer or Sharps, the 7th was using the Springfield M1873 trapdoor carbine with copper bullet casings. Spencers and Henrys as well as an assortment of other weapons were mostly used by the Sioux and the other massed tribes, and the average soldier's pay was about $13 a month and if they saved enough up they could buy them themselves. Officers in the period weren't allowed to carry anything other than a revolver and saber, NCOs could however carry what they wanted just as today. Custer would have won if he had brought along those Gatlin Guns and extra re-enforcements but he was too proud, complaiscent and arrogant to do so saying that, "This is a job for the Seventh Cavalry alone."
Sorry for the history lecture, as a reenactor and ameture historian I tend to get into it.
No matter which battlefield I go to, be it, Gettysburg, Antietam, the Alamo, Chalmette, the Little Bighorn, Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Fort Sumter, Olustee (north Florida, Confedrate victory), or the Dade Massacre sight, I always get a chill down my spine knowing what happened there. There's no doubt that if i ever go to Pearl Harbor or Normandy I will get that same feeling.
In correction of the above comment about the Spencers at the Little Bighorn, it wasn't the Spencer or Sharps, the 7th was using the Springfield M1873 trapdoor carbine with copper bullet casings. Spencers and Henrys as well as an assortment of other weapons were mostly used by the Sioux and the other massed tribes, and the average soldier's pay was about $13 a month and if they saved enough up they could buy them themselves. Officers in the period weren't allowed to carry anything other than a revolver and saber, NCOs could however carry what they wanted just as today. Custer would have won if he had brought along those Gatlin Guns and extra re-enforcements but he was too proud, complaiscent and arrogant to do so saying that, "This is a job for the Seventh Cavalry alone."
Sorry for the history lecture, as a reenactor and ameture historian I tend to get into it.
I knew Custer's men didn't carry a Henry. Sorry if I implied so. There were a number of breach loading rifles -- which one the men carried I would have had to look up. But I recall that the brass casings were thin, and if overheaded the spent brass jammed, and, worse, the casings were likely to shred when extracted with a knife or bayonet.
Of course, nearly everything Custer did at the Greasy Grasses (Little Big Horn, and techically it was the Rosebud anyway) was idiotic. But he was never as well endowed with brains as he was guts.
Of course, nearly everything Custer did at the Greasy Grasses (Little Big Horn, and techically it was the Rosebud anyway) was idiotic. But he was never as well endowed with brains as he was guts.
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