"Gettysburg - Muskets or Muzzle-loaded rifles" Topic

Hello,

Am doing some research for a forthcoming scenario on McPherson's Ridge, but can't find any reference to whether Infantry regiments were all armed with rifles, or some still stuck with muskets.

Are there any books out there that might assist, please?

The SPI/TSR board game Terrible Swift Sword (boardgamegeek.com) has counters for every unit at Gettysburg showing what weapon they carried. Can't guarantee how accurate but its available.

Well, i can recommend "regimental strenghts and loses" by martin and bussy, for the weapons of union units.
According to Tucker in his book, High tide at gettyburg, all confederate regiments carried rifles(it is remarked in several books that the gettyburg campiagn was the first time that the rebs were so armed. In fact, the 2nd corps were armed entirly with enfields).

When you mean muskets, are you meaning "rifled percussion muskets", or "Smoothbores"?

The whole "musket/muzzleloader" is confusing and interchangeable…

I assume the OP means "who had rifled muskets and who had smoothbores?"

Or more generally, how to find out what each regiment was armed with?

I don't know the accuracy either, but Terrible Swift Sword had unit counters with smoothbores.

A thread from a few years ago:

TMP link

I will check my references but I believe that almost all the units at Gettysburg had rifle-muskets

You might check at boardgamegeek.com and see if the counter sheet for "Terrible Swift Sword" are uploaded there & if so, are they readable when zoomed in enough to read the regiment IDs. R = rifled muskets and M = smoothbore muskets.

Should have phrased that better :P
I meant Rifled muskets versus Smoothbores

I've gone shopping to my good friend Mister Amazon & he's going to deliver me the Martin & Bussy book.
Incidentally, is there much difference between the 1986 & 2005 version?

Thanks muchly for the help guys! *double thumbs up*

There were certainly units at Gettysburg with smoothbores. See Irish Brigade for one. However, the vast majority would have been rifled muskets (infantry).

Busey and Martin's book is excellent! I have the original version. I am sure there are some updates to the second one.

According to Ready…Aim…Fire: Small Arms Ammunition in the Battle of Gettysburg by Dean Thomas the vast majority of Confederates carried Enfield or Springfield rifles, perhaps proportionally more than in the Army of the Potomac. His survey of dropped ammunition recovered from the areas where various Confederate divisions fought, in addition to rifled projectiles, includes .69 cal. balls for smoothbore muskets, .69 cal. buck and ball rounds and .69 cal. slugs for smoothbore muskets or shotguns. He notes that the .69 cal. ball ammunition could also have been fired from .69 cal rifled muskets.

The Confederate ordnance reports for Gettysburg make no mention of types of ammunition issued. As in the Army of the Potomac, some Confederate regiments probably had companies equipped with smoothbores and others with rifles. The June 30, 1863 Ordnance report of the Army of the Potomac records nine regiments completely equipped with .69 cal. smoothbores and 13 regiments equipped with both .69 cal. smoothbores and rifled muskets.

XenaWP, 8 May 2016

The Regimental Fire & Fury Civil War Battle Scenarios, Volume 2: 1862-1863 has two McPherson's Ridge scenarios. The smaller morning battle runs from 1030--1215 hours (8 turns). The larger afternoon battle runs from 1445--1730 hours (12 turns). All infantry on both sides and in both scenarios are armed with RMs (rifled-muskets). The OoB unit labels also include the artillery weapon type that each section was equipped with.

Best, Lowell D. Hamilton

I think part of the confusion in these threads comes from the terminology employed in the period that has been slightly muddled over time.

Technically, all black powder, muzzle loaders are muskets. The term being in use way before the Civil War. In fact such weapons were being called this over two hundred years previously all be it they were Matchlocks!

As I understand it were things get a bit lost, is in change caused by the beginning of wider use of rifled barrels. Rifles had of course been around for a long time too but were commonly called "rifles" though often with their origin in front – Kentucky, Baker etc.

When people started converting existing smoothbores by rifling their barrels (regardless of them being flintlock or percussion) they became "rifled muskets".

All weapons of the musket type that were made with rifled barrels from the outset were "rifle muskets" – Springfields & Enfields for example.

Over time casual use seems to have run "rifled" and "rifle" together but they are not really the same thing, although coming from the same technical source of language.