Civil War Artillery

Changed Forever

The biggest impact on the field artillery of the Civil War was the muzzle loading 58 caliber rifled musket. They didn't understand the changes in tactics from the spectacular increase in the effective range of the musket. The artillery had to back up to three times their former distance from the infantry.

The 58 rifle musket made a dramatic change in the common soldier's marksmanship. The predecessor 69 caliber smoothbore had a maximum effective range of about 100 yards. With the adoption of the 58 rifle musket, the effective range increased to 300 yards, or more. The increase in range and accuracy was so profound they put a rear sight on the common musket for the first time.

58 Musket Rear Sight, with a metal leaf marked with a 3 and a metal leaf marked with a 5

The 3 and the 5 on the sight leaves denote ranges of 300 and 500 yards respectively.

Massing The Guns

Both sides of the Civil War brought more field guns to the battlefield than any American then living had ever seen at one time. Both sides learn to bring their guns together to be managed with a newly discovered professional attitude for centralizing their artillery as needed, or to disperse their artillery battalions and batteries as the situation called for. Larger formations called for giving their artillery commanders higher ranks than their field artillerymen had previously held.

The introduction of the 12 pounder Napoleon smooth bore, followed closely by the 3 inch rifled cannon, provided a range and power previously unknown, especially in America. The designations for Civil War artillery is confusing because they changed the nomenclature from sizing the bore from the weight of a spherical iron shot (such as 12 pounds) to the actual bore diameter (such as 3 inches).

Common Artillery

12 pdr Napolean (smoothbore)

3 inch Rodman (rifled)

More Information

There is a privately maintained registry of examples of surviving pieces of artillery open to public view that is thorough and we hope growing. The surviving artillery is expensive as collectors items. Newly made replicas are available to legal buyers from Dixie Gun Works and others.

The National Park Service has an excellent website on Civil War Artillery. For more information about artillery in the Civil War, consult American Civil War Artillery by Philip Katcher, and Introduction to Civil War Artillery Cannons by Dean Thomas, or on the big fortress Siege Guns by Olmstead, Stark & Tucker. There are several websites with good information about Civil War Artillery, such as Civil War Weapons and Civil War Artillery Encyclopedia.