When
Fort Scott was first established in 1842, infantry soldiers were armed
with smoothbore, muzzleloading, flintlock muskets. Changes in weaponry
had already been developed by that time but the army was slow to adopt
them Part of the problem was that some of the new technology was not
quite perfected. Additionally, the army was reluctant to give up something
tried and true for something new. It was also costly to reoutfit all
the units with all new weaponry. Nevertheless, the changes did come,
the Army would eventually adopt them and those changes would revolutionize
warfare.
Flintlock vs. Percussion
Flintlocks were developed during the early 1600s to replace several
other cumbersome arrangements. This system employed a piece of flint
(a hard quartz-like stone) that was clamped into the top of the
musket hammer. When fired, the hammer fell forward and drove the flint
into
a vertical, spring-held piece of steel. The steel served a dual purpose:
when not being actively used, it was a cover for a small "pan" that
contained a priming charge of about ten grains of black powder. In operation,
when the flint struck the steel, the steel snapped back exposing the
priming charge at the same time a shower of sparks fell into the pan.
The sparks ignited the priming charge and passed fire through a small
hole in the side of the barrel that communicated with the main powder
charge in the barrel. The system worked well when it worked, but was
very prone to misfires. The failure of the sparks to ignite the priming
charge, a damp priming charge, or a lost priming charge were just some
of the reasons the flintlock system was less than adequate.
The percussion system of priming that used the copper percussion cap
is popularly credited to the Englishman, Joshua Shaw, who was issued
a U.S. patent in 1822. For shoulder arms, the percussion cap looked
like a tiny "top hat" and was about the size of a 
modern
pencil eraser. Pistol caps were usually straight-sided without the "brim"
and were smaller still. The interior of the percussion cap had a small
deposit of fulminate of mercury or another "salt" formed by dissolving
a metal in acid. The correct formula produced a substance that exploded
when it was struck a sharp blow. After loading the weapon with powder
and ball or an externally primed cartridge, a percussion cap was placed
by hand onto a hollow tube, called a cone or nipple, at the breech end.
With the percussion cap, there was no priming powder to blow away or
get wet. The frizzen would not fail to spark during humid conditions.
The vent hole (the hole that the spark from the initial explosion
traveled through to ignite the powder in the barrel) was not as
likely to become fouled with gun powder, thus eliminating the "flash
in the pan" that occurred when the powder in the priming pan ignited
but the powder in the barrel did not.
The
percussion system of priming was more reliable and easier to clean and
to use. Dragoon units in the army were armed with percussion weapons
from the creation of the unit in 1833. The infantry was slower to adapt,
however the regular Army units were armed with percussion weapons by
the Civil War, but some of the volunteer units still used flintlocks
during the early part of the war.
Smoothbores vs. Rifles
For
centuries, men had known that by cutting spiraled grooves inside a musket
barrel to impart spin to the bullet, they could increase its range and
accuracy. Hunting weapons were usually rifled and some eighteenth-century
armies contained special rifle regiments. But the smoothbore remained
the principal infantry weapon until the 1850s. Why? Because a bullet
large enough to "take" the rifling was hard to ram down the
barrel of a muzzleloading weapon. After a rifle had been fired a few
times, the residue from the black powder built up in the grooves and
made the gun impossible to load without cleaning. Since rapid loading
and the reliability of repeated and prolonged firing were essential
in a military weapon, the rifle could only be used for special purposes.
This dilemma was solved by the creation of the "minie ball"
in the 1840s. The bullet was elongated with a base that expanded to
"take" the rifling as it traveled through the barrel. The
expanding bullet would also clean the grooves in the rifle as it traveled
through the weapon. The expansion would continue once it reached the
intended target. Minie balls left small entrance wounds but large exit
wounds, thus inflicting much more pain and suffering than the standard
balls that were used prior to the invention of the minie ball. Minie
balls were never used at Fort Scott, but were standard issue during
the Civil War.
This development revolutionized military tactics. The maximum range of
a smoothbore was 250 yards, but a soldier could not hit a specific target
at distances greater than 80 yards. Because of the poor accuracy and range,
fighting tactics with smoothbores called for soldiers to stand shoulder
to shoulder in lines. Sometimes one line would fire, fall back, reload,
and the line of soldiers behind them would follow suit. At other times,
the soldiers would make a formation so that four lines of soldiers could
fire at once. The idea was to put a large quantity of lead in the air at
one time, so that even though an individual soldier would not hit what he
was aiming at, he would hit something, because the enemy would be fighting
the same way. (At least according to the rules of civilized warfare).
Infantry charges were a classic part of this tactic because with a range
of only 250 yards, a defending army would only have time for a couple of
shots before the opposing army would be on them with bayonets.
The rifle's range was four to six times that of the smoothbore. It's maximum
range was 1,000 yards with an effective range of 4,000 yards. The old
smoothbore tactics were no longer effective because an infantry charge
would be cut to pieces well before reaching enemy lines because advancing
soldiers could be hit from further away. US Army units were not completely
armed with rifles until into the Civil War, although some infantry units
may have had "Mississippi" rifles at Fort Scott after the
Mexican War.
Muzzleloaders vs.
Breechloaders
Muzzleloaders were the weapons that required the round to be loaded
and then rammed down through the muzzle or barrel of the weapon. This
type of loading was slow and cumbersome. Breechloaders could be opened
at the breech or the butt end of the weapon and the round could be inserted
directly in without the use of a rammer. 
The
breechloader was much quicker to use but it had its problems. The breechloaders
had a gap in the breech that gases produced by firing escaped through.
This escaping gas could blow into the soldier's face. More importantly,
it caused the weapon to malfunction as the barrel heated with rapid
use. Dragoons were armed with breechloaders in the early 1840s, but
due to the above named problem, the breechloaders were replaced with
musketoons in the late 1840s. The musketoon was a muzzleloader but was
still a percussion weapon.
In the 1850s, several inventors developed copper cartridges or other
devices that largely solved the problems of escaping gases, yet the
Army was reluctant to adopt breechloaders because they were not a proven
technology, and they were not widely used until late in the Civil War.
The information on this page came from
An Introduction
to Civil War Small Arms by Earl J. Coates and Dean S.
Thomas.
