Guns and War

The transition from muzzle loaders to cartridge guns happened in stages. Without looking it up, I believe it went something like this:

The earliest muzzle loaders were flintlocks. I'm pretty sure that, by the time of the Civil War, they were all cap locks. The only difference is the ignition system. With a flintlock, the hammer strikes a piece of flint against steel, which generates a spark. The spark ignites a small amount of powder in the pan, which flashes through a tiny hole in the barrel, called the "touch hole",  and ignites the main powder charge inside. There were several things that could go wrong in this process, so the invention of cap locks was a big improvement. With a cap lock, a small percussion cap is placed over a nipple that leads into the touch hole. The hammer strikes this cap, which sends a spark through the touch hole directly to the main powder charge.

There were a few intermediary stages in the development of cartridges, but they didn't last long and the modern brass cartridges came on the scene about the time of the Civil War. The first cartridge guns were single shots. The English had them, but I don't know if they were available in the U.S. by then. I don't recall ever seeing a photo or movie that showed either the North or the South using them. During the war, however, there were several attempts made to produce repeating rifles. They did have revolver handguns by then, but I think each chamber in the revolving magazine still had to be loaded with a powder charge and a bullet like the barrel of a muzzle loader. Towards the end of the war, the revolver went cartridge, and the lever action repeating rifle became available. The North started issuing them, but the war was over before they came into general use. Repeating rifles and pistols quickly made muzzle loaders obsolete and replaced them in all military applications. Some civilians clung to their muzzleloaders for awhile but, by World War I, almost all of them had been retired to "wall hanger" status. Modern interest in muzzle loaders revived around the 1960s, but the old guns were considered unsafe to fire by then, so they started making reproductions with better steel.

War, what's it good for? I got a late start tonight, so let me think about it and I'll try to come up with something by tomorrow.