Also known as: Civil War artillery.
| Period | 1861-1865 |
|---|---|
| Transition | Smoothbore to rifled artillery |
| Standard field guns | Napoleon, 3-inch Ordnance Rifle, and Parrott rifle |
| Character | Unprecedented variety of guns, projectiles, and fuzes |
A war of transition
The Civil War caught American artillery in mid-transition. It opened with the smoothbore system, the bronze Napoleon foremost among the field guns, and rapidly filled with rifled guns, the wrought-iron 3-inch Ordnance Rifle and the banded cast-iron Parrott, whose range and accuracy transformed the battlefield and doomed the masonry fort.
More kinds of projectiles and fuzes were tried in these four years than in all previous American wars combined, as inventors North and South sought the best combination of sabot, body, and fuze. The result is the enormous variety of guns, shot, shell, and fuzes that this site and encyclopedia document.
On this site
Sources & further reading
- CivilWarArtillery.com research archive: manuals, reports, and historical references.
- Gibbon, John. The Artillerist's Manual. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1860.