American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume I: Colonial and Revolutionary War Arms focuses on the arms used from the early exploratory period throughout the colonial period and the American Revolution. Arranged chronologically, it contains definitive descriptions of the pre-flintlock and flintlock shoulder arms used in North America and detailed accounts of the development and progression of military regulation shoulder arms of the major colonial powers from the early eighteenth century through the Revolutionary War. Lavishly illustrated with more than four hundred vivid photographs of muskets, rifles, carbines, and other arms, this book offers an intelligent analysis of the shoulder arms procured and used by the colonists, colonial and state governments, and the Continental Congress.

New data surrounding the procurement and modifications of arms produced by the national armories, and under federal contract procured by the individual states and by individual members of militias, is presented here for the first time. This information, interwoven with military, political, economic, and social factors, results in new and better definitions and a clearer understanding of the arms’ historical context. Though this work focuses on military flintlock shoulder arms, details on the federal government’s procurement of arms for Indians during rapidly changing military policies of the period is also included. American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume II, contains more than three hundred photographs. As with the previous volume, Volume II is written primarily for students of arms, but also contains material of interest to historians, museum specialists, collectors, and dealers of antique arms.

This third volume in Moller’s authoritative reference work describes muzzleloading percussion shoulder arms procured by the U.S. government for issue to federal and state armed forces in the period that includes the Civil War. These twenty-five years were an exciting time in the history of shoulder arms. During the 1840s, only a handful of American manufacturers were capable of producing significant quantities of arms having fully interchangeable components. By the early 1850s, at least one firm was producing rifles with close enough tolerances to be considered fully interchangeable. And thanks to the invention of the expanding bullet, rifled arms could be used by an army’s entire infantry. For the first time, line infantry were equipped with arms capable of rapid reloading and of consistently hitting a man-sized target at distances as great as three hundred yards. Like the first two volumes of American Military Shoulder Arms, this exhaustive reference work will be a must for serious arms collectors, dealers, and museum specialists.

The Confederate sword of Lieutenant Colonel Axalla John Hoole, 8th S.C. Infantry, was engaged in many of the most important battles of the Civil War. Responding to the first call to arms, it was present at Fort Sumter and saw action at First Manassas, the Warwick-Yorktown Line, Williamsburg, Savage's Station, Malvern Hill, Harpers Ferry, Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. It fell silent on the last day of the Battle of Chickamauga, September 20, 1863, in the fierce fighting on the slopes of Snodgrass Hill. Fourteen decades and four generations later, the sword has returned to Chickamauga. Today it is handsomely displayed at the Chickamauga Battlefield Museum and Visitor Center, Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. This is its remarkable story, told by Dr. Elizabeth Hoole McArthur, educator, author, historian, and great-granddaughter of the soldier who carried it.