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.

"A great deal of time and study has been devoted to the task of acquiring a knowledge of our flintlock military arms, and much has been written on the subject ... In this compilation, the source used is the Official Chart issued from Springfield Armory, for as is well known, all such publications had to be approved by the officials of the War Department, and the model designations used on the chart must have had official sanction"--Introduction

The Effect of Soldiers' Weapons on the Turning Point of the Civil War The three-day battle of Gettysburg has probably been the subject of more books and articles than any other comparable event. Surprisingly, until this work, no one has analyzed the firearms and other individual soldier's weapons used at Gettysburg in any great detail. The battle was a watershed, with military weapons technologies representing the past, present, and future--sabers, smoothbores, rifles, and breechloaders--in action alongside each other, providing a unique opportunity to compare performance and use, as well as determining how particular weapons and their deployment affected the outcome and course of the battle. Small Arms at Gettysburg: Infantry and Cavalry Weapons in America's Greatest Battle covers all of the individual soldier's weapons--muskets, rifle-muskets, carbines, repeaters, sharpshooter arms, revolvers, and swords--providing a detailed examination of their history and development, technology, capabilities, and use on the field at Gettysburg. Here we learn that the smoothbore musket, although beloved by some who carried it, sang its swan song, the rifle-musket began to come into its own, and the repeating rifle, although tactically mishandled, gave a glimpse of future promise. This is the story of the weapons and men who carried them into battle during three days in July 1863.

The popular Civil War News columnist has written a unique work, combining technical data on each Civil War firearm, an often surprising treatment of their actual use on the battlefield, and a guide to collecting and firing surviving relics and modern reproductions.