Civil War Artillery

The artillery crews of both armies of the Civil War worked with the first guns that would eventually come to be the long-range killing machines that are used by the modern armies of today. The Civil War saw the beginnings of rifled barrels and breech loading artillery, with limited service however these new concepts were not fully developed and perfected until the years after the war. On the battlefields of the Civil War the smoothbore …

…Union cannons covered McClellan’s withdrawal from Pennsylvania, killing an estimated 2,500 of the 5,000 Confederates. Confederate forces proved to be just as deadly behind the gun sights. While on watch over the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1862 an Alabama battery spotted a Union patrol. The battery fired a single solid shot from a rifled Whitworth cannon, fifteen seconds and three miles latter the shell tore through a horse and Union soldier. Artillery had come of age.