THE CIVIL WAR
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FAMOUS WEAPONS

"Famous" is of course a relative term, and one which gives free play to the prejudices of its user. At least three guns are famous enough to rate their own web pages:

  • The Swamp Angel (see also its entry on Parrott Rifles, Page 2 of the Encyclopedia of Civil War Artillery.
  • The Galena Blakely
  • The Gettysburg Gun (courtesy Battery B, 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery)
  • The Blue Whistler (Not famous for its use during the Civil War, but I exercise author's prerogative)

    But here are some other guns you should know:

    The Four Apostles

    These four "cadet" 6-pounders had been ordered especially for the use of the students at the Virginia Military Institute. They were slightly lighter than the regulation M1841 6-pounder and were mounted on smaller carriages. Christened Matthew, Mark, Luke and John "because they spoke a powerful language", the guns were turned over the the Rockbridge Artillery (then under the command of William Nelson Pendleton) at the start of the War. Replaced with heavier pieces as the War progressed, these cannon were sent to the defenses of Richmond, where they were captured at the fall of the capital. After being returned to VMI, the cadets continued to train on them until the pieces were retired in 1913, and placed at the foot of the Jackson monument on the parade ground. It is an odd quirk of fate that these guns, among the prized mementoes of VMI, were not present at Battle of Newmarket.

    Stonewall and the Apostles The Apostles, hub to hub

    The "Opening Gun" at Gettysburg

    The four 3-inch ordnance rifles of Calef's Battery A, 2nd U.S. Artillery, stand today at the base of the Buford monument at Gettysburg, on the spot where they fired the opening salvo of that pivotal battle. Lt. John Haskell Calef, a 1858 graduate of West Point, won a brevet for his gallantry at Gettysburg. Battery A claimed to have been the first unit to use the bugle call "Taps" at a military funeral, over the grave of one of its cannoneers killed on the Peninsula. The Battery's Regulars passed on their esprit de corps to the volunteers detailed to serve the pieces, taking an especial pride in having been the first assignment of Henry Jackson Hunt, by then commander of artillery for the Army of the Potomac.

    Buford monument with the guns of Battery A, 2nd U.S. Artillery The "Opening Gun" plaque

    The Widow Blakely

    7.5-inch Blakely Rifle
    This 7.5-inch rifle was called the Widow Blakely because it was the only specimen of British Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely's design in the works at Vicksburg. While firing on Federal gunboats during the Siege of Vicksburg, a shell exploded prematurely in the tube. The broken end was trimmed off, and the Widow was used as a mortar for the remainder of its service. Taken to West Point as a trophy, the Widow was misidentified as "Whistling Dick", another famous Confederate cannon, which Ripley has identified as an 18-pounder rifle. When her true identity was recognized, the Widow was sent back to Vicksburg, and placed on the bluffs about a mile south of her original position. My thanks to Dave Smith, of the The Cincinnati Civil War Round Table, for furnishing this photograph.

    The Guns of the Monitor

    A turret gun of the Monitor, an XI-inch Dahlgren
    The battle in Hampton Roads between the Monitor and the Merrimack (AKA CSS Virginia) on March 8, 1862, was considered a tactical draw, but the entire world recognized it as the death-knell of the days when "the ships were of wood and the men were of iron". Swedish-American engineer John Ericsson's famous "cheesebox on a raft" design featured a revolving turret with only two guns: XI-inch Dahlgren shell-guns of sufficient durability to be used to fire solid shot as well.

    The 168-pound solid shot of the Monitor's turret guns might have done more damage if the pieces had been used as designed, with charges of 20 or even 30 pounds of gunpowder. However, the pressure of the situation made Dahlgren cautious, and he decreed a maximum charge of 15 pounds. The two guns are Nos. 27 & 28 made by West Point Foundry in 1859. They currently lie in the turret of the Monitor, wrecked in a storm in late 1862, and are visible in videotapes made of the wreck. (My thanks to Wayne Stark for this information.)

    For another view of Dahlgren's work, see this photograph of Admiral Dahlgren posing with another gun of his design, a 4.4-inch rifle, aboard the USS Pawnee.

    The Dictator

    13-inch seacoast mortar
    Scan courtesy Dave Smith
    The 13-inch seacoast mortar weighed over 17,000 pounds and, as its common name implies, was intended for seige and fortifications and not field work. This monster was made portable during the Seige of Petersburg by being mounted on a railroad car, specially strengthened with extra beams and iron rods to withstand the strain of firing. Since this mortar threw a 218 pound shell about two and one-half miles with a charge of 20 pounds of powder, this strain was considerable.

    The mortar was placed on the car and run up the tracks from City Point toward the Union cordon around Petersburg, where a curve in the tracks allowed the Dictator's gunners to adjust the plane of fire. The power of this weapon was enough to shatter most field magazines and bomb-proofs, and it is credited with causing the Confederate gunners to withdraw their attempts at enfilade fire along the right of the Union line.

    Cast at the Fort Pitt Foundry in 1862, the whereabouts of the Dictator are now unknown, and this famous weapon may no longer survive. Its oft-repeated identification with No. 95, at Hartford, Connecticut, is untrue, as that piece does not match the recorded weight of the Dictator. Consult the The Siege of Petersburg web site, by Jim Epperson, for an overview of the campaign in which the Dictator played a pivotal role.

    The Gun that Sank the Alabama

    The forward pivot on the Kearsarge, an XI-inch Dahlgren shell gun
    The meeting of the Monitor and the Merrimack was certainly the most far-reaching naval action of the Civil War, but it could not match the gripping drama played out on the high seas off of Cherbourg, France, when the USS Kearsarge finally brought the Confederate raider Alabama to task after almost two years in which she had laid waste the merchant marine of the United States. Although the entire armament of the Kearsarge contributed its fire to the sinking of the Alabama, this is the gun celebrated in song for accomplishing that feat:
    A ball from the forward pivot that day
    Roll, Alabama, roll.
    Blew the Alabama's stern away.
    Oh roll, Alabama, roll
    This gun is an XI-inch Dahlgren shell gun, shown here with Master J. R. Wheeler and Engineer S. L. Smith. The Kearsarge had two of these guns on board; both have been transferred from the Mare Island to the Chatham Annex in Williamsburg, Virginia, where they will eventually be installed in a museum to be built there.

    IDENTIFIED GUNS

    Founder's marks provide tantalizing clues to the history of the weapons that mark battlefields and public squares across the nation. Check here for a growing collection of marks furnished by artillery enthusiast Art Bergeron.
    The Library

    Warren Ripley, Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War, 4th rev. ed., 1984

    James C. Hazlett, Edwin Olmsted, M. Hume Parks, Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War, 2nd ed., 1988

    Edwin Olmstead, Wayne E. Stark, Spencer C. Tucker, The Big Guns: Civil War Siege, Seacoast and Naval Cannon, 1997

    Compiled Site Bibliography

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