The
Civil War
Artillery
Page
Battery of Light Artillery En Route
William B. T. Trego, 1859-1909 		Last updated 10/31/00;
see WHAT'S NEW.

Hurrah for the Light Artillery!

A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.
General William Tecumseh Sherman

Only about six percent of the soldiers in the American Civil War were enrolled in the artillery branch of the service, yet the artillery played a pivotal role in almost every major engagement of the War. From the massed Union batteries at Stones River and Malvern Hill to the intrepid field work of Pelham's horse artillery at Fredericksburg, the big guns were always a factor, and often the decisive one.

The purpose of this site is to acquaint the reader with basic information about the topic and provide some suggestions for further viewing and reading. Much of the focus is on the field artillery, which saw the most battle action during the War, but the growing Encyclopedia of Civil War Artillery provides examples of every type.

Table of Contents

Organization & Drill
  • Branches of Service
  • The Battery
  • Positions and Duties
  • Insignia
  • Flags
  • Drill
  • The Library

 The Weapons
  • Basic Terminology
  • Nomenclature
  • Common Weapons
  • Cannon Markings
  • Evolution of Ordnance
  • Cannon Costs
  • Modern Replicas
  • The Library

 
The Ammunition
  • Types of Ammunition
  • Tables of Fire
  • Fuses
  • Primers
  • Effects of Artillery Fire
  • The Library

 The Equipment
  • Carriages
  • Limbers and Caissons
  • Implements
  • Artillery Horses
  • The Library

 
Famous Weapons
  • Swamp Angel
  • Galena Blakely
  • The Apostles
  • Gettysburg Opening Gun
  • Widow Blakely
  • The Guns of the Monitor
  • The Dictator
  • The Gun That Sank the Alabama
  • The Library

 Famous Artillerists
  • Union Artillerists
  • Confederate Artillerists
  • Readers' Choices
  • Artillery Monuments
  • The Library

 
History & Reenactment    
  • Union Batteries
  • Confederate Batteries
  • Artillery Reenactors Directory
  • The Artilleryman's Vision
  • The Library

 The Reference Desk
  • Dictionary
  • Encyclopedia
  • Bibliography
  • Site Search
  • National Register of Surviving
    Civil War Artillery
  • Discussion Page
  • Artillery in the News
  • Reenactors' Primer
  • Links
  • About the Webmaster

THE THIRD
BATTERY PAGE

This page is maintained by Chuck Ten Brink. Comments? Questions? Contact me at webmaster@cwartillery.org
Original text and illustrations copyright 1996, 1997, 1998 Third Battery, First Michigan Light Artillery, Inc., others as noted. This is a non-commercial web site created for educational purposes. The use of excerpts from other works, with appropriate credit for their creators, is reasonably believed to fall within the doctrine of fair use under applicable copyright laws. My thanks to Kathie Fraser of the Civil War Poetry and Music page for designing some of the graphics for these pages, and for her invaluable moral and esthetic support.

AWARDS

The Civil War Artillery Page has received the following awards. I am very grateful to the owners of these sites for their recognition and approval, and I hope you will visit them. To see the logos for these awards, click on the heading above, and follow the logos or the links to these sites to visit other award winners.

The Civil War Artillery Page has been included in The Civil War on the Web: A Guide to the Very Best Sites, by William G. Thomas and Alice E. Carter, published by Scholarly Resources, Inc.

  • Civil War News, featured in Dave Smith's Internet column
  • E-Blast, The Encyclopaedia Britannica Internet Guide
  • 1861-1865 Award
  • Civil War Interactive; a 4-star award winner
  • The History Channel
  • StudyWeb Award
  • Civil War in Miniature
  • The 29th Field Artillery Regiment, for a great field artillery site
  • PoP's "I Dig-it" Award
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