Arming the Massachusetts Volunteers Spotlight Massachusetts

MARCH 2012
Civil War Talk Radio
Gen. Grant would be
listening and so can you.
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www.centralmassroundtable.org
Massachusetts
Spotlight
Arming the Massachusetts Volunteers
Massachusetts Gov. John Andrews, a Republican, got involved in the civil war with
Newburyport and the both feet and immediately. He sent several state militia companies within days of an
urgent request from President Lincoln. ese men were equipped with newly-minted,
Civil War
smoothbore muskets. ose weapons and many others used by the soldiers from Massachusetts were the topic of our March meeting attended by over forty people.
Sherman Lohnes covered the types of weapons used by the soldiers and from
where they were acquired and manufactured. He also noted the soldiers’ preferences about weapons by quoting from regimental histories and the correspondence from
the soldiers. Much of his information was gained from the documents found on the
website Google Books where practically all the regimental histories are freely available.
Sherman owns samples of the most common weapons used by the Massachusetts soldiers. ey were all on display for people to see up close and to hold. ese include:
Model 1812, Altered Flintlock Musket, .58 caliber, converted to a percussion cap in
the 1850s. Due to a shortage of the more modern ri�e muskets at the start of the Civil
War, some Massachusetts regiments were issued outdated smoothbore muskets previously converted to percussion from stores on hand in the state’s armory. While many
regiments exchanged their obsolete weapons for Spring�eld or En�eld ri�e muskets,
some regiments retained smoothbore muskets as late as the Battle of Gettysburg.
Model 1841 Robins & Lawrence “Mississippi” ri�e musket, .54 caliber
e Volunteer, the monument to the Newburyport
Civil War soldiers, was created by the artist Mrs. eo
Alice Ruggles-Kitson. It was
dedicated and placed at the
Atkinson Common on July 4,
1902. It depicts the returning
citizen-soldier after defending
the Union against the slaveholders’ rebellion.
is photo is from the
excellent book just published
by the History Press in 2012,
Newburyport and the Civil War
by William Hallett. Mr. Hallett spoke at the March meeting of the Civil War Round
Table of Northern Worcester
County which holds its meetings at the Leominster Library
on the second Tuesday of each
month. Our treasurer, Ed
Norris, is the president.
Mr. Hallett is a twelfthgeneration descendant of a
�rst settler of Newbury, Nicholas Noyes. He was president
of the Civil War Roundtable
of New Hampshire for 10
years and is a reenactor. He
lives in Newburyport with his
wife, Elizabeth, where they
conduct civil war walking
tours of Newburyport.
See another photo on next page.
US Model 1861 Ri�e Musket Marked “Mass 41” with Bridesburg lock, .58 caliber. Between 1861 and 1865, 713,443 Model 1861 Ri�e Muskets were produced both
at the United States Armory in Spring�eld and under contract with manufacturers
throughout the North.
Pattern 1853 (En�eld) .577 caliber percussion Ri�e Musket with “Tower” lockplate, marked “28th Mass. ese were made by European manufacturers under contract
from the state of Massachusetts. Reaction to foreign-made arms varied. e history of
the 21st Mass. Regiment noted their En�elds were “. . . a good kind but of poor quality,
hastily and carelessly made, with many badly tempered cones and weak mainsprings,
and for a time, until we discovered how well they would shoot, we almost wished for
our old crooked barreled smooth-bores again.”
Sherman Lohnes, originally
from Worcester and now
living in Holden, got started
as a collector and Civil War
historian during his high
school years in the mid1970s. He currently works
in Boston at the Department
of Public Health and
his commuting time on
the train is well-spent in
researching about the Civil
War and the artifacts that
he collects. His collection
includes a smoothbore from
the early 1800s to a Spencer
7-shot repeating ri�e from
the 1860s.
Pattern 1853 (En�eld) Ri�e Musket by Potts & Hunt marked “Mass 33” Massachusetts purchased over 22,000 En�eld pattern ri�e muskets from 1861 to 1863 to
arm twenty-six different regiments through July of 1863. Most soldiers preferred the
Private Augustus Wheeler,
Company F, 53rd Mass. Volunteer Infantry, photographed in
August, 1862, holding an altered smoothbore �intlock musket. ough at least 20 Mass.
Regiments used smoothbore
muskets while training or in
the �eld, Wheeler likely holds
a weapon supplied as a prop by
the photographer to create a
more martial image, as the 53rd
was armed with En�elds.
Newburyport Veterans on the March
It was 1907 when these members of Grand Army of the Republic Post 49 marched through Market Square during the
annual Yankee Homecoming parade. Most of the vets were in
their late �fties or sixties.
“Spring�eld” ri�e musket to foreign made arms
such as En�elds. A common concern was that
many of the Pattern 1853 ri�e muskets built by
British contractors were not made with interchangeable parts as US arms beginning with the
M1842 smoothbore percussion musket, and the
Model 1855, 1861 and 1863 ri�e muskets.
Model 1863 Massachusetts Contract Ri�e Musket by Samuel Norris & W.T. Clement Marked
“WLI” is percussion musket was ordered as the
demand for arms throughout the north exceeded
the capacity of the Spring�eld Armory. A total of
13,000 muskets were delivered to Massachusetts
by this contractor at an average price of $18.73
per musket (about $450 in today’s dollars). e
“WLI” stamped into the stock of this ri�e musket
may indicate that it was issued to the Worcester
Light Infantry, as Governor Andrew based his
request for funding in 1863 on the need for arms
for the Massachusetts militia.
Spencer Model 1860 Army Ri�e. is ri�e used
a seven-shot magazine and was manufactured
in Boston during the Civil War. Massachusetts
contracted with Spencer for 2,000 of these ri�es,
but the federal government requested that Massachusetts turn over delivery of those arms to
the Ordnance Department for use by the Union
Army. ough relatively few cartridge arms were
used during the Civil War – there was great concern that the ammunition would be used to rapidly and availability and supply was limited – the
repeating ri�e, with its self-contained metallic
cartridge ammunition, changed how future wars
would be fought.
e muskets and ri�es from Sherman Lohnes’s collection
that were on display.
Big civil war Encampment
coming to Worcester
Scott Bears announced that
a large Civil War reenactment
will be taking place this
summer at Worcester’s Green
Hill Park. Plans call for 500
people depicting infantry,
cavalry and artillery. Scott
is in the process of making
a documentary �lm about
civil war reenactors in New
England. His involvement
started with the encampment
last year in Rutland. ere
will also be a military
Scott Bears
reception and ball.
After two years in office, and two years of
war, Governor Andrew faced a new arms criSherman Lohnes is standing with
sis in 1863. Since the war began, the state had
a Model 1841 Robins & Lawrence
purchased over 20,000 En�eld ri�e muskets,
“Mississippi” Ri�e Marked “51
and received an additional 2,700 En�eld, 8,100
Mass.” It is a single shot .54 caliber
Spring�eld and 3,600 Austrian ri�e muskets from percussion ri�e manufactured under
the US Ordnance Department. Still, the Govercontract for the U.S. government.
nor warned in his inaugural address on January
ough Massachusetts had several
9, 1863, less than 100 ri�es and “hardly enough
thousand M1851 ri�es available early
smoothbore muskets to arm a single regiment”
in the war, Governor Andrew and his
staff chose not to issue these ri�es to
were on hand at the state arsenal. e Governor
Mass. Regiments, with the exception
asked the legislature to authorize the purchase of
of �ank companies of the 21st Mass.
15,000 “�rst class arms” of domestic manufacas most of these ri�es lacked bayonets.
ture, as by 1863 he had apparently arrived at the
opinion that “Spring�eld ri�es are unquestionably In 1862 the state contracted with A.J.
Drake to have 1,839 M1841 ri�es
superior to any of foreign make which can be im- altered to accept a socket bayonet.
ported at equal cost.”
Subsequently, M1841 ri�es were
At the Battle of Balls Bluff on October 21,
issued to two nine-month regiments,
th
1861, the 15 Massachusetts, had a nearly 400 ca- the 46th and the 51st Mass.
sualties – killed, wounded, captured or missing. In
e 51st was recruited in Worcester
County in the fall of 1862. ey
searching for someone to blame, the soldiers said
served in North Carolina until June,
it was their lack of proper weapons. ey blamed
1863, then guarded Confederate
their smoothbore muskets as being inadequate.
prisoners captured at Gettysburg and
However, before the regiment made a paniced retreat down the bluff they were able to �re off a dev- was in pursuit of Gen. R.E. Lee’s army.
astating volley at the 18th MisNext Meeting - April 25, 7 PM,
sissippi in�icting 50 casualties.
Holden Senior Center
In re�lling the ranks shortly
thereafter the recruiting postTom Army, “Civil War Engineering”
ers that were posted in the
Roundtable Question:“Could the Civil War have
county made special note that
been
prevented?” [and as Pres. David Nyman joked,
the regiment is “now armed
“avoided all these CWRT meetings.”]
with the ri�ed musket.”