TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Some time ago (in 2006) I wrote a post about John Jacob and his unusual rifle. In it I said that Lorenzo Barber, the “Fighting Parson” of the 1st U.S.S.S., used a Jacob rifle because he is mentioned as having a double-barrel rifle with one barrel loaded with buckshot and the other with a bullet. This was just an assumption on my part, and it looks like an erroneous one.

Reader Art Ruitberg contacted me about the reference I used for that statement, and I had to admit that I did not have one for the specific make of gun. Ruitberg suggested that it might have been a “combo” gun made locally in New York state. A combo gun was both rifle and shotgun Some had the rifle barrel directly over the shotgun barrel, some had them side by side. All were muzzle loaders. This made for a versatile gun both for hunting and the battlefield, but one that was rather heavy. Several New York gunmakers built them to order, so it seems more likely that Barber used one of these rather than an imported (and very expensive) Jacob. Barber himself describes it as “my double barrelled rifle, containing a bullet in one barrel and nine buck-shot in the other” but gives no more details.

Period examples of this kind of gun come up for auction now and then. A recent one was this Lewis Hepburn combo gun, which sports a .45 caliber rifle barrel over a 12 gauge shotgun barrel. Operating out of Colton, New York, Hepburn (1858-1908) made his own rifles, then later worked for Remington, where he designed the famed Hepburn target rifle.

So I have revised my opinion about Barber’s gun. It was most likely a New York-made combo gun.

Combo guns remain popular today. The one you most often see is the Savage Model 24, and over and under combination that comes in a variety of calibers. In Central Europe many hunters use a drilling—a three barrel gun with two side by side shotgun barrels over a rifle barrel.

Special thanks to Kramer Auction Service in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, for permission to use the photos.

Cap and Ball is at it again, this time to answer a question that often comes up about Civil War rifles. Did the addition of a bayonet have any effect on accuracy? He also has some commentary on the use of bayonets during the war.

We often hear that Sam Colt invented the revolver, and that he got the idea during a transatlantic crossing in the 1840s while watching the helmsman turn the ship’s wheel. In truth, however, the revolver goes back much farther than that. The first one we actually have belonged to one Georg von Reichwein and dates all the way back to 1597. It’s more accurate to say that Colt designed the first practical mass-produced revolver. Guns like that of von Reichwein were hand made and available only to rich people and the nobility.

Amputation of wounded limbs was not new but reached somewhat of a high point in the Civil War. The Minie ball, in particular, was notorious for shattering bone. Doctors soon found that trying to save a limb was counterproductive—it almost always became infected and the patient died. We have all seen gruesome photos of severed arms and legs piled up next to a field hospital, sometimes higher than the roof.

An upcoming auction has a very nice example of a Civil War era amputation kit (and it’s not cheap) that shows what a typical surgeon would have used.

Although we think of Civil War medicine as primitive (and it was by today’s standards), medical practice made huge strides during the war. At he conflict’s beginning, for instance, the death rate for hospitals hovered around 50%, when the were available. By war’s end the figure had been reduced to 6-8% on both sides.

UPDATE: Speaking of interesting things at auctions, I came across this. It’s a wooden scale model of the C.S.S. Tennessee of Mobile Bay fame. Don’t know what I would do with it and don’t have space to display it, but the cool factor is hard to beat.

Cap and Ball, whom we have met before, has a very informative post on four Civil War revolvers—the Colt, the Remington, Starr, and Adams. He shows how each worked and which worked best. He also shows the paper cartridges they fired and how to make them. Quite interesting if you want to know the details of how all this worked.

UPDATE: Cap and Ball has another video exclusively on the Adams, which was a very advanced firearm for its time, having the first real combination single/double action. He goes into some detail about how this worked.

A look at the people who buy all those statues people have been tearing down.

The leaders of Newton Falls have declared their town a “sanctuary city” for unwanted statuary.

“History is a big part of this community’s identity – you can still dig up arrowheads in the fields – and we have acres of parks,” said Lynch. “Buying statues would be an expensive proposition. But by taking them from municipalities that would only put them into storerooms, we ­provide a good alternative.”

It is refreshing to see someone who actually values history.

There are also individuals collecting discarded statues for reasons unknown. According to Fox News, when the city of Dallas didn’t know what to do with a tribute to Robert E. Lee, Lone Star Auctioneers put the Confederate general’s bronze likeness on the block – and it sold for $1.43 million. The buyer was identified only as LawDude. The auction house did not return calls for comment.

One of the guns from what was probably Clint Eastwood’s best Western is up for auction. Set in Missouri during and just after the Civil War, it chronicles the flight of an ex-Confederate guerilla to escape a vengeful Union.

“Well, you gonna pull those pistols or whistle ‘Dixie’?” Moments after delivering this line in the 1976 film “The Outlaw Josey Wales”, Clint Eastwood (playing the titular character) deftly draws a brace of Colt revolvers and opens fire. With assistance from his Cherokee friend, Lone Waite (played by late Chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, Dan George), Wales employs his pair of Colts to dispatch a group of Union soldiers who are hesitatingly preparing to attempt to take the infamous outlaw into custody. One of the guns in this iconic scene was an 1847 Walker which is set to be sold at an auction that will be held next month, August 26th-27th.

Better get that second mortgage, however. Estimates for the auction price run from $40-60,000. Original ones may bring close to a million.

The Walker Colt was the most powerful revolver made until the advent of the .357 Magnum (no word whether it would “blow your head clean off”), so it’s an appropriate arm for the man who played “Dirty Harry.” The Walker weighed a hefty 4.5 pounds, though, so a pair of them would weigh as much as a rifle.

Although popular in the movies, the Walker was a rare bird. The military contract was for 1000 pistols, and another 100 were made for private sale, making it very unlikely that a Confederate guerilla would end up with a pair of them.

UPDATE: Should you want to know exactly which guns were used in various movies, including Josie Wales, as well as the ones that weren’t right and the ones they should have used, I suggest you consult the Internet Movie Firearms Database, which has all that info and much, much more.

Smallpox, unlike the Minié ball, was an indiscriminate, equal-opportunity killer that killed about 30% of those it infected.  Although there was no cure, English physician Edward Jenner had devised a vaccine of sorts. He noticed that milkmaids often contracted cowpox, which resembled smallpox but was much less virulent, and were thereafter immune to smallpox. He then began deliberately infecting people with cowpox.

Control of this early pandemic was imperative for both armies in the Civil War. By the beginning of the war both sides required immunization to it.

Now, thanks to an analysis of American Civil War-era vaccination kits, scientists have traced the origins of the virus strains used during some of the earliest smallpox vaccination efforts in the United States, according to a study published Monday in the journal Genome Biology.

For the study, an international team of researchers captured viral molecules from biological material, including blisters and pus, left on blades, tin boxes and glass slides found inside the aging leather vaccination kits housed at the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Analysis of the molecules revealed the genomes of virus fragments, allowing scientists to identify the strain used to vaccinate Civil War soldiers against smallpox.

Follow the link for a photo of a period “vaccination” kit.