Flintlock Muskets & Rifles in 18th Century America

After the French and Indian War, relations between the North American British colonies and the British Parliament grew more and more strained. Parliament sought to demonstrate and enforce its authority over the colonies, and to recoup the cost of the war through taxes on their activities. The colonies, particularly New England, felt more and more frustrated by the loss of local control over local affairs. Many colonialists began to see armed conflict as inevitable, and started stockpiling arms and ammunition. One important stockpile of weapons had been gathered by the militia in Concord, Massachusetts. This powder keg would soon explode into a war for independence from British rule, and for the colonialists to become Americans, they would need the power of the American gun. To defend the colonies against external threats, including pirates, but more often hostile native tribes, governors established local militias. Every able-bodied male was expected to serve in the militia, and every home was expected to have at least one working firearm. The militias drilled in tactics such as volley fire and quick response to emergency bells. They built solid defenses around each village and kept their powder dry. But in contrast to professional armies, the militias were loosely structured, and generally only met a few days a year to drill. The militia were required to provide their own weapons. Often these were fouling pieces. These were popular for their versatility, able to fire a single large ball or a handful of shot for hunting waterfowl. English colonies struggled in their relations with the native populations. Though these were friendly relations at times, there were also periods of conflict. During a conflict known as King Philip's War, New England colonists and their own Native American allies battled against a confederation of other native tribes. In that war, a colonialist named Benjamin Church emerged to form a company of colonialists and allied natives. Church learned the natives' tactics for moving through the forests and swamps undetected and fighting a more guerrilla style than was known to Europeans. These were the first American ranger forces, and Benjamin Church is considered the father of American ranging. These skills proved valuable, for the conflicts did not end when one of Church's native allies killed the so-called King Philip, a native chieftain. From the late 1600s, almost up to the American Revolution, there were a series of wars between English colonials and French colonials, each having their own allies among the Native American tribes. The most famous is the last one, known in America simply as the French and Indian War, ending in 1763. But there were others, with Europeans and natives alike wielding muskets in their struggle for control of the new world. Within the broad categories of matchlocks, wheel locks, and flintlocks, there was a wide variety of gun designs, wheel lock dueling pistols, and, like any art, gunsmithing drew its artists. Guns made for nobility might include beautifully carved gold or silver designs. One well-known style of gun was the blunderbuss. This might be a shorter musket or a pistol, marked by the flared muzzle at the end of its short steel or brass barrel. The broad opening at the top made loading the powder and shot easier and faster, and the blunderbuss could be devastating at short range, usually firing a handful of lead shot. The blunderbuss is strongly associated with the pilgrims in American minds, though those early colonists made use of other firearms as well. The 75 caliber flintlock musket, known as the Brown Bess, was the standard for British soldiers through 18th and early 19th centuries. The Brown Bess musket is English in origin, and this is based on the muskets they developed in the early 18th century, roughly around 1722, and these muskets are what won the English their empire around the world. These muskets are all roughly around 75 caliber smoothbore muskets, and they use a flintlock as the system of ignition. And this particular example is a copy of the Shortland pattern musket that was developed just prior to the American Revolution. This example has the mark Tower on the lock plate, indicating that it had been inspected in the Tower of London. These things were battle winners in their time. They are smoothbore and inherently inaccurate. They're only accurate out to about 50 to 75 yards. Anything greater than that, the accuracy really drops off quite a bit. This thing is quite simply loaded. A soldier would take a cartridge from his cartridge pouch, normally worn at the waist or from a broad sling on their right hip. They would draw a cartridge from their pouch, bring it to their mouth, tear it open, pour a little bit within the pan, shut the pan, pour the remainder of the gunpowder down the barrel. They would draw out this long iron ramrod and ram the whole cartridge down with a tamp and return the rammer to the pipes just underneath of the barrel. Then the soldier was ready to fire. A good soldier was supposed to be able to fire three shots in a minute. I know I've seen people that can get between four and five shots in a minute with one of these is really quite a feat. The comparable gun among the French was the Charleville musket, a 69 caliber smoothbore musket. These muskets were standard issue for French infantry after 1717. Named for the armory in the Charleville-Mézières, Ardennes, France, the Charleville, like the Brown Bess and other smoothbore muskets, was accurate to around 50 to 100 yards. The 1717 Charleville had a pinned barrel like the Brown Bess, but the 1728 model would have three barrel bands instead. This was easier to disassemble and clean and was a stronger design for bayonet combat. The gun was about 60 inches long and about nine pounds. The Charleville and Brown Bess were sturdy dependable flintlocks, perfect for their intended purpose. The goal was not individual accuracy. When the armies of Europe met on the field, they gathered into formation and fired volley after volley of heavy lead balls into the opposing forces. The soldiers could load and fire roughly three shots per minute. As the smoke from the black powder made it difficult to see, even within the limited range of their guns, they did not place a high value on marksmanship. Once their shot was spent, the soldiers would affix bayonets. With bayonets attached, the long guns were effective pikes for use against cavalry and could be deadly hand-to-hand weapons as well. The Charleville and Brown Bess, like most firearms of that day, were smooth bore muskets. It had been known for some time that a rifled barrel could fire a bullet further and more accurately. A rifled barrel has a pattern of twisting grooves which gives the projectile a spin as it leaves the barrel. That spin gives the bullet stability. But rifled barrels were more prone to fouling by the black powder used during that period. Also, for a bullet to take advantage of the rifling, it would need to fit tightly into the barrel. This made loading more difficult. Smooth bore guns like the Brown Bess and Charleville could be reloaded more quickly and military tactics at the time did not require the range or accuracy afforded by rifles. But hunters could appreciate both of these characteristics. In America, in the mid-18th century, rifles were being made by smiths in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Though fouling pieces and European-styled smooth bores were popular and common, the rifles were the truly American-made guns. The American long rifles were developed by gunsmiths of German ancestry. On the frontier, a hunter's powder and shot were in short supply. Whereas European armies needed to load and fire as quickly as possible without regard for an individual's accuracy, the frontier hunter needed to hit his target on the first shot or else see his family's dinner bound off into the woods far faster than he could hope to reload. The time would come when the ranger tactics learned and developed by Benjamin Church and the marksmanship of the American hunters would be put to a different use. Tensions between the American colonies and the British government were growing. Committees of safety were cropping up all over the colonies, taking control of the militias, watching out for royal encroachment on colonial rights, and eventually gathering arms for the coming conflict. When I was a kid growing up and reading about the causes of the American Revolution in the history books in school, I was under somewhat of a misguided notion that the American Revolution began because of a number of things that had set the colonists off against King George III. Unreasonable taxes, tax without representation, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, all these things had conspired to ferment a level of unrest in New England, and the American Minutemen were called to bring out their squirrel rifles after Paul Revere's ride and meet at Lexington Green and they started the American Revolution on the morning of April 19th, 1775. The thing that I found through more research and study is that it was far more involved and evolved than that. The American Revolution had its seeds going back to the French and Indian War almost 20 years earlier, certainly 10 years earlier when things like the Boston Massacre occurred. The colonials had a great stock of personal firearms as they were used by just about everybody for personal sustenance, to be able to hunt with, to provide meat on the dinner table. For those living in an urban setting such as Boston, Cambridge, New York City, there were committees of safety that had been established. Those were basically local militia units and at that time they weren't seen as being used in the defense of the colonies against the Crown of England, but more for the mutual protection and defense against whether it was the French or still prevalent bands of Native Americans. Not everybody had a rifled musket or long rifle, but where committees of safety were established, they had firearms that equaled or surpassed the quality of the brown bests of the British infantry. These were generally 69 or 75 caliber muskets, smoothbores. When Paul Revere did make his famous midnight ride on the night of April 18th, and alerted the countryside to the fact that General Gage had sent yet another column out into the countryside near Lexington and Concord, he was alerting the minutemen to come to their rally points. This time, the reason for the marches outside of Boston was different from all the other different marches that the British troops had made in the years leading up to that one morning. This time, Gage's orders to Major Pitcairn were clear and precise. You will remove all stands of arms, powder, shot, projectiles, and artillery from the colonists as you encounter them. That was the line in the sand. When Captain John Parker assembled his 80 men on Lexington Green, he told them, do not fire unless fired upon. If they mean to have a war, let it begin here. Throw down your arms and disperse, you damned rebels. Advance and disarm them. Charge, bayonets. Charge, all bayonets. Fire, do not fire, do not fire. And soon would come the shot heard round the world. Patriots throughout the colonies would put muskets to shoulder and fight for their liberty. A liberty that would be forged in battle, achieved and defended by the American gun. The most common guns of the American Revolution were large caliber, smoothbore, and flintlock muskets. In the British Army, the firearm of choice was the British Army land pattern musket, which is known by its nickname, the Brown Bess. This weapon was largely responsible for winning the English their empire. And this was very easy to make. These things were all entirely handmade within a certain specification. They would make them all roughly to 75 caliber. The Brown Bess musket, this is an example of the short land pattern used was used just prior to the revolution. But the Brown Bess as a small arms design dates from the early 18th century, around the 1720s. And these were used up till the 1830s roundabout where they switched over to the percussion system and the Enfield rifle musket. Many of these old Brown Besses had been used during the Napoleonic Wars, although in a slightly updated version. Many of the colonials in the militias and in the Continental Army would use the Brown Bess. Another common musket among the patriots was the French pattern musket called the Charleville. The Charleville had been used by the French infantry for years. The 1763 and 1766 models were common in the colonies during the war, purchased by the Congress and secretly imported from France. When the French entered the war, their infantry were also carrying Charlevilles, including the newly designed 1777 model. The Americans also had guns made right in the colonies. Committees of safety were established in the colonies to organize and equip their militias. They ordered guns built by local gunsmiths who frequently followed the design of the Brown Bess. Congress would eventually establish a Continental gun factory in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where gunsmith William Henry and his workmen produced arms for the revolution. In addition to muskets and rifles, military officers and some soldiers also carried handguns like the long guns. They were all flintlocks. They were deadly at close range, but were inaccurate at any significant distance. These large caliber smooth bore flintlocks could fire a single large lead ball, but they could also fire a handful of lead pellets like a shotgun. George Washington would later encourage his men to load their muskets with a buck and ball. This meant loading the gun with one standard musket ball, probably 69 caliber, and three to six buckshot pellets. This greatly increased the probability of hitting one of the enemy while maintaining the deadly power of the large caliber gun. With the smooth bore muskets used by most of the troops, it was all but impossible to shoot with any real accuracy over any significant distance, making the buck and ball system an attractive option. But that wasn't true for rifles. A rifled barrel has a pattern of twisting grooves which gives the projectile a spin as it leaves the barrel. That spin gives the bullet stability, allowing an accurate shot over a greater distance. But rifled barrels were more prone to fouling by the black powder used during that period. Also, for a bullet to take advantage of the rifling, it would need to fit tightly into the barrel. This made loading more difficult. Smooth bore guns like the Brown Bess and Charleville could be reloaded more quickly, and military tactics at the time did not require the range or accuracy afforded by rifles. But hunters could appreciate both of these characteristics. And by the time of the American Revolution, shooting competitions were held for riflemen to demonstrate their prowess. The American long rifle is sometimes called the Kentucky rifle due to a popular song called The Hunters of Kentucky, which lauded the heroics of frontiersmen during the War of 1812. But rifles were actually made in most of the colonies, and particularly in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. They were originally designed by German gunsmiths who had immigrated to the colonies. They redesigned the German Jaeger rifle, lengthening the barrel to 44 inches or even longer to improve the gun's accuracy. Rifles were the first truly American-made firearm. Smooth bore muskets like the Brown Bess, Charleville, and the Committee of Safety guns were still more common in New England. Guns such as these, along with powder and ammunition, were stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. A provincial congress in Boston had directed Massachusetts towns to establish a rapid response militia, men who could be called upon to grab their guns and go wherever they were needed on a minute's notice. The Congress approved the purchase of arms, powder, and ammunition, which were to be stored until needed. In early April, 1775, the militia received word that the British knew of the stockpile and were moving to seize it. The militia were able to move most of the supplies out, distributing them among nearby towns. At 2 a.m. on April 19th, about 700 British regulars, including light infantry and grenadiers, marched out of Boston toward Concord. As they marched through Lexington, they had their first encounter with the Massachusetts militia. Captain John Parker and 75 armed militiamen stood at attention. Greatly outnumbered, Captain Parker had told his men not to start a fight. As the British advance party eyed the militiamen, someone's trigger finger itched. No one knows who fired that shot heard round the world, but Captain Parker testified that it wasn't any of his men. In response to that first shot, the British fired a volley into the militia and then charged forward with their bayonets. Bayonets turned the long muskets into spears and pikes to be used in deadly hand-to-hand combat. Bayonets were a military addition to the gun. Expert riflemen in the colonies might have far more skill than British troops as marksmen, but they had no experience with the bayonet. A British bayonet charge could be terrifying to the Americans and for good reason. The accuracy of the smoothbore muskets was so poor that most shots never struck flesh, but the bayonet could stab and cut through that flesh to deadly effect. That day in Lexington, Massachusetts, the British bayonet charge accounted for most of the eight militia men killed and ten wounded. Only a single British soldier was wounded. The British troops moved on to Concord where they found the small amount of supplies that had not been moved and burned them. As they marched back to Boston, however, the British were attacked by minutemen who had gathered after hearing the shots fired and seeing the smoke in Concord. Shooting from behind fences and trees, the militia harassed the British regulars all the way back to Boston. The colonists were demonstrating those military tactics that they had learned from the natives, a guerrilla style of hit and run, shooting from concealment at a larger but less mobile force. The militia killed 73 British soldiers and wounded 174. The war had begun. The militia encamped around Boston beginning an 11-month siege. In June, the Continental Congress formed the First Continental Army with George Washington as commander-in-chief. This included the formation of 10 companies of expert riflemen to serve as light infantry. Six companies were drawn from Pennsylvania, two from Maryland, and two from Virginia, states where the rifle was most widely used. These riflemen were expected to provide their own arms, powder horn, shot pouch, and other equipment. These were men such as Timothy Murphy of the Pennsylvania frontier, the son of Irish immigrants. Timothy and his brother John enlisted in Captain John Loudon's company of Northumberland riflemen where he demonstrated himself an expert marksman able to hit a seven-inch target at 250 yards. Murphy's skills qualified him to be placed into Daniel Morgan's elite rifle corps. When it comes to the ability to use firearms in battle, when you're looking at the Continental Army versus the British Army, one of the popular myths is that we were armed with rifles that were capable of inflicting fatal casualties out to 300 yards or better while the British were armed with smoothbore muskets of 75 caliber. That's three quarters of an inch in diameter of lead flying through the air. British Major once wrote in his diary, woe be it to the unlucky, unfortunate fellow struck and done harm by a ball fired at a distance of greater than 75 yards. That was true for the smoothbores. The rifles could reach three times that distance. The problem was that not everybody was armed with rifles as the popular myth is so prevalent. Certainly the Minutemen at Concord and Lexington did fire at the British. They harassed that column from dawn until dusk by firing at them from behind trees and rocks and bridges and they were very excellent marksmen. They had used their guns. They were economical in shooting because these were the tools that fed their family. These weren't rich individuals. These were individuals that were eking out a living on the frontier out in the country. Every shot counted back then. A wounded deer from a misplaced shot would result in hours of tracking and the expenditure of more powder and lead of which was in short supply. Daniel Morgan was a veteran of the French and Indian War. During the Revolutionary War, he commanded a crack troop of marksmen, backwoods men who had grown up hunting, tracking, and scouting. Officially named the Rangers, they were better known as Morgan's Riflemen. At the Second Battle of Saratoga, October 7th, 1777, Morgan's Riflemen were there. Morgan commanded the left flank of the American forces. During the battle, the British line fell into disarray but British General Simon Fraser was rallying them to reform. American General Benedict Arnold, who had not yet turned traitor, saw General Fraser and shouted to Morgan, That man on the gray horse is a host unto himself and must be disposed of. Direct the attention of some of the sharpshooters amongst your riflemen to him. Morgan did as he was commanded and soon Tim Murphy was climbing a tree that would give him a clear line of sight to the target 300 yards away. He fired a single shot and General Fraser fell. Without Fraser to rally them, the British line fell apart. The Americans won at Saratoga and in the process secured France as a formal ally in the war. But though the rifle had proven itself a formidable weapon, it had serious drawbacks in combat. So the idea that we all had rifles is somewhat of a myth. The Continental Army was equipped with muskets that were very similar to the British muskets and when the two armies met, they generally met closing at distances of less than 100 yards, firing smoothbore muskets at each other. But the riflemen, the American side, did have a greater number of individual riflemen. The problem was is that they were going up against the best trained army in the world at that time. These British redcoats had tremendous military discipline. They had been professional soldiers. They weren't volunteers. They weren't new recruits. The American army was basically inexperienced. There were a few that had experienced the French and Indian wars and some of the colonial wars with the Native Americans in the area, but very few of them had the type of training, the type of discipline that the British soldier had. When it came to actually fighting on the field, we were at a distinct disadvantage. When the British, however, actually saw the effectiveness of rifled musketry on their ranks from the Continental Army and the units that were using rifles, they adopted a regiment of riflemen themselves, but they never put them to their tactical advantage. The smoothbore muskets like the Brown Bess were the standard infantry weapons for a good reason. They could be loaded and fired much more rapidly than a rifle. For a bullet to benefit from the gun barrel's rifling, it must fit snugly into the barrel. It could take a full minute to load a rifle. First, the powder is poured from the powder horn into the powder measure to ensure the proper amount of powder, or riflemen might choose just to eyeball it. The powder is then poured down the barrel of the rifle. Then the rifleman prepares the patch, a moistened or greased bit of material. The lead ball is rammed down the barrel carefully on top of the patch using a ramrod. Finally, he cocks the hammer and adds powder to the priming pan. Now he's ready to shoot, the whole process having taken about a minute. In contrast, a smoothbore musket could use a prepared paper cartridge containing the powder and the ball. The soldier would bite open a cartridge, pour a little powder into the priming pan, close the pan, and pour the rest of the powder down the muscle. The powder was followed by the rest of the cartridge, paper and lead ball, the paper serving as the wadding. Then he would ram the ball in and was ready to fire. Trained soldiers could load and fire a smoothbore musket four times per minute. Also, the rifle, like all civilian long guns, was not designed to accommodate a bayonet. Not long after their success at Saratoga, Morgan's riflemen encountered some British light infantry under Colonel Robert Abercrombie. The riflemen moved to attack and Abercrombie ordered a bayonet charge. Only a quarter of the riflemen had time to fire a single shot before being scattered and driven back. But the British feared the riflemen nonetheless, specifically the British officers who were being killed. The European style of fighting, with massed soldiers firing volleys while standing in the open, was completely at odds with the small bands of hunters who picked off British officers without warning. Many among the British army considered this cowardly or even a war crime. Nonetheless, they recognized the value of riflemen as skirmishers, though they did not have as many in the field. A thousand British rifles, the pattern 1776 infantry rifles, were distributed to the light companies of each regiment. British Major Patrick Ferguson also developed a breech-loading rifle. About a hundred of these were issued to Rifle Corps in 1777. Of course, most American soldiers were also using smoothbore muskets. During the American Revolution, most American soldiers carried a Brown Bess, Charleville, or a Committee of Safety musket, which were patterned on the Brown Bess. After the war, the American army needed its own standard issue musket. In 1776, an arsenal was established in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1794, it became the first national armory, and in 1795, it produced the first truly American musket. During the war, thousands of 1766 Charlevilles had been delivered to the colonies by their French allies, and the gun was well-regarded by American soldiers. It served as the inspiration for the 1795 U.S. Army musket. which would be used during the War of 1812. 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