Weaponry from the civil war, revolutionary war he collects a host of artifacts which he has brought and will share with us today he is a ph. D. Earned his doctorate from Texas Christian University in fort worth texas, what year was that . It was a while ago. He is an expert so if you get an opportunity to take a class with him take a class so we are going to continue to discuss the civil war thankfully for doctor kine or we get to look at the aspect of weaponry and its impact on the war so without further ado i will hand the close over to doctor kin or a center. Thank you. The theme for todays lecture is going to be about technology of warfare. A lot of our classes we deal with the politics of warfare and just the historical record of warfare but in a lot of it comes down to the individual whos in the field and the weapons that they were issued because that is what you need for warfare. But one thing that i found fascinating in research was looking at the early 19th century, 1800 up till the American Civil War from 1860, 61 to 65. This was also a period in the United States of intense invention, americans were incredibly creative at this time. We were really a world leader in inventing just about everything. Everything from steam ships to steam power in factories to the telegraph. Layer after layer of invention, creativity. In a kind of a strange unfortunate way though, we see that a lot of these inventions started using their talents in inventing weapons. In other words there was a certain technological revolution in referee technology during the early 1800s and this is one of the factors that leads to such high casualties in the American Civil War, that you see this throughout history, a repetition, that it takes military leadership very often if you look through the past to catch up, military thinking and strategy its tends to stay in the past war and Technology Goes ahead and then military thinking has to catch up with technology, and what we see is that when we enter the American Civil War, that most military thinking was still along the lines of the american revolution, in other words warfare that had happened decades earlier, or even napoleon just a few years earlier. That was their hero, a lot of these american generals, their hero was napoleon bonaparte, they thought was the greatest general in the world and strategist. But the problem was they had new weapons where they were planning, making their planning based on old weapons. And so that is one thing im going to get to is show this the advances in various weaponry that we see because of the American Civil War and how that is going to affect casualties. First of all, when i brought in the basic weapon of an American Revolutionary war soldier. This is a, its actually an american copy of a french musket that was used at the time. This is the french call it a charlottesville but it is a single shot flint lock musket. Anybody ever know anything about these . They are very slow to shoot, just the weapon itself dictated how any battle would have happened for really over 250 years. From the American Civil War back for this kind of weapon dictated how that battle would happen, it is just because of the limitations. This weapon cant really be aimed. It is a smooth board weapon, which means that the barrel, possibly not the basic idea behind the flint lock musket. Im going to use my artistic genius here. What would be the basic part of this musket the most important part is the barrel. Now you can understand why my freshman are teacher started crying. But if you think of a barrel its really just a long pipe. It is a metal pipe. It is plugged about when and. I will plug it up here. It is open at the scent. This is the barrel what we have here, is that we drill a small hole on the side. I look like a left hand must get here. What happens is, if youre going to load this, the soldier is told to load. A soldier would have taken a cartridge. A cartridge was essentially around ball like this. This is around red ball. These can be 69 to 75 caliber. Three quarters of an inch, about an ounce of lead. This ball itself would have been in a paper tube with gunpowder in it black powder. Soldier himself wouldve been told to load. He would raise the must get like this, and this is the rock. You would have to take this which is called the prism or the battery. He flipped that up. This is the hammer. At that time they called it the caulk, because it looked like a roosters head. You would pull that back to have caulk. You would bite off the end of the cartridge, the paper cube, poor a tiny bit of powder in what is called the pan. Theres a whole right there. The whole that i just. You put a bit of powder in the span, flipped back, it holds the power in place powder. You then drop the musket like this. You take the rest of your powder and the ball, you drop it in. You pull out your ram rod, and that is where you have to do that. Imagine if somebody was shooting at you while youre doing this . It is taking a long time. Imagine somebody shooting at you while you are doing this. Then your finish that. You are now pretty much ready to go. Your officer or sergeant says, ready. You put it to full clock and then, they never said a. They said level. You cannot aim these things. You would level it at the other side like that and then pull the trigger. You have a piece of flint says this illustrates much better. This is a pistol from the same time. This is a piece of flint, and if you do like this, you see the sparks come up. So its flint hitting the steele, that is why its called flint lock if you are lucky, what is going to happen next . What happens next is when the gunfire, as this goes forward, the sparks fall into the pan right here. The sparks go through the whole, hit the powder inside the mosque it, and with luck, the ball will go rolling out the barrel. If you are lucky that ball might go how far . 50 yards . 100 yards . It will not get very far. It is just kind of rattling down the barrel. It will not be accurate. If i were shooting towards the back of this room, i might be able to hit somebody, i might not. That would be kind of discouraging, wouldnt it . And it takes a long time. What is going to happen if it is raining with this work . It wont spark. Thats right, a spark wont spark. If it is raining, its humid, that could not work. Thats why you, as a soldier are issued a buy in it, which turns your must get into a spear. So that is why we have that. So you have got maybe two or three shots in the battle, then you just are trained to go a year enemy with a musket like that with a spear. That is typical fighting. In other words, if you did not follow a set of rules, the battle would not have worked. Not only does it take so long to load, im a skit like this, if it went off, would create a huge amount of smoke, and if you are thinking youve got several thousand guys firing at the same time, you will have massive amounts of smoke. That is why we see a kind of its almost rules of war for a couple of hundred years. To make a battle work, you have to have very inaccurate slow firing muskets and a lot of smoke. For this reason, you have to follow certain rules. Soldiers would line up, shoulder to shoulder in line and face another group of shoulders, the enemy soldiers. They would lineups shoulder to shoulder. The idea is, i might be aiming at you, but i might hit him. So if im shooting at least a will hit somebody. The same thing happens. If you are shooting at me, you might miss me but you might hit the guy next to me. That is why they had to be very close, just to make it work. Thats why you see the soldiers are color coded. The american revolution, what color did the british soldiers where . They were known as the red coats. What color did we wear . We were blue. You know why . We got it from the french. Very good. We got it from the french. So if you went to the civil war, that is why we were wearing blue coats in the American Civil War. Federally United States troops were wearing blue. The hats they wore, the only reason they were hats like this, the french war hats. We copied everything french. This is called a kathy. French for cap. This is why people fought like that. You actually have those colors so you can see each other at a distance. It had to be close to each other to be able to hit what you are going to shoot. Then we have a breakthrough in technology as we go from the twenties into the thirties to the 18 forties. One part of this breakthrough is the use of the rifled musket or rifling. Well ill be able to see this in a minute. Somebody figured out that if you take this peril and cut grooves into the barrel and make them twist. In other words, the grooves twist as they go down the barrel, it will take that bullet, and instead of having it rattled down the barrel, if you have the bullet just a little bit smaller, then the bore inside the barrel, it will fit tightly into those grooves. So you have the soft lead bullet. I will just pass these around. Here is around ball. And then theres a bullet, what we call the mini ball. The mini ball is shaped like what we call a bullet. I am doing a little bit better now. The mini ball, youll see, if you look at the base of it, it is kind of hollow, isnt it . If you look inside, it is shaped like this. It has a hollow in it. The idea is, that when you fire the musket, that the power of the charge will make this spread out a little bit. It will spread out, grab the rifling and go down the bore and it will be much more accurate. So instead of missing that person at 100 yards, you are going to hit what your shooting at. As a matter of fact you can hit someone 300, 400 yards away. So accuracy jumps way. You have super accuracy with these things and you can fire them quickly because instead of having the loose powder to set it off. They invent what we call a percussion cap. I will pass this around. This is the percussion cap which, ill switch to the musket im talking about. This is a model 1855 rifle musket which would have been produced at Harpers Ferry virginia at that time. This rifle has the percussion cap right here. You can use a percussion cap. It uses the mini ball which i passed around. That means, your loading is going to be much faster, so taking this cartridge, and again, this is a paper cartridge, this is what you use. You would take a cartridge like this, drop it on the floor. laughs by the way, if youre doing archeological work, you can see where people are trying to load an old battle sites, you can tell the soldiers that were really nervous, because you will see that they used to drop cartridges all the time. They had been shot at, they were afraid. You can find many balls like this where they had just drop them in their perfect shape. But the soldier himself would grab this cartridge, put it in the muzzle, and you still use your ramrod, but its fast. A lot of times the guys we just stick it in the dirt like this so that they would not it would be faster the next time. You pull this back, put that percussion cap in there and fire. The thing about it is, you can hit somebody hundreds of years away accurately. This is what led to a lot of the casualties in the civil war. Guys got way too close. There was no way to miss, and you see tens of thousands of soldiers getting killed in one single battle. This is one of the reasons why we see the casualties. Something very accurate and it is also showing a lot of the invention. The one thing about this particular rifle, though. It Shows Technology was too far ahead of its time. The rifle itself has an invention on it that was it had made the percussion cap obsolete. You see whats going on in there. This is a rule of caps. In these caps, today you can get 20 cap guns. When you clock it, it pulls the cap forward and so that way you dont even have to put on the percussion cap. It is automatically priming itself. What is the problem with . This what happens when you run out . Very often, that was the problem. The soldiers cannot find the caps. They would get wet sometimes. Another problem was, it is a little more complicated than using just the cap. Some soldiers, theyre straight off the farm. Theyve had almost no experience with real machinery. Theyre confused. So the soldiers, for the ordinance officers figured out, maybe this is too complicated, so they could still use the cap, that you see an attempt to make these more efficient. It was a pretty decent idea and practicality and did it work. If you got any questions at all, feel free to ask. Go into the idea of ideas that did not work. Does this look different from that last one . This was an attempt to make a soldiers weapon that you do not have to use a ram rod with. We called it a breach floating musket. The idea is, equipped it with a bolt. If you do it right, you pull it back, feels like a more modern weapon. You take your cartridge, you put it in their, you close the bolt and then it still needs to percussion cap, guess where . It is on the bottom. So this was how this one was made. Then again, you take your percussion cap and you put it there. What is the problem with that . It could fall out. But it is a great idea. It just confused soldiers and was not all that practical. Only about 1000 of these were made. It was great experiment. It did work. Great idea, but in practicality it does not work. Another great idea that does not work. Do you see anything odd about this . What a strange about this . It has got to hammers. Behind the the idea behind this was, an inventor whose brother had been killed out in the west fighting native americans and battle thought that american explore ships had more shot in their guns. So they created a two shot musket. You put two cartridges in the barrel and with luck, you have both hammers cocked with luck. It shoots the front cartridge and then the back cartridge and you have two shots in one barrel. How successful do you think that was . But it was a great idea. Sometimes great ideas just get pushed out into the field, and not tested. I think the biggest jump in technology that we see in the civil war as far as firearms, it would not be for infantry. If you know about the military we have three fields of at least three branches. Artillery, infantry and cavalry. The infantry guys pretty much had these kinds of weapons. They were trying to keep it simple. We do see however, with the cavalry, there was much more innovation with cavalry. These are the soldiers that are on horses. They wanted shorter weapons that could be easy to use while on a horse. You also wanted weapons that could be fired fairly rapidly and loaded easily. This is where we see most of the innovation, i would say, or the useful innovation. I brought several cavalry weapons here which were invented by individuals and each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. The first when i picked up, doesnt it look a little bit neater . This is what is known as a burn side car been. It was invented by a famous civil war general by the name of ambrose burn side. Guess what star we have that comes from burnt side . Sideburns. The term site burns, they just switched it around. The term site burn comes from general birds burn sites. He was famous for that. You convinced this. He was a great inventor. He was a terrible chant general and businessman. He got cheated out of his patents, but it is a brilliant concept. The burn side carbon has the rifle barreled. It is short, easy to carry on your horse. Its got a ring so you could put it on the strap so you dont lose it. To fire it, instead of using a ram rod, you press the lever and this drops out. You have the entire inside of this exposed. That is easy. You do not have to ramp. Things you do that, and it uses a metallic cartridge. In other words not made out of paper that can get messed up in the rain. It has a brass or copper holder for the powder. The powder is in the copper. It has got the bullet in the front. To load it, you just place it right here, and then push this forward. You still have to use the percussion cap, but it is much much faster to use. It works in the rain, and you can fire probably five to ten times more rounds in the same time as it takes to fire two rounds in one of these or one round. Really a big breakthrough. Not to be outdone, another inventor named smith invents his own car being. Guess what it is . Called the smiths car been. If you want to load this you press a button right here. It pops open. It uses a cartridge like this. It was made out of the lid bullet with a rubber, hard rubber cartridge in the back that fits right in there, and you close it, and you are ready to go. It also needs a percussion cap. Carabine. I love people being able to examine these. This is a good example of looking down the barrel and seeing the grooved cuts in the barrel that makes that bullet spin. Brilliant idea. If you have overheard the term sharp shooter. A lot of people think it comes from this particular carbine it is called the sharps car been. It is one of the most popular car been used in the civil war. It is nice, light, handy. To load it you use a cloth cartridge, linen or animal skin, and to load it, you pull that down, you put your cartridge right there. The back of the cartridge has to be opened. There is like a razorblade in the back of this and it cuts it off. You are ready to go. Then it also uses percussion cap. This was one of the more popular guns used and civil war. Some of the longer ones were used by sharpshooters for sniping. After the civil war this became the most popular type of weapon used for buffalo hunting out in the west. It became a very popular weapon. This is a famous sharps carbine. The most revolutionary carbine, was this carbine. This was invented by a man named christopher spits her. Spencer came up with several brilliant ideas. One of which was a new cartridge. His cartridge was totally self contained. It looks like a modern cartridge, doesnt it . It looks like a giant 22. His cartridge was the standard lead mini ball, but the cartridge itself is selfcontained. It has the powder in this copper case, and instead of having a percussion cap for priming, the primer isnt that rim around the base of. It so you have the rim going around the base of the cartridge. You do not need to percussion cap. Is that a big jump . It is a huge jump . If that wasnt a chump, enough to load it, he invents a magazine that goes in the back of the carbine. This magazine holds seven cartridges. If you have a spencer carbine and you are in a battle, the soldiers would typically have what they loaded with this magazine, like that. They would have had seven magazines in a pouch or a box attached to their saddle. To fire, it all you had to do is, loaded, do that, pocket, fire it. So you could shoot it. Dozens of shots within a brief time. Incredibly effective. The army adopted it. Why would the army not adopted . It is simple, it is very efficient. Super well made. But why would they not adopt . It was not that expensive, but it was expensive to shoot. The army the guys counting the beans were saying, soldiers will waste too much ammunition. It is too easy to shoot. Soldiers will waste ammunition. We are not going to buy this gun for the army. That makes sense, doesnt it . Spencer was one of those guys who does not give. Up in a famous story spencer takes ones of his carbine, he is frustrated with the army. He goes directly to the white house, gets a meeting with Abraham Lincoln in the famous story is that abraham goes out on the white house grounds, he gets to testify or one of these himself. As soon as he does this, lincolns orders his generals and says you are accepting this rightful. It took a president ial order to order one of these. So this is the famous spencer carbine. It works wonderfully. As soon as lincoln was dead at the end of the civil war, the army took back all these spencer carbines and took them back into single shot carbines. It was still a beautiful idea. Going back to the cavalry, we also see another jump in technology. Before the civil war, if you had a pistol, this was probably what it looked like. A single shot or percussion pistol. You notice it is shaped like a club. It works great with one shot, then you can hit somebody with it. Not very accurate. Does not go very far. 2030 yards maybe. Not an efficient weapon. Famously, an american inventor by the name of samuel colt. He was a sailor at the time. He invents what we call the revolver while he is in a ship sailing around the pacific. He left carving stuff. He comes up with the idea of the revolver. It is a progression weapon, but you have he greats the cylinder, and again this is a rifle. The cylinder with six cartridges in it. The cartridge was a little thing like this. It has got the powder and a piece of white skin or paper, and with a colt revolver, you take your cartridge, you put it in the front of your cylinder. This is a ram rod. So you ram each one in. You put your core percussion cap, and uses little tiny ones. You put your percussion cap on it so you load it, put the cap on it right here and to that effect you have six cartridges in this pistol. Just to fire it, all you have to do is clock it, pull the trigger, clock it and with each caulk, the cylinder revolves and youve got six shots. Each slender has to have a percussion cap and six cartridges in it. It takes a while. That is the disadvantage of the colt it takes a little while to load it. Most of these guys would carry two pistols at a time, so that gives you 12 shots. If you consider a cavalry, if you had the spencer carbine youve got a massive number of shots from the carbine, and with two of these you have 12 shots. Again, i have seen in archeological sites outside of greensboro, where you can see a confederate position of local confederate soldiers who had conventional muskets like this, and then you are facing a much much Smaller Union or federal cavalry. You could tell that this tiny cavalry unit held off a much larger federal infantry because the cavalry soldiers had revolvers like this and the spinster car beans. You can tell what was happening because you could see these cartridges left on the ground that were about three inches under the earth. You could see how effective the massive power fire coming out of these carbines. That just reminds me, the coat, even though a great inventor, held back invention in america for decades because of his patent rights. He patented this revolver, actually. Nobody else could really use it unless they bought a patent or they infringed on the patent. He held it back. A much better pistol came out at the same time which was this one. This is a ramming ten revolver. The second most used pistol in the civil war. It is a much better pistol than the cold. Especially if you like to fire rapidly. It is heavier. Feels more solid. It could be loaded much faster than the cold. To load this thing, it works the same, but you can talk this, and all you have to do to load it is dropped the cylinder out and replace the cylinder. Here is the cylinder. It is a little bit, heavy isnt . It but you can see on the back, you would put those caps on the, back loaded from the front, and some of these cavalry soldiers would carry a bunch of those in a back. Theyd be loading it like a magazine. They would have much more shots than otherwise. Let us see, here. I will share one thing that i find someone interesting in that the ability to manufacture modern equipment during the civil war. There is a difference between what was issued to the south, what was issued to the north. When the civil war started, the north already had good resources that they had developed in their manufacturing skills and factories. It was not like that here in the south. This was agricultural. We did not have the manufacturing skills in the south to match the north. You could really see that and some of the weapons that were produced at the time. Also the thinking. At the beginning of the civil war, there were very few arsenals in the south. There were not that many resources to create weapons. And thinking about behind the times, one of the first weapons produced by southern arsenals, and this is excavated, this is called a pike or a speier. Early confederate soldiers out of georgia were issued spears to use against union forces. Not really a good idea, was it . But they did not last, but they were using something so primitive. They decided to copy union weapons. Here is the basic cavalry saber federal soldiers or United States soldiers civil war. Beautifully made. Made in massachusetts. Beautiful leather, beautiful workmanship. Makes a nice ring, doesnt it . But you can see it is beautifully made, beautifully balanced. You can see it it is stated, inspected, manufacturing mark is all over it. This went through an intense inspection program. Beautifully made. It is sharp enough, but one thing they found out, very quickly, it is almost like you had to have a sword because it was part of your ego. But you probably never would use it because if im going at you with a sort, and you are coming at me with one of these, who will win . They had gotten to the point where people its almost like you had to have a sort, you just had to have one. But they never use them. This is a good example of a federal sword. Beautiful quality. On the other hand, the sort was made here in North Carolina near wellington at about the same time. Do you see any differences so far . If you look very simple, very crude looking. The blade is dark. But the blade is not as well balanced. It is not as well made. It has low markings on it. It has roman numerals, but if you look at the scattered, you can see a seam down it. Whoever made this was not that good at it. The stuff made and the south is not as good. It is crude. And not quality. Another example of that will have a sword fight in a few minutes. Another example of that is, i showed earlier, this is a federally made United States, government made musket. Beautiful. You can look at it. Beautiful workmanship inspected multiple times. Beautifully made. The problem in the south was, it just did not have the manufacturing capabilities. They tried to copy federal designs. This is a musket made this was made in richmond virginia. This is a confederate musket, which is a copy of the union musket. The federal musket. You can see, it is darker, it is not as good in a shape, but you can see the federal musket had a mechanism here, and the confederate version, they did not know how to make it so they lifted off. Its a little bit crude or. Another issue we have, Steel Workers in the south did just example locally, there were multiple rifle making shops here in Guilford County. Multiple. One of them was out off of 85 on the road if you know that. It was a can federal rifle factory there, North Carolina made. They were doing a great job of making muskets, but i found the paperwork for this must get factory, here in town. Or Guilford County. I am finding in the paperwork that, this is sort of sad, that they had been working and working and working. They had almost finished all of these muskets. They had huge order ready to go. But muskets need springs. If you noticed, to calk, you need a spring. They had Something LikeThree Springs that needed to be in that must get. Two to three. They will not work without them. Here in Guilford County, we had one man in 1862 who could actually make good springs. One guy in the whole county. That is kind of, side isnt it . What was the problem with this man who made springs for this factory . He was really good friends with the local moonshine are. He would disappear for weeks at a time. They would have everything to go, but the guy was not dependable. That held up production. That was another one of the issues. Any questions at this point . We are getting kind of close to time. Between the first full run and at the mattocks with sort of the change in weapons, is there a shift in battle tactics . Have you found that there were, the proximity was further away from the soldiers, or did the federals or unions realize, hey, we have better weapons, lets keep close proximity. We will come out better . Sadly, no. Not really. You would think. You see some changes in cavalry tactics, but for the most part, they just dont seem date it hasnt seemed to registered on them. You still see massive casualties towards the end. You see these big groups of soldiers marching in and just getting taken down. One folly can just drop dozens of guys at one time. They were still doing that. It shows, after the war they had them turned dispenser back into a single shot. What are those big bullets over . Theyre the big bullets. These are artillery shells. They also show that jump in technology. This is what you would have seen fired in a cannon during the revolutionary war. This is a cannonball from the battlefield for Guilford County courthouse. Its just a big iron ball. If it hits you its gonna make a mess, but it has to hit you. That was one of the other changes during the American Civil War. They made the jump to shells inside of this, it was found a bit and fill in North Carolina in 1865 during the battle. The big jump, you had explosives inside of this. A very complex few whos, and these would explode. You could time it. You could fire this at troops, and up to five seconds, when it got to where you wanted it to go for where it would exclude blow, chunks would break off, it was filled with bullets, and this was much more deadly. Here is one. This was found at masses. That is one little bit that throws people off. Hes battles had two names. The south named the battle after the local town, the north named it after the local body of water. The first battle in the south it was called masses because of the town, in the north it was called bull bull run because of bull run creek. This was an artillery shell fired on cannon. Weighs ten pounds. Shaped like a bull. It came out of a rifle artillery piece cannon. He could get it much farther than the revolutionary war cannon. The cannon whos firing this, it has a fews, it would explode, and this would go much farther, much more accurately and it would explode making it much deadlier than anything else you wouldve seen in the revolutionary war. Its heavy isnt it . Ive also got other things if you want to see basically articles of clothing. What you would have been wearing and july at manassas if you were in the union artillery. Wool. This is what people wore at the time. These soldiers are wearing will close, will pants, long sleeves, shirts, jackets, vests. You would not have been fired not only, but burning up hot. Yes maam. I just wanted to know, how did you gather all the stuff and also, i noticed theres some initials on that gun. Is that your initials or is that a soldier from back in the days . I love that. Actually, im old enough that these were issued to me. I just kept them. I have been this is part of my profession. I have been doing this for years. It is true, you will see, some of these have been personalized by soldiers, and you do not see it as much on union weapons, but in the south, sometimes, this was made in the north, captured by a southern soldier. He was just personalizing it. A lot of times in the military, they would spend a lot of times board. So you will see things like that. Youve got somebody with the initials jay he. This one over here, a lot of the guys personalized their muskets. They did other things for example, what else do you do when you get bored here. Its a bullet that someone carved into a fishing lore. It is a wait for fishing line. He took the bullet, carved it, and you can tie your line on this. Its made for fishing. Soldiers personalize just about everything they. Had that is exactly what they would do. You would see it quite often. Somebody else . Yes sir. With black paddle rifles and general, it seems like they kicked pretty hard. What inventions would come around this time or later that would make the recoil a little better . They do kick. They kicked more, the morey fired it. That was another issue that i did not mention, that you dont really see it in something put less powder in it and it will do that. But they would not want to do that, because it takes away range. But it does illustrate one of the problems with these muskets. Black powder yesterday. If you fire black powder weapons, it leaves a lot of credit, residue and the barrel. It is kind of grainy, black, and messy. But every time you fire a black powder musket, it leaves this residue in the rifle, which means it gets harder and harder to load. Each time you load it, you have to really ram that ramrod down. That was one of the problems. I dont see any issue with the rifles later on. They invented vices that helped with recoil. But these things do kick. They kicked more when it was harder to load them, because you had more buildup in them. If you want to come up afterwards, ive got bullets here that you can actually see, where the soldier had to really ram it. You see the impression of the end of the ram rod on these bullets before they got fired because the guy really had to cram it down like that. That was a good question. They still kick. Anyone else . I know you showed us the wool coats they wore during battle. Were there numbers that were shown that showed large casualties not from puncture rooms . From any munitions or things like that, but heatstroke instead, from hiking and traveling for work . More people, that is a great question, thank you. More soldiers died of disease and other problems then bullets. When you are looking at casualties, you see almost no casualties from, say, the bayonet. You are in the revolutionary war. You are not supposed to get close. You wont get close enough to the other guy to use it. If you are civil war soldier, would you use your by a net for more than a war . Stick it in the ground and put a candle in it. And makes a lovely candle holder. That is what they would use it for. Ive looked at all sorts of casualties. You rarely see wounds from a bye in it. You rarely see wounds from a sort. You cannot get close enough. You see quite a few wounds from the biggest thing damages came from the rifle muskets. This is the biggest weapon, but the soldiers are in camp. This is pre the big killer would have been like any kind of disease going through camp. Like measles could kill people. You see dysentery being a big killer. Typhoid was a big killer. I have seen issues of heatstroke, because i do not see how people could have fought in weather at that time like gettysburg, in the middle of the summer early july. To me it is phenomenal. This is also winter weight, but a soldier would have been wearing, really, long chance with a linen shirt, and that coat, you could not leave it unbuttoned. It had to be buttoned, it was part of the uniform. So you are wearing that. You wouldve been wearing wool in pants, and an almost useless swollen cap. So yeah, the evidence and the shoes, by the way. Leather scholes leather soles, and the shoes would have been hideously uncomfortable. The seoul was not sold on. They were pegged on with little pegs. If you want to see that but yeah, there is evidence you would have seen the soldiers. Ive read a lot of letters where they died of thirst. They had low capacity canteens. You would have seen people dropping from heatstroke. Since this is nationally televised i will ask you the Million Dollar question. In your mind, your research, is gettysburg still considered the major turning point, or do you see it as being Something Else or other sets of circumstances . I would say it would be the big turning point. I noted i know some people would disagree, but gettysburg was a desperate move and confederacy, robert e. Lee trying to get a major victory on Northern Home soil. His biggest purpose for that would have been to bring in european help to the south. A lot of people in the south, a lot of leadership in the south were really counting on bringing in france and england on the side of the south to go against the United States. One of my Research Topics was a french nobleman who right up to the very end the 1965, was hoping to bring france and on the side of confederacy. What these european powers were looking for was to see if the south had a chance of winning, or at least coming up with negotiations. It would have been a great victory on northern soil. It might have persuaded some foreign powers to at least recognize confederacy as an independent government, but that failed through. It was delusional, i think. Very delusional. But that was the big goal, and once he lost that, the war still goes on. There are horrendous battles afterwards. But i think that really was the turning point. Anybody else . Thank you. If anybody wants to come down and enjoy, take a look. If youve never held a musket, here is your chance. Let us give a hand to doctor scott us. Be prepared for your second exam coming up next week. Thank you for being here if you like to come down and look at the weapons please come down, doctor fanner will hang out a little while and we will let you know what he brought. Thank you so much. Male clinic is an american institution. It is at the heart of our country in many respects. It is the worlds first and largest private Multi Specialty Group practice. 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