Very often if you look through the past to catch up. The military thinking and strategy. It tends to stay in the past war and Technology Goes ahead and the military thinking has to catch up with technology. What we see in the American Civil War is that most military was 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 a hero. A lot of the american generals, their hero was napoleon bonaparte. They thought was the greatest general in the world. And the strategist. But the problem was they had you up and where they were planning, making their planning, based on old weapons. That is one thing im going to get to. The advanced weaponry that goes into the American Civil War and how that is going to affect have casualties happen. First of all, basic weapon. Its actually an american copy of a french musket that was used at the time. This is the french call it a surely bill but it is a single shot musket. Anybody ever hear about these . They are very slow and just a weapon itself dictated how any battle wouldve happen for really every 250 years from the American Civil War back. This kind of weapon dictated how a battle would happen. Its just because of the limitations. This weapon cant really be aimed. It is a smooth board weapon which means that the barrel yes, no . Possibly not. The basic idea behind the flip lock musket. Im going to use my artistic genius here. What would be the basic part of this musket . Most important part . Its the barrel. Now you can understand why my freshman art teacher started crying. If you think of a barrel it is really just along pipe. Its just a metal pipe. And its plugged up at one end and its opened at this and. See, this is the barrel. What we have here is that we jeweled the small horror on this side, im making a lefthand musketeer. What happens is, if you are going to load this, the soldier is told to load. They dont a military guy, a soldier, wouldve taken a cartridge. A cartridge was essentially around ball like this. This is a round lead ball. 69 to 75 caliber. In other words, three quarters of an inch and an ounce of lead. This ball itself would have been in a paper tube with black powder in it. The soldier himself would have been told to load. What he would do is raise the musky like this and then this is the lock. So you would have to take this, which is called the prison or the battery. It is very hard still. You flipped up. This is a hammer. At that time they called it the clock because it looked like a roosters head so that is why when you say cocked the weapon you pull that back to have caulk. You would fight the end of the cartridge, the paper tube, pour a tiny bit of powder right here in what is called the pan. If you see through the pan there is a hole right there. That whole that i just threw. So you put a little bit of powder in this pan. This lifts back. It holds the power in place. You then frog for drop the musky like this. You take the rest of the power powder. You put your ramrod and that is you have to do that. Can you imagine if somebody was shooting at you while you are doing this . It is a long time. Imagine someone shooting at you while you are doing this . You then finish that. You are now pretty much ready to go. Your officer or your starch and says ready. You put the full caulk and then they never said aim, they said level. You cannot aim the things. You just kind of level it at the other side like that and then pull the trigger. You have a piece of flint. This illustrates much better. This is a pistol from the same time. And this is a piece of flint, this is a steal. If you do it like this, you saw all the sparks come out. So its flint hitting the steel. That is why its called flint lock. If you are lucky, what is going to happen next . Well what happens next is when this fires, this goes forward, the sparks fall into the pan right here, the sparks go through the whole, hit the powder inside the musket and with luck, the ball this powder will explode and the ball will go rolling off the barrel. And if you are lucky, that ball might not go far. 50 yards, 100 yards. Its not going to go very far. And because its just rattling down the barrel, it is not going to 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. Whats going to happen if it is raining . With this work . No. Its going to get on the powder, the spark will spark. If it is raining, if it is really humid, muggy, that might make it not work. Thats also why you as a soldier are then issued the bayonet which turns your must get into basically a spear. Let that is why we have that so youve got maybe two or three shots of the barrel and then you are just trying to go your enemy with the musky like that and the spear. That is typical fighting. Listen other words, if you did not follow a set of rules, the battle would not have worked. But because not only does it take so long to load, i must feel like this, if it went off, would create a huge amount of smoke and then if you are thinking youve got several thousand guys firing at the same time you are going to have massive amounts of smoke. So that is why we see a kind of its almost rules of war for a couple of hundred years. To make about a work, you are going to have very inaccurate slow firing muskets. And then you are going to have a lot of smoke. So for this reason, you have to follow certain rules. Soldiers would line up shoulder to shoulder in line and face another group of soldiers, the enemy soldiers mind up. In other words, shoulder to shoulder. The idea is i might be aiming at you but i might hit him. So if im shooting at least employs hit somebody. The same thing that happens if you are shooting at me, you might not miss me but you are going to hit the guy next to me. That is why they have to be very close just to make it work. Its also why you see the soldiers are color coded. In the American Revolution what color to the british soldiers where . The red quotes. What color did we wear . Yeah, we were blue. You know why . We very good we got our close, our weapons from the french. Guess what color the french war . Blue. So if you want to the American Civil War you see that is why we were wearing blue clothes like this in the American Civil War. Federal United States troops wore blue. The hats they wore the only reason they wore the hats like this this is called a copy it is french for cap. For this is why people felt like that. You have to have those colors so you can see each other in the distance. Know who each other are. You have to be close together to be able to hit what you are going to shoot. Then we have a breakthrough in technology as we go from the 20s into the thirties to the 18 forties. One part of this breakthrough is the use of the rifled musket or rifling. You will all be able to see this in a minute. Somebody figured out that if you take this barrel and put grooves in the barrel and make them twist, in other words, they twist as they go down the barrel, you are going to take that bullet and instead of having it rattled down the barrel, if you have a bullet, just a little bit smaller than the bore, inside of the barrel, that you will fit tightly into those grooves. So youve got the soft lead bullet and, you know, i will just pass these around. Here is like a round ball for and there is a bullet. What we call the mini ball. For many ball is shaped like what we think of as a bullet. I am doing a little bit better now. The mini ball if you look at the base of it, its kind of hollow, isnt it . So if you look inside look its shaped like this. Its got this 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 so it will spread out, it will grab the rifling and it will go down that for. It will be much, much more accurate. So instead of missing that person at 100 yards, you only get what you are shooting at. As a matter of fact, you can hit somebody 300, 400 yards away. Factors he jumps way up to. You have super accuracy with these things. You can fire them quickly because instead of having the loose powder to set it off via, they invent what is called the percussion cap. I will pass this one around. This is the percussion cap, which i will switch to the musket i am talking about. This is a model, 1855 rightful musket which would have been produced at the harpers ferry, virginia at that time. This rifle has the percussion cap right here. You could use a percussion cap. He uses the mini bally and that means your loading is going to be much faster. So im taking this cartridge and again this is a paper cartridge. This is what you would use. You would take a cartridge like this, drop it on the floor laughs . By the way, as we archeological work you can see where people are trying to load. You could find old battle sites and tell the soldiers that were really nervous because you find a battle line, they drop cartridges all the time. They would just be shot at, they were afraid and you can find many balls like this where they just drop them and they are in perfect shape. The soldiers themselves will grab this cartridge, put it in the muzzle like that and you still use your ramrod but its fast. A lot of times the guys would stick it in the dirt like this so that they would not it will be faster the next time. You pull this back, you put that percussion cap on here and you could fire. The thing about it is, you could hit somebody hundreds of yards away but 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 a single battle so this is, you know, one of the reasons why we see the casualties. Something very accurate and its also showing a lot of the inventions. The one thing about this particular rifle and it Shows Technology that was too far ahead of its time. The rifle itself has an invention on it that was made to make the percussion cap even obsolete. Can you see what is going on in their . This is a roll of caps and these caps are like today, you can get them. They are toy captains. When you pocket, it pulls the cap forward and so that way you dont have to put on the percussion cap so its automatically itself. What is a problem with this . What happens when you run out . And very often that was a problem for soldiers who couldnt find the caps. But also they got white sometimes. Another problem was its a little bit more complicated than using just the cap. Some soldiers again, a lot of these soldiers are swayed off the farm. They had almost no almost no experience with real machinery. They kind of got confused. So the soldiers, or the ordinance officers, figured out maybe this is too complicated so they could still use the cap on it but you see an attempt to make these more efficient. So it was a pretty decent idea in practicality, it did not work. Four if you got any questions at all feel free to ask. Going to the idea of ideas that did not work. Does this look different from the last one . This was an attempt to make a soldiers weapon that you did not have to use a ramrod with. It was meant to be what we called a breach loading musket. The idea is, is actually two equipped with a bolt. If you do it right, you pull it back. Its like a modern weapon. You take your cartridge, you put it in their. You close the bulb and then it still needs a progression cap. Guess where . Its on the bottom. So this was like how this one was made. Again, you take your precaution cap and you put it there. Whats the problem with that . It could fall out. We noticed that earlier. Its a great idea it just confused soldiers and was not all that practical only about 1000 of these were made so its a great experiment. It did not work. Brilliant idea but impracticality, it does not work. Another great idea that does not work. Do you see anything odd about this law . What is strange about this . Its got to hammers. The idea behind this was an inventor whose brother had been killed out in the west fighting native americans in the battle. Thought that american explorers should have had more shots in their guns. So he creates a two shot musket where you put two cartridges in the barrel and then with luck, you have both hammer caught with. Look, one trigger the next trigger shoots the back of the cartridge and youve got two shots in one barrel. How successful do you think this was . Not, but it was a great idea. Sometimes great ideas just get pushed out of the field and not tested. John i think the biggest you jump in technology, we see in the civil war as far as firearms, we go it would not be for infantry. If you know about the military, you have three fields or at least three branches. You have artillery, you have infantry, you have cavalry. The infantry guys pretty much had these 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 the horses. They wanted shorter weapons that could be easily used while on a horse and you also wanted weapons that could be fired fairly rapidly and loaded easily. So this is where we see most of the innovation i would say or the useful innovation. So i brought several cavalry weapons here, which were invented by individuals and each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. First one i pick up one. Does that look a little bit neater . This is whats known as a burn side it was invented by a famous civil war general by the name of and paris burn side. Guess what style we have that comes from and paris burnt side . Lets sideburns. The term sideburns, they just switch them around. The term sideburns comes from burn side who had magnificent sideburns so he was famous for that. So he invents this look i was a great adventure, he was a terrible general and a terrible businessman. He did not make a penny off of this really. He got cheated Office Patents but its a brilliant concept. The burn sidecar be as a lot it is short and easy to carry on your horse. Its got a ring so that you can put on the strap so you dont you lose it and to fire it instead of using a ramrod, you press this little lever and this drops open. You have the entire inside of this exposed so that is easy. You do not have to ramp things law. You do that and it uses a metallic cartridge. In other words, not made out of paper that gets messed up in the rain. Its got a brass or copper holder for the powder. So the powder is in the copper back. Its got the bullet in the front and its loaded. You just place it right here and push this forward. Still have to use the percussion cap but its 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. So a big breakthrough. Not to be outdone, another inventor name smith invents his own power be. This is guess what its called . The smith carbon. Brilliant idea. 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 lead bullet with a rubber hard rubber cartridge in the back. That fits right there and you close it and you are ready to go. It also though needs percussion cap. After the top if you want to come up and being able to examine these, this is a good example of looking down the barrel and actually seeing the rifle in it so you can actually see those grooved cuts in the barrel that makes the bullet spin. Brilliant idea. If youve ever heard the term sharpshooter a lot of people think it comes from this particular car beam. This is called the sharps car beam, one of the most popular car beams used in the American Civil War. Well its nice, its light, its handy all. To load it you use a golf cart fridge either cloth linen or made out of animal skin and to load it you pull that down, you put your cartridge right there. The back of the cartridge has to be open. Theres like a razorblade in the back of this and it cuts it off. You are ready to go like a trooper. Then it also uses percussion cap. This is one of the more popular guns used in civil war. Again, some of the longer ones were used by sharpshooters for sniping. After the civil war, this became one of the more popular types of weapons used for buffalo hunting out in the west so it became a very popular weapon through the entirety of the 1800s really. So this is the famous sharps be. What the most revolutionary carving was this car be. This was invented by a man named Christopher Spencer and spencer came up with several brilliant ideas. One of which was a new cartridge. This cartridge was totally selfcontained. It looks pretty much like a modern cartridge, doesnt it . It looks like a giant 22. His cartridge was the standard led many ball but the cartridge itself is totally selfcontained. It has a powder in this copper case and instead of having a percussion cap for priming, the primer is in the rib of the base of it. So it has a rib going at the base of the cartridge. So you do not need a percussion cap. Is that a big jump . Its a huge jump. And if that was not a jump enough for, to loaded, he invents a magazine that goes in the back of the car the. So this magazine holds seven cartridges. If you have a spencer car beam and you are in a battle, a fight, the soldiers would typically have the thing loaded with this like that. They wouldve had seven magazines in a pouch or a box attached to their saddle and so to fire it all you have to do was float it, do that, khaki, fire it. So you can shoot it just dozens of shots within a very brief time. It was incredibly effective. Look does the army adopt it . Why would the army not adopt it . Its simple, its very efficient, super well made but why would they not adopt it . It was not that expensive but it was expensive to shoot. The army the guys counting the beans were looking at the fact that soldiers would waste too much ammunition. Its too easy to shoot, soldiers would 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 one of his car beams, hes frustrated with dealing share with the army. He goes directly to the white house and gets a meeting with Abraham Lincoln and in a famous story, Abraham Lincoln goes out on the white house grounds and Abraham Lincoln test fires one of these himself. As soon as he does this, he orders his generals to accept the rifle and so it took a really a president ial order to take one of these. Or for us to adopt this. This is the famous spencer carbon. It works wonderfully. As soon as lincoln was dead, at the