Weaponry in the Civil War

Paper Summary:

This paper explores the development of new and, at the time, cutting-edge weaponry during the U.S. Civil War. The author provides an historical and technical overview of the various weapons, in particular the naval ironclad, as well as new hand guns, rapid fire rifles, bombs and torpedoes.

From the Paper:

"One of the most notorious developments of the Civil War was the introduction of the naval Ironclad. When the war started, "there was not a single ironclad of any description in the United States Navy," [1] but in August of 1961 Congress passed a bill authorizing a Naval board to begin creating plans and specifications for the construction of ironclad warships. A month later, another Naval review board concluded that the warships would be necessary for coastal and harbor defense, for operation on rivers and for blockading. They would be of negligible service as cruisers, since their iron would weigh them down and reduce their speed and range. (To compensate for this weight problem, they would be built with a mixture of iron and wood.) Thus, the ironclad was built primarily as a shallow-draft vessel that would be "invulnerable to shot" from land or sea. [2]"

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