January 18, 1861: The arms seized at Charleston

Model 1819 Hall Rifle

One of the areas of Civil War history that fascinates me is how the Confederacy armed itself. Broadly speaking the Confederacy's only sources of armaments were:

1) Federal arms seized during secession;
2) Foreign arms purchased overseas and imported;
3) Northern weapons purchased before the war;
4) Northern weapons captured or purchased during the war; and
5) Weapons produced in the South.

The subject of this post is the first part of this list: federal arms seized during secession. It isn't always easy to find out exactly what the seceding Southern states managed to capture during secession. Details as to the number, type and quality of weapons are frequently missing. On January 18, 1861 the Richmond Daily Dispatch published an attachment to a letter from Joseph Holt, the Acting Secretary of War, detailing the arms seized by the State of South Carolina on December 27, 1860 when Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, and the Charleston Arsenal fell to the South Carolina militia. Here is what South Carolina managed to take from the federal government:

At Fort Moultrie:

14 - 32 pounder iron guns
16 - 24 pounder iron guns
10 - 8-inch iron columbiads
5 - 8-inch iron sea coast howitzers
4 - 24 pounder iron flank howitzers
2 - 12 pounder brass field howitzers
4 - 6 pounder brass field guns

At Castle Pinckney:

4 - 42 pounder guns
14 - 24 pounder guns
4 - 8-inch iron sea coast howitzers

At Charleston Arsenal:

2 - 6 pounder old iron field guns
5 - 24 pounder old iron field howitzers
502 - Flint-lock muskets, calibre .69
5,702 - Flint-lock muskets altered to percussion, calibre .69
693 - Percussion muskets, calibre .69
2,808 - Percussion rifles, calibre .54
6 - Percussion rifles, calibre .54, with long range sights
566 - Flint-lock Hall's rifles
4 - Percussion rifled carbines
9 - Percussion carbines
815 - Flint-lock pistols
300 - Percussion pistols

There are two things that leap out from these lists. The first is the use of the term "flint-lock" to describe certain small arms. The flint-lock was, by this time, an obsolete weapons technology that used a sliver of flint to strike sparks and trigger the gunpowder in small arms. The state of the art for small arms in 1861 was the percussion cap. Small arms with percussion actions used a small brass caps filled with fulminate of mercury to trigger the weapon's gunpowder charge. Percussion arms were more reliable, especially in the rain or wet conditions.

The second thing to look for is the use of pounds versus inches to describe guns (but not columbiads or howitzers). A gun that is described in terms of pounds could only fire solid shot. Howitzers and columbiads, by definition, could fire explosive shells. Once you understand the nomenclature, it becomes clear that most of the artillery captured by South Carolina on December 27, 1860 were out-dated weapons capable of firing only solid shot.

South Carolina captured a significant amount of weaponry on December 27, 1860, but much of it was antiquated or obsolescent when compared with the standard military arms being produced in 1861.