The new South. [volume] (Port Royal, S.C.) 1862-1867, 1864-04-02
Improvement In FIREARMS.

Improvement In Firearms.
One of the most marked developments
made by the war is the great superiority
in range and accuracy OF the new rified
guns over the old regulation muskets
and artillery. A battle is now getting to
be a very deadly affair. Formerly two
bodies OF troops might meet and bang
away at each other for hours without
killing more than handful of men. 1t
is related that at the battle Of Salaman-
Ca, for instance, no more than eight
thousand men were put hors de combat
although three million five hundred
thousand cartridges were fired, together
with six thousand cannon balls, to say
nothing of cavalry and infantry charges,
so that only one shot in four hundred
and thirty took effect. An officer enga-
ged at Waterloo has stated that he could
not see more than three or four saddles
emptied by the fire of one side of a squsre
of British infantry upon body Of French
cavalry close to them. Com are these
abortive performances. with the deadly
fire OF our troops in that little affair which
took place at GAINESVILLE, Florida, on the
l4th ult. Forty-nine of our men, armed
with the new repeating Spencer rife,
withstood the charge of one hundred
rebel cavalry, putting more than forty OF
them hors du combat. AS the rebels were
leaping the breastwork Of cotton bales
the Federals poured in a seven-fold vol
ley, every man firing seveRhots in rapid
succession; when the astonished troops
wheeled and fed, leaving their dead upon
the ground. In this action, by the aud
of this new repeating fire arm, nearly
every Union soldier brought down his
man. Such deadly firing makes engage
ments short and sharp, and is terribly
destructive of human life. Look at the
results of the battle of Olustee, in which
our little army of five thousand men lost
one-fifth of their number in three hours
fight.
The old regulation musket, with which
our soldiers were formerly armed, was
very unreliable weapon. Sir Emerson
Tenant tells us that mot long ago, a,reA
trained marL:Snon, provided with an old
regulation musket, was placed to fire at
target eighteen feet square, at distance
of three hundred yards, and found that
he could not put even into that spacious
area one bullet ont Of t,ceaty. At two hun
dred yards, his success was not greater,
and vet the fre-arm thus tested was the
regular weapon of the British soldier so
late as the year 1852"
1t is the rifle that has brought about
the great change in the range and precis-
ion of fire arms. The rified bore and
elongated projectile have not only given
greater accuracy but triple power of pen
etration. The Enfield rife was thought
to be a very superior weapon, but now it
is acknowledged to be inferior to the
Whitworth rifle. The effective range of
the latter weapon is given at 2, 600 yards,
or about one and one-seventh miles,
distance more than equal to the ordinary
capacity OF the eye to distinguish objects
no larger than the body of man.
Troops armed with such weapons must
of course 60 into action with greater
confidence than they could have felt
with the old regulation musket. The
importance of the men having this con-
fdeace in their weapons is seen in the