page_title: Armies in the American Civil War
section_title: Field artillery
hierarchical_section_title: Armies in the American Civil War / Weapons / Field artillery
caption_attribution_description: Line engraving of a field gun on a limber used in the American Civil War, side view.
context_page_description: This brief survey is by no means exhaustive, but it should give enough material to have a better understanding of the capabilities of the forces that fought the American Civil War. Understanding these capabilities should give insight into the reasoning behind the decisions made by commanders on both sides.
context_section_description: In 1841, the US Army selected bronze as the standard material for fieldpieces and at the same time adopted a new system of field artillery. The 1841 field artillery system consisted entirely of smoothbore muzzleloaders: 6‑ and 12‑pound guns; 12‑, 24‑, and 32‑pound howitzers; and 12-pound mountain howitzers. A pre-Civil War battery usually consisted of six fieldpieces—four guns and two howitzers. A 6‑pound battery contained four M1841 6-pounder field guns and two M1841 12-pounder howitzers, while a 12-pound battery had four 12-pound guns and two 24-pound howitzers. The guns fired solid shot, shell, spherical case, grapeshot, and canister rounds, while howitzers fired shell, spherical case, grapeshot, and canister rounds (artillery ammunition is described below).
  The 6‑pound gun (effective range 1,523 yards) was the primary fieldpiece used from the time of the Mexican War until the Civil War. By 1861, however, the 1841 artillery system based on the 6-pounder was obsolete. In 1857, a new and more versatile fieldpiece, the 12‑pounder Napoleon gun‑howitzer, model 1857, appeared on the scene. Designed as a multipurpose piece to replace existing guns and howitzers, the Napoleon fired canister and shell, like the 12-pound howitzer, and solid shot comparable in range to the 12-pound gun. The Napoleon was a bronze, muzzle-loading smoothbore with an effective range of 1,619 yards (see table 3 for a comparison of artillery data). Served by a nine‑man crew, the piece could fire at a sustained rate of two aimed shots per minute. Like almost all smoothbore artillery, the Napoleon fired “fixed” ammunition—the projectile and powder were bound together with metal bands.
  Another new development in field artillery was the introduction of rifling. Although rifled guns provided greater range and accuracy, smoothbores were generally more reliable and faster to load. Rifled ammunition was semifixed, so the charge and the projectile had to be loaded separately. In addition, the canister load of the rifle did not perform as well as that of the smoothbore. Initially, some smoothbores were rifled on the James pattern, but they soon proved unsatisfactory because the bronze rifling eroded too easily. Therefore, most rifled artillery was either wrought iron or cast iron with a wrought-iron reinforcing band.
  The most commonly used rifled guns were the 10‑pounder Parrott rifle and the Rodman, or 3‑inch Ordnance rifle. The Parrott rifle was a cast‑iron piece, easily identified by the wrought‑iron band reinforcing the breech. The 10-pound Parrott was made in two models: model 1861 had a 2.9-inch rifled bore with three lands and grooves and a slight muzzle swell, while model 1863 had a 3‑inch bore and no muzzle swell.  The  Rodman or Ordnance rifle was a long‑tubed, wrought‑iron piece that had a 3‑inch bore with seven lands and grooves. Ordnance rifles were sturdier and considered superior in accuracy and reliability to the 10-pounder Parrott.
  A new weapon that made its first appearance in the war during the Overland Campaign was the 24-pound Coehorn mortar. Used exclusively by the North, the Coehorn fired a projectile in a high arcing trajectory and was ideal for lobbing shells into trenches in siege warfare. The Coehorn was used briefly during the fighting at the “bloody angle” at Spotsylvania and later in the trench lines at Cold Harbor.
  By 1860, the ammunition for field artillery consisted of four general types for both smoothbores and rifles: solid shot, shell, case, and canister.  Solid shot was a round cast‑iron projectile for smoothbores and an elongated projectile, known as a bolt, for rifled guns. Solid shot, with its smashing or battering effect, was used in a counterbattery role or against buildings and massed formations.  The conical-shaped bolt lacked the effectiveness of the cannonball because it tended to bury itself on impact instead of bounding along the ground like a bowling ball.
  Shell, also known as common or explosive shell, whether spherical or conical, was a hollow projectile filled with an explosive charge of black powder that was 
caption: Line engraving of a field gun on a limber used in the American Civil War, side view
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