Year: 1861

IN The lhOUUf1l


To the Editors Of the ErauliaSxis.s==r--


Our people over-estimate the value of the arms
manufactured expressly for war, and they do not
appreciate the value OF the immense number of rifles
in their possession. Now if every man in the South
and especially those whose highest duty it is at this
time to look after the means Of defence which in
the South would consider the facts which will
now detail, and act upon the suggestions given, we
will soon be the best armed people in the world
The Southern people are proverbial for the passion
which they have always had for hunting-riHeS and
prize-gunS. There are but few Of these guns which
are not over the length of the Minnie rife go inch
es) Their barrels have metal enough to bear bor-
ing out for large balls; there smiths enough in
every county in the South to bore and rife them
out in ten days, to carry approved, uniform
and required Harper's Ferry ball


In the size of the bore and that shane of the ball
is the great virtue of the Minnie rife. This i'm
provement ordered at once by the authority of the
Confederate States, and sing gle bullet-mould sent
to the clerk of the Circuit Court of each county
a pattern, and every rife cut down to thirty
inches, would at once arm the whole county. If
our State Convention would make the move, the
whole South would adopt it. Improved rifles would
at once be in the hands of those accustomed to their
use To satisfy any person who is at all skeptical
on this point let him measure off four hundred
yards from a barn-door, load his small bored rifle
with q d0uOle CnaFSe OF powder anu TOunu Oal,
and after trying three fres then let him try three
fires with the Minnie ball. He will find that the
three first balls will not reach the door, and that
the three last are killing shots. have tried this
with rife, shooting ball the size Of buckshot,
and therefore know what l say to be true. The
masses will not examine and pry into the phiOSo-
phical principles which demand that this change
should be made at once. There are few scientific
reasons which will convince ali thinking men of its
viz tha hOllO hal he full
volume and force of the powder, none of it eScap-
ing by the sde as in the case of the round ball
Its expansive power causes more resistance to the
powder thereby enabling the gun to burn more
powder and give more force to the ball. The conf
cal shape of the ball less atmospheric resist
ance, and the excavation of the ball causes a rush
and conclusion of air that absolutely tend to sustain
the bail in its flight


The masses will not experiment The guns
which will take off squirrels head at eighty yards,
altered propose will kill from six to eight
hundred yards. You had as we'll say that rife
carving an ounce ball will shoot as far as a cannon
as to say a small bored rife will shoot as far as
large one. Our people are willing to obey their
rulers, (and with one accord they would heed jeff
Davis.) If the order was given requiring change
Of all our rifles, it would be obeyed instantly. Our
people would then test their guns from spirit of
awakened curiosity, and every Southern man, being
thus convinced of the fact that he had as good a
shooting gun as the world afforded, would be ready
not only to obey orders, but he would rush to the
field already armed Conscious power would infuse
new ador into our entire population, and we would
hear no more of the only fear that is expressed in
the South, and that is that we may not have arms
enough. We have the men who can whip the world
upon our own soil, and this move would give the
arms. We would at once be nation of soldiers.


believe that I underestimate the number of
rifles in the South. Our merchants have never
ceased treating them as an article Of merchandise.
Men own rifles who scarcely own anything else. [
know one such man who owns five. | know the
fact that there are about thousand rifles in this
county, and it is Of the smallest counties in the
State l know the fact Qittle as the North thinks
of the mechanical skill Of the South,) that we have
in the county of Smyth one hundred men who can
make this proposed alteration of rifles and, up
on short notice, can bring together Smyth county
men who can change, at Marion, three hundred
rifles day. We have every facility here for a Gov
ernment Armory, either upon large scale or a
small one and, if the suggestions given are needed,
work should be commenced at once.