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Title:	RIFLE/MUSKET -  U.S. RIFLE-MUSKET MODEL 1855 TYPE I PERCUSSION .58
Maker/Manufacturer:	SPRINGFIELD ARMORY
Date of Manufacture:	1857
Eminent Figure:
Catalog Number:	SPAR 4426
Measurements:	OL:142.2CM 56" BL:101.6CM 40" 9.3 lbs.

Object Description:

U.S. RIFLE-MUSKET MODEL 1855 TYPE I PERCUSSION .58
Manufactured by Springfield Armory, Springfield, Ma. in 1857 - Standard Model 1855 Type I single-shot, percussion, muzzleloading, Model 1855 rifle-musket. Equipped with Maynard tape primer. A clean out screw is provided on the side of the cone seat. Iron furniture, finished bright. Three groove rifling with progressive depth rifling. Three bands, spring fastened with all three springs forward of bands. The bright, swelled-end, tulip-head shape ramrod has a channeled swell near the end at the fore-tip to retain it in the stock. This Type I is equipped with a long range rear sight graduated to 800 yards. Front sight is set on a lug, approximately 1 1/4" from the muzzle, and also serves as a bayonet stud. Weapon has the iron nose cap characteristic of the Type II. Weapon weighs approximately 9.3 lbs. This is one of 5,711 M1855 rifle-muskets manufactured at the Springfield Armory in 1857.

Markings:
Lock: 1857 rear of hammer. U.S./SPRINGFIELD forward of hammer
Primer door: Eagle.
Barrel: 1857. V/P/Eaglehead.
Bands: U.
Stock: SPRINGFIELD (painted on in white).
Buttplate: U.S. 568 (possibly old museum number.)

Notes: "The Infantry gets a New Weapon: the M1855 Rifle-Musket. While a large numbers of the M1855 rifle musket had been issued in the summer of 1858 for the Spokane Plains expedition, few of these weapons had been seen by the public in California towns. A Sacramento Union reporter wrote that the 6th regiment was 'armed with the new (M1855) percussion cap rifled musket, with Maynard's patent primer attached.' This .58 caliber weapon was the first regulation weapon to fire the minie bullet and had a maximum effective range of over 1,000 yards.
There is little question that the 1855 rifled musket was a marked improvement over the M1842 musket. The touted Maynard primer system, however, was hardly a blessing. The Maynard taped primer worked like a child's toy cap pistol. A paper roll, containing bits of fulminate of mercury as a primer, was placed in a chamber just below the hammer. The tape was mechanically fed under the hammer each time that the hammer was cocked. When the hammer dropped, the fulminate would be detonated and the paper cut away. The system had first been tested in 1849 on muskets supplied to the Infantry by the firm of Daniel Nippes.
The concept was sound enough for those in Ordnance who tested it at the Washington, D.C. armory. The primer compartment was not sealed. When the primer tape was exposed to wet weather, however, the entire tape could be ruined by dampness. In the hotter climes, the tape became brittle and would easily tear. Inspector General Joseph Johnston, in 1859, observed troops firing the rifle-musket and reported 'at least half misfired, sometimes from defective machinery, others by the fault of the (taped) primer system.
The Final Battles - As the 6th Infantry tried to settle in after their long journey from Utah, a campaign was brewing in the desert. The Mojave tribe regarded travelers on Edward Beale's new road to be trespassers and drove off mail trains and killed immigrants. Elements of the 6th Infantry were ordered by General Clarke to protect the travelers.
On the morning of 11 February 1959, four companies of the 6th boarded the cready wooden side-wheeled steamer Uncle Sam. The ship sailed through the Golden Gate and turned south. Off Point Ano Nuevo, it plowed into a severe storm. The bilge pumps stopped working and the Uncle Sam began to take on water.
In order to save the ship, overboard went the coal, soon followed by all of the baggage of the four companies along with 320 new M1855 rifle-muskets. As the ship continued to founder, the men turned their attention to the mules. These durable creatures, which had walked to California from Ft. Leavenworth, showed no interest in being dumped into the foamy sea and fought efforts to cast them overboard. As the battle of the mules was beginning, the storm broke, and the Uncle Sam was able to sail back to the repair yards.
The 6th Infantry requested replCol. Joseph Mansfield was again inspecting California as the Mojave campaign was being organized at Fort Yuma. He was astonished at the bewildering array of clothing, equipment, and weaponry. Due to the heat most of the men were in lightweight civilian shirts. But the troops looked hardy, ready for a long march and a tough campaign.
On 5 August 1859, Companies F and I, under the command of Maj. Lewis Armistead, took part in a fight with the Mohaves twelve miles south of the post. The long-ranged 1855 muskets proved their value in this long-range firefight. Major Armistead reported that, because of the dry desert weather, the Maynard primers worked well.
The twenty-three reported Mohave dead were among the first Americans to suffer from the powerful firepower of modern infantry weaponry. In less than two years' time, tens of thousands back east would, likewise, experience the deadly effects of rifled weapons.
There would be several more infantry actions out in the far West: in the northern Redwoods; along the Pit River in north central California; on the shores of the Pyramid Lake in Nevada Territory; and patrols against horse thieves southeast of San Diego.
Soon after the firing upon Ft. Sumter, orders from the War Department began to arrive in the Department of California directing the scattered infantry companies, stationed in the interior, to concentrate on the coast for embarkation. By the end of 1861, the 4th and 6th Infantry as well as the 1st Dragoons and most of the Third Artillery, would be on their way to fight a greater was in the East. Only the 9th Infantry remained behind in San Francisco where it, along with a company of the 3d Artillery, took up positions guard that important harbor for the duration of the war." - Military Collector & Historian. INFANTRY IN ANTEBELLUM CALIFORNIA, Will Gorenfeld and George Stammerjohan. Winter 2006.

"Maynard, Edward - Dentist of Washington, D.C. Inventor of Maynard breechloader and primer. The primer was submitted to the Ordnance Board at West Point in 1845. The original idea was the conversion of flintlock to percussion, and the first alterations had the primer magazine entirely outside the stock and did not permit the use of regular percussion caps. In 1845, 300 flintlock muskets were converted at Springfield Arsenal. In 1851 the Ordnance Department suggested the improved lock, in which the primer was imbedded in the lock plate. The new feature was incorporated in the Model 1855 rifle. The arm was adopted by order of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis in 1855 and condemned in 1860. Maynard received the following patents:
Primer for firearms, September 22, 1845 (#4,208). 'What I claim as my invention, and as distinguished from all others before known, is - first, making primers of fulminating mixtures, or such compounds as ignite by percussion in a continuous series, each primer, or two or greater number, being separated from the others by a substance which is more or less combustible than the fulminating mixture, by which one or more may be exploded without communicating fire to the others. Secondly the mode of moving and measuring out the primers, by the movement of the lock....'
On December 25, 1857, the Government contracted for 400 Maynard carbines at $30. each. These were produced by the Maynard Guns Co., Chicopee Falls, Mass." - Colonel Robert E. Gardner

"The Maynard Primer - Although it is likely that more than 90 percent of the population in North America would recognize a roll of caps used in a toy cap gun, it is unlikely that one in one thousand would know the history of these caps.
Developed by Edward Maynard, the cap roll made its debut in 1845 as an alternative priming mechanism to loose percussion caps. By depositing drops of a pressure sensitive explosive at regular intervals along a strip of paper and then sealThough this ignition system was adopted by the United States government in 1855 for use in its service rifles, the cost of the primer's feeding mechanism, as well as its delicacy, caused the design to be abandoned when the Civil War began.
Resurrected in a modified form in the 1870s for use in children's toys, the Maynard tape primer had proved to be one of the few arms-related designs from pre-Civil War America that is still in use today." - Herbert Houze

"A number of so-called tape primers were designed and patented but in this country it is believed that Dr. Maynard, a dental surgeon of Washington, D.C., really developed the so-called tape priming mechanism which he patented in 1845. This was used in 1851 on Sharps and other rifles. The Government used the Maynard primer on some of the Model 1840 altered muskets and Model 1855 rifle muskets as well as on many pistols.
The Maynard tape primer consisted of a roll of about fifty pellets between layers of paper. These were very nicely made while they are very similar to the so-called rolled caps used in 'cap pistols' on our noisy holidays, the material was constructed with a large amount of priming materials perfectly formed into little 'pills' and sealed between two layers of varnished paper. The Maynard magazine was similar to that used in modern cap pistols in that the cocking of the hammer reeled one section of roll caps out so that it was placed against the nipple." - Philip M. Sharpe

Letter from Springfield Superintendent James S. Whitney dated 18 November 1856, to Col. Craig of the Ordnance Office - "I desire to suggest that in our judgment it would be better to stamp the date of the new arm upon the breech of this barrel rather than upon the tang of the breech screw, as the date is more liable to be effaced than it would be upon the barrel, and the breech screws are replaced more often than a barrel fails."

Letter from Whitney to Col. Craig, dated 12 October 1857 - "Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith a manual of directions relative to the manner of assembling, cleaning & care of the U.S. Rifle Musket.
The drawings, or plates, are the last work done by Albert D. Allin, a young man of great promise, only son of Master Armorer E.S. Allin, of this Armory, who deceased on the 26th ultimo. The directions for use are due to his Father. A melancholy interest will attach to this work at this Armory - as we deem it to be very creditable to the young man (who was but 21 years of age) & a work which he was pursuing with great, perhaps too great industry at the time he was arrested with sickness."

The Model 1855 rifle-musket was adopted on July 5, 1855. Springfield Armory manufactured 47,115 rifle-muskets from January 1, 1857 to December 31, 1861. This was the first regulation arm to use the hollow-base, three-cannelured Minie bullet in .58 caliber. It was learned that an elongated bullet with an iron or wooden plug set in its base caused insufficient expansion. This was the "Minie Ball," named after a French Army officer partially responsible for its development. The "minie ball" was imperfect in design at first, and was expensive to manufacture.
The elongated ball famous with the troops of the United States, the Confederate States, the European powers, and the British Empire, was the Burton or Harpers Ferry bullet. Designed by James H. Burton, assistant master armorer at the Harpers Ferry Armory, it had a deep hollow cavity in the base. No iron or wooden plug was used, since the thin walls at the base expanded sufficiently upon the ignition of the charge. The base then served as a gas check and allowed the wall of the long lubricated bearing surface of the bullet to expandof the Civil War.
The .58 caliber rifle-muskets and rifles, along with the machinery for their manufacture, were developed at the United States armories in the 1850s. Among the champions of these new arms were Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War in the Franklin Pierce Administration, James H. Burton, and James W. Ripley, later Chief of Ordnance.
First recorded use of the M1855 rifle-musket was when approximately 1,000 Yakima Indians met 500 soldiers in the little-known Battle of Four Lakes. While the Indians began to close in on the outnumbered soldiers, from 500 yards away the soldiers began to fire. The Indians never got close enough to fire their guns. They were annihilated, and not one soldier was harmed.
They Indians tried again at the Battle of Spokane. Now, the military added mountain howitzers, and along with the rifle-muskets, again the Indians could never get within shooting distance of the soldiers. The M1855 rifle-musket secured the Pacific Northwest.
Among the many volunteer units to utilize the M1855 rifle-musket during the Civil War were the 44th Indiana; 4th Michigan; 7th and 8th New York; 15th Pennsylvania; and 1st Rhode Island.

"By the 1850s many of the battlefield tactics and grand strategy perfected and practiced during the Napoleonic Wars and taught at military schools around the world became obsolete. The development of a rifled musket, adopted by the U.S. Army in the mid-1850s, made offensive operations much more difficult. In Napoleon's time, forces using smoothbore muskets with an effective range of only fifty yards could close rapidly with the enemy in offensive engagements. The invention of a conical-shaped rifled bullet that expanded when fired to 'grip' the rifling of a musket drastically altered the advantage on the battlefield in favor the defender. Perfected by a French Army captain, Claude Etienne Minie, the so-called minie ball could be rapidly loaded, unlike with previous rifled weapons, and gave the rifled musket an effective range of four hundred to six hundred yards. By the time of the Civil War, the standard infantry weapon for both sides was a .58 caliber, muzzleloading rifled musket that was made more reliable by the use of a percussion cap. The net result was that offensive forces came under effective enemy fire at a distance about ten times greater than in earlier wars. Because the rifled weapons continued to be muzzle-loaded, soldiers were exposed even when reloading. Despite what is now clearly seems like a revolutionary change on the battlefield, officers were slow to adjust their tactics and strategy to the new reality. The result was inordinately high casualties in the Civil War, especially for attacking forces." - Carroll & Baxter

"...Molte's concept of strategic or operational operational offensive maneuvers to place infantry where they could employ tactical defensive firepower against hostile flank or rear was in fact not new. It had been pioneered by Lee and Jackson at Second Manassas and Chancellorsville in 1862 and 1863, improved by Grant in the bitter fighting around Richmond in 1864 and early 1865, and employed brilliantly by the Union general in his final pursuit of Lee to Appomattox.
Nothing in the organization or employment of the combined armed division during this period had any appreciable effect on the conduct of war, strategically or tactically. It is true that from 1845, when the smoothbore musket was still largely in use, to 1878, when the breechloading rifle had become commonplace, a major revolution had occurred. But it was technological, not organizational or tactical. The rifled, p
"These two inventions - the percussion cap and the cylindro-conoidal bullet - revolutionized infantry tactics. The first rendered the musket serviceable in wet weather, reducing misfires in each 1,000 rounds from 411 to 4.5, and raising hits from 270 to 385 in 100 shots. The second caused the rifle to become the most deadly weapon of the century." - Fuller

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