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Updated: May 19, 2025
A premature explosion at a forty-two pounder killed three men and wounded others. A priming-wire accidentally spiked the ten-inch columbiad. Five men were killed, eleven wounded, and five missing. Four guns were disabled. The men were discouraged. General Tilghman took personal charge of one of the guns and worked it, but he could no longer inspirit his men.
I heard Captain Poague, on being informed who No. 3 was, shout, "Ned Moore, where is that priming-wire?" I replied, "It is in the limber-chest where it belongs." There were a good many people around, and I did not wish it to appear that I had misplaced my little priming-wire in the excitement of covering Stonewall's retreat. The captain yelled, as I thought unnecessarily, "It isn't there!"
The belt also secured the "primer with priming-powder," the "bullet-bag," the "priming-wire," and the "match-cord." The soldier being thus a slave to his weapon, we are not surprised to note that his manual of arms was the following, from Elton's "Postures of the Musket:" Our fathers might have gone on in this lumbering way for many years if they had seen nothing worth imitating in the red men.
Let the other towns boast, let Stormont show her grenadiers, Leicester her riflemen, and Acton her artillery, but when "muster-day" comes look out for Walton and her infantry. The law requires every soldier to have a musket or rifle, flint-lock of course, a bayonet, a priming-wire and brush, a knapsack, a cartridge-box, and two spare flints. The lack of any one of these may lead to a fine.
Arms and the men we sing, not those panoplied and helmeted according to Virgil, nor those of our own day, armed with repeating rifles and drum-majored into popular favor, but rather the heroes of the flint-lock and the priming-wire in the New England of two or three generations ago, the sturdy train-bands that have left scarce one John Gilpin to tell the tale of their valor.
He reached for a fresh cartridge, and thrust it into the throat of the gun, and as the seam was laid downwards he said to himself that he could swim under water, if discovered as he left the Victoire. As he unstopped the touch-hole and tried with the priming-wire whether the cartridge was home, he was stunned by a fresh thought.
I had taken a seat by the roadside and was chatting with a companion while the guns drove out into a field to prepare for action, and, as I could see the ground toward the enemy, I knew that I had ample time to get to my post before being needed. When getting out the accouterments the priming-wire could not be found. I being No. 3 was, of course, responsible for it.
He reached for a fresh cartridge, and thrust it into the throat of the gun, and as the seam was laid downwards he said to himself that he could swim under water, if discovered as he left the Victoire. As he unstopped the touch-hole and tried with the priming-wire whether the cartridge was home, he was stunned by a fresh thought.
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