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Updated: May 19, 2025
But it was another matter when the Seneca rifles cracked, and a sergeant and a drummer lad of the 11th Pennsylvania fell. The smooth-bores cracked again, and four more soldiers tumbled forward sprawling, the melons on their bayonets rolling off into the bushes. Carbury, marching forward beside me, dropped across my path; and as I stooped over him gave me a ghastly look.
The water battery below the main work was armed with one 10-inch columbiad, two 8-inch columbiads, and two rifled 32-pounders. Fifty of these pieces were available against the fleet, but of the whole armament of one hundred and nine guns, fifty-six were old 24-pounder smooth-bores. The passage of the forts had been obstructed by a raft or chain anchored between them.
The kitchen and offices were on the ground floor, otherwise it was uninhabited. Ralph had his pistols by him, and his cavalry sword, long and heavy, but admirably poised, lay within his reach. "I have settled it," he said. "You and Connell are to take the guns. Smooth-bores are quickest loaded, and will do for this short distance.
The four-inch iron plating of the citadel knuckled over the wooden sides two feet under water. The engines, which the South had no means of replacing, were the old ones which had been condemned before being sunk. A four-foot castiron ram was clamped on to the bow. Ten guns were mounted: six nine-inch smooth-bores, with two six-inch and two seven-inch rifles.
She was raised by the Davis Government and converted into an ironclad ram a novelty in those days. The hull was cut down to the water's edge, and a stout roof, 170 feet long, with sloping sides and a flat top, built amidships and plated with four inches of iron. This roof was pierced for ten guns four rifles and six nine-inch smooth-bores.
"Two of our companies can stand off a thousand Sioux," said one gallant officer, who based his confident report on the fact that with fifty of the new breechloaders, behind a log breastwork, he had whipped a horde of mountain braves armed only with lance and bow and old "smooth-bores" or squirrel rifles. "We came down through the whole tribe," said Burleigh, with swelling breast.
This is high testimony to the fighting capacity of two hundred riflemen and four guns, two twelve-pounder smooth-bores and two howitzers, all that Admiral Porter's three gunboats had to contend with. It proves the utter helplessness of gunboats in narrow streams, when deprived of the protection of troops on the banks.
The blind bard omits to inform us whether the guns used in the great pounding-match between Lucifer and Michael were smooth-bores or rifles. The strong presumption is that they were exclusively the former, and that a well-served battery of Parrotts would have silenced them in fifteen minutes.
"You'll find him at the target before you, no doubt," said Elsie, putting away her moccasins as she rose to aid in the household preparations. The target was placed against the bank of the river, so that the bullets might find a safe retreat. The competitors stood at about a hundred yards' distance in front of it. The weapons used were single-barrelled smooth-bores, with flint locks.
To kill people with arrows is barbarous; to kill them with smooth-bores and flintlock muskets is semi-civilized; to kill them with breech-loading rifles is civilized. That nation is the most civilized which has the appliances to kill the most of another nation in the shortest time. This is the result of six thousand years of constant civilization.
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