Part of the Confederate Infantry Private Website

Then, as the Confederacy began to acquire modern weapons either from England by way of blockade runners or by gleaning the dead of thier enemy the Confederate infantry's primary weapon became the Model 1853 .577 Caliber Enfield Rifle as shown below:

Also used was the .58 caliber Springfield Rifle or its Confederate knockoff called the Richmond Rifle. Since the calibers of the main weapons were so close, ammunition for Enfields and ammunition for Springfields/Richmonds were pretty much interchangable. The ammunition came in packets of 10 paper cartridge ( consisting of a lead minie ball and a charge of 65-70 grains of black powder contained in a paper tube ); below is pictured one such packet from the Confederate Augusta Arsenal:

The standard .577/.58 cartridge (left) and minie ball (right) looked like this:

The minie ball was very deadly. It was a low velocity projectile and it was made out of soft lead. If it hit bone, generally, amputation was the only solution. Even today, if one received a minie ball to an arm or leg bone, amputation would be the only alternative. If a soldier was unfortunate enough to receive a gut shot...he was certainly doomed. Many photos from the Civil War show contorted bodies with mangle shirts; this was the soldier desperately looking for the wound in his final moments knowing that if he found one in his stomach he would shortly depart this earth.

Black powder is very corrosive. After battle, the soldier would clean his weapon using hot water and cleaning patches which fit into the convenient slot in the Enfield rifle's ramrod. But during battle, he couldn't do this while moving, firing, and being shot at. Science came to the rescue by including a cleaning round in every packet of ammunition. This round was a basic minie ball with a hard metal ring at the bottom to scrape the barrel of deposits as it was ejected during firing; in the case of the William's cleanier shown below it was zinc. There were many variants.

Not often, but sometimes, hand-to-hand combat became necessary. Early in the War soldiers carried huge knifes for this purpose but soon discarded them since they were hardly used and became a great burden during marches. He did, however, have the socket bayonet which fit his weapon. Note the triangular design of the blade: this causes triangular wounds - wounds which were harder to stitch up by the surgeons of the day and thus more suseptable to infection. Also, the inner surface between each of the edges is curved making it easier to remove from the subject its being used upon. What else was used? Rifle butts, hands, and in one documented case - rocks thrown down onto Yankees trying to scale a Confederate earthwork wall.

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