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- Freedom's Doorway
CSA Richmond Arsenal Percussion Rifle Musket
This Confederate rifle musket was a close copy of the U.S. Army's Springfield produced in the same caliber.
These rifle-muskets were produced at the armory that had once
been home to the Virginia Manufactory of Arms. This facility was
the only state-operated armory in the days after the American
Revolution, as other states relied on private contractors to
produce arms for their militia forces. The C.S./Richmond was
manufactured with parts and equipment captured by General Thomas J.
"Stonewall" Jackson, whose Virginia troops seized the U.S.
Government armory at Harpers Ferry in the early days of the Civil
War.
Because Harpers Ferry was indefensible, the armory's tools,
machinery, and other equipment was relocated to Richmond and
Fayetteville, North Carolina. At the time of the Armory's capture,
the U.S. Model 1855 rifle-musket (see Case 37/ #s 4, 10, and 13)
was still in production. This long arm used the Maynard tape primer
system (see Case 31), which employed a compartment forward of the
hammer as a cap magazine. The Maynard system proved unreliable in
military applications and was later abandoned. The U.S. Armory at
Springfield, Massachusetts, modified their lockplate design
slightly (see Case 37/ #3), however, Confederate ordnance
artificers used the original design but omitted the cap
compartment. The result was a lockplate with a "humpback" profile
often associated with Confederate-manufactured infantry arms.