Weapons
When the Orphan Brigade was mustered into service, weapons were in short supply. The troops were armed with old smoothbore muskets (some flintlock and others percussion) along with shotguns and hunting rifles. Some men had no arms at all. Only a week before the Battle of Shiloh, every regiment except the 9th Kentucky was issued a supply of Enfield rifles imported from England (the 9th armed themselves with Enfields captured during the battle).
From that point onward until the end of the war, most of the Orphan Brigade carried the long three-band Model 1853 Enfield rifle. When the unit surrendered in March 1865, some men were still carrying the same rifles they'd had since Shiloh.
Read more about this topic: Orphan Brigade
Famous quotes containing the word weapons:
“Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams—Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91)
“Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)