Rifle The military Sharps rifle was produced by the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company and is a
falling-block rifle used during and after the
American Civil War in multiple variations. Along with being able to use a standard
percussion cap, the Sharps has an unusual pellet primer feed. This is a device which holds a stack of pelleted
primers and flips one over the
nipple each time the trigger is pulled and the hammer falls—making it much easier to fire a Sharps from horseback than a gun employing individually loaded percussion caps. It was used in the Civil War by multiple Union units, most famously by the
U.S. Army marksmen known popularly as "
Berdan's Sharpshooters" in honor of their leader,
Hiram Berdan. The Sharps rifle made a superior
sniper weapon of greater accuracy than the more commonly issued
muzzle-loading rifled muskets. This was attributed to the higher
rate of fire of the
breech loading mechanism and superior quality of manufacture, as well as the ease with which it could be reloaded from a kneeling or prone position.
Carbine The carbine version was very popular with the cavalry of both the
Union and
Confederate armies and was issued in much larger numbers than other carbines of the war and was top in production in front of the
Spencer or
Burnside carbine. The falling-block action lent itself to conversion to the new metallic cartridges developed in the late 1860s, and many of these converted carbines in
.50-70 Government were used during the
Indian Wars in the decades immediately following the Civil War. Although long thought to be a
coffee mill, experimentation with some of the few survivors suggests the grinder is ill-suited for coffee. The modern consensus is that its true purpose was for grinding corn or wheat or, more appropriately, for grinding charcoal needed in the production of
black powder. Unlike the Sharps rifle, the carbine was very popular, and almost 90,000 were produced. painting showing men of the 1st Maine Cavalry with Sharps carbines during the
Battle of Middleburg. The kneeling man fires at the enemy, as the man standing behind him is feeding a new cartridge into the chamber. The British purchased 1,000 Model 1852 carbines in 1855 which were later used in the
Indian Rebellion of 1857. ==Sporting rifles==