For Springfield Armory and, especially, the United States, the pay-off for the many decades of labor and investment in developing mechanized interchangeable manufacture of military shoulder arms occurred in the Civil War years of 1861-65. Twenty years before the first shots were fired between Federal and Confederate forces, production of fully interchangeable muskets at Springfield Armory became, for the first time, a reality. Fifteen years later, Springfield Armory began production of the revolutionary new US Model 1855 Rifle Musket – a weapon that set the pattern for those shoulder arms used by both sides in the Civil War five years later.

In the first year of the war, Springfield Armory was able to make about 40,000 of these powerful and highly accurate weapons – not nearly enough for the demands of the Union armies, however. As a result, the nation turned to supplies of shoulder arms wherever they could be found. For many regiments, this meant that they fought with serviceable foreign weapons until enough “Springfields” could be had. They had not long to wait!

The second year of the war found Springfield Armory, the sole federal armory following the destruction of Harper’s Ferry Armory in the first weeks of the war, kicking its mechanized production system into high gear. Manufacture of an improved and simplified weapon, the US Model 1861 Rifle Musket, increased more than four fold that year to about 174,000 only to increase again in 1863, with production of a further simplified rifle musket, the US Model 1863, to about 240,000. The next year, about 250,000 were made with as up to a thousand made on some days. By the war’s end, Springfield Armory had provided more rifle muskets that those of all private contractors combined.

Rifles manufactured by the Springfield Armory during the Civil War