Flintlocks and Muskets

The original American small arm was the muzzleloading long rifle, also known as the Pennsylvania Rifle or the Kentucky Rifle, which helped the fledgling nation win its independence from Britain. The English musket known as the Brown Bess was also quite common in the colonies at the time, which was the standard British long gun from 1722 until 1838—but unlike the American long guns, the Brown Bess was a smoothbore flintlock with no rifling.

The long guns were mostly modified small frame rifles that were originally designed in Europe and accurate out to about 250 yards, but fired a relatively small caliber projectile, usually somewhere between .32 and .45 caliber, from very long barrels.

A piece of flint was grasped in the vice-like jaws held in place by a screw wrapped in a felt pad to keep it from cracking. When the trigger is pulled, the flint strikes the frizzen which generates a spark that ignites powder in the flash pan, which in turn ignites the main charge in the barrel and fires the weapon.

Each time the weapon was loaded, powder had to be poured into the flash pan as well as the barrel before the rifle could be cocked and fired—not exactly easy to do under battle stress and/or in wet conditions. Even so, these weapons dominated the battlefield for about 100 years.

Flintlocks and Muskets

Charleville muskets   1717  French 

"Brown Bess" 1722  Bristish

Pennsylvania - Kentucky Rifle