We Old Coots and some possible anti- nonsense

[230RN]

1.
Regarding Old Coots:

From :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Concord#Successful_Patriot_intelligence

Against the advice of his Master of Ordnance, Commander Hugh, Earl Percy had left Boston without spare ammunition for his men or for the two artillery pieces they brought with them. He thought the extra wagons would slow him down. After Percy had left the city, Gage directed two ammunition wagons guarded by one officer and thirteen men to follow. This convoy was intercepted by a small party of older, former militiamen, still on the "alarm list*" who could not join their militia companies because they were well over 60. These men rose up in ambush and demanded the surrender of the wagons, but the regulars ignored them and drove their horses on. The old men opened fire, shot the lead horses, killed two sergeants, and wounded the officer. The survivors ran, and six of them threw their weapons into a pond before they surrendered. Each man in Percy's brigade now had only 36 rounds, and each artillery piece only contained a few rounds in side-boxes.

So much for the advisability of limiting the milita to between the ages of 17 and 45, as in:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode10/usc_sec_10_00000311----000-.html

* The lists of people and families who were to be alerted on the approach of the British

--------------

2.
Regarding Possible Anti Nonsense:


I've got a problem with a couple of the things in the wiki article, though. Among them:

Note: No evidence exists that rifles were present on either side in this battle. All surviving weapons from the battle on both sides are smoothbore muskets, and no account from anybody who participated mentions rifles at all. If the colonists had used rifles, with three to four times the range of a musket, and much better accuracy, the colonists could have stood off and fired accurately at long range, killing large amounts of British soldiers and officers, with little possibility of damage to themselves. Such did not occur, however.

Was this an illicit edit of the wiki aricle? I rather thought that Pennsylvania/Kentucky type rifles of .45 and .36 caliber were being used with fair frequency among the woodsmen and farmers at that time.

And the article itself states, two or three paragraphs down from that note,

The fighting grew more intense as Percy's forces crossed from Lexington into Menotomy (modern Arlington). Fresh militia poured gunfire into the British ranks from a distance, and individual homeowners began to fight from their own property. Some homes were also used as sniper positions.
(snip)
Percy lost control of his men, and British soldiers began to commit atrocities to repay for the purported scalping at the North Bridge and for their own casualties at the hands of a distant, often unseen enemy.

The article itself in fact makes makes several references to long range firing and sniping.

So:

Did someone slip anti-nonsense into the article?

I am reminded of the Bellesiles flap, where Bellesile maintained that virtually nobody had any guns in the colonies. He was stripped of his Historical Society Award because of his anti lies. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America,_The_Origins_of_a_National_Gun_Culture

 

[SaMx]

make a comment in th comments section of the article. Someone will get around to researching it.
Either that, or research it yourself, edit it, and cite the research.

 

[another okie]

The article is giving what it claims are facts. We can check them. Whether the surviving weapons are muskets or rifles is not a matter of opinion subject to "point of view." You can't prove the post wrong by saying it's antigun. For that matter, I don't see why it's "antigun" to say they used muskets and not rifles.

I know there was a unit called the Pennsylvania Rifles, which certainly suggests a few militia units had rifles, but they were not present at this battle. Most rifle units I know about were frontier units. The Lexington and surrounding militias were not frontier units.

I just checked a couple of fairly traditional history books and found very little, but then most historians are not really interested in firearms. Several books do mention militia firing at long range, but ineffectively and basically because they hoped to stay out of range of the British muskets. The militia had a better chance to hit at long range because the British troops were packed together.

One source I read says a British spy found a 77 year old man cleaning his musket on porch of his house and asked what he was hunting. The man said there was a fine flock of redcoasts coming and his wife was busy making more musket balls.

 

[cbsbyte]

Sorry I don't trust Wikipedia as a real source. Anyone can post anything on that site. Its fine for basic information but using at a research source is playing with fire.

 

[obxned]

Early in the war many of the weapons of the colonists were indeed rifles and shotguns - what ever they had in their possession for harvesting food for the table. It took quite a while for our men to aquire sufficient numbers of the preferred military arms of the time - the smooth bore musket.

Some of these muskets were captured, some were French, and a good many were locally made copies of the Brown Bess. The big advantage of the musket was the higher rate of fire.

 

[Thefabulousfink]

I'm not sure about the presence of rifles at the battle of Lex and Concord, but remember rifles were still relatively new and not favored by armies because they took longer to load. The Pennsylvania Longrifles of the American Revolution were the personal weapons of hunters and frontiersmen, the American Army and most of the militia were primarily armed with muskets like the Brown Bess.

 

[tkendrick]

As the colonies (and later as states) expanded westward, the use for rifles went west with them. Most colonial farmers had one gun per male in the household, and the most popular piece by far was the fowler. They ran the gamut from 45 caliber to 75 caliber, (figure roughly .410 to 10 guage) and were designed as an all purpose hunting weapon that could be used for large dangerous game by loading solid round ball all the way to light shot for dove and the like.

In the early days, especially when the French and the Indians were a very real threat, local militias required that each man provide his own firearm and ammunition, and since most city dwellers didn't see a lot of need for a "specialty" weapon, most opted for the fowler.

I own an 1816 US musket and a French Tulle ( a civilian fowler that did double duty with the Canadian militia during the French and Indian wars) and from a functional point there is very little difference between them but for one very minor and incredibly important difference, that being the presence of a bayonet "lug" on the military weapon. Remember that these were the days prior to Napoleons "king of battle" artillery days. There are several historical references to colonists standing the fire of the British regulars, only to fall to the bayonet charge.

A well trained soldier could fire three aimed shots a minute, less time than it takes to load most rifles of the day. It wasn't until the arrival of Von Stueben (sp?) and several boatloads of French Charlesville muskets (complete with bayonet) that the colonial army was able to finally stand up to the British in most battles.

There were some very good rifle units employed on both sides during the war, mostly on the colonial side, and as depicted in Mel Gibsons "The Patriot", the British on at least one occasion formally complaind to an American General that his riflemen were practicing the "ungentlemanly act" of targeting officers during battles.

WE Americans have raised ourselves on stories of rifles in the hands of sharp-shooting men, but the fact is that during the early part of our history rifles were primarily the tool of trappers and explorers on the western frontier, and saw little use in the military conflicts of the times.

That most mythical last stand at the Alamo put forever in most americans minds the picture of the steely eyed rifleman holding off hordes with his trusty rifle, and some parts of that legend, like most legends, are true. Santa Anna did take around a thousand casualties in that battle, what you don't hear in the American legend is that almost his casualties were from "friendly fire". The assualt took place before sun-up, and his chief of artillery never got the word lift his fire when the infantry went in, and for several minutes the Mexican troops hitting the North wall were taking concentrated fire from over twenty guns behind them.

I've always been somewhat amazed that they didn't break at that point. I guess there is something to be said for having troops that are more afraid of you than they are of their enemy.

 

[Sage of Seattle]

tkendrick,

Paragraphs are our friends!

 

[tkendrick]

Sage

They didn't have paragraphs when I went to school. Your lucky ah kin rite

 

[Sage of Seattle]

 

[tkendrick]

Sage...wuz concentratin on my spllin so hard, fergot my parygraf button!!!