Existing comment:
Guns of Fort Negley:
Technological advances in weaponry, especially artillery, had a major impact on casualty rates during the Civil War. At Fort Negley, several types of artillery developed in the 1840s, 1860, and during the war were used to defend the city from Confederate attack. They included smoothbore, rifled, and siege cannons.
In November 1862, an inventory by John H. Ferguson of the fort's artillery pieces consisted of one 64-pound gun and one 48-pounder positioned on the north main works, and four 32-pound smoothbore cannons located along the south main works and the east and west inner works. Two underground powder magazines supported these gun emplacements. On each of the fort's eight redans, like the redan where you are standing, field cannons, possibly Napoleons, from Houghtailing's Battery C, 1st Regiment Light Artillery (Illinois) were placed en barbette (elevated gun positions) and could provide both direct and cross fire.
By 1864, the artillery at Fort Negley was upgraded. One of the most powerful pieces was the iron-forged 30-pound Parrott Gun developed in 1860 by Robert D. Parrott, an 1824 graduate of the United State Military Academy, at his West Point Foundry in New York. Parrott guns had rifled bores, five grooves running the length of the inside of the barrel with a right-hand twist that spun the projectile in a spiral motion, allowing a shell to travel farther and strike the target with more force and accuracy. The Parrott Gun was eleven feet long and weighed 4,200 pounds. Too heavy to move quickly in the field, they were used primarily in Union fortifications or against entrenched Confederate positions. A thirty-pound shell could travel up to three miles. |