CSA Richmond Arsenal Percussion Rifle Musket

This Confederate rifle musket was a close copy of the U.S. Army's Springfield produced in the same caliber.

These rifle-muskets were produced at the armory that had once been home to the Virginia Manufactory of Arms. This facility was the only state-operated armory in the days after the American Revolution, as other states relied on private contractors to produce arms for their militia forces. The C.S./Richmond was manufactured with parts and equipment captured by General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, whose Virginia troops seized the U.S. Government armory at Harpers Ferry in the early days of the Civil War.

Because Harpers Ferry was indefensible, the armory's tools, machinery, and other equipment was relocated to Richmond and Fayetteville, North Carolina. At the time of the Armory's capture, the U.S. Model 1855 rifle-musket (see Case 37/ #s 4, 10, and 13) was still in production. This long arm used the Maynard tape primer system (see Case 31), which employed a compartment forward of the hammer as a cap magazine. The Maynard system proved unreliable in military applications and was later abandoned. The U.S. Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, modified their lockplate design slightly (see Case 37/ #3), however, Confederate ordnance artificers used the original design but omitted the cap compartment. The result was a lockplate with a "humpback" profile often associated with Confederate-manufactured infantry arms.