At the same time, however, this effort was countered by Northern industrial might. In 18 Southern industry did make amazing strides in its ability to provide conventional muzzle-loading arms to Southern soldiers. Unfortunately for the South, this goal was never fully attained. This ambitious goal was a necessity if it was ever to lessen reliance on imported weapons. In the South, the Confederate government was attempting to build its own small arms producing facilities.
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In the North, well-known arms makers such as Colt, Sharps, and Remington geared for war production. As these ships continued to cross the Atlantic, established American arms makers, and those aspiring to be such, rushed to the call. In short order, volunteers from such states as New York, Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia, found themselves armed with weapons originally intended for British, Austrian, Belgian, or French soldiers. By the fall of 1861 ships loaded with European arms and ammunition began to arrive at ports from Boston to New Orleans. The agents operating in Europe wasted little time. Many early volunteers found themselves armed with antiquated weapons, some even dating back to the War of 1812. Every type of firearm suitable for military purposes was pressed into service in the meantime. To meet the emergency, both Union and Confederate governments sent purchasing agents to scour the arsenals of Europe. The most serious shortage was the lack of up-to-date small arms.Īs thousands of volunteers rushed forward to join the armies of the cause in which they believed, the supply of arms in both state and national armories was soon exhausted. Years of peace, a small standing army, and a state militia system that was largely ceremonial, combined to severely limit stockpiles of military supplies. In 1861, neither the United States nor the newly-formed Confederate States were prepared to fight a major war. Small arms, in the hands of both Union and Confederate soldiers, accounted for half of the war's 633,000 killed and wounded. During the American Civil War (1861-65) small arms consisted of an incredible variety of muskets, rifles, carbines, revolvers, and even shotguns. Some researchers argue that Van Gogh was accidentally shot by two young boys playing with a gun near him.Small arms are the firearms carried by individual soldiers. It is there that Van Gogh is widely believed to have shot himself in the chest.įor years experts have questioned the theory of Van Gogh's death, pointing to the uncertainty of the angle of the shot, the disappearance of evidence and the long trek the wounded Van Gogh would have made back to the inn before he died two days later in the hospital. In 1960, the weapon was found by a farmer in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, just north of Paris, reports NPR's Eleanor Beardsley.
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Its purchase has reignited the debate over whether Van Gogh died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The gun's trigger is pulled back, frozen in place, some think cementing the moment in which it would have dropped from Van Gogh's grasp. The unnamed buyer bought the corroded 7mm caliber Lefaucheux revolver for about $182,000. The gun believed to have been used by Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh to take his own life was sold at the Drouot auction house in Paris. This undated recent photo provided by Drouot auction house shows the revolver believed to have been used by Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh to take his own life.