Somewhere were I can find information on Civil war weapons and how they evolved?
I am doing a project over the civil war in my history class. What you have to do is find a weapon (not physically. A photo and some information) that they in battle in the war. Then you have to put more photos of how the weapon evovled over the years. Where can I find that kind of info? Best answer get 10 points.
I am guessing you mean weapons that an infantry soldier would carry. Infantry soldiers were the front-line troops. At the beginning of the Civil War, weapons issued to them would have been either a Springfield or Enfield musket, capable of firing one shot before reloading was necessary. A skilled infantry soldier could fire such a musket three times in a minute due to the length of time it took to go through the nine steps necessary to load and fire the weapon. In order, as given by a commanding officer, these steps were: 1) Handle cartridge, 2) Open cartridge, 3) Tear cartridge, 4) Pour cartridge, 5) Draw rammer(ramrod under the musket barrel), 6) Ram cartridge, 7) Replace rammer, 
Place percussion cap, 9) Fire. From there the process starts again to load and fire. Neither the Springfield nor the Enfield musket changed physically during the American Civil War. However, below is a brief history of the changes in muskets before the Civil War:
The musket was a large-caliber, smooth-bore FIREARM that was aimed and fired from the shoulder. The weapon, which first appeared in Spain in the mid-1500s, fired a lead ball weighing about 1.5 oz (42 g). Although it was lighter and more accurate than the older arquebus, it was still so heavy and long that each musketeer needed an aide who helped carry the weapon and its ammunition and prop it up on its stand. The first simple muskets were fitted with matchlocks as the refiring mechanism. The later wheel lock, a serrated wheel that struck sparks from iron pyrites, was too complicated and costly for rough use. The simpler flintlock, known in England as a snaphance, was produced in the late 1500s. Between 1645 and 1650 the snaphance flintlock action was improved, producing the Brown Bess, the musket used by the armies of Europe and America for nearly 200 years.
The Brown Bess was simple, cheap, and easy to manufacture, but like all muskets it had serious disadvantages. Apart from the complex loading procedure, the flintlock’s efficiency was uncertain. Moreover, the musket’s range was limited–as late as 1846 the British War Office put the range at 100 to 150 yards “for all practical purposes.”
“By 1836 the percussion lock and the copper cap had been introduced. The percussion system brought about perhaps the greatest single advance in the firearms. The system proved completely adaptable to the major change from muzzle to breech loading and to the transition from black powder to smokeless powders. The percussion system and pitched rifling marked the end for the musket.”
Tagged as:
war weapons,
war weapons for sale,
war weapons from world war 1,
war weapons in world war 2,
war weapons list,
war weapons of india,
war weapons online,
war weapons timeline,
war weapons week,
war+weapons wiki