6-pdr Field Guns

Blog posts discussing the 6-pdr guns (3.67-inch bore diameter) guns. As with other artillery systems, these follow the design history of the caliber from Revolutionary times up to the Civil War.

Early American 6-pdrs

Early Bronze 6-pdrs for the militia

The “Iron Age” 6-pdrs – Models 1819, 1827, and 1834 in particular.

Other early iron 6-pdr field guns – associated with Confederates

Model 1834 iron gun “walk around”

Model 1835 Bronze 6-pdr (with mention of the Model 1836 iron guns)

Model 1838 and 1840 bronze guns

Test and Trial guns from the 1840s

Model 1841 6-pdr Field Gun – Design and Particulars, Production and Service, and Walk-around

Treadwell’s Experimental Steel-Wrought iron 6-pdr

6-pdr Cadet Guns

6-pdr Alger “Eagles” from 1844

Rifled 6-pdr Field Guns

“False Napoleons” Altered 6-pdr Field Guns

Model 1861 6-pdr Field Guns

Revere Copper 6-pdr Model 1841 (converted to False Napoleon after the war)

Griffen 6-pdr Wrought Iron guns

Links between the 6-pdrs and early rifled artillery

Confederate Types

Overview of Confederate 6-pdr production

Bennett & Lurges 6-pdr

Brierfield Confederate 6-pdr

Leeds & Company bronze 6-pdrs (converted to false Napoleons after the war).

Tredegar bronze 6-pdr cast to the Model 1841 form.

Tredegar iron 6-pdrs in early (muzzle swell) and late (straight muzzle) forms.  Three of these are on display at Sunbury, PA.

Foreign Types

Various 6-pdr class weapons presented for comparison. Some of these were used by the combatants during the war.

Austrian 6-pdr – Both an older form, tentatively of the Liechtenstein system, and a “new” pattern were imported by the Confederates during the war.

Spanish 6-pdr – Presented here to compare with American types.  While several Spanish 6-pdrs were in the US during the war, their use, if any, was minimal.  Surviving examples include an 1740s pattern captured in the Mexican War and a Gribeauval pattern gun.