(Transcription of the captions displayed along with the three firearms)

Lookout Mountain Cave Guns

Numbers, Generalship, and Arms

Two Confederate brigades, Moore's Alabama Brigade and Walthall's Mississippi Brigade, bore the brunt of the fighting for the South in the Battle of Lookout Mountain, November 24, 1863. Approximately 2,700 Alabamans and Mississippians faced nearly 10,000 Federals. Poor leadership by the Generals above them left these Southerners' efforts uncoordinated and unsupported. Added to that were the decidedly third rate weapons Moore's Alabamans carried.

Three of these third class weapons recovered from Lookout Mountain are displayed in this case.

Rediscovery

In 1931, a Chattanooga businessman found nine weapons leaning against the back wall of a cave on the west side of Lookout Mountain; weapons that had been abandoned and forgotten by Confederates who had held the mountain in 1863; weapons abandoned, at least in part, because of their inferior quality. Today, three of those nine weapons are reunited to tell a part of the story of the battle of Lookout Mountain.

Manufacture & Caliber Vary

Information is known on four of the nine weapons found in the cave. Between these four, there are four different models and three different caliber. Three had been modernized or altered from their original form. Only one was considered a first- or second-class weapon. All three of the weapons displayed here (A, B, & C) were considered third class arms. Two of the three displayed weapons (A & B) had the flintlock ignition system originally but were altered by two different methods to percussion ignition, probably by the Confederates. Two of the three (B & C) are .69 caliber; and the third (A) is .75 caliber. One (A) was originally a 1779 French-style flintlock musket of the American Revolution era!

A -- FRENCH-STYLE MUSKET, SMOOTHBORE,
CALIBER .75 ALTERED.
Stock dated 1779.
Converted from flintlock to percussion ignition using a civilian style hammer and the "drum" bolster method to receive cone (nipple); conversion probably done by or for the Confederate government; brass and iron mountings.

This is the style weapon Brigadier-General John C. Moore said required the ramming of leaves on top of the .69 caliber projectiles to get it to stay in the .75 caliber bore. Weapons of similar model and date in their original form had been used by the grandfathers or great grandfathers of many of Moore's men in the American Revolution four score and seven years before.

B -- MODEL 1816 UNITED STATES MUSKET,
SMOOTHBORE, CALIBER .69 ALTERED.
Manufactured between 1822 and 1831
Converted from flintlock to percussion ignition by cone
(nipple) in barrel method, barrel shortened by 11.5 inches; iron mountings.

Thousands of these old muskets, many still in their flintlock form, were in storage at the beginning of the war. Converted to percussion ignition by several methods, they saw great use, particularly amongst the Confederates, in the first half of the war.

C -- MODEL 1842 UNITED STATE MUSKET,
SMOOTHBORE, CALIBER .69; ALTERED
Manufactured at the Harper’s Ferry Armory in 1850
Barrel shortened by 9 inches; iron mountings

Large numbers of this model weapon were available to both sides at the beginning of the war. Some were altered by rifling the barrels to improve their range and accuracy. While considered a second-class arm, they were still reliable in the hands of a large number of troops at the time of the Campaign for Chattanooga in 1863. This weapon has been altered by shortening the barrel, perhaps to remove a damaged area nearer the original muzzle. The alteration, undoubtedly done by the Confederates, and how crudely it was done (the cut was not made straight across the barrel) make this weapon a third-class arm.

Weapons of Moore's Alabama Brigade

Brigadier General John C. Moore's Alabama Brigade

Moore's Brigade of three Alabama infantry regiments, the 37th, 40th,and 42nd, had been captured and paroled at Vicksburg in July, 1863. When they were exchanged and reorganized at Demopolis, Alabama in the late summer, they were re-armed with what weapons were then available, weapons that General Moore described as having

"... been condemned as unfit for service and piled up in an outhouse near the
railroad depot....These arms were of many different calibers. Most of them,
however, had the essential parts--lock, stock and barrel--but were in bad order
...I was assured that this was merely a temporary supply, that it would answer
for drill and guard duty, and that we would be supplied with servicable guns
before being ordered to the field.... but it was not done."

Ordered to Chattanooga and assigned to the Lookout Mountain sector of the Confederate lines on November 10, 1863. Moore's Alabamans faced the prospect of fighting Federals superior in both numbers and arms with a motley array of third class weapons, weapons not unlike those found sixty-eight years later in the cave on Lookout Mountain.