The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Monday, July 20th, 2009, in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow the signs to the Science Museum and Greer Stadium. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. There is no charge to attend.

This month's program:

"The Rifle Musket in the Civil War"

Noted Civil War historian and author Earl J. Hess of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, TN, will be the speaker for the July, 2009 meeting of the Nashville Civil War Roundtable.

The rifle musket has long been believed by many historians to have been the cause of the massive casualties inflicted in the Civil War. The extended range of the weapon and its bullet, many state, devastated old style infantry tactics certainly adding its weight to the over 640,000 men who dies in the war. In the last 20 years, however, a number of historians have examined in depth the weapon, its bullet and the characteristics of it both in practice and reality of the battlefield and it has been found most wanting. The troops of both sides, unlike modern soldiers, were never given proper rifle training or range estimation due to the expense of doing so. Additionally, historians have made note of the older smoothbore muskets that fired the deadly Buck & Ball rounds causing the heavy casualties at battles like Antietam, still America's bloodiest day. Indeed, the heavy casualties of the Napoleonic Wars, were mostly caused by smoothbore muskets and this fact is ignored by most Civil War historians. Professor Earl J. Hess, in his most recent book The Rifle Musket In The Civil War: Reality And Myth, is the latest historian to tackle the myth of the rifle musket and he will be reporting his research at the July meeting of the Nashville Civil War Roundtable.

Earl J. Hess is a professor of history at Lincoln Memorial University at Harrogate, TN. He is the author of twelve Civil War books, twenty three articles in various publications as well as numerous reviews of historical books.