Minie Ball Use Before The Civil War?

[Joshism]

My understanding is the first American firearms to use Minie ball ammo were the M1855 Springfield and Harper's Ferry rifles.

Did these see any service in the Third Seminole War in Florida (1855-1858)? Or any of the small armed conflicts in the American West?

 

[rittmeister]

the french invented it in the 1830s and it definately was used in the crimean war and the battle of solferino so are we talking us use ore use in general?

 

[rittmeister]

i did a gOOgle search for minié ball at

Preservation, Education and Publication of Seminole Wars History

seminolewars.org

and got no hit - i think they probably would know about that stuff. i also don't get a valid hit* for third seminole war and minié ball so my guess is it was not used.

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* what i get are guys shot by minié balls in the acw who had previously fought in the third seminole war

 

[rittmeister]

it's only wiki, but as to the british at the battle of balaclava:

At the start of the battle, a large body of Russian cavalry charged the 93rd Highlanders, who were posted north of the village of Kadikoi. Commanding them was Sir Colin Campbell. Rather than "form square", the traditional method of repelling cavalry, Campbell took the risky decision to have his Highlanders form a single line two men deep. Campbell had seen the effectiveness of the new Minie rifles with which his troops were armed at the Battle of Alma, a month earlier, and he was confident that his men could beat back the Russians. His tactics succeeded. From up on the ridge to the west, Times correspondent William Howard Russell saw the Highlanders as a "thin red streak topped with steel", a phrase which soon became the "Thin Red Line".
emphasis mine

 

[Joshism]

I know it had been introduced in Europe earlier. I'm specifically wondering about USA use 1855-1860.

 

[5fish]

Here is the inventor...

Claude-Étienne Minié | Inventor, Rifleman, Ballistics

Claude-Étienne Minié was a French army officer who solved the problem of designing a bullet for the muzzle-loading rifle. The bullet became known as the Minié ball. After serving in several African campaigns in the Chasseurs, Minié rose to the rank of captain. In 1849 he designed the Minié ball, a

www.britannica.com

 

[5fish]

Minié Ball - Civil War, Wounds & Bullet | HISTORY

The Minié ball, an expanding bullet invented by French army officer Claude-Etienne Minié, was used to devastating effect in the American Civil War.

www.history.com

In the early 1850s, James Burton of the U.S. Armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, improved further on the Minié bullet by eliminating the need for the iron plug and making it easier and cheaper to mass-produce. It was adapted for use by the U.S. military in 1855.

Minié ball - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Captain James H. Burton, an armorer at the Harpers Ferry Armory, developed an improvement on Minié's design when he added a deep cavity at the base of the ball, which filled up with gas and expanded the bullet's skirt upon firing. The result was not only better range, but also a cheaper bullet, which was used in the Crimean War[citation needed] and then the American Civil War.[3] Burton's version of the ball weighed 1.14 ounces.[6]

 

[5fish]

Third Seminole War in Florida (1855-1858)?

I do not think it made it to the Seminole war of 1855...

https://history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-1/CMH_Pub_75-1.pdf

. By the middle of the nineteenth century, technological developments made possible an accurate, dependable muzzle-loading rifle that could be loaded as quickly as the smoothbore musket. In the late 1840s a Frenchman, Capt. Claude E. Minié, invented an oblong bullet with a hollow iron cup at the base that fit easily into the barrel when loading but which expanded upon being fired so as to catch the rifling. European armies quickly adopted the new minié round. The U.S. Army tested the concept in 1854 New rifle-musket ball, caliber .58,” 1855 (Smithsonian) 40 and pronounced it superior to the venerable smoothbore. The next year, the federal armories at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, began converting old smoothbores into rifles by adding rifling to the bores. They also began producing a new weapon, the Springfield Model 1855 rifle-musket, manufacturing four thousand by the end of 1858. The Army also explored the possibility of developing a breechloading firearm that could be reloaded more rapidly than a muzzleloading weapon. In 1854, Congress appropriated $90,000 to test and purchase a breechloader. A series of boards examined a variety of proposals over the next four years, but could not agree on a model to replace the muzzleloaders for the infantry. Fielding a repeating rifle offering even greater range, accuracy, and rate of fire than any muzzleloader or breechloader also proved difficult. The Colt revolving rifle model 1855, issued in limited quantities on a trial basis, frequently burned soldiers’ hands when the paper cartridges accidentally ignited in the cylinder. George W. Morse corrected that problem in 1858 when he developed metallic cartridges to replace the paper ones. Two years later he began converting muzzleloaders to breechloaders at the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal. That project ended in 1861 when Morse defected to the South and Confederate troops captured Harper’s Ferry. Meanwhile, by 1860 Northern inventers had developed magazine-fed repeaters—such as the Spencer and Henry rifles. Therefore, by the outbreak of the Civil War America had the technology to produce breechloaders and repeaters. The U.S. Army’s Ordnance Department, however, did not want to unduly complicate the manufacture and distribution of rifles and ammunition. Consequently, the muzzle-loading rifled musket remained the standard infantry weapon for both sides during the Civil War, with breechloaders and repeating rifles confined mostly to cavalry and specialist units