Civil War Revolvers: Myth vs. Reality

Peter Schiffers, in this book, provides excellent coverage of many of the handguns used in the United States Civil War, from their historical development and usage up to firing vintage working examples of the arms for accuracy and reliability. The coverage of each weapon purchased by the U.S. Ordinance Department for use during the war, as well as a large number of weapons bought on the civilian market by individual soldiers is detailed, with each description following a set pattern. (The resulting text may appear to be repetitive, but the ease of comparison between weapons marks it as thorough, instead.) A particular pleasure is the detailed photographs of the exteriors of the weapons along with, in many cases, photographs of their internal actions. Also, I thought the experimental firing of the guns well done and convincing, although Mr. P. Bowman's comment about the small sample size is certainly something to keep in mind.The downsides to this book that I see are that it covers only the United States Ordinance Department, not the Confederacy. While the weapons used by the Confederacy were for the most part, I assume, either the same as that of the northern states or inferior copies, it would be nice to have some information about them. Secondly, there were a fair number of typographical mistakes in the text, although none interfered noticably with reading and understanding the book.In short, this book is very well done and I am looking forward to getting a copy of the author's book on Civil War carbines.

I have mixed feelings about this work. It is the result of considerable effort, written with much insight by someone passionate about their topic. it includes much useful information. For me, and this may well be a purely personal issue, the way the information was presented and the book put together left something to be desired. It appears bitty at first and then repetative. As a result I became bored with it fairly early on.The issue I had with it is the strong conclusions drawn from sampling a very small number, sometimes only 1 example of a particular weapon.To draw damning conclusions about design or manufacture based on such a small sample, and then on later reproductions rather than original pieces seems wrong.There are many fine works written about Civil war arms containing much useful information. This comes close to being one but due to its format and approach doesnt quite make it for me.

Excellent book on comparison of current production models of civil war revolvers, and the originals in his collection. The author fires several originals and replica's to get an accurate feel for the accuracy and killing power of these guns. He used ammo as close to the original issue as he could to simulate the problems with loading and firing civil war revolvers. This is a good book for the civil war historian or re-enactor to have and study, as there is a whole lot of miss-information out there on the inaccuracy of these revolvers. The author shows why certain revolvers were favorites among Calvary soldiers, and why others were rejected. He also dispels the myths about infantry soldiers not carrying small guns on their person, as they were too heavy to carry on the march.

I am not quite sure how to evaluate this book, it is filled with a lot of useful information, but also, in my opinion some very erroneous conclusions, the conclusions the author came to after testing just one 100 year old 1860 Colt are a typical example, to write the design off on the grounds of just one example of a designs performance is not very good type testing, there are however some very rarely encountered designs tested in this book, which balances these errors, so in all I think it is worth having, if only for the information on the more unusual types.

Excellent reference , well researched. Would have been better if the photos of the firearms were in color.

Fair price. Delivery by USPS took longer than predicted.

Reasonable conclusions on handling and ergonomics of civil war revolvers and possibly the reliability. However the information presented is not necessarily accurate in historic reality or accuracy of shooting civil war revolvers.The photos used are treated as accurately depicting soldiers battle handguns, when it was common to "dress" pictures up at that time with props like pistols.Treating results from a sample size of one and shooting a 140 year old handgun to compare accuracy to other handguns of unknown history is not scientific and provides misleading results.The big question: Would I buy it again; no.

This book is a very useful shooting reference. By that I mean you can get some very good ideas for loads and accuracy for your black powder revolvers.It also covers some guns that I did not know about and found intriguing. I am only sorry it is not in a kindle edition.

Excellent reference for those interested in Civil War arms.