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How Did The Minie Ball Influence The Civil War

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How Did The Minie Ball Influence The Civil War
The Minie ball greatly influenced the Civil War, causing many people to die, and changes in many other areas. Like all the wars before it, during the Civil War many large technological breakthroughs occurred. One of the biggest, and most influential changes for personal weapons was the evolution from the smoothbore muskets to rifles, and even more so, the Minie ball that allowed the rifling to realistically be used in a battle situation. The bullets also had another plus: causing huge damage to anyone they hit. Blood and screams were heard all around the battlefield from the Minie ball tearing through flesh and shattering bone.

The Minie ball greatly increased the accuracy of guns and the distance that they could fire. According to the article about Smallarms on civilwar.org, a smoothbore musket with a lead ball could generally be accurate up to 75 yards, but with a rifle and a Minie ball, it was possible to have an effective range of 300 yards, where it was still accurate. Even more than that, the total firing range was was only 200 yards with the smoothbore musket, but ½ a mile with the rifle, about nine times the distance. With this increased range, it was much easier for the soldier to pick off …show more content…
According to the Minie Ball article on historynet.com, the soft lead that the bullets were made out of flattened on impact and could splinter. Some soldiers even notched bullets to ensure that this would happen. It easily tore tissue and shattered bones, causing anybody hit to need to be amputated. They caused the same degree of damage as an exploding bullet, eventually forcing them to be banned. 90% of the people who died in battles were killed by the Minie ball. The degree of damage meant that people were extremely injured when shot. They hurt people so much that they had to be amputated, making them unable to fight, and leaving the other side to have more soldiers, and the
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