A Refutation of the Charges Made against the Confederate States of America of Having Authorized the Use of Explosive and Poisoned Musket and Rifle Balls during the Late Civil War of 1861-65

by Horace Edwin Hayden

A
REFUTATION OF THE CHARGES
MADE AGAINST
THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA
OF HAVING AUTHORIZED THE USE OF
EXPLOSIVE AND POISONED MUSKET AND RIFLE BALLS
DURING THE LATE CIVIL WAR OF 1861-65.

BY
Rev. HORACE EDWIN HAYDEN,
Member of the Southern Historical Society and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania;
Corresponding Member of the New England Historical and Genealogical
Society, the Historical Society of Virginia, &c., &c., &c.

Richmond, Va.:
Geo. W. Gary, Printer and Binder.
1879.

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EXPLOSIVE AND POISONED MUSKET AND RIFLE BALLS.

The following remarkable statement occurs as a note to the account of the battle of Gettysburg, on page 78, volume III, of "The Pictorial History of the Civil War in the United States of America, by Benson J. Lossing, LL. D.":

Many, mostly young men, were maimed in every conceivable way, by every kind of weapon and missile, the most fiendish of which was an explosive and a poisoned bullet, represented in the engraving a little more than half the size of the originals, procured from the battlefield there by the writer. These were sent by the Confederates. Whether any were ever used by the Nationals, the writer is not informed. One was made to explode in the body of the man, and the other to leave a deadly poison in him, whether the bullet lodged in or passed through him.

Figure A represents the explosive bullet. The perpendicular stem, with a piece of thin copper hollowed, and a head over it of bullet metal, fitted a cavity in the bullet proper below it, as seen in the engraving. In the bottom of the cavity was fulminating powder. When the bullet struck, the momentum would cause the copper in the outer disc to flatten, and allow the point of the stem to strike and explode the fulminating powder, when the bullet would be rent into fragments which would lacerate the victim.

In figure B the bullet proper was hollowed, into which was inserted another, also hollow, containing poison. The latter being loose, would slip out and remain in the victim's body or limbs with its freight of poison if the bullet proper should pass through. Among the Confederate wounded at the College were boys of tender age and men who had been forced into the ranks against their will.