What became of the millions of civil war rifle-muskets?

Grants Farm in St. Louis. The fence is made from Civil war gun barrels.

Fleener

mater stakes?

It's really amazing there is as much "hardware" as there is today. Twisted Railroad Rails(Sherman's neckties) , locomotives, busted cannon barrels, chains from river obstructions, rusty rifles, Etc. Were all considered scrap.You can bet alot of them did wind up in scrap metal drives.

Bunch probably went west and more home with the soldiers.

I think i read many confiscated southern arms were destroyed/melted down.

My father had a Duffle bag of German Lugers when WWII ended. They got confiscated on his way back home to the states.

Many were bored out and converted to single shot shotguns for civilian use. Look at trapdoors. A great many long rifles were shortened into carbine length and sold for deer hunting.

Hatchet Jack said:

My father had a Duffle bag of German Lugers when WWII ended. They got confiscated on his way back home to the states.

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In 1972 RTAFB Tahkli Thailand the Thai MPs found my aircrew Walther P38 and demanded i give it up. I took it to the motor pool and beat it with sledge until it was fairly flat and dumped it into the Amnesty Box. The Thai commander wanted me arrested. I gave him the mag and got on the 141.

also the fence around the SPRINGFIELD ARMORY is also made up of SPRINGFIELD musket barrels. hundreds of them!

earlwb said:

Some were converted into a cartridge rifle for a Canadian revolutionary group as well (Fenian Raids Canada).

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Your 'Canadian Revolutionary Group' was made up of Americans with a perceived or even actual Irish background. They may or may not have been the original 'Patsies - people set up to try and achieve success in a hopeless cause on behalf of a third party with vested interests.

At one time or other my three-band Snider may have actually been discharged in their direction as they attempted to invade Canada and set up their revolutionary form of government.

No actual Canadians were involved, it seems.

Good point. You are correct.

It had been a while and this thread had triggered a memory of them using a Needham cartridge conversion of Springfield rifles into .58 caliber breechloading rifled muskets. Something like 5,000 muskets were converted using the Needham system. The US went with the trapdoor rifle conversions instead. The early trapdoors in .58 caliber and then later .50-70 and on to .45-70. They sleeved the old .58 barrels if I remember right.

The British used the Snider conversions. While the Austrians used the Wanzl conversions for their guns. I am thinking that some Springfield muskets might have had prototypes of these types of conversions done way back when the US Army settled on their trapdoor conversions.

Yeah my memory wasn’t too far off on the conversions:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/needham-musket-conversion/

I can remember reading in the late 1970's or early 1980's about the US government awarding a contract for one or two million dollars to DESTROY thousands (40 or 50) of trap door Springfields. The contractor had to render them unusable. Way back then I had a hard time wrapping my head around destroying them as they really weren't anything that was going to be used in another revolution. I have no doubt that any Enfields that were still sitting in warehouses succumb to the same.

Boatncamp said:

I can remember reading in the late 1970's or early 1980's about the US government awarding a contract for one or two million dollars to DESTROY thousands (40 or 50) of trap door Springfields. The contractor had to render them unusable. Way back then I had a hard time wrapping my head around destroying them as they really weren't anything that was going to be used in another revolution. I have no doubt that any Enfields that were still sitting in warehouses succumb to the same.

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In 1963 I was involved in dimilling about 20 tons of surplus M-3 .45 cal. grease guns, United Defense sub machine guns, air crew .38 cal handguns and thousands of 50cal and 20 mm barrels. This was at Warner Robbins AF base in Georgia

TobJohn said:

Many Enfields in American stockpiles were sold to Japan.

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And some of the Springfields were sold to China. I'd imagine that few of those weapons would still be around today. At least in the case of China, the guns could have seen continuous military use and abuse up to the beginning of the 20th century ... and after that, probably scrapped, as the Chinese didn't have the same culture of gun-collecting that Americans do, nor the same civilian market for surplus that America has.

Has anyone gone to this fence say with a hack saw ? Bad idea but man my heart hurts looking at that fence.

Usually the cost of storage and preservation exceeds the eventual value of anything, whether cars, musical instruments or firearms.

Even though that now "priceless" relic has an impressive tag on it now, if you add up all the effort and trouble to store, maintain and preserve it it might be rare to break even.

There is a cost to keeping something for 100 + years in an attic.

Colonial Williamsburg has a few Bess muskets on display. Armorer said many were original mixed with reproduction examples.
Yes this is pre American civil war making them even older.

One of them is buried in a field by a tree as my Grandmother didn't want it in the house.

Daveboone said:

Many were sold off as surplus to be sold very cheaply, much as Mausers, Springfields, etc. were....the diff. is that at the end of the war they were rapidly becoming obsolete. They were frequently bought as a very inexpensive all purpose gun, going duty as a shotgun, varmint gun, barn gun etc. and were very hard used. Many scrapped, etc. There were alot of them out there, but were considered of little worth and as all tools, once worn out, discarded. Luckily my granfather found a nice example of an 1863 springfield in the local hardware store for about ten bucks, and I own it now.

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A bunch went back to the factory to be refitted as breach loading rifles.

They blew up with Bannermans