Some questions about Civil War weapons

Factual Questions
1

Can someone tell me what kind of cannon was most commonly used by the Confederate army during the American Civil War? Would it have been possible to fire canister from this type of cannon? Can someone describe it? Was it made of iron, brass, or bronze?

What type of rifle was most commonly used by the Confederacy? Wasn’t it one of the Enfield models?

Assuming it was stored in a water-tight and air-tight container, would gunpowder from the Civle War era still be usable today?

2

Also, how would you go about loading and firing canister in the cannon?

3

Short answer: anything they could get.

The Confederacy were unable to produce steel artillery themselves, but had a few European-made steel guns (and possibly a few captured Union pices).

Most arty pieces of the time were wrought iron, bronze, or even brass.

I’m not up on US Civil War weaponry, I have “heard it said” that the Confederacy used something like 25 different rifles concurrently during the Civil War.

Here’s an excellent link which:

http://www.mdgorman.com/confederate.htm

Launcher may train without warning.

4

Here ya go Polecat. Couple of my fave sites http://www.cwartillery.org/artillery.html http://myhome.shinbiro.com/~PMOADE/wpns.htm
Black powder is touchy stuff it deteriorates over time, sealed up or not.You can’t even hardly buy the stuff anymore. my cap and ball gun uses a modern replacement. And sure they fired cannister shot.And exactly why you wanta fire some canister? You load and fire it just like you’d load and fire anything else. If its a breech loader you open her up slide in the cartridge(s) prime ,put your fingers in your ears, and bang. Muzzle loader you put in the charge, then the wadding if needed, then the cannister. Prime, fingers in ears, mouth open, and bang. I got a link here somewhere to the artillery manual but I cain’t find it. And I wanta know what you got in mind afore I tell ya more.If your plannin on secedin, I think you need more than a napoleon and some cannister, cides Texas is mostly Republican nowdays, so you won’t last nearly so long as they did the first time.

“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx