Yea, smooth bore muskets were. The British infantry were mostly armed with them.
Our frontiersmen, farmers etc., were mostly armed with rifles. The assault rifles of the day.
And the Brits came to confiscate them.
They lost.
“Yea, smooth bore muskets were [weapons of war]. The British infantry were mostly armed with them.
Our frontiersmen, farmers etc., were mostly armed with rifles. The assault rifles of the day.
And the Brits came to confiscate them.
They lost.”
American colonists of the 1770s were not armed exclusively with rifles: not even a majority owned them.
The rifle of the period (best-known types were the long rifles made in Pennsylvania) was far more expensive than any smoothbore long gun: it required a great deal of skilled labor to make one. Each was unique, and a custom-cut mould had to be made, sized to the bore, to cast balls that fit properly. Notable feats of individual marksmanship were possible, and the British paid heavily (many officers complained about the “ungentlemanly” behavior of Americans, who kept picking them off at ranges of 200 yds). But each rifle varied in performance compared to every other: massed fire was impossible. Since the tight-fitting ball had to be forced down the barrel during loading, rifles took longer to load, for each shot.
In contrast, smoothbore long guns were much more common. Encounters with wild game on the eastern seaboard of North America were at very short range, thanks to the dense forests, and the often-spotty accuracy of a smoothbore was good enough. Smoothbores were also more flexible: they could be loaded with small-diameter shot for hunting birds and small game, and smaller numbers of mid-caliber balls (later termed “buckshot”) for use against deer and other large game.
Smoothbores were much easier and quicker to load: a ball of smaller diameter than the bore could be forced down the barrel with the rammer, even if heavy fouling was present.
European military practice favored high volumes of fire and speedy reloading: hence the universal adoption of the smoothbore musket.
Small units of riflemen were formed in the American War of Independence, but fought chiefly as scouts or light infantry. They required line infantry armed with muskets mounting bayonets to protect them in close action; rifles had no bayonets. Once the rifleman discharged his piece, he was helpless until he reloaded, a process that could take a minute or more.
General Washington and other senior American leaders knew quite well that American forces would likely fail when going up against British training and discipline, and thus expended great effort to drill and train the rank and file in standard European infantry tactics; they also went to great lengths to arm them with military-issue muskets of uniform bore size and decent quality. France supplied many used muskets of 69 cal, chiefly their M1763 pattern (which became the prototype for US-issue small arms design, for many decades).
After “Baron” von Steuben (served on the staff of Prussian King Frederick the Great) trained cadres in early 1778, individual regiments drilled the same way, and the Continental Line became “an army that would look the enemy in the face.” Just what General Washington wanted.
The British did not lose. General Washington held the Continental Army together, dodging each British attempt to annihilate his forces until US diplomats convinced the French to intervene. Spain followed, and then the Netherlands.
Facing with a worldwide conflict against three major European powers, the British ran short of cash and confronted serious threats to other elements of their empire. Public opinion soured on the war to retain the American Colonies.
The British decided it wasn’t worth their while, to continue.