[BroJoeK]

"Editorial: How to End the War – 12-13"

Our editors suggest the war will end quickly if the Union will just purchase abroad 500 rifled cannons, 200,000 mini-rifles and as many armed steamships as possible.

Perhaps wiser investments would have been 200,000 Sharps rifles (@$30 each), made in Philadelphia & Hartford and instead of foreign cannons, a new-fangled contraption being invented by a North Carolinian living in Indianapolis, a 44 year old medical doctor by the name of Richard Jordan Gatling.

[GreenLanternCorps]

The problem with the Gatling Gun in the civil war was that they tended to treat it as artillery, not like a machine gun.

It was not a long range weapon. Had they embedded them with infantry or dismounted cavalry, they could have been devastating. Imagine first day Gettysburg if Buford had Gatlings...