Christian Sharps
was awarded 15 firearms patents in his lifetime. He also liked trout. In 1871,
he established a trout hatchery in Connecticut to try to help replace New
England’s declining population of the freshwater fish. Sharps’ 1874 death put
an end to the fishy venture.
By 1830, Christian Sharps, born in New Jersey in 1811, had gone to work at the
Harpers Ferry, Va., Arsenal, helping to produce firearms for the U.S. Army. In
1848, Sharps received his first breechloadingfirearms patent. By 1851, the
gunmaker had struck out on his own and formed the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing
Company in Hartford, Conn., to produce his simple and sturdy weapon design
that remained relatively unchanged throughout the Civil War. It featured a
breechblock that dropped down when the trigger guard was unlatched and moved
forward.
Then, a linen or paper .52-caliber cartridge would be inserted into the
breech. As the trigger guard was raised, a sharpened edge on the breechblock
would shear off the end of the cartridge, exposing the powder. A common
percussion cap was then placed on the cone, and the gun was ready to fire.
The first Sharps carbines were issued to U.S. troopers in 1854, and they
remained the most widely issued cavalry shoulder arm throughout the conflict.
One admiring Union officer remarked: “A cavalry carbine should be very simple
in its mechanisim, with all its…parts well covered from the splashing of mud,
or the accumulation of rest and dust. Sharps carbine combines all these
qualities.”
Breechloaders allowed soldiers to load easily while lying prone, and the rifle
version of Sharps was favored by the marksmen in the 1st and 2nd U.S.
Sharpshooters, who used a custom model that included a hair trigger.
An early war photo of a member of Georgia’s
Richmond Hussars with his Sharps carbine. Because Sharps carbines were made
before the war, some Southern militia units were equipped with the
breechloaders. Ammunition for the Sharps was easy for the Confederacy to
produce once the war began. 
Cartridges for the .52-caliber Sharps
carbine could be made out of linen, as is the top example, or paper, bottom.
The bullet used with the paper cartridge was nicknamed a “ringtail” because of
the small ring at the base to which the paper tube containing the powder was
glued. The simple, sturdy Sharps breechloading mechanism was
relatively easy to copy, and the Confederacy made its own carbine version
between 1862 and 1864. Initially the S.C. Robinson Company in Richmond made
about 1,900 carbines. The Confederate government purchased that company in
March 1863, and the Confederate Carbine Company then made about 3,000 more.
The Southern copy omitted the patch box in the buttstock, used simple fixed
sights, and substituted brass for some parts. This Confederate trooper sports what is likely a
captured Sharps original, due to the presence of a patch box. He has a lot of
reserve firepower at hand, and who knows what might be under his hat. Sharps
also made 156,000 of these 1859 patent four-barrel pepperbox pistols in
calibers ranging from .22 to .32. To load, a user depressed the button under
the muzzle and slid the barrel assembly forward. Brass rimfire cartridges were
inserted and the barrel assembly slid back. As the hammer was cocked, it
rotated a firing pin that traveled to each barrel. Some soldiers carried them
as sidearms.
