Proudly handmade in the USA. A combination of new, highly effective weapons and outmoded tactics made the Civil War the bloodiest conflict in American History. A nation on 32,000,000 people lost and 714,245 men killed and wounded. This was almost exactly the same number lost in World War II when the nation was infinitely larger. The weapon that produced many of these casualties was the new rifle musket, adopted in 1855 and modified in 1861 and 1864. Rifles had need known for centuries, but they were slow to load, and so only a few were used. The breakthrough came with a new bullet invented in France through the work of several men, including Claude Minie and soldiers called the new bullet a minie ball, even though the version used by American troops was an improved design by James H. Burton of the Harpers Ferry Armory. Basically it was a pointed bullet with a hollow base. It could be made smaller than the bore so it could be loaded quickly and easily. Then, when the gun was fired, gases from the explosion expanded the hollow base and made it fit tightly enough to take the spin from the rifling grooves. Now every soldier could have a rifle and an accurate one. Whereas the old smoothbore musket could only be counted on to hit a man-sized target at 80-100 yards, the new rifle musket could hit it at 500 yards and strike a man on horseback about half the time at 1,000 yards.