Did ‘Baldy’ Ewell Lose Gettysburg? - July ‘97 America’s Civil War Feature

John Gilleland developed a revolutionary double-barreled cannon meant to sweep Union infantry off the field.

By Lonnie R. Speer

On a spring morning in April 1862, a number of men gathered in a field near Newton’s Bridge on the north side of Athens, Georgia, to witness a demonstration of a weapon that they believed would revolutionize the art of warfare. Rolled into position was a newly forged cannon ready for test-firing, one that everyone present could clearly see was no ordinary cannon.

Forged at the local Athens Steam Company and mounted on a regular carriage, the new gun was 4 feet 8 1/2 inches long and nearly 13 inches wide. Although a trained eye might have noticed that the cannon was slightly wider than a normal gun of that size, it did not look all that abnormal until one examined the muzzle end. There, two side-by-side 3-inch-diameter bores stared back at the observer, rather like a giant double-barreled shotgun. The breech end was also abnormal; it had three touchholes, two permitting each barrel to be fired independently and one in the center allowing both barrels to be fired at once.

Its inventor, 53-year-old John Gilleland–an Athens carpenter and cabinetmaker before the war and now a private in the Mitchell Thunderbolts, a homeguard unit composed of men too old for active service–prepared the new gun for firing. Several of the spectators milling around the gun had contributed to its financing. Thirty-six men, many of whom belonged to the Thunderbolts, had raised a total of $350 through a subscription fund. Its casting at the foundry had been personally supervised by Thomas Bailey, a longtime Athens resident and member of the Thunderbolts.

A target of several upright posts was erected a short distance away. Gilleland, with the help of others, rammed balls of solid shot, connected to each other by a 10-foot length of chain, into each barrel. An excess length of chain was allowed to drape down toward the ground between the two barrels. The men gathered behind the gun as Gilleland approached the breech, attached a lanyard to a friction primer and carefully inserted the primer into the center vent.

Gilleland had designed his new weapon to fire mainly “chain shot,” two cannonballs connected by heavy chain, intended to mow down large formations of enemy troops like so many acres of wheat. Gilleland’s concept was not as impractical as it might have seemed. Chain shot had been used routinely in naval warfare as far back as the 1600s. It was invented by the French, who preferred to incapacitate opposing ships by knocking down and destroying their masts and rigging during pitched battles, as opposed to the British preference of pounding the hulls of enemy ships with shot aimed at the waterline to stop and sink them as quickly as possible.

The common procedure with chain shot was to load two balls connected by a chain into a single cannon barrel, fire it off, and watch the twirling projectiles shred the enemy’s sails or wrap around and bring down their huge masts. Eventually, the use of chain shot became a common naval procedure, perfected by the Spanish.The outbreak of Civil War hostilities renewed efforts to find a successful method for using chain shot in field artillery. Various inventors submitted plans and prototypes to both the Union and Confederate governments, including forked cannons, but the strange-looking weapons proved impractical or else failed to produce the desired results.

Gilleland had read many newspaper stories and accounts of experienced troops returning to Athens after major battles; he realized that although the Confederate armies were often quite effective in the field, they suffered from a lack of manpower and were easily flanked by greater numbers of Union troops. In an effort to equalize the manpower situation, the Athens inventor set out to design a cannon that would bring down large numbers of enemy soldiers at one time.