“At the distance of a few hundred yards, a man might fire at you all day without your finding it out.”1 That’s Ulysses S. Grant, making fun of the old .69-caliber, muzzle-loading, smoothbore musket the US Army used in the Mexican-American War. He was only slightly exaggerating. Though the weapon threw a frighteningly large projectile and could be fired quickly—up to four times a minute—using one was like shooting a marble from a shotgun. It was famously inaccurate at any range above a hundred yards, and often not much good beyond eighty yards.
