POTD: Confederate Mississippi Rifle Carbine – Cut Down for the Saddle

Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a Model 1841 that somebody went after with a saw during the Civil War.

The 1841 picked up its Mississippi Rifle nickname from Jefferson Davis and the 1st Mississippi at Buena Vista in 1847, and it was a good gun. 54 caliber, brass mounted, patchbox in the butt, accurate well past the range most soldiers could use. This one came out of Whitney’s shop in New Haven in 1850. Somebody then cut the barrel back to around thirteen and a half inches, shortened the forend and ramrod to match, recrowned the muzzle and dovetailed in a new front sight.

The work is clean enough that a trained armorer did it, and the alteration is attributed to the Confederacy, most likely for cavalry. That tracks for me. The South had almost no carbine production worth mentioning. Richmond and Tallassee eventually managed a trickle, and Confederate horsemen spent most of the war carrying shotguns, cut down muskets and whatever they could pull off a dead Federal.

Chopping an 1841 filled that hole, and there were thousands of them sitting in Southern arsenals after the 1861 seizures. The trade is brutal though. You take a rifle that shoots well and turn it into a thirteen inch 54 that throws a fireball and beats up your shoulder. I imagine it was miserable on foot and perfectly fine from a saddle at forty yards.

Most of our POTDs utilize images from our friends at Rock Island Auction Company, the premier firearms auction in the United States. Take some time to browse their current auctions – who knows, maybe you’ll find a piece of history to take home!

“Confederate Carbine Altered Whitney 1841 ‘Mississippi Rifle’.” Rock Island Auction, www.rockislandauction.com/detail/4097/1195/confederate-carbine-altered-whitney-1841-mississippi-rifle. Accessed 4 Sept. 2026.

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