Volley gun
Two notable artillery-sized volley guns were developed in the mid-19th century, although neither was particularly successful in practice. Developed in the 1860s and based on an 1850s design by a captain Fafschamps, the French mitrailleuse is an example of a multi-barreled volley gun that could fire all of its barrels simultaneously or sequentially over a short period of time. Also developed in the 1860s, General Origen Vandenburgh of the New York State Militia designed a weapon that had eighty five parallel .50 caliber rifle barrels. After failing to sell the weapon to the United Kingdom, he reportedly sold a small number to the Confederate States of America, although there is no record that they were actually used. One Vandenburgh gun was located at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, and another reportedly at Salisbury, NC.
Combat shotgun
While the sporting shotgun traces its ancestry back to the fowling piece, which was a refinement of the smoothbore musket, the combat shotgun bears more kinship to the shorter blunderbuss. Invented in the 16th century by the Dutch, the blunderbuss was used through the 18th century in warfare by British, Austrian, Spanish (like the Escopeteros Voluntarios de Cadiz, formed in 1804 or the Compañía de Escopeteros de las Salinas, among others) and Prussian regiments, as well as in the American colonies. As use of the blunderbuss declined, the United States military began loading smaller lead shot (buckshot) in combination with their larger bullets, a combination known as "buck and ball". The buck and ball load was used extensively by Americans at the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 and was partially responsible for the disparate casualty rates between American and British forces. The advantage of this loading was that it had a greater chance of hitting the enemy, thus taking wounded soldiers out of a fight. The disadvantage of this load was that the buckshot did not cause as severe wounds at longer ranges, and contemporary accounts show many of the British wounded recovering quickly as they had been struck by the buckshot rather than the ball. Fowling pieces were commonly used by militias, for example during the Texas Revolution. However, buck and ball worked as well or better in standard or even rifled muskets. Buck and ball loads were used by both sides of the American Civil War, often by cavalry units.