In 1862, John Gilleland was a 53-year old carpenter in Athens, Georgia. He was too old to serve in the Confederate Army, but he was a private in a home guard unit. Determined to find some way to counteract the Union's massive manpower advantage, he devised this cannon to fire chain shot.
Chain shot--a length of chain between two cannon balls--had been used for centuries for anti-personnel purposes or, in naval applications, to destroy rigging. But such shells were usually loaded into a single cannon.
Gilleland's innovation, according to a 1996 article by military historian Lonnie R. Speer, was to cast a cannon with two barrels side by side. The barrels were pointed 3 degrees away from each other so that the chain would fan out and sweep through the bodies of Union soldiers.
Test firings revealed many technical problems. The chains would break apart and the balls would scatter wildly--a problem exacerbated when the firing of each barrel was not precisely simultaneous.
Gilleland's cannon was used in battle only once in August 1864 outside of Athens. I have no information about the utility of the cannon in that battle, but the Confederate forces were compelled to withdraw despite its use.
This unusual weapon resurfaced in the 1890s and, in 1957, was put on public display in Athens.
-via Michael Brasher | Photo: Jud McCranie
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