Quaker Guns

Some of the Confederate cannons placed at Manassas and nearby Centreville were for show only. These non-functioning cannon were intended to deceive Union soldiers who might turn their telescopes on the earthworks: “This was nothing other than huge mock guns of wood—‘Quaker guns’ as they have come to be called....Some of these Quaker guns are mere logs with the bark on, just as they come from the tree. Others have the end pointing outward, colored black. Others again are fashioned into the form of a columbiad, blackened at the muzzle and for about two-thirds of their length, and having bungholes bored at the breech.... In these forts I personally saw at least twelve, more or less trimmed to the shape of heavy siege guns, and blackened, and some twenty more, not subjected to this artistic process of deception...

“The object of this Quaker gun trick was of course to create the impression ... that the heaviest artillery known to the science of war opened their jaws through the portholes of that range of earthworks. The Rebels had field artillery, according to the testimony of people in the neighborhood, in ample quantity, and this is no doubt true. The Quaker guns were not their sole armament...they certainly were in battery.” Correspondent of the Utica (New York) Morning Herald in March 1862, as reprinted in the Oneida (New York) Weekly Herald, April 8, 1862.

Marker can be reached from the intersection of Battery Heights Boulevard and Quarry Road, on the right when traveling south.

Courtesy hmdb.org

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