The M1844 32-pounder howitzer was a bronze smoothbore muzzle-loading artillery piece adopted by the United States Army in 1844 and employed during the American Civil War.

The howitzer was intermediate between the field gun and mortar in that it fired an explosive shell on a curved trajectory against enemy soldiers or fortifications.

A howitzer needed a smaller explosive charge than a field gun in order to lob a projectile of similar weight.

Because the United States had few copper and no known tin deposits, in 1800 Secretary of War Henry Dearborn recommended that all cannons be cast from iron.

However, casting guns from iron was unsuccessful, so the Ordnance Board of 1831 under Alexander Macomb determined that field artillery pieces should be manufactured from bronze.

[12][13] At 3°45' elevation, the gun could throw spherical case shot a distance of 1,200 yd (1,097 m) with a propellant charge of 3.25 lb (1.47 kg).

Therefore, a typical six-gun battery had 20 six-horse teams to pull 6 gun limbers, 12 caissons, 1 wagon, and 1 forge, plus 10 extra horses.

[7] During the Battle of Malvern Hill on 1 July 1862, Brigadier General Fitz John Porter reported that Captain Charles Kusserow's battery of 32-pounder howitzers was engaged.

Porter believed that Confederate reports of being fired on by the Union gunboats were mistaken, and that the explosions were really rounds from Kusserow's howitzers and some 4.5-inch siege rifles.

[18] One of Kusserow's gunners wrote to a friend that he was sickened to see their shells "cut roads through them some places ten feet wide ... they would close up and come ahead".

[19] Kusserow's Battery A, 1st Battalion, New York Light Artillery was present at the Battle of Antietam on 17 September 1862, during which it was armed with six 32-pounder howitzers.

[10] Union Brigadier General Henry Larcom Abbot wrote, "For defending positions against assault ... no artillery can be more efficient than the 32-pdr.

The former ... throws very large case shot and canister and from its light weight may be kept out of sight and danger until the assault is delivered when it can suddenly be run into battery and served with murderous effect."

Abbot then described an attack by the 22nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment on the Dutton redoubt located near Bermuda Hundred.