It was a standard infantry weapon for Union and Confederates alike, until the Springfield Model 1861 supplanted it, obviating the use of the insufficiently weather resistant Maynard tape primer.

While the powder and Minié ball still had to be loaded conventionally, the tape system was designed to automate the placing of the percussion cap and therefore speed up the overall rate of fire of the weapon.

An attempt was made to remedy this problem by making the tape primers out of foil, but despite the improvement this brought, the United States Army Ordnance Department abandoned the Maynard system and went back to the standard percussion lock in later rifled muskets like the Model 1861.

[2] The machinery to make the Model 1855 rifled muskets, at Harpers Ferry was captured by the Confederate Army in early 1861.

The captured machinery to produce rifled muskets was taken to Richmond Armory, where it formed the backbone of Confederate weapon manufacturing capability.

The rifled musket machinery was taken to Fayetteville Arsenal, North Carolina where it too was put to use for significant arms production throughout the War.

Some of them were destroyed when the Confederate military captured the Harpers Ferry arsenal in April 1861, and several thousand more were in Southern hands.

[3] The Model 1855 got its first test in September 1858 in the Pacific Northwest at the Battle of Four Lakes (Spokane Plains) where the Northern tribes greatly outnumbered U.S. troops.

[8] The Model 1855 rifled musket was modified in 1858 to include a simpler rear sight (the typical flip-up leaf type), a patch box on the side of the buttstock, and an iron nosecap to replace the brass one.