Quakers got a bad name not so long ago: Richard Nixon was one.

Funnily enough, I first heard of Quaker guns when Sandra and I were doing a tour of several Civil War battlefields in 2001.

They used Quaker guns at Sharpsburg/Antietam. The Japanese-American ranger there showed us where the Confederates positioned them to deter a flank attack. They were, apparently, made on the spot and were really crude. It's not in any of the official histories and he got the information from some source he was holding close to his chest! He was doing his PhD on the battle.

Sharpsburg is the spookiest of the Civil War battlefields that we went to. It was, hands down, the bloodiest single day's action in the war.

It's one of the easiest on which to visualise the action. It may have been because we had such a good guide, but.