Arms from the Association

Arms from the Association were from various makers. No special tabulation now exists by which a name could be connected with this order. Records show barrels passing proof at Birmingham as follows:

1856	384,900
1857	490,037
1858	333,478
1859	450,753
1860	486,617
1861	656,605
1862	1,131,306
1863	No record
1864	No record
1865	552,109

The prewar years and 1865 indicate the norm for the Trade was about a half million barrels annually. A large proportion of these were common sporting gun and rifle barrels; presumably, also, pistols. But the rise in 1860-61 was caused by the excitement in Eng- land that they might go to War with France at any minute. A Volunteer Rifle movement swept the United Kingdom and yoemanry regiments were formed overnight. Equipped at private expense, their rifles were finely finished. For this market the Whitworth and Kerr sharpshooter rifles were aimed.

The Volunteer Rifle movement tapered off into the shooting association of Great Britain, but the Confederate and Yankee purchasers came along to fan the flames of Birmingham barrel forges higher. The increase of 500,000 barrels over 1861 for 1862 was entirely of Enfield type barrels, for the warring purchasers. Why no records are found for 1863 and 1864 is not known —they would be of great interest, if they existed. How much more the United States paid for Enfields from Naylor, than if Stanton had let Hartley remain another six months abroad, is a simple problem of arithmetic which others can solve. The record of history shows that Naylor sent in guns regularly, in quantities promised, and of good quality, often better than expected. That a great many of these guns never got to the fighting fronts, and troops maneuvered in the morass of a southern winter carrying smoothbore muskets, is the fault of official Washington and failures of transportation, not of the Ordnance to contract and buy, nor of Naylor or other contractors to deliver.

Comments

The Gatling Gun

Ager, Williams, Vandenberg, these have faded into history. The repeating gun most remembered from the war, and yet one which had a very confusing record of use therein, is that of Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling. I had the pleasure of witnessing how effectively Dr. Gatling had builded when I attended a meeting of the American Ordnance Association at Aberdeen the fall of 1957 . Mounted on a testing stand was a small bundle of barrels, dwarfed in seeming firepower by the huge cannon flanking it. But when the gunner pushed the button and that mighty mite whirred into action with a high-pitched snarling roar so rapidly that no individual explosions could even be sensed, I knew I had witnessed not only the world’s fastest-firing machine gun, and the world’s heaviest gun in weight of metal fired (a ton and a half in one minute), but a gun that was directly inspired by the Civil War special artillery General Butler bought from Dr. Gatling. First of Gatling’s guns was bulky wheeled carriage “c...

CHAPTER 6 Rifle Muskets: Civil War Scandals

You place me in a most embarrassing position, Mr. Secretary. How is that, Mr. Wilkeson? the gaunt-faced Penn sylvanian queried, the lines of his expression amplified by the fatigue and, somewhat, disappointment with which he laid down his role as Secretary of War for Mr. Lincoln. Because, Mr. Cameron, the newspaperman re sponded, your contract for rifle muskets with the Eagle Manufacturing Company of Mansfield, Connecticut is for only 25,000 arms, and my friends there, whom I induced to engage in this business in expectation of your issuing a further order, as your assistant Mr. Scott assured me you would, will be sorely embarrassed in their operations on this small amount. Indeed this is bad news to me, Mr. Wilkeson, War Secretary Simon Cameron sympathetically observed, as he stuffed papers from his desk drawer into a large portfolio, scanning them briefly, consigning some to the waste basket. But as you can see, I am leaving office today; I believe Mister Stanton, who repla...

CHAPTER 7 Injustice to Justice

In justice to Justice, it must be said that a recent examination of one of the muskets, for the supplying of which to the Union he was so villified, proves to be a reasonably well-assembled hodgepodge of surplus parts and at least as strong and reliable as the American parts from which it was built. But when Philip S. Justice, gunmaker-importer of Philadelphia, tried to get aboard the Federal musket contract gravy train, he both got more than he bar gained for—and Holt and Owen conversely gave him less.

Civil War Guns

Search This Blog