CHAPTER 3 Ordnance-Industry: Mismatched Team

The militia system was for many years the underpinning of the small-arms procurement system in the United States. Both national armories’ output was generally reserved for issue to Regular Army troops. For the militia, six private armories furnished arms under the Militia Act of 1808.
Under this sinecure there was appropriated annually $200,000 to be apportioned among the several states in proportion to the number of militia enrolled. For convenience of accounting, each state had a quota of arms established annually in terms of so many muskets. Thus, for example, South Carolina for 1850 might be allowed 200 muskets, but during the first part of the year had only drawn 100 actual muskets from among the private armories’ production in the depot at Governor’s Island or Washington Arsenal. South Carolina’s militia authorities therefore would have a credit of 100 muskets still due, and could draw their value if desired in harness, cannon, field forges, or other military goods on an approved list of stores for issue under this Act. Sometimes it was possible for a state to carry over a credit to the following year, if an improved model was to be issued, or if a more valuable purchase, such as several batteries of artillery, were contemplated. At other times, states could, if their adjutant generals were persuasive enough, draw in one year materiel against the budget of the ensuing year.

Private Armories

The six private armories achieved quasi-governmental status in 1808, though one or two had been in business for a short time before that. From among all the contractors for arms in the country these six emerged: Asa Waters, of Sutton (now Millbury), Massachusetts, Simeon North of Berlin and later Middletown, Connecticut, Nathan Starr of Middletown, Eli Whitney of Whitneyville, near New Haven, Henry Deringer of Philadelphia, and Lemuel Pomeroy, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. These private armories were regarded as permanent, having been publicly recognized by the Government as a part of the United States force for the supply of arms. In 1845, when the last contracts expired, the whole system was broken up, without notice. Firms such as Waters and Pomeroy dissolved.
Deringer continued making pistols but ceased to be a factor in armaments. Whitney continued to obtain contracts by reason of the technological excellence of his factory and interchangeable plan. Colonel North, old and in ill health, declined rapidly and upon his death in 1850 his government business ended. But the real reason for the end of the business was the actions of the Chief of Ordnance, Colonel George Talcott, who replaced Colonel George Bomford in 1845.

The Talcott Scandal

Talcott’s predecessor, Colonel Bomford, was (like most Chiefs of Ordnance) a man of strong opinions. Practical experience had persuaded him that the flintlock musket was the best arm for the common soldier. Specialized privately patented arms enjoyed success in the hands of elite, trained troops in this country and abroad, such as Harney’s Dragoons in Florida with Colt’s rifles, and the Chasseurs de Vincennes in France with the earliest military rifles. Nevertheless Bomford did not hold with the new-fangled patent arms and the rejection of flint and steel. He was instrumental in building up a system of coastal forts and developed for them large-caliber cast-iron shell guns known as Columbiads.
In 1844, Bomford ordered the building of a Columbiad on a wrought-iron built-up principle. The Peacemaker was one of the largest guns in service at that time. Installed aboard the U.S.S. Princeton, it was readied for a demonstration before the new Secretary of the Navy, Abel P. Upshur, and President Tyler himself. On the third drill round, the gun burst, smashing a piece of wrought-iron breech into Upshur’s chest, killing him, and nearly getting the President.
Bomford’s Columbiad was not a success, and it remained for the technology of a later date to perfect a successful wrought-iron cannon.
Colonel Bomford, aging, was retired the following year. In his stead, his subordinate, Talcott, was appointed Chief of Ordnance. With Colonel Bomford having laid the foundations of a Columbiad shell-gun fortress system girding the nation’s coast, Talcott was in a position to profit. He profited not from the six private armories, but from another means.
When the contracts for muskets and small arms, and the new Mississippi Rifles made by Whitney, were not renewed, the six private armories were distressed. One of these armorers, Asa Holman Waters, later published (1878) a most interesting document titled Gunmaking in Sutton & Millbury. In this privately printed book he described the situation under Talcott’s regime:
Since the gunmakers had large capital invested in equipment of no use in anything but arms manufacture, they were distressed. They asked General George Talcott (he was later brevet brigadier), of Ordnance, why their contracts were ended. He replied, ‘It was done in obedience to instructions from the Honorable the Secretary of War.’ This honorable secretary was Wilkins of Pennsylvania, who soon after retired from office, and when asked why he issued the order, said ‘he did not know he had; that Talcott sent in so many papers it was as much as he could do to sign them; he had no time to read them.’
“The condition of things at the department appears to be that while honorable secretaries were coming and going every few months, Talcott remained there in permanence; had been there many years, and had become a perfect autocrat in the office. The only use he had for honorable secretaries was to sign his papers, and if any complaint arose, his uniform reply was, ‘Done in obedience to instructions from the Honorable the Secretary of War,’ thus making the Secretary a scapegoat for all his sins. But a terrible retribution came at last.
“When President Polk came into power (1846), he appointed as Secretary of War a lawyer from New Orleans by the name of Conrad, whose knowledge of War office business was confined chiefly to the ‘code and pistols for two.’ He took the customary round of visiting the armories and arsenals, and wherever he went he noticed vast stacks and pyramids of cannon balls. On his return he sent a simple order to (now) General Talcott, to issue no more contracts for cannon ball.
“Not long after, among the papers sent in for him to sign, he happened to notice a new contract for cannon ball. He writes to Talcott to know why it was issued. Talcott replies in his usual style, ‘done in obedience to instructions, etc.’ Conrad answers that ‘so far as being done in obedience, it was in disobedience to instructions, etc.’ Talcott, in reply had the presumption to reaffirm his previous statement. Conrad’s ire was raised at once; said he did not know much about cannon ball but on matters of veracity he was at home. Being in official station he could not challenge Talcott (to a duel) and so he ordered him to be tried by court martial before a board of which General Winfield Scott was made judge advocate. Much more was proved in the trial than was expected. It appeared in evidence that General Talcott was the owner of a large factory in Richmond, Virginia, devoted to making cannon ball; that it was in charge of his nephew, to whom he issued, from time to time, large contracts upon most favorable terms; that he had become very rich; was the owner of large blocks in Washington, where he was living in the style of an eastern nabob.
“The mystery of the discontinuance of the private armories was now revealed. The moneys intended for their support found their outlet chiefly through this channel.

“General Scott, with his high sense of honor, was greatly shocked that a government official so high in position, a graduate of West Point, a brigadier general in the Army, and Chief of the Ordnance Department, should be found guilty of such corrupt embezzlement. His sentence was terribly severe, almost without precedent. In brief, it was that General Talcott should be removed from the office of Chief of Ordnance, be deprived of his commission of brigadier general, his name erased from the roll of Army officers, and be sent in disgrace out of Washington.

In Talcott’s Footsteps

While Bomford and Talcott had a profound effect upon the small-arms program of the nation during their tenures of office, I had never given the matter another thought until 1957. Then, during an October meeting of the American Ordnance Association at Aberdeen Proving Ground, I and four thousand other members of this civilian-military league of men concerned with national defense listened to an address on the Ordnance Department’s record by Secretary of War Wilber Brucker. I had to stifle my burst of laughter as the Secretary spoke of the men of today’s Ordnance Corps following in the footsteps of the great Bomford and Talcott. Whether the Secretary’s speech writer had a most winsome sense of humor, or simply couldn’t know any better, I never did find out. Considering the snafus and goof-ups in our ordnance program from small arms through to missiles with which the ensuing years have been marked, I wonder if some unsung scribe in the Secretary’s speech-writing staff didn’t hit the nail on the head. Historically, the succeeding Chiefs of Ordnance who followed Talcott were a little better. Under Colonel H. K. Craig, through direction of Jefferson Davis, great strides were made in small arms for militia and for the Army. The emphasis swung away either from the private armories supply concept, or from buying cannon balls from the Chief of Ordnance’s own foundry, to greater reliance upon the national armories.
The build up at both Harpers Ferry and Springfield, as well as the foundry at Pittsburgh, and the increase of activity restoring old arms, transforming flint muskets to percussion, and building minor stores like gun carriages and holsters at the regional arsenals, was both good and bad. Those establishments which remained in the North worked well for the Union. Those which were in the South constituted reservoirs of technology upon which much of Southern War production was based.
Oddly, General Talcott’s buying of excessively large amounts of cannon balls from his Richmond foundry contributed to the improvement in Virginia’s ordnance production during the Civil War. For War was coming; even during the 1850’s few doubted it.