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 “cannon” of six barrels, made by Miles Greenwood & Co. of Cincinnati. Actual arms were destroyed by fire but patent drawing probably pictures these first specimens. Weapon used steel chargers of “Union” type.

The revolving bundle of barrels to which Dr. Gatling attached a hopper feed for steel chargers solved many of the problems then plaguing machine gun designers. First, the hopper permitted the sustained fire desired. With sustained fire, as in the Ager or Williams gun, came hazards; expansion from over heating and either jamming, or erosion of the bore. Gatling solved this by adding barrels. The time delay between the firing of succeeding shots in any one barrel, as it revolved about to return to its place before the firing mechanism, was enough to permit some cooling. Originally Gatling conceived of an enclosed barrel group with a cylinder about the barrels to hold cooling materials. This was found to be not necessary and the Gatling guns from first until the brass-jacket Ml883 were exposed barrel models.
It can be answered with some degree of certainty why Gatling invented his gun. That is, in the lives of many other inventors, statements of purpose are often lacking. Some may have invented such-and-such for patriotic motives, to get rich quick, or some other mundane, prosaic reason. Dr. Gatling, independently wealthy at the start of the war, has chosen to set forth his own reasons quite clearly.

In 1877, Gatling lived in Hartford, Connecticut next door to Mrs. Colt, widow of the late Samuel Colt at whose factory the Gatling Gun Company now contracted the manufacture of their guns. Mrs. Colt’s little niece, Elizabeth Jarvis, was a frequent visitor to the Gatling’s hospitable residence, and Gatling explained to her his beliefs at the time he developed the guns:

Hartford, June 15th, 1877My Dear Friend.

It may be interesting to you to know how I came to invent the gun which bears my name; I will tell you: In 1861, during the opening events of the war, (residing at that time in Indianapolis, Ind.,) I witnessed almost daily the departure of troops to the front and the return of the wounded, sick, and dead. The most of the latter lost their lives, not in battle, but by sickness and exposure incident to the service. It occurred to me if I could invent a machine-a gun-which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease be greatly diminished. I thought over the subject and finally this idea took practical form in the invention of the Gatling Gun.

Yours truly,
R. J. Gatling

By the time of Gatling’s elderly years, the story had grown slightly in nobility; as his granddaughter, Mrs. Albert Newcombe, remembers it. “He was a most peace-loving soul, and I remember that his reason for inventing that then-lethal gun, was to make war so horrible that it would end wars.”
But Gatling’s own written words seem to be less glamorous, for in 1864 he touched somewhat on his motives in a letter to President Lincoln. “The arm in question is an invention of no ordinary character,” he wrote from Indianapolis to the President on February 18, 1864. “It is regarded by all who have seen it operate, as the most effective implement of warfare invented during the war, and it is just the thing needed to aid in crushing the present rebellion.” (Emphasis supplied by Dr. Gatling). Taking a swipe at the Ager gun in a postscript, Gatling concluded his appeal to Lincoln to have the gun adopted by the Army with:

“I have seen an inferior arm known as the ‘coffee mill gun,’ which I am informed has not given satisfac- tion in practical tests on the battlefield. I assure you my invention is no ‘coffee mill gun,’ — but is entirely a different arm, and is entirely free from the accidents and objections raised against that arm.”

There is in this a hint of the efficiency, the veritable “automation” which Gatling, a mechanical scientist first and always, sought to bring to the battlefront. His first gun was patented November 4, 1862, but was in existence, working well on July 14, 1862. That day, T. A. Morris, A. Ballweg, and D. G. Rose certified to the working of the gun which they had tested at direction of Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana. “The discharge can be made with all desirable accuracy as rapidly as 150 times a minute, and may be continued for hours without danger, as we think, from over heating.”
But Morris, Ballweg, and Rose admitted that only field service would prove the point; they recommended that Morton order enough be made for testing in battle.
The Governor was unwilling to risk state funds at the time, and so sent Gatling to Washington with a letter of introduction to P. H. Watson, the new Assistant Secretary of  war under Stanton. His letter is dated December 2, 1862; Gatling must have arrived there not much later than the 4th or 5th, allowing even for delays en route. With him he had a gun.
What kind of gun this was is the subject of some dispute among arms historians. By the fall of 1862, prior to the issue of his patent, Gatling had contracted on his own account to have six guns made at the works of Miles Greenwood  Company in Cincinnati. This firm was recognized by the Ordnance Department as a firm loyal to the North. They supplied between August 30, 1861, and December 24, 1862, many bronze smoothbore and rifled guns and howitzers, and 2,500 lances with pennons, for a total value delivered of $84,157.68. That Miles Greenwood could deliver to Gatling the guns he required seems true, but the factory was destroyed by fire and with it, Gatling’s models and the partly finished battery of guns. The date of the fire is carelessly passed over in the record, and we have not been able to tie it down; yet it would seem to have been about the New Year’s, 1863. The sample gun was made either by a private model maker to Gatling’s order, or by Miles Greenwood and delivered to the doctor in time for his trip to Washington. Most likely, he would have taken one of the six, if finished in time, asking the factory to store the others until he should know whether to send them to Washington or to some commander in the field. There was said to have been a Gatling gun dated 1862 in the Washington Arsenal for some years after the war. The models of Gatling guns must therefore be said to consist of patterns as follows:

• Type I: Wooden breech actually made and deposited with the initial filing for the patent. This shortened mechanical model of wood was in existence in the 1940’s and photographed, but its location is not known now to this writer.
• Type IA: the gun detailed more clearly in the final issued patent specification of November 4, 1862, No. 36836. Of six barrels mounted in plates at muzzle and breech, this piece set the style for subsequent models having long trunnion arms reaching forward to support the barrel group on a cross member at the front. The back plate has the cascabel knob of one of Miles Greenwood’s cannon; it is not the round knob containing aiming or safety mechanism that is found on later Gatling guns. Elevation was a simple screw jack in a box between the trail arms; the gun trunnions were mounted in pillow blocks on top of the cheeks of the trail and, perhaps a draughting error or perhaps a designing error, the caps of the pillow block slanted to the rear, suggesting the ease with which the gun could jump out of its seat if recoil was excessive.

The barrel group axle passed entirely through the breech to the rear, just inside the cascable plate. There, a gear engaged a cog on the right-mounted hand crank, to turn the barrels and breechblocks. From a centrally mounted hopper, steel cartridge cases using individual percussion caps on musket nipples, dropped into a cylinder exactly like the Ager cylinder.
Gatling considered the Ager gun to be competition and obliquely referred to it in his patent: “I do not claim the use of the grooved or fluted revolving carrier separately considered, and when the same is made to revolve separately and independently of the barrels and breech, the same being an old device,” he deprecatingly put it. The group of barrels and locks revolving together with him were new.
It is possible that this type of gun was going with him to Washington. But the record is not entirely clear. “My first guns were built in Cincinnati (Miles Greenwood), and were able to fire 150 to 250 shots per minute. Six had been completed when the factory burned down and the guns were destroyed,” he reported in an interview to a New York reporter, recorded later in an obituary column on his life. “Following this accident,” as Dr. Gatling categorically calls the fire, “I had thirteen guns made at what is now the type foundry in Cincinnati, and those I sent on by my partner, a wealthy merchant of Cincinnati, to Washington to persuade the Government to introduce them. He took them to Baltimore, where he left twelve, and went with the other to Washington. The Chief of Ordnance at the time was an old fogey. He received him coldly, told him he had no faith in his gun, and that he believed flintlock muskets were on the whole the best weapons for Warfare. In short, he would have nothing to do with him. My partner then left Washington and returned to Baltimore. Ben Buder was there with his troops. He had heard of the guns and had asked to see them work. As soon as he had done so he said he would buy them on his own responsibility, and did so, giving his voucher for $12,000 for them. My partner had this cashed, but at this time there was a great fall in pork, and 50,000 hogs which he had packed in Chicago in expectation of a rise had to be sold. In a word the break in the market ruined him, and my money went with him. So, for the first twenty guns I had made at a great cost to myself, I received nothing. Ben Butler took the guns he had with him to the Battle of Petersburg and fired them himself upon the rebels. They created great consternation and slaughter, and the news of them went all over the world ...”
The autobiographical Butler’s Book in its several volumes neglects to mention this colorful use of an important novel weapon of war by the loquacious major general. Major Frederick V. Longstaff in The Machine Gun (1917) notes the oft-repeated tale that Gatling’s guns were demonstrated “on the field of battle” by either Dr. Gatling or one of his crew, but says little more than that of the alleged Civil War use of the arm. An early reference to Ben Butler and the guns is made by General Norton, who was in 1872 not only a close friend of Gatling’s but possibly a paid publicist. His cover ornament for American Breechloading Small Arms is a beautiful stamping of a horse carrying a Gatling gun, over the legend, “The Gatling Gun,” while the back of the book is devoted to a very thorough essay on the Gatling, with emphasis on its successful use after adoption by the United States and manufacture in 1865-66 by contractors Cooper and Colt.
Says Norton briefly, “Some of them did get into service before the close of the American war, and were used effectively in repelling rebel attacks upon the Union Forces, under command of General Butler, near Richmond, Virginia.” To check with the facts, these guns had to be in service between June 1864 and April 1865, during which time several battles or campaigns involving fighting at Petersburg are dated. The letter of February 18, 1864, of Gatling to Lincoln makes it quite clear that no guns were delivered to the United States Army or Navy before that time. Yet during the New York draft riots of July, 1863, right after Gettysburg, several Gatling guns were ensconced in the windows of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune headquarters, and on one occasion at least turned away a serious threat of attack by the mobs. Reference to this is found lately in July 1863 a novelized version
of the time by Irving Werstein, whose sources for the Gadings seem to confirm their existence there in Greeley’s windows.
We therefore have to assume that at least two or three of the Cincinnati type foundry guns had been completed by June of 1863, and that Gatling sent them out to Greeley for publicity purposes. These presumably were returned to Gatling in Cincinnati, where they remained until February of 1864, when, as he said to President Lincoln, “Messrs. McWhinny and Rindge, partners of mine in the manufacture and sale of the gun, are now in Washington with a sample gun and I hope ere long to hear of its adoption by the War Department.”
Robert V. Bruce in Lincoln and the Tools of War is equally uncertain about this matter of the use of Gatlings. There was an easy chance in the records to confuse them with the Ager or Union Repeating Gun, which may have accounted for Gatling's vehemence in declaring to Lincoln that his was no “coffee mill gun.” For example, Bruce reveals that the coffee mill guns died hard. In October 1863 John H. Schenck, an as- sociate of Edward Nugent, announced himself as their new proprietor and complained that those ordered by Rosecrans had not yet reached that officer’s successor, General George H. Thomas, “who highly approves of them.”
Although 16 of the coffee mill guns remained at the Washington Arsenal, the Ordnance Office ignored Schenck’s complaints, as well as his suggestion that the guns be carried on horseback by cavalry and mounted

Improved styling is present in second series of Gatling repeaters which also used steel .58 chargers. McWhinney, Rindge &Co. were partners with Gatling in manufacture of second series of guns at Cincinnati Type Foundry. Gun shown is No. 205, preserved at Springfield Armory.

infantry, ready for swift dismounting and use. Ten were sent to General Butler in February 1864 when he requested them for use on boat service upon the James river (op. cit., p. 282). These it must be assumed are those “Gatling’s” sometimes spoken of as in service in the James River squadron; actually, they were Ager coffee mill guns. But later on (pp. 290-91), Bruce says Admiral Porter actually acquired one Gatling gun for his Mississippi squadron and General Butler used eight Gatling guns on gunboats and two in the Petersburg lines. Bruce himself seems confused in the issue; even more confusing is the statement from John W. Gatling, grandson of the inventor, to this author on June 21, 1957:

“No one seems to know any anecdotes on the Civil War use of the gun. General Ben Butler, with his own money, had the first gun made after my grandfather had been turned down by the Army. They were made at Cincinnati at a brass foundry that did work of this nature on contract. How my grandfather came to know him I don’t know, but they were very close friends. This factory was destroyed by fire, but I don’t believe it was anything but an accident and in no way connected with the war or guns.”

Here we have a very interesting piece of family legend, in which there may lurk some shades of history. If Butler advanced money to Gatling for the manufacture of the guns at Miles Greenwood  Company, then Butler was a party to the manufacture of an invention which he later, exercising the prerogative of a commander, purchased for use after rejection by the Government. He may have been quite reluctant, in view of history not also noticing the event, to have made much of any employment of the Gatling guns if he did in fact have any in his command. Dr. Gatling was quite sure that Butler bought the 12 guns his partner had taken to Baltimore, but there appears to have been contemporary confusion over the use of the expression “coffee mill guns” that made soldiers and commanders interchange the Union repeater and the Gatling Battery Gun under the same heading. Later, in his writings during which he makes claim to other innovations, Butler’s failure to mention his alleged purchase of the Gatlings is conspicuous.
That Butler had an “interest” in the Gatlings, paying for “the first gun made after Gatling was turned down by the Army,” is beyond proof today.
Aside from the Butler references, it was not until May, 1863, that Gatling was able to get much notice taken of his development. Meanwhile, the fire had destroyed his factory and he began again, in associa- tion with McWhinny, Rindge  Company. Neither McWhinny or Rindge are listed as gunmakers, contractors for ordnance and ordnance stores, nor in tabulations of gunsmiths and like suppliers. It is assumed they owned or represented an establishment in Indianapolis, which Dr. Gatling made his headquarters after the fire at Miles Greenwood. One gun tested by the Navy appears to be a transition model, in that it necessarily still used the steel cylinder percussion cap-charges, but had an improvement in the form of the breech casing which is reflected in the construction of the several existing percussion-cap Gatlings now in Government museums. In other words, it was a model not shown in any patent, but somewhat less bulky in the breech than the 1862 model. During May, 1863, the Navy tested the gun:

NAVY ORDNANCE YARD
Washington City, May 20th, 1863

Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, Chief of Bureau of Ordnance:

Sir: In relation to the “Gatling gun or battery,” I have to report as follows:

The gun consists of six rifle barrels, of 58/100-inch calibre; each barrel is firmly connected to a breech-piece by a screw of 1 inch in length. The breech-piece is composed of one solid piece, which is made secure to a shaft 1⅜-inch in diameter. The barrels are inserted in the breech-piece around the shaft, on a parallel line with the axes of said shaft, and held in a proper position by a muzzle-piece, bored by the same gauge as the holes for the breech-piece for the reception of the barrels. The breech-piece is also bored in the rear end, for the reception of the locks, on a parallel line with the barrels, each barrel having its own independent lock, revolving simultaneously, so that in case one lock or barrel becomes disabled, those remaining can be used effectively.

Between the locks and barrels is a receptacle for the charges on a parallel line with the locks and barrels. As the entire gun revolves, the charges find their way through a hopper, containing any given number, fed from cases, instantaneously. The breech-piece contains the locks, and is entirely protected by a heavy casing of gun-metal (brass alloy), made fast to a wrought-iron frame resting on trunnions 1 ½ inches in diameter. It is screwed to the frame by four bolts. Inside this casing is attached an inclined ring, which the hammers of the locks ride as the gun revolves, until coming to the point of fire, when the discharge takes place. The locks are composed of three pieces and one spiral spring, and are entirely protected from dust or any injury. The gun is mounted as other field-pieces, with limber attached.

The gun or battery has stood the limited test given it admirably, has proved itself to be a very effective arm at short range; is well constructed, and calculated to withstand the usage to which it would necessarily be subjected. It is suggested that an improvement in the rifling of the barrels would be advantageous.

Respectfully submitted,

J. S. Skerrett,
Lt. Commander U. S. N.

Mounted on light field artillery carriage, rapid fire .58 Gatling gun may he one of few bought by Ben Butler, though records are exceedingly hazy on this alleged use of Gatling’s design in Civil War. Family says Butler backed Gatling in manufacture of arms for government use.

Admiral Dahlgren gave permission to commanders of fleets and squadrons to requisition such guns as they might require. As Gading wrote to Lincoln, on February 18, 1864, “Since which time a number of requisitions have been sent in for the guns by different naval officers, but none of said requisitions have been granted to my knowledge.”
The delay in patronizing the Indianapolis physician, who was known to be of Southern descent, lay with the belief that he belonged to the Organization of American Knights. While some principles of this secret society flourishing in the western and border states were very fundamentalist American, what in calmer times might have been called truly patriotic, in the present schism they served merely to rock the boat. For one thing, as a goal for some of the members, they proposed to unite the states west of the Mississippi in a third nation, a Western Confederacy, sympathetic to the Southern and withdrawing the support of these regions from the war machine of the North. Further, they proposed to bring Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio into the war on the Southern side; secret agents reporting to Federal Provost Marshal Colonel J. P. Sanderson at St. Louis even referred to Confederate volunteer regiments of Indiana as being at least nominally in existence.
A report filed with Sanderson some time between April 18, 1864, and May 25, 1864, by an unnamed informant, listed among members of the Order of American Knights “in different localities as far as
known to date,” one “Dr. Gatling, inventor of gun so called.”
The report circulated, and Brigadier General Henry B. Carrington, U.S. Volunteers, conveyed the information in a report to Captain C. H. Potter who was assistant adjutant general of Ohio, at Columbus. Carrington sought to advise Captain Potter how widespread the conspiracy was, and especially the current threat of an uprising of Southern sympathizers, well armed, at the occasion of a forthcoming convention and speech in Chicago by C. L. Vallandigham, the grand commander of the Order. “If numbers, money, and oaths can give them the power and will to strike,” Carrington wrote June 6, 1864, “they are a dangerous body of men and it will pay to be ferreted out . . . Dr. Gatling, inventor of the gun so called, is a member of the order.”
During the year preceding, a celebrated incident of the war had occurred that Colonel Chinn thinks may have some direct bearing on why Gatling’s guns were not made and used before this. The incident is Morgan’s Raid, up into Ohio and Indiana. That Morgan was in direct contact with the Knights of the Golden Circle, as the Order of American Knights was sometimes called, is indicated by voluminous correspondence and testimony. Most directly, a letter noted by James D. Horan in Confederate Agent, written July 10, 1863, by Conrad Baker, Acting Provost Marshal General of Indiana, to Colonel Fry, Acting Provost Marshal of Indianapolis, states: “In consequence of Morgan’s raid into this state and the fears I entertain that there is an understanding between him and the Knights of the Golden Circle.”
For a fuller exposition of the scope of this fantastic but almost-successful series of insurrections proposed by the Confederate secret service, we would refer the reader to Horan’s book. That Morgan was in league with the Knights is quite certain. The purpose of his raid, therefore, is what fascinates Chinn. Did Gatling contract to have his guns made by Miles Greenwood in order to have them captured by Morgan thus saving him from the embarrassment of openly supplying the guns to the South? Or did Morgan push on toward Indianapolis partly to capture the new lot of guns being made under direction of McWhinny and Rindge? Exactly when were Gatling’s guns actually burned, and did the whole factory of Miles Greenwood go, or only the Gatlings? It would seem probable that only the latter occurred.
There is room here for a book, resolving the seeming paradox that while Gading was accused of being a sympathizer and member of the organization working to destroy the Northern government, he also sought to supply the North with his guns. Such duplicity is not unheard of, but it does not fit Gatling’s character as later revealed by those who knew him.
He was definitely not a sympathizer with the slavery of the South, and at the same time recent researchers have made out a fair case that to be a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle was not necessarily to be disloyal.

During war, Gatling’s guns influenced no battle, won no conflict. At war’s end contract was let to Colt’s who supplied 50 guns in 1" caliber for fortress defense. Here three of this order are shown on river front at Washington Arsenal on Potomac.

Gatling was of a temperament to side with the Southern cause for a time, at the same instant being a firm “Jacksonian Democrat,” a fundamentalist, a Constitution-man in an age when interpretations of the Constitution varied widely.
“My grandfather abhorred war, force, and was most peace loving,” his grandson John W. Gatling notes as a recollection of family lore, John W. having been born about two years after Richard J.’s death. “You could not impose on him, for he was very firm and strong about his ‘rights,’ but differences were to be settled by negotiation, and people were to be free, unregimented, and individuals.” The charge that Dr. Gatling was of the Order is plausible and possible; that he was genuinely disloyal, implausible.
Gatling’s contribution to the war effort of either side was negligible. But he persisted in seeking government patronage and continued to perfect his designs. To adapt the percussion cap guns to metallic cartridge, he effected a modification of the breech bolt to a double-edge firing pin, and at the same time substituted cylindrical steel chambers individually charged with rimfire .58 musket cartridges. But this was a makeshift and did not last long. The patent of 1865 reveals a four-barrel gun, slower rate of fire, and a genuine novelty in cooling system; the barrel group is cased in a sealed canister, into which water or cooling liquids, or plaster of paris for cooling, could be introduced. It takes little imagination to see that the first time the plaster of paris was put in and then later someone carelessly added water, the concept was found to have practical defects. Gatling for the time dropped the barrel casing, and increased the barrels to a minimum of five, a maximum of ten.
Transition guns were experimentally chambered for the .58 rimfire musket cartridge at the end of the war, and further changes were due. After the tests of January-February 1865, General Dyer suggested constructing a 1-inch gun, and special ammunition for this caliber was made at Frankford Arsenal. The contract was given to the Cooper Firearms Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia, where eight were built in 1-inch caliber, ten barreled. Tests continued, more for the fun of shooting the thing, we suspect, than from the need to really learn anything new. Captain T. G. Baylor at Fort Monroe, firing the 1-inch gun in comparison with the 24-pdr. flank defense howitzer loaded with langrage, reported what Gatling long since knew and had often said: “The moral effect of the Gatling gun would be very great in repelling an assault, as there is not a second of time for the assailants to advance between the discharges.”
Reported on July 14, 1866, it was at last decided to redly adopt the Gatling gun as a part of the arsenal of the United States. An order for Gatlings not previously recognized is that given by General A. B. Dyer. Dated August 24, 1866, was the order to Talbot, Jones & Company of Indianapolis, for 100 guns, half .50 caliber and half 1-inch caliber, “each gun to have six steel barrels, rifled.” The gun carriages were to be of seasoned white oak, the limbers and ammunition chests to be identical, except for interior arrangement of the ammo boxes, with the limbers for field carriages. Barrels were to be browned, a blue-black rusting process; other iron or steel parts to be blued. In proof each gun was to be fired 96 times, 16 from each barrel. The order was to be completed in 12 months, the guns to be delivered “at the manufactury.” Price was $2,000 each 1-inch gun and $1,500 each .50 caliber gun.

Col. Mel Johnson in 1949 took regular M1883 Gatling and hooked up electric motor drive to achieve fantastic rate of fire. Notion led to development of electric Vulcan gun for FI05 jet fighter armament.

Talbot, Jones  Company subcontracted this work to the Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company of Hartford, and the guns were completed there. Deliveries and payments to Talbot Jones spread over the spring and summer of 1867; first deliveries in April 20 of five .50 caliber guns were paid for promptly on May 1. Deducted from the payment was the sum of $525, evidently an advance against materials or work, by the United States. Additional advances totalled over $11,000, but work lagged slightly on the 1-inch guns until the day before deadline, 35 1-inch guns were presented for inspection and acceptance on August 23, 1867. The contract totalling $175,000 at last was paid; Gatling had begun to reap a return from his endeavors. But the gun he developed to make war more economical, so that fewer soldiers would be called upon to fall ill from the diseases of the camp and field, had quite the opposite effect.