Weapons Offered by Boker

On September 4, 1861, Boker’s New York man wrote to Simon Cameron, offering 100,000 “rifled percussion muskets, new and in good condition,” which they now controlled in Europe by having made advances on them. Cameron was thrown into a tizzy, rushed quickly to his friend Lincoln, who quietly and incisively endorsed the Boker proposal with:

I approve the carrying this through, carefully, cautiously, and expeditiously. Avoid conflicts and interference.
A. LINCOLN

Boker had set a price of $18 each on the guns, subject to inspection and approval of an armorer which Cameron was to appoint to accompany their authorized agent. Cameron agreed, issuing a letter-contract September 5, 1861 setting New York as the place of payment, upon inspection certificates of the United States inspector in Europe, on delivery. He also at once wrote to Minister Henry Sanford at Brussels, asking him to cooperate to the fullest with Boker’s men. Civilian Ordnance employee George Wright, a master armorer from the Washington Arsenal who had received some $1,500 as a special royalty on a patent for casting fuses, was appointed to acompany Boker’s man to Europe. General Ripley put him on full pay during the absence, and his expenses to and in Europe and return were to be paid by Boker.

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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

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