Boker Gets Desperate

Boker’s situation was rapidly becoming desperate. Though the enterprise founded by Herman Boker had been in business 30 years, guns and hardware, he was not possessed of unlimited capital. It seems likely he had obtained many of the guns on consignment, having to pay his numerous suppliers in a specified time. By March 13, 1862, the need for money was urgent, and Boker of New York offered to adjust the prices of arms if desired, but that the United States should please send him half a million dollars needed to tide him over a tight situation.

The accounts rendered by us for arms since December 21, 1861, and the delivery of arms since that date to your or- donance [sic] officer in New York amount to upwards of one million and a half dollars. To save our credit, which we value beyond profit, we require this week $500,000 ... By our proposition, we evince our readiness to risk our legitimate profits to save our credit, which is dearer to us than anything else in business; but the offer also demonstrates our confidence that you will deal uprightly and fairly with us . . .
Stanton directed Hagner to strike up a balance on the Boker deal and (including advances made by San- ford of $402,895.00) found that about $252,000 was still owing Boker. Stanton tossed the whole bundle to Holt and Owen who at once sent notice out to Sanford not to pay any more on Boker’s arms, and not to buy any more guns himself. Then they turned to sorting out the mess.
On March 24, the New York agent of Boker, Mr. Schlesscher, offered to settle the whole deal for cost plus 2Yi per cent commission, so urgentiy did they need the money to pay their European accounts. The proposition was contingent on the United States making an immediate advance of $500,000. The Commission did not dally, and on March 27 made its provisional finding, directing the half million to be paid on account. But Holt and Owen now began to sift the evidence.

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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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