Skip to main content

CHAPTER 23 Yankee Revolvers

For half a century the halls of official Washington resounded with the clamor of disappointed inventors of revolving breech firearms. Seeking the patronage of the War Department or Navy Department, they thronged the anterooms of the respective Bureaus of Ordnance, but to no avail. Elisha Collier, inventing his revolver in , had to take the idea to England to find capital and manufacturers. A mysterious Mr. Chambers, who appears to have developed a “Roman candle” type of load for fighting tops of warships, received so little recognition that the physical description of his invention is lost. Persistently, unfailing (but he failed), a Mr. Cochran tried to have his turret-chambered revolver adopted. Even Colt failed for 15 years, before at length, in , some measure of success in having his revolvers adopted by the Army brought him modest riches and the beginnings of fame and fortune. Then, suddenly, the War Department seemed convinced that the rotating chambered breech firearm was here to stay. By the time the First Regiment of United States Dragoons was reorganized into the First Regiment United States Cavalry in , official Washington was willing to buy virtually any type of cylinder-breech hand arm offered. In one or two cases influence seemed necessary, commissions were paid to members of Congress, and scandals arose, but in the main, anybody with a decent pattern of repeater and some hope of a factory could get a contract.
The list of officially purchased revolvers and pistols is not large but it embraces a number of distinctly different types. Curiously, the most “modem” of all, the Smith & Wesson, is not listed. For reasons best known to themselves, but perhaps principally that policy of conservatism and refusal to over-expand, that marks the firm’s policies even today, Smith & Wesson deliberately held out on their larger military revolvers and did not launch one into production until the War was well over. Next best were the imported arms, especially the Lefaucheux and the Raphael and Perrin types. But among the standard brands in use by the cavalry were old favorites: the Colts of Army and Navy sizes, the Whitneys, Remingtons, Starrs, and Adams. Four hundred and fifteen Adams revolvers were bought, seemingly obtained all from Schuyler, Hartley & Graham, and in several different patterns. Of arms discussed in this chapter, the following were obtained:
536 Allen’s revolvers ..............................$9,130.50
1,100 Joslyn revolvers...............................24,793.00
2,001 Pettengill’s revolvers ......................40,287.10
11,284 Savage’s revolvers ........................221,355.75
5,000 Rogers & Spencer’s    revolvers ..    60,739.90
11,214 Whitney revolvers..........................139,690.39
200 Horse pistols ................................1,400.00
348 Signal pistols ................................1,938.50
Of foreign handguns, the following were obtained not otherwise listed:
200 Perrin’s revolvers ........................$4,000.00
12,374 Lefaucheux revolvers ..................167,489.99
978 Raphael’s revolvers ....................16,181.73
100 Foreign pistols ............................1,000.00
In addition, notes of Ordnance purchases include the following handguns:
346 Cavalry pistols 68 French revolvers 772 Percussion lock holster pistols 453 U. S. holster pistols
The exact nature of these different arms will be considered; the first to be mentioned is a revolver which is in fact not a U. S. military arm at all, the Freeman revolver of C. B. Hoard.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more