The complete story of Federal and Confederate small arms: design manufacture, identification, procurement, issue, employment,
effectiveness, and postwar disposal.
By WILLIAM B. EDWARDS
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Allen & Wheelock Revolvers
Listed among the “Pistols” obtained for the war is a lot of 536 Allen’s revolvers at a total cost of
Big Allen's revolver used trigger guard hinging forward to rack back a loading plunger with enormous force, to seat bullets. Percussion arm was fundamentally well designed and built in spite of bulk.
$9,130.50. Of these, 198 were bought from William Read & Sons of Boston, December 31, , for $22 each. More correctly known as Allen & Wheelock, they were produced in Worcester, Massachusetts by Ethan Allen and his brother-in-law, Thomas P. Wheelock. Allen, pioneer gunmaker (no relation to Ethan Allen of Ticonderoga fame) patented features of the gun January 13, (No. 16,367), December 15, (No. 18,836), and September 7, (No. 21,400). A .44 caliber percussion six-shooter, the Allen & Wheelock is a single action gun having a creeping lever ramrod of distinctive form; the lever arm is bent around to form the trigger guard, pivoted in the frame below the barrel, and working on the bottom side of the loading plunger. The principle is the same as the Savage and Root patent creeping levers; the means are quite differently arranged.
A solid and strongly built gun, the Allen & Wheelock had no official use, only the few purchased, though Allen’s salesmen were active in the South in early ’61. It is presumed the Reed pistols were ,44’s; a .36 “Navy size” was also made, and a .31, using the same loading lever but with a side hammer, the
Compared with lip-fire cartridge model Allen revolvers also produced during the war is regular Allen percussion Army .44. Special cartridge used had flange which fitted into notch seen in cylinder rim, while frame on .44 size was modified in production to allow side plunger for extracting fired cartridges. Only recently has lipfire .44 been identified as distinct model, not a conversion, though frame, hammer, lever differences are obvious in comparison.
cylinder pin withdrawing from the rear of the frame like the Joslyn and Colt. In the .44 A & W, the cylinder pin removes from the front, above the lever plunger. The .44 nipples were in line with bore; in the sidehammer, recessed in holes. A final model of cartridge side-hammer A & W appeared toward the end of the war.
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...
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...
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.
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