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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Cessation of Revolver Production
It is odd that “the man who invented the revolver” kept his factory going by making single shot muskets. But deliveries from the Hartford works reveal a cessation of revolver production for the Government with a last delivery of 955 Colt’s holster pistols, new model, at $14; 155 of them being without bullet moulds at only $13.73. These arms were received November 10, ; no more are shown as bought by the North from
Military Navy Colt is US stamped on frame and bears inspection seal on grips. Backstrap of this pistol now owned by Tom Parvin of Illinois is inscribed to Col. Pleasants who was supervisor of the Crater mining in Union siege of Petersburg, Va. Pistol is said to have been presented to Pleasants while he was Provost Marshal of Lexington, Ky., by the “citizens.”
Placed across old photo of destroyed Colt’s Armory is bullet mould and London-stamped Pocket Model barrel, relics of fire salvaged from fused scrap. Old match box is symbolic of suspected Confederate arson though fire hazard conditions in factory made blaze of February, , not totally unexpected.
that time forward. A great fire destroyed the pistol section of the factory, and collectors have thought the fire terminated production of the New Model Army revolver. But the fire was not until three months after the last of the New Model Armys had been made.
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...
Among the many stories of the sharpshooters’ exploits, none stands out more than the vaunted accomplishment of Captain John H. Metcalf, who is said to have killed a Confederate general with a picket ball rifle at the enormous distance of one mile, 187 feet range. That no “Captain John H. Metcalf III” existed, or that the one Captain Metcalf of some distinction to be found in the Official Records was not a sharpshooter Left side of full stock Whitworth shows slightly different scope but position is same as on Battle Abbey Confederate specimen. Long eye-relief tube was located so because rifle was shot from “back position,” with muzzle balanced between shooter’s crossed feet and butt near cheek, lying on one’s back. Rifle shown, in N.R.A. (British) museum, has Enfield-type rear sight.
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