Colt’s Goes To War

The role of Colt in the Civil War might be considered by some as an enviable one. The company had by the late 1850’s “attained the status of a National Work,” according to Secretary of War John B. Floyd; and it was to grow even larger. But the stress of War was a real thing to man and machines. Sam Colt, weakened by illness, was killed by the pace of War.

From the fall of Sumter to Appomattox, Colt’s Armory turned out a prodigious quantity of War materiel. A total of 129,730 Colt’s Army revolvers, “New Model Revolving Holster Pistols,” to a value of $2,296,112.49, and 17,110 Colt’s Navy revolvers costing $446,068.13 were delivered to the general government for issue during the War. In addition, a constant supply of pistols and patent rifles for volunteers, officers, and soldiers, who were buying totin’ pistols, were routed from Hartford through wholesalers as far west as Cincinnati and St. Louis.
Filling orders of Southern purchasers directly, Colt himself was willing to make special efforts to fill special requirements. “I desire Mr. Colt to send me two pair of pistols, one pair 12-inch, the other 14-inch barrels; I desire to test them. I shall need some 25 pairs as soon as my company decides as to which they will prefer. I desired each pair to be sent in a double case (two pistols in a case) with all the accompaniments, flasks, wrenches, etc.” So wrote Felix Tait from the Adjutant General’s office at Montgomery, Alabama, February 18, 1860.
Colonel Colt endorsed on this letter, “I think this order can be complied with by using the 12-inch barrels we have on hand and by measuring from the rear end of the cylinder. In the one we will have a 14-inch barrel or gun then by cutting off the barrels 2 inches, the 10 inches left added to the cylinder will answer for the 12-inch pistols.”
Perhaps a Colt’s Navy pistol owned by Massachusetts collector, Gerald Fox, may be one of these arms; numbered 91750, it has a 10-inch barrel and is with an original flap leather holster. The unnumbered loading lever, to my recollection, was supplied by me to a former owner before the gun was sold, as the lever which had been attached to it originally for many years was numbered but not matching the gun. A dated Navy pistol of this year is No. 95844, given by Colt to Andrew B. Moore, Governor of Alabama, in December of 1860. No general issue of such longbarreled arms is known; an early special 10-inch barreled Navy was sold in 1851, when No. 618 was made up for Colonel Jack Hays. This pistol has never been found.
Colt responded in more ways to the call for arms. One was his offer to form a regiment of volunteers— the short-lived “1st Regiment Colt’s Revolving Rifles

Portrait, painted in 1857, of pistol inventor Samuel Colt.

of Connecticut.” Cynicism, not patriotism, has been argued as the motive. Without being too partisan, we urge this is an unfair appraisal of the man. Colt had always wanted to have the actual rank of colonel. This was his chance.