Foreign Purchases

Two of the most important men in the Confederacy assumed their posts during April. On April 8, 1861, Special Order No. 17 issued by C. S. Adjutant General Samuel Cooper at Montgomery declared “Major Josiah Gorgas, of the Corps of Artillery and Ordnance, is assigned to duty as Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance.” Placed under his command on April 15, was Captain Caleb Huse, directed to proceed to Europe to buy arms. About December, 1861, arms began to come in through the purchases of Huse, and there were a good many Enfields in the hands of Confederate troops at Shiloh. The shipment of arms resulting from Commodore Bulloch’s work in England, via the Fingal, was among the most important single boat-loads of arms to be sent over. Aboard the Fingal were:
On Account of the War Department—10,000 Enfield rifles, 1,000,000 ball cartridges, and 2,000,000 percussion caps; 3,000 cavalry sabers, with suitable accouterments, a large quantity of material for clothing, and a large supply of medical stores.

On account of the Navy Department—1,000 short rifles, with cutlass bayonets, and 1,000 rounds of
ammunition per rifle; 500 revolvers, with suitable ammunition; two 4Vi-inch muzzle-loading rifled guns, with traversing carriages, all necessary gear, and 200 made-up cartridges, shot and shell, per gun; two jreech-loading 2 Vi-inch steel rifled guns for boats or lield service, with 200 rounds of ammunition per gun; 400 barrels of coarse cannon powder, and a large quantity of made-up clothing for seamen.

For the State of Georgia—3,000 Enfield rifles.

For the State of Louisiana—1,000 Enfield rifles.

“No single ship ever took into the Confederacy a cargo so entirely composed of military and naval supplies, and the pressing need of them made it necessary to get the Fingal off with quick dispatch, and to use every possible effort to get her into a port having railway communication through to Virginia, because the Confederate army, then covering Richmond, was very poorly armed, and was distressingly deficient in all field necessaries,” reported Commodore Bulloch in his biographical narrative, Secret Service of the Confederate States, London, 1883.
The new Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Pope Walker, exhibited a charming capacity for haggling in the market place, in an exchange of telegrams with an arms broker in Washington. The C. S. Government was still in Montgomery, and the War clouds had not burst to rain their curtain of death for four years over the scene, so Walker dallied with the following arms order:
Washington, April 9, 1861
Hon. L. P. Walker:
Have ordered 2,000 Colt new army pistols, at $25; Sharps carbines, new (army) improvement, held at $30; Sharps rifle, with sword bayonet, $42.50; Colt carbine, $30. Two hundred to three hundred tons Hazard’s (Government) powder offered at 20 cents. Answer immediately.
John Forsyth
Walker replied the same day that “The rifles are too high. Would take 2,000 Sharps rifles, with sword bayonets, at $30. Do not want the other guns; if the powder has been tested and is cannon powder, will take it. You had better ascertain and know certainly all about it. Answer fully.”
The Secretary showed remarkable aplomb, or stupidity, in refusing Colt’s revolvers at $25 when soon the wires between Washington and Hartford were to hum with messages demanding all the factory could turn out “until further notice” for the Union. But at the time neither Colt’s plant nor the Federal army were committed to the course which opened before them within ten days, when Sumter was fired upon. On April 9, all was hustle and bustle, but somehow the reality of War seemed distant; a tone of “they’ll never do it; it can’t happen here” prevailed.
Munitions magnate Forsyth wired promptly back, setting Walker straight on the conditions of the market. He told Walker the prices were lowest market; subject to immediate acceptance; “Probably they could not be had twenty-four hours hence.” Walker must have spent the afternoon checking with local arms dealers, for it dawned on him that the newest army model of Colt
was a pretty good buy then at $25, and he also accepted the Sharps rifles.
Missing from the records is Forsyth’s letter of reply indicating how the arms were to be delivered. On the following day, Walker agreed to buy gunpowder from Forsyth, who replied stating he had arranged for the cannon powder “to be delivered in same manner as the pistols.”
How these particular Colt pistols were delivered is and may remain a mystery. There is a strong inference here that at least 2,000 of the full fluted cylinder New Model Armies were sold to Walker while operating out of the Montgomery War office.
The combination of industrialization of the South and the success of Huse’s imports by 1863 was maintaining the balance between the new nation and the old, in the opinion of observers in the Confederacy. Apparently, the South was not in want of arms, though measures had to be kept up to maintain the supply. In Three Months in the Southern States, by the Englishman, Fremantle, published by S. H. Goetzel, Mobile, 1864, he noted that on June 20, 1863, a Saturday, as he changed cars at Gordonsville, Virginia, en route to Culpeper, there was “an enormous pile of excellent rifles rotting in the open air. These had been captured at Chancellorsville; but the Confederates have already such a superabundant stock of rifles that apparently they can let them spoil.”
“The Confederate troops are now entirely armed with excellent rifles,” Fremantle wrote, from a rather limited vantage point, “mostly Enfields. When they first turned out they were in the habit of wearing numerous revolvers, and bowie knives. General Lee is said to have mildly remarked, ‘Gentlemen, I think you will find an Enfield Rifle, a bayonet, and sixty rounds of ammunition as much as you can conveniently carry in the way of arms.’ They laughed, and thought they knew better, but the six-shooters and bowie knives gradually disappeared and now (June 1863) none are to be seen among the infantry.”
Not all the Enfields got to the South, of course. Diversion of Confederate shipments by capture raises a pedantic question for the collector. It has been noted there are three types of “Confederate guns,” the Primary, the Secondary, and the Probable. These are defined as, first, one “made under Confederate contract, by private contractor or by the government itself to be issued directly to Confederate troops. A Secondary Confederate (arm) is one which might have been made for any purpose, but which was purchased by the Confederate Government for issuance to its troops after it was made. A Probable Confederate is that which, through Southern markings or method of finding, one can be reasonably sure was carried by a Confederate soldier and used in the Civil War.” Where in this definition we find the arms of the 144th Regiment New York Volunteer Infantry we cannot say. At Elmira, New York, on the way to the seat of War in 1862, the regiment received Enfields: “Those issued to us were intended by the English makers of them for the Confederate service; but the blockade runner having them on board was captured in its effort to reach Charleston and so were appropriated by the War Department to meet a pressing need in arming Northern soldiers.”
Not all Southern soldiers were so lucky as to receive Enfields. Perhaps Johnny Reb who was supposed to get an Enfield from the blockade runner captured as cited above, was issued instead a Belgian musket. These arms, of the same description as the identical make and patterns of guns issued to the North, were about as well liked in the South as by the Northerners. As A. P. Ford, Life in the Confederate Army, recalled in 1905, his outfit was “armed with old-fashioned Belgian rifles, probably the most antiquated and worthless guns ever put into a modem soldier’s hands. But they were all our government had. These rifles could not send a ball beyond 200 yards, and at much shorter range their aim was entirely unreliable.” Failure of a bullet to reach a mere 200 yards suggests A. P. Ford was so stupid he loaded his rifle with .58 bullets in a .69 caliber barrel, thus losing most of the force of the gunpowder past the bullet. But the Belgians continued in service; in December of 1864, Captain G. L. Buist’s Palmetto Guards artillery unit of four howitzers was reorganized as infantry and issued Belgian muskets.