Private Musket Makers

It was into this spirit that the Yankee private militia musket makers wandered. During the Cold War grand plans were laid for armories and arsenals all over the south. And oddly, the ones to suffer most when War finally came were the Northern munitions makers! The pattern of rifle most affected by these firms was a

Arms transferred to Southern U.S. armories or issued to States prior to 1860 included basic types shown here. Majority were flintlocks of 1821-22 pattern (top) but some had been converted to percussion in 1840’s by U.S. (2d from top). M1842 smoothbore muskets, original percussion, were also in lot and same model had been made in Dixie in 1852 (3d). Rifles included the popular “Mississippi” (shown elsewhere in this book) and earlier standard arms such as this .54 “common rifle” M1817. Shown is rifle by contractor N. W. Starr, Middletown, Ct., transformed to percussion by “French method” with cone directly into barrel. Muzzle-loading carbines on hand in South included this type, the U.S. M1855. Arm shown is West Point Museum gun, one of two prototypes reported made 1848 cal. .54, but identical issue arm of 1855 was cal. .58. 300 made 1855, without Maynard primer.

version resembling the Model 1841 “Mississippi rifle” or the U. S. Ml855 brass-trimmed Harpers Ferry rifle without the Maynard tape primer.

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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

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

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.

Civil War Guns

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