All C.S. LeMats Were Alike

Some collectors have assumed that the “Navy LeMat” is the smallest type having a rifled barrel of .35 caliber and shot barrel about .50 caliber. But one of the guns of the type “formerly furnished to the Army,” used by Navy Inspector Lieutenant Evans as a pattern for his viewing the Navy arms, shows conclusively that both military Southern LeMat revolvers were of the same general type, size, and caliber.
LeMat’s .40 caliber 16- or 18-gauge revolvers were for both C.S. Navy and cavalry. J. E. B. Stuart carried a handsome engraved spur guard First Model First Type pistol of the form, evidently supplied for cavalry use. Those with round guard it would appear were for the Navy, though no marks other than the “star over LM” for LeMat, plus a variety of company names engraved on the barrel, are on these revolvers; and of course the proof marks of Birmingham testing are sometimes found. The .35 Baby LeMats, of which some exist, do not reveal any more information about the good doctor and his enterprise than do the marks on their bigger brothers. The Baby model, of which specimen No. 35 is pictured, conforms to the round guard Second Model First Type design. This is borne out by the only Baby with barrel engraving, shown; use of the word “System” also occurs in .40 cal. Second Model arms above 950 rather than in those first made.
The purpose of the Baby LeMat can only be conjectured. Probably the colonel intended to fabricate this smaller sized model for belt and pocket use, to supplement his heavy holster or military pistols which were the ones initially in demand. Extant is another “Baby,” but pinfire, No. 20, listed in the Golden State World's Guns catalog. But the ups and downs of LeMat manufacture never permitted him to establish a stable trade during the War.

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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 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...

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.

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