Capture and Burning of Harpers Ferry Arsenal

In the event of attack on this arsenal, the commander had orders to destroy it. John Brown’s capture revealed how indefensible the position was. It meant losing half the North’s arms-making capacity, but the sacrifice was deemed essential.
“Finding my position untenable, shortly after 10 o’clock last night I destroyed the arsenal, containing
15.000    stand of arms, and burned the armory building proper,” reported First Lieutenant Roger Jones, U. S. Mounted Rifles, commanding at Harpers Ferry on April 19, 1861, “and under cover of the night withdrew my command almost in the presence of 2,500 or 3,000 troops.” He concluded his report to General Winfield Scott by stating “I believe the destruction must have been complete.” But within the hour Virginia and Maryland secession troops swarmed through the gate and past old John Brown’s firehouse, out into the Armory alleys and roadways to the square two-story arsenal storehouse and to the flaming Armory factory buildings.

The arsenal was beyond hope of saving. Though the rivers rushed by, there was not water and pumps enough to consider trying to stop the flames. Dipped in varnish for protection, or oiled with thick tallow, the 15.000    new Ml855 Rifled Muskets and Rifles, together with experimental arms, transformed flint locks and other weapons in storage made a pyre that flamed high, illuminating the sleepy mechanical town of Harpers Ferry on the hillside. Then the floor timbers gave way
above, and with a crash the second floor cascading sparks like some monster pinwheel subsided to the street level; then, overburdened and weakened by the fire, the first floor collapsed and all fell through into the deep basement to bum until all was consumed. Today, a century later, the National Park Service is conducting an archeological survey of these strata of buried muskets.
At the manufactory were two lines, for producing the Rifle Musket, and the Rifle, and a somewhat less important set-up for fabricating the Ml855 Pistol Carbine. Valiant work by the Marylanders saved the tools, thousands of parts in all stages of manufacture, and a great quantity of the rifle stocks. In storage at Harpers Ferry in 1859 had been 130,000 seasoned musket stocks; hard, dense, straight-grained black walnut three years or more old, dry and of top quality. Though the estimated annual production of 12,000 per year might have reduced the total to 100,000 or less, by the time of General Jackson’s raid there were a good many left.
Jubilant Maryland troops took 17,000 gun stocks which they saved from the flames and shipped them in gratitude to the armory at Fayetteville, North Carolina. Major Bradley T. Johnson (ultimately brigadier general) was on the staff of the 1st Maryland Volunteer Infantry, C.S.A., and through his charming wife, who was a native of North Carolina and a friend of the Governor, the Maryland Line had been equipped with Mississippi rifles. The actual weapons could have been made by any one of the several contractors of Harpers Ferry itself; but the probability is that they were the famed Palmetto Rifle, the Ml841 U. S. Rifle as made by William Glaze & Company at the Palmetto Works in Fayetteville, on contract for the state in 1852. The 17,000 salvaged stocks appear to have been, probably, those for the M1855 Harpers Ferry rifle. This arm later, with the type 1861 lockplate (without Maynard primer) and with a special “S” shaped hammer was the main rifle fabricated at Fayetteville.

Photos like this one taken after Jackson’s Raid reveal considerable damage to government arms factories there (rifle works, left; and rifle musket main armory, right arrow) but Confederates ran shops for several weeks making rifle muskets while remainder of stores and machinery were being moved South.

The Harpers Ferry Arsenal, with between 4,000 and 5,000 finished rifles and rifle muskets, and the carpenter shop, were totally destroyed by Lieutenant Jones’ bombs. But Pollard (Lost Cause) states that 5,000 rifles in an unproved state, and 3,000 not finished (assembled but not inspected as finished?), were seized by Virginia troops. Fourteen thousand burned rifle muskets were fitted with new stocks at Richmond. Virginia helped herself to the machinery, the basic machine tools, and the sets of fixtures for making parts of the Rifle and the Rifle Musket, as well as quantities of unfinished and semi-finished parts. Much of this materiel was at once sent via railroad to Winchester; then by wagons to Strasburg, and from there via Manassas Gap Railroad to the Richmond Arsenal.
On May 7, 1861, Colonel T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson reported to Lee that “Mr. Burkhart, who is in charge of the rifle factory, reports that he can finish 1,500 rifle muskets in thirty days. I have, in obedience to the orders of Governor Letcher, directed the rifle machinery to be removed immediately; after that the musket factory. My object is to keep the former factory working as long as practicable without interfering with its rapid removal.”