George Washington Morse

George W. Morse was in many ways the co-equal of James Henry Burton. Inventor of a toggle-joint breech-loading rifle or transformation for a muzzleloader, somewhat like the Jenks and Merrill arms, the Morse gun tools apparently were made by Ames. General Ben McCulloch came east for the purpose of buying 1,000 Colt’s revolvers and 1,000 Morse rifles for Texas. In getting the Colts, he was successful. But no operating plant for the Morse arms was in being, though tooling existed and plans were many. Morse’s was the earliest successful military cartridge rifle, and used a reloadable centerfire musket-capped cartridge. As a Southern rifle, less than 1,000 were made, but they command the respect of the present for the ingenuity of the past.
A South Carolinian, Morse had lived in Baton Rouge and it is from that place that his patents, October 28, 1856, and June 5, 1858, were issued. The

Contract militia rifle by J. J. Henry when located at Boulton, Pa., was issued in SOUTH CAROLINA to judge by mark stamped on barrel flat. Muzzle is round to take socket bayonet. Enormous quantities of Southern sporting rifles were bored out to take .54-inch rifle bullets and then burst on proof-testing, accounting for relative scarcity of Southern Kentuckys today. Forgett collection.

Patent Office model for the 1856 specification has a compact toggle joint action with a top lever folding forward; the cartridge is a stubby .58 bullet, largely filled with powder in a big base cavity, and stuffed into a short rimmed case. Variations on this idea were made by Morse, but first production was set up at the works of the Muzzy Rifle & Gun Manufacturing Company, Worcester, Massachusetts. One hundred handsome cased sets of Morse breech-loading sporters were made by this firm; these cases included one stock and action, with interchangeable .54 caliber carbine, .50 caliber rifle and 16 gauge .69 caliber) shotgun barrels. Morse was backed up in this speculation by an order from the War Department for 100 military carbines ordered March 5, 1858, but apparently none were made. Instead, Morse sold the United States the right to alter 2,000 guns to breech-loading under his patents at a royalty of $5 for each gun. Of 1,000 arms drawn for the purpose, only 56 U. S. muskets of the Model 1840 were altered for test in 1859 to Morse breech and rifled with long range sights added. Apparently a full set of tools had been made for this work, since 544 more were partly converted. The remaining 400 were returned to store, unaltered, when the appropriation was exhausted.
Springfield also altered four .54 caliber rifles (M1841 presumably), one .58 rifle (M1855?) and started on three carbines, left uncompleted. The .58 rifle was sent to Harpers Ferry as a model in 1860. Of the 56 completed Morse conversions, one was sent to the Muzzy firm as an ammunition test gun, two were held at the Ordnance Office as presumably inspection models, and 53 were delivered to the Washington Arsenal for test. As a result, the Army decided to standardize the Morse conversion, changing all percussion muskets to breechloading rifles. The system would work equally well on flint arms since the hammer was reduced to a cocking lever, the breech block carrying its own inside firing pin and two extractors.
While Colonel Lewis notes (American Rifleman, March, 1955) that “Machinery was being installed for that purpose at Harpers Ferry, where it was captured by Confederate troops before production started,” it seems that tool-maker Ames had some of the Morse equipment which Semmes managed to get South via his own channels. Morse was a mechanical genius. Perhaps he did not have the administrative abilities to organize manufacturing on the same large scale as Colonel Burton. But the carbine of his production was practical and reasonably cheap, and his single shot muzzle-loading musket might have doubled the capacity of Confederate armories if it has been standardized in the beginning of the War. The Morse musket is a novelty because it is one of the very few applications of intelligent invention to what usually is a centuriesold pattern of side lock musket.
The Morse musket did not have a lockplate. The hammer was hung on an arbor that passed through the stock from side to side; at each end it was guarded by a brass oval plate but in the center passed through the tumbler. The tumbler was hung in a frame of bent strap iron, cheaply made. The frame was roughly the length of the trigger guard tang and removed from the bottom of the stock when the tang was unscrewed in the usual way. The mainspring leaf bore against the tumbler, and was fixed at the back of the folded sheetiron “frame.” The trigger, mounted in the sheet iron assembly, bore directly against the tumbler, instead of using a separate sear. The whole outfit was a “package deal” that could have been fabricated in enormous quantity at a properly equipped shop and shipped out all over the nation to musket and carbine makers, if anybody had been foresighted enough to see its merits. Unfortunately, Morse seemed more interested in making guns for state defense than in volume production.
When War began, Morse shelved plans to build the 3,000 carbines which the United States had contracted to manufacture in 1860. The tools were either at Ames, or at Harpers Ferry; as he later testified, he plotted with the Armory master armorer Ball to steal the carbine tools; eventual production of the Morse carbine at Greenville seems to indicate he was successful. While Gluckman (American Arms Makers) states he was in charge of cartridge making machinery taken from Harpers Ferry and put into service at Nashville, Morse on July 18, 1861, wrote to Secretary of War L. P. Walker asking for machinery that definitely was for making small arms, not merely cartridges. He de-
sired to obtain on loan a trip hammer for welding barrels, planers, screw machines, a cone machine, lathes eight milling machines, a rifling machine, punch press, and many other items. The bill of machines would fit up a shop sufficiently to turn out Morse muskets; General Polk had indicated that Morse could probably obtain the loan of these machines and with that understanding the state of Tennessee had bought buildings and grounds for an Armory. Perhaps Morse got the equipment he desired; when Nashville was evacuated in April, 1862, Morse and machinery went to Greenville, South Carolina. In March, ex-Governor William H. Gist of South Carolina had been made chief of a Department of Manufacturing and Construction, with duties to encourage foundries, workshops, and arms factories. South Carolina decided to build an arsenal, and David Lopez was chosen superintendent. Temporary shops were set up on the state house grounds at Columbia while a permanent arsenal and armory was being erected in Greenville. Choice of the site was dictated by the gift of Vardry McBee of 20 acres near the Greenville & Columbia Railroad. With Morse now in Greenville, his wife joined him, she having left Washington, D.C.
The state spent over $500,000 on the Greenville works, and an inventory in the latter part of 1863 placed the value of the plant at $283,000. This was a far step from the machinery Morse wanted to borrow earlier, which he appraised at $8,000 to $10,000 value. At the factory, Morse produced breech-loading brassframed centerfire cartridge carbines. Numbers on specimens are found as high as 548 on one in the Confederate Relic Room of the State House at Columbia. Another Morse carbine in this display is numbered 474. A card attached to the gun says it was given to Relic Room by F. W. Huseman, who was a gunsmith of Columbia and worked for Peter Kraft. Huseman it is

South’s carbines showed ingenuity and manufacturing skill. So-called “Maynard” or “Perry” combines slock of one and tipping breech of another. The author thinks brass-framed Tarpley, 2nd, may be evolution from Alexander’s patent breech gun. The 3rd is Morse Carbine made at State Works, Greenville, S. Carolina. Breech hinges up like Merrill to load metallic cartridge. LeMat revolving rifle is shown only because it is popularly thought to be Confederate association but no records show use of any percussion LeMat rifles in the South, and this bright pinfire specimen is definitely post-War. Val Forgett collection.

said also worked for Morse, probably in Greenville.
By the fall of 1862, the State Works at Greenville was well established, manufacturing shot and shell, gun carriages, caissons and ammunition chests, pikes, rammers, railroad spikes Orders were given for it is not known if any Morse carbine plant and rails, and other equipment, making revolving cannon though were built. By April of 1863 the was in operation and continued for 18 months. The extent of the factory is described by preliminary remarks on September 2, 1862 of the sub-committee reporting to Gist:
It is said that by the 1st of October next the works will be in condition to cast said shot and shell and soon afterward to cast cannon, but not to make small arms for six months afterwards, unless the emergency of the service should require them sooner, which could be done by multiplying labor at increased expense.
It is not contemplated to establish a first class armory, but upon a scale commensurate with State means, which may be increased if necessity should require it thereafter.
Under these conditions it is not surprising that less than 1,000 Morse carbines should have been built there. The arm built for South Carolina was supposed to be for the beginnings of a complete rearming of Union forces in 1860-61 with breechloaders. Governor Bonham reported to the Legislature November 23, 1863, that he had contracted for 1,000 and “A part of them have been completed, and I regard them the best cavalry weapon in use. The compensation to Colonel Morse has not been determined upon, and I recommend this matter to your consideration, as something more than the mere value of the article manufactured it may be thought proper to allow.”
Odd in form, the Morse rifle was eminently practical as a work of machinery. The top lever opened the breech by collapsing a toggle joint, and the guttapercha wad in the base of the cartridge sealed around the musket percussion cap and prevented gas leakage; the front of the breechblock slightly entering into the rear of the cartridge to help make the seal. The frame of cast brass extended through the weak part of the stock small, usually easily broken in rough service on other guns, and was carried forward some below the 20-inch barrel; overall length about 40 inches. Butt stock and forestock were of butternut; the weight only 6 1/2 pounds, though seeming “hefty” owing to the center of balance being the center of mass of the brass frame. Usually marked only with the serial number, one gun in the Val Forgett collection obtained in the region of Clemson, South Carolina, is stamped morse on the right side of the receiver directly below the hammer. The gun’s cast brass frame has been repaired during process of manufacture, the re-brazing being noticeable only under close examination.
Powered by coal, not cheap water, the productive State Works was unprofitable. In December, 1863, the legislature authorized the Governor to dispose of the State Works if he could except that he was to keep materialized, and on November 2, 1864, the Daily South Carolinian of Columbia announced the State Works would be sold at public auction on November 15. Bids were apparently not high enough and no sale was consummated; Governor Bonham recommended that month moving the State Works to Columbia to use the canal water power, but apparently this was not done, for Governor Magrath placed J. M. Eason in complete charge of the State Works at Greenville in February, 1865. Said the Governor, “Hitherto they have not been productive; now they must be so.” The State Works at Greenville escaped the notorious burning of Columbia which destroyed so much capital enterprise; in 1866 the legislature again attempted to sell the establishment.
Morse remained decidedly unreconstructed. At the close of the War numbers of U. S. rifles were transformed to breechloaders by the Allin system. Modifications of this system were adopted as successive U. S. standard arms. In 1875 he brought suit against the Government and Winchester Repeating Arms Company as co-defendants in infringements of his cartridge patents, claiming a royalty of $5 on each of the 130,-000 breech-loading Government rifles made to that date. Ultimately the decision was made in his favor. For a short time the lever action rifles made by the Whitney Arms Company were counterstamped after manufacture on the tops of the barrels with G. W. Morse’s Patent, 1854. This marking has puzzled many who wondered how an 1854 patent could affect an 1875 rifle. A House Report on Morse in 1878 recommended compensation, and the ultimate payment was made to his widow, for Morse died before it was finally paid. The notice was brief in the New York Tribune of March 9, 1888:

Washington, March 8—Col. G. W. Morse, the inventor of the Morse cartridge and breech-loading gun, and a nephew of Professor Morse, who invented the telegraph, died at his home in this city today. His funeral will take place Saturday.