Skip to main content

James Henry Burton

With Adams was another long-time employee of the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, James Henry Burton. Bom at Shenondale Springs, Virginia, August 17, , Burton attended school in Pennsylvania, but entered the machine trade in Baltimore at the age of 16. In he took a job at the rifle works under John Hall and in was appointed foreman. He rose to Master Armorer within 10 years, and attracted the attention of the British who came to the United States, inspecting arsenals in , in connection with the parts. Shown here is unique version with Special Model bands and lock. Plate is dated ; has -type U.S. bevel Sharps rifle contract. Offered a good position he resigned from Harpers Ferry and from then until was Chief Engineer of the Enfield Royal Small Arms Factory. While there, he became acquainted with the tool-making firm of Greenwood & Badey in Leeds, from whom Enfield purchased gunmaking equipment; this contact was to be renewed when Burton worked for the South.

He returned to Virginia in and accepted a position with Joseph R. Anderson at the Tredegar Works, in connection with their contract to make the machinery for the Richmond Armory. By June, , the Tredegar machinery and the Harpers Ferry equipment were in operation; on July 12, George W. Munford, Secretary of the Commonwealth, tendered the services of the booming Richmond Armory to the use of the Confederate State Government.
Prior to the setting up of machinery, the Armory had issued 10,000 U. S. flintlock muskets to both state and C.S. troops, and 50,000 “Virginia flintlock muskets, these last plainly known by the stamp ‘Virginia’ upon the lock.” With Colonel Burton as Superintendent of Armories of the Confederacy, was Solomon Adams as Master Armorer of the state, General Gorgas moving in with his family as the Government shifted north from Montgomery. The Richmond Armory was ready for full-scale manufacture of Rifle Muskets by Springfield Armory standards.
To use in making muskets, Adams had 20,000 seasoned musket stocks obtained in an exchange from Harpers Ferry before the raid, plus such quantities of parts of arms as were salvaged. In June of , parts of arms in progress were valued at $93,573. At the time of Jackson’s raid, there were 4,287 arms in store, of different types, valued at $60,000. Cannibalized, finished up, placed into seasoned stocks, these parts of arms and burned guns made bright were among the first issues from Richmond’s newest arms factory. Said General Gorgas:
The machinery of the rifle musket (caliber .58) retained at Richmond, got to work as early as September, . If we had possessed the necessary number of workmen this “plant” could have been so filled in as to have easily produced 5,000 stands per month, working night and day. As it was, I don’t think it turned out more than 1,500 in any one month.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more