The Dance Revolvers

While there is nothing in the foregoing inconsistent with the sad chronicle of Mr. Crockett, the fact of Clark’s going to Galveston raises a logical surmise, based unfortunately on nothing but the existence of another class of Texas Civil War era revolvers; those of the three Dance brothers, James, David, and George.
Produced at the Dance blacksmith shop a little west by south of Galveston near the old capital of Texas, Columbia, these guns exist in two basic sizes, .36 and .44. The .36 is a round-barreled Navy of Colt size. The .44 is not, as often surmised by those who have never handled one, a dragoon pistol; it is a scaled-up Navy, basically an Army-sized pistol, not dragoon. The distinctive feature of all Dance revolvers is the absence of the round part of the frame or standing breech; the frame is thought of as “milled flat” at this point.
The Dance smithy is known to have made plows, farm implements, and feed mills. But the degree of capital mechanization of this factory is not at present known. Apparently it was not until 1863 at the earliest that the Dance brothers turned to making firearms, if so early. As one collector who has done what research can be done on Dance, Paul C. Janke of Houston, puts it,
About 300 of the Dance revolvers were made, as nearly as we can figure. Mile C. Bell, a soldier of the Confederacy, was issued one of these revolvers while home on sick leave, in Kenney, Texas. Before he was able to return to duty, the War was over, and Dance Brothers revolver No. 317 never saw action. No. 317 was evidently one of the last revolvers made before the manufacture of revolvers was discontinued at the close of 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.

Civil War Guns

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