The Southern Armories and Superintendent Burton

The word “beleaguered” had not been heard. Riding high on a wave of patriotic ardor, Southern forces were triumphing wherever they clashed with the Federals. Brash Southrons proclaimed they would “whip the Yankee’s with cornstalks,” but after Virginia’s legislature passed the Ordinance of Secession on April 18, the state authorities acted on somewhat more responsible measures to ensure production of weapons. Capture of the United States’ Arsenal and Hall’s Rifle Works at Harpers Ferry was ordered.

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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...

The Metcalf Legend

Among the many stories of the sharpshooters’ exploits, none stands out more than the vaunted accomplishment of Captain John H. Metcalf, who is said to have killed a Confederate general with a picket ball rifle at the enormous distance of one mile, 187 feet range. That no “Captain John H. Metcalf III” existed, or that the one Captain Metcalf of some distinction to be found in the Official Records was not a sharpshooter Left side of full stock Whitworth shows slightly different scope but position is same as on Battle Abbey Confederate specimen. Long eye-relief tube was located so because rifle was shot from “back position,” with muzzle balanced between shooter’s crossed feet and butt near cheek, lying on one’s back. Rifle shown, in N.R.A. (British) museum, has Enfield-type rear sight.

Civil War Guns

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