Congressional Investigation

Hannibal Hamlin was appointed chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate Sales of Arms, Etc. under a Senate resolution of February 20, 1872:

Resolved, That a select committee of seven be appointed to investigate all sales of Ordnance Stores made by the Government of the United States during the fiscal year ending the 30th of June, AD 1871, to ascertain the persons to whom such sales were made, the circumstances under which they were made, the sums respectively paid by said purchasers to the United States, and the disposition made of the proceeds of such sales; and that said committee also enquire and report whether any member of the Senate, or any other American citizen, is or has been in communication or collusion with the government or authorities of any foreign power, or with any agent or officer thereof, in reference to the said matter; and, also, whether breech-loading muskets, or other muskets capable of being transformed into breech-loaders, have not been sold by the War Department in such large numbers as seriously to impair the defensive capacity of the country in time of War; and that the committee have the power to send for persons and papers; and that the investigation be conducted in public . .

The testimony and report of the committee proceed through 857 fascinating pages of secret deals with Springfield Armory, offers by noted Civil War contractor Hermann Boker to buy arms for the Germans to oppose the French, condemnation of good arms in favor of their being sold at reasonable prices to wouldbe international munitions runners, and charges and attacks upon President Grant and others.

The subject is entirely too lengthy to do more than outline in this book, which has as its fundamental approach the arms of the American Civil War and, in this chapter, what happened to some of them. But the spirit of the testimony, and the parties to it in 187072, are strikingly parallel in some ways, and antithesis in others, to situations in the arms trade of America in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. For example, one of the most outspoken condemners of the sales of arms was Massachusetts Senator Sumner. Another Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. John F. Kennedy, representing the small arms industry “lobby” of that state, in the 1950’s was outspoken against the sale of surplus arms. On the Ordnance level, today’s (1961) Ordnance Department prefers to acquire half a million, more or less, semi-modem automatic rifles of good quality— the Ml4. A plea or justification made for this in the international cold War emergency is that “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” i.e., a search for superior infantry weapons designs can handicap the acquisition of second-rate but good arms at the time.
Back in 1870, the complaint was that the Ordnance officers had disposed of half a million or more acceptable muzzle-loaders, which were capable of being transformed into breechloaders economically. Although better arms (the Winchester repeaters, the innumerable bolt-actions which led to magazine loaded arms in the following decade) were successfully in use, Ordnance preferred the course of economy in altering muzzleloaders to breechloaders by inserting a “trap door” breechblock in the back of the barrel.
Associated with Senator Sumner was Senator Carl Schurz who alleged great harm to the United States from the sales. In beginning the inquiry, Hamlin approached Schurz concerning some statements he had made; Schurz replied that “The witnesses to be examined in this case will almost all be unwilling witnesses, whose testimony will depend upon the manner of their examination, where one point will suggest another.” Such “unwilling witnesses” included Trimble, already noted, Colt’s vice president General Franklin, Richard Jordan Gatling himself, and a host of others whose names were familiar to the Ordnance Department from the preceding ten years as sellers of the very ordnance stores they now sought to repossess, for shipment to a foreign belligerent power, France.
The gross amount received during fiscal year 1871, the period of greatest sales, was $9,748,943.13, nearly $10,000,000. In gold, in 1871, at the prevailing purchasing power, this was a very great sum of money. Deducting costs of the sales, which amounted to $219,634.47, including the manufacture of cartridges at Frankford Arsenal to fill out some quantities, and money already on hand, the Ordnance Department received nearly 9Vz millions of dollars, all of which was paid into the Treasury. The ratio of income against expenditures was about 10^ on the dollar, the ordnance stores bought during 1861-65 totalling $130,266,364.79.
Two Acts related to the conditions of the sales. The first, of March 3, 1825, provided that the President could order sold any arms “which, upon proper inspection or survey, shall appear to be damaged or otherwise unsuitable for the public service, whenever, in his opinion, the sale of such unserviceable stores will be advantageous to the public service.”
The Act clearly related to those arms, among other articles, which had been found, upon proper inspection, to be unserviceable or damaged. A lot of brand new arms, properly preserved and in mint condition can acquire the grading of “unserviceable” by reason of the passage of time. But this was not considered in the Act referred to; the inspection had to be made and upon inspecting if damage or other cause for declaring unserviceable was found (as for example brand new but clearly obsolete flint muskets), the President in his discretion could authorize their sale.
While many of the complaints raised at the vast disposal program of the Ordnance Department were based upon current constructions of this Act, there
was another law in effect more directly relating. As Secretary of the Committee Carpenter noted:
On the close of the late War, in 1865, the Government found itself in possession of a large amount of muskets and other military stores, not damaged and unserviceable within the meaning of the Act of 1825, but unsuitable in the sense that other and improved arms were more desirable; and thereupon Congress, in 1868, passed an Act under which the sales in question were made, as follows:
“That the Secretary of War be, and he is hereby authorized and directed to cause to be sold, after offer at public sale on thirty days’ notice, in such manner and at such times and places at public or private sale as he may deem most advantageous to the public interest, the old cannon, arms and other ordnance stores, now in possession of the War Department, which are damaged or otherwise unsuitable for the United States military service, or for the militia of the United States, and to cause the net proceeds of such sales, after paying all proper expenses of sale and transportation to the place of sale, to be deposited in the Treasury of the United States.”
The Committee found in the wording of this Act, opportunity for unjust or undesirable conduct on the part of the War Department. Since it was passed in 1868, it would have been possible in complying with the letter of the law for the War Department to have put the whole fantastic accumulation of Civil War surplus munitions up for sale on 30 days’ notice in one lump. The condition of the market alone would have produced no takers; the quantity would have frightened away all buyers, even governments. Then, according to the letter of the law, the Department could have peddled bits and pieces here and there at any old price at private treaty.
The actual course pursued was far different, a “soldier’s construction” of the law, rather than a lawyer’s interpretation, as the Committee found. Parcels of armaments were offered from time to time and thus the market was “felt out” by the sales officers, and they were kept abreast of the times. When it became known that France, for example, in 1870, was to be a purchaser of surplus Springfield muskets, General Dyer deliberately raised the price of the arms.
He claimed that France had charged the United States high prices for muskets ten years previously when the Union had been in danger, and he hardened his heart to the protestations of the French agents, fixing a price of $12 for new Springfield Rifle Muskets (which had cost as little as $14 a decade before and been “written off” the account books by the fact of Northern victory), and $9 for “C & R,” or Cleaned and Repaired Springfields. “Free” Confederate Enfields and other arms were priced in proportion. As the committee reported, in determining if the sales were to the best interests of the United States, “The testimony upon this subject is all one way . . . prices received by the Government were higher than could have been expected, and much higher than the same stores would now command.” Only in one point does the testimony and the Committee seem at variance, and then only because the Committee were directed to find out facts at certain levels, and not absolutely.
Surplus parts went into “sporterized” arms. Shown is controversial “forager’s shotgun” using Springfield Ml842 lock and barrel, in West Point Museum. Controversy is pointless as old catalogues quite clearly show variety of shotguns offered by different firms, based on Government surplus arms or parts.
This area of discord surrounded the government order excluding persons known to be agents of France, from directly purchasing after the fact of their agency became known. But witness after witness testified to the fact that arms purchased by Schuyler, Hartley and Graham, by Austin Baldwin & Company, by Hermann Boker and others, all were delivered to one French ship in the harbor and there checked from the lighters into the hold by a man named Starbuck, who was the official representative of Remington Arms.
Seventeen shiploads of munitions went out alone on vessels of the General Transatlantic Company, including the St. Laurent, the Ville de Paris, the Lafayette, the Periere, and the Washington, between September 3, 1870, and April 22, 1871. Cases bore marks of the consignees, but two sets of marks in particular elicited comment: ER & S, and RF. The ER & S were obviously destined for E. Remington & Sons, whose agent and member of the family Samuel Remington was resident in Paris at the time. The marks “RF” were more enigmatic; some witnesses thought they meant “Remington Freres,” studiously avoiding the fact the mark was quite obviously the cypher of the belligerent power Republique Francaise.
Among the guns shipped to France were nine of the caliber .50 Gatling Guns made by Colt’s at the end of the War. General Hagner of Watervleit Arsenal received in exchange nine new caliber .50 guns from Colt’s, conducting the business of the transaction directly with General Franklin and Hugh Harbison, Colt’s treasurer-secretary. The exchange deal was naturally worked out, following the pattern of the .50 Remington rolling block rifles bought by Poultney and Trimble, to give the French agents arms in being, quickly, when time was short. Then Colt’s could finish the nine improved guns at their leisure.
The deal, “avoiding” complying with the directive stopping sale aided the cause of research and development by giving both Colt’s and the Ordnance officers experience with a new type of curved feed case for ammunition. This feed case had been developed for use with the bottieneck caliber .42 Berdan Gatling guns made on the Russian order. At least nine such guns, but in caliber .50, were delivered to General Hagner
together with 240 of the special curved feed cases. The replacement guns afforded an opportunity to observe that the cartridges misfired, and the cases failed to feed certainly, unless an assistant kept his thumb upon the follower. Less sensitive primer compounds used in the Frankford cartridges, were claimed by Franklin to be the cause of the one defect, as ammunition made by Union Metallic Cartridge Company and by Colt’s Cartridge Works did not misfire in the .42 Russian Gatlings. Modifications of the feed case follower was discussed and the experiment had value in its “new look” at the Gatling batteries of our frontier service.
The arms sales investigation was concluded without anybody getting cashiered or shot. Some of the testimony led to “whitewashing,” but the matter took on the aspects of comedy when Boker testified that he, as a sympathetic German-American, had telegraphed to the German Government asking if he should buy arms to keep the French from having them. Bismarck replied that he could get all the arms in France he wanted, “As we shall pick them up on the banks of the Loire cheaper.” The German troops did just this and concluded after the end of hostilities an interesting sale of 100,000 Springfield rifle muskets, captured from France, to the Turkish government at $1 each— some 8 per cent of the cost paid out by the French to obtain them!
The minority view in the Senate was not fully in agreement. Filed by John W. Stevenson, it made some detailed criticisms about the Poultney & Trimble purchase, noting that in this the Baltimore partners were fronting for Remington. Further, the matter of Starbuck checking in the cases and issuing receipts in his name in behalf of an obvious syndicate of buyers conspiring to purchase for France was set forth precisely by Stevenson:
. . . The Remingtons, after they had become known as the agents of the French government, still maintained a lively intercourse with the Ordnance Department and its officers, in connection with the sale of arms through intermediaries, and that in some of the transactions above referred to, the fact that such third parties were not the real purchasers, but were acting for the Remingtons, could, by
vigilant inquiry, have been early ascertained by the officers making the sales. What unprejudiced mind can doubt it?
The testimony develops other facts worthy of note in this connection. The arms were delivered by lighters in the pay of the ordnance agency, on certain piers at New York, partly at the    pier of    the    French Transatlantic Steamship Company,
partly    at pier    No.    3, where steamships were    loaded, known
by common report to have been chartered by the French consul. The cases were sometimes hoisted immediately from the lighters on board those ships. While still in the lighters, the cases were marked “R.F.” which meant, Republique Francaise, one of the employees of the ordnance agency, sent there to keep an account of the deliveries, taking part in thus marking the boxes. The receipts for delivery were signed and given to the employee of the ordnance agency by one and the same man, in the name of Remington & Sons, Austin Baldwin & Co., and Thomas Richardson, thus tending to create    a presumption that the arms really    went into the
hands    of one    and    the same party. This man    (Starbuck) had
been charged with this business, and his receipts were accepted at the ordnance agency in pursuance of a letter addressed by Colonel (W. C.) Squire, Remington’s known agent, to Colonel Crispin. A French officer, Captain Guzman, openly inspected large quantities of artillery on the wharf at New York, and that French officer received there from an employee of the ordnance agency, certificates as to the quality and condition of the goods delivered.
(This requirement for certificates was in conformity to the proposal of Remington to the Ordnance Department to buy up to 19,000 Spencer carbines, accompanied by certificates as to their quality and condition signed by an ordnance inspecting officer. WBE.) The same French officer was seen by Mr. (C. K.) Garrison at the ordnance agency in conversation with Colonel Crispin about ordnance stores.
But Garrison, though he doubtless testified truly concerning the rapport between Captain Guzman and Colonel Crispin, was not too knowledgeable a man himself when it came to arms sales. One of the heaviest buyers of weaponry, especially Parrott 10- and 20pounder rifled field artillery, Garrison furnished the Committee with an odd bit of comic relief.
Cornelius K. Garrison did not enter into the arms sales with a view to actually purchasing anything. He took part, doubtless in consideration of a sum of money, which in the contract he assessed at only “$1 and certain other valuable considerations” to be surety on behalf of several Americans who were contracting to supply arms to France. Frederick Billings, W. J. Valentine, and William Saint Laurent November 28, 1870, at Tours, France, agreed to supply the French government with arms. A stipulation of their contract involved depositing 1,000,000 francs with some banking house in New York as security for performance of their contract. Not wanting to put up this money in cash, they turned to Garrison as a wealthy man of New York to offer his own means as surety. This was acceptable to J. S. Morgan & Company of London and Dabney, Morgan & Company of New York, through whom the transaction was channeled.
Garrison was to advance the money needed to pay for the guns. He was to have the right of veto on such arms as he felt were not in accordance with the contract between Billings, Valentine and St. Laurent, and the Government of France. He was also to charter a vessel or vessels as necessary to fulfill the transportation of the arms abroad. While the original contract
called for delivery of arms at Bordeaux by December 20, 1870, the French not only extended it in favor of the Americans but made a deposit of six millions of francs, about $1,200,000, in their favor at J. S. Morgan in London to be used to pay for the purchases.
The French Government tried to abrogate the contract during the spring; the Chancellor of the Exchequer of England refused to allow the money to be withdrawn from J. S. Morgan & Company, alleging it had been deposited there for a specific purpose. The matter was brought to suit, but back in the United States, Garrison, for the consideration of $100,000 from the contracting trio, had been paying out for arms purchased in the names of half a dozen other firms and buyers.
A. B. Steinberger had turned over Enfields to Garrison, and from other buyers, as well as in his name, he had acquired some 40,000 Enfield rifles and 20 batteries of field artillery. The French reneged on their contract because of the military situation abroad; the country had been invested by the German Army. But at last they agreed to accept delivery of the arms at Algiers. Meanwhile, Garrison had tried to obtain a refund of his $60,000 deposit or margin put up on the Enfield purchase.
His reasoning was accepted by Colonel Crispin, who noted in correspondence that the purpose of a margin or earnest money was to protect the seller against loss in the event the option to one party prevented a sale in the interim to another party. No such potential loss could have been shown, and he recommended compliance with Garrison’s petition to have a full refund on the Enfields. But the Parrott rifled guns were another matter, he having bought and paid for them, even obtaining five batteries from an outside source.
As Garrison told Senator Carl Schurz under oath, “In these statements about the arms business, I want it distinctly understood that I am not speaking as an expert. I do not know a shotgun from a rifle, scarcely.” (As Captain Garrison, he seemed once to have known a good deal about the value of Chasseur de Vincennes carbines shown to Fremont!)
He then went on to speak of the Parrott rifled guns. “My understanding was that the goods were all to be had at two places, at Washington and Watervleit (Arsenals). AfterWard, on account of the rejection of a number of these pieces, they fell short, and, as I understand, some pieces of artillery had to come from St. Louis, some saddles, bridles, harness, etc., from Rock Island, and from different parts of the country, and it was during the time of snowstorms, and, as I said before, my lay-days were running out. We had so many lay-days, after which I had to pay <£200 per diem demurrage, and that was my anxiety.”
Garrison had chartered a steamer for shipping the guns, at <£11,000 a trip, plus the £200 per diem demurrage. He had so many days at the dock without charge for the charter fee; then he had to pay £200 for each day overtime that the SS Ontario lay idle at the wharf.

“I would almost rather do anything than ship batteries” pleaded Garrison and view here of U.S. heavy artillery ready for transportation at Yorktown during Peninsular campaign shows why. Big 30-pounder Parrott rifles in background are grouped with quantity of “impedimenta,” such as field forges and ammunition waggons which accompanied gun in the field. Pieces shown probably were included among Garrison’s purchase in 1870 which overflowed from biggest steam freighter afloat. Guns are in travelling position, trunnions unseated and tubes pulled to rear to balance in draught.

“I was dealing with a thing I knew nothing about,” pleaded Garrison as he, metaphorically, clutched his sheaf of a $100,000 commission: “I supposed all these batteries would not measure more than 400 or 500 tons, and I found they measured 2,500. I did not know anything about a battery. I chartered the largest ship in the United States, and I thought she could carry twice the quantity of freight, but I found I was very much mistaken.” Brokenly, he concluded, “I would rather do almost anything else than ship batteries.”
What Garrison had neglected to determine was that his 20-pounder Parrott cannon came in lots    of    eight
pieces per    battery,    plus ammunition wagons,    field
forges, and    complete    harness to hook up six    or    eight
horses for    draught.    There were additional    saddles,
“valise” saddles, for the artillerymen to ride the horses, and ton upon ton of accessory leather and ironWare that accompanied these 20 batteries of field cannon, fully found and ready for War. Bulky and uncrated,
the rolling mass of the 160 pieces of field artillery more than filled the Ontario’s hold.
Smith Crosby & Company actually paid the Ordnance Department for the 20 batteries of Parrott guns. They were taken out of the Ontario, though Garrison later found it cheaper to buy the ship than pay the charter. They were reshipped via sailing vessel during June or July, 1871, to Algiers.
The location of these cannon today is a mystery. Of iron, it is to be hoped that they were not so valuable as scrap iron to cause diligent and thrifty French ordnance officers to have them melted down, as was done with so many valuable old bronze and brass guns. In the dry air of Algeria they might still repose in some French-Algerian artillery park, unused, in good condition. If some eager surplus dealer of today should find them and ship them back to the United States for sale to Civil War cannon buffs, we hope that he has better luck than Mr. Garrison, who would “rather do almost anything else than ship batteries.”