Poultney Trys Again

Undaunted by the possibility of disapproval of his Remington purchase, Poultney kept at the Ordnance Department, seeking more arms. He was a heavy purchaser of all types of surplus equipment, and some not so surplus. He preferred National Armory products, new make or rebuilt. Learning that the Armory had been conducting experiments in rebuilding Spencer carbines into rifles, fitted with Springfield “Eagle-V-P” barrels and new forestocks, he tried to buy them. His expectations were not unfounded. Silas Crispin, now a brevet colonel, was on duty as usual in New York, office at Houston and Greene streets. To General Dyer, Chief of Ordnance, on January 6, 1871, he telegraphed: “Benton has 500, more or less, Spencer rifles on hand. Please authorize sale at 30 dollars.”
Replied Dyer, “Sell Spencers at 30 dollars each.” The demand continued, and Crispin wired Washington again, the afternoon of the 7th, seeking to learn if the Navy had any Spencers. Dyer fired back at once: “Commander Navy Yard instructed to issue to you Spencer rifles.”
Certainly with Spencer rifles being sold so briskly at $30, Poultney was justified in thinking he, too, could have some if he could sniff them out. The transformed Springfield-Spencers were by way of being an experiment and any junior Ordnance officer could have told him they served more as an engineering study than as any important step forward in reequipping the Grand Army.

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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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