Sales to France

The realities of the case are interesting, by contrast with the later events in disposing of the Civil War surplus. The cabinet’s decision to stop shipping arms to France was at the insistence of the State Department, which felt that the fact the United States was known to be supplying guns on an “official” basis to one of the belligerents would endanger our relations with the other power, Germany. At that time a weak imperialistic nation emerging from a heterogeneous confederation of princely states, the Germany of Kaiser Bill might have been postponed a generation by a more active aid of the United States to our sister republic France. If France, with publicly avowed assist-
ance of Uncle Sam, had been able to throw back the German invasion of 1870, a defeated Germany would not have been in such a strong position in 1914. The Great War would have, instead, been of the minor magnitude of the Franco-Prussian War, and the global devastation of World War II might have been confined to the struggling of a minor power, Germany, for “lebensraum” on the continent of Europe. Fearful of arousing Germany against us, the United States, having just fought the biggest War the world had seen, having just disbanded the biggest armed force ever to march, having in her store houses millions of serviceable muzzle-loading rifles, was afraid to risk the displeasure of Germany which was in fact the acknowledged aggressor against France.

France, unlike the United States, had no such vast store of arms in her arsenals. Stripped of serviceable, man-killing muzzle-loaders by the scavenging buyers of Uncle Sam and Jeff Davis, the Republique had only just begun to rearm with an improved breech-loader about 1866. Germany, flushed with triumph at Koeniggratz against the Austrians in 1866, was bent on national growth by force of arms.
The new German rifle, introduced in 1840 to the Prussian service, was the famous and semi-secret “Zundnadelgewehr,” or needle gun.
Against this weapon the French were rapidly introducing their own breech-loading arm, the Chassepot. This employed a slightly similar cartridge, self consuming, made of glazed linen with a more elongated bullet than the needle gun. French research on bullets had always tended to be in the advance of the world reductions to small bore, and the Chassepot rifle, of 11mm, was in advance of the German, as the needle gun’s caliber was .64. But French ordnance officers, having shipped all their 1820-1850 period muzzleloaders to Yankees and Rebels, were eager to buy the improved Springfield muzzle-loaders which Uncle Sam, through a generous Ordnance Department, was offering to their friends, the Remingtons.