Preface

The writing of this book on Civil War guns has occupied bits and pieces of my time from 1955 to the final moments in the summer of 1962.
I am indebted to many friends who have assisted me in the course of research. First and foremost I am indebted to my good friend John Hintlian, of Newington, Conn., who lent me some books in 1955 and has patiently held off demanding their return until I had finished this book. They include sources such as "Correspondence on the Purchase of Arms," Proceedings of the Commission on Ordnance & Ordnance Stores (Ex. Doc. No. 72, 37th, 2nd), Ordnance Contracts (Ex. Doc. No. 99, 40th, 2nd), and the little known Report on Arms Sales 1870 (Report No. 183, 42nd, 2nd), as well as the published libel suit Opdyke vs. Weed which revealed interesting Brooks-Gibbs carbine facts. These are fundamental sources for Civil War Arms study. As this research grew to a close I also discovered the one-time existence of a tabulation of captured Confederate Ordnance and Ordnance Stores sent to the chairman of the House Select Committee on Retrenchment by the Chief of Ordnance in 1866. No trace of this document exists, but should such ever appear, it might justify a sequel volume.
I am indebted to Dr. Stanley Pargellis of the Newberry Library, Chicago, for making available the remarkable resources of this famous depository. Their military collection is too little used, too seldom recognized as being such an extensive library. To Mr. Paul Angle, Mr. Charles Dienethal, and the staff of the Chicago Historical Society my thanks for their courteous aid; within this specialized bracket there was little to find in their files, but they were ever helpful.
A few of the photos are of standard guns in the Society's large reference collection.
On numerous trips to Washington, Messrs. Mendel Peterson, Craddock Goins, and the late Captain Carey, always welcomed me, always had time to chat and direct me to some gun or record of value.
Trips abroad, especially to Liege, Belgium, and the distinguished Musee d'Armes de la Ville de Liege, gave me a valuable understanding of the problems of Caleb Huse and Marcellus Hartley. It is not possible even to read about these men comprehendingly until you have also worked in the same gun trades. Mr. Techy of the Musee, and his assistant Mr. Pieters, were always willing to take time and open cases, to allow me to examine unique models or standard arms which had the incomparable merit of having been in the museum for a century. From such friends as Messrs.
Paul and Albert Hanquet, and Mr. Ancion, I not only bought guns which had been returned to Belgium from Civil War surplus sales, but gained also knowledge of people, times, places, and methods, which confronted the buyers of North and South a century before in this same city.
Sheer book reference is also important in this work.
I have stood for hours in the Newberry's stacks till my feet were sore, leafing through book after book.
In Civil War regimental histories, the word "gun" or "firearm" or a brand name like "Maynard" or "Remington" might catch my eye. But mostly, the search was fruitless. Some books such as the Sharpshooter's History, Buell's "The Cannoneer," Semmes "Service Afloat" and many others, which did emphasize the specialized Warlike nature of history or actually devoted chapters or passages to weapons, I bought.
I do not know whether I should thank Chicago bookseller Dick Barnes for his help in filling out my set of Official Navy Records, and other Civil War books, or he should thank me for buying them. I sold an original plated and fully engraved Winchester Model 1873 rifle that I later found cause to suspect had belonged to Doc Carver, in order to buy a set of Official Records of the Army—then found the set sold; later bought another set from Milwaukee and my Nash was never the same again after bringing those heavy books home in the trunk.
My thanks are most especially due in general— there are too many in particular—to my friends among the various gun collectors associations. The interchange, the swap-buy-sell action at the gun shows, added to my store of lore and incidentally added guns to my collection. Friends such as Val Forgett, Archer Jackson, and Rowland Burmeister, helped materially with the picture end of the book, by supplying essential illustrations or, as Burmeister did, photographing some of my own collection for these pages. Milt Perry, formerly of West Point's excellent Museum, helped with the loan of photos, while the Smithsonian Institution's Mr. Phillips often was able to squeeze some special chore into a busy schedule over the years and get me a print, or a special enlargement of an old picture. And so it goes . . . the list may not be endless, but it is long.
Cited in the text are many well-known researchers on guns and Civil War topics. I am especially indebted to the pioneering research of Claud Fuller, Col. Berkeley R. Lewis, Richard D. SteWart, and William A. Albaugh III. To Col. Arcadi Gluckman, I am especially grateful for exhaustive studies of U. S. small arms. Col.
Lewis by elaborate use of quotes of often obscure original sources, added immensely to the reference lore. Bill Albaugh through his intensive interest in the Southern arms story afforded good background material for the author's C. S. chapters. Many other current books-in-print by my friends Charles Suydam, Harold Peterson, Alden Hatch, Major James Hicks, the late A. Merwin Carey, and Martin Rywell, furnished either reproductions of valuable contemporary documents or current, scholarly research on an item or topic. To all these and many more, my sincere thanks and considerable acknowledgements.
Not always do I agree with earlier researchers; sometimes I am directly at variance. But without their work, this book could not have been written. Verily, what is past is prologue. More specific citations are embodied in the bibliography and index; to these books the reader is directed for an elaborated treatment of individual subjects.
To Mr. E. B. Mann, Editor of GUNS Magazine, I am indebted for permission to use material from my Bannerman story again in Chapter 34, and many of the pictures of standard or non-special arms.
A book like this—this book—has a value that must be gotten across to the reader by the author. It is what the author gradually has learned as a consequence of his study. It is not necessarily the obvious lesson of the book, or the obvious contents. It is something more. For the lesson of history is what people have done, and from this you can conjecture what they will do.
The schooldays prattle about King Cotton and "to keep the Negro in bondage" fall away as you examine the legal causes and justifications for the armed conflict of 1861. The just fears of Southern States that the growing power of the Federal Government would restrict their sovereignty seem very apropos and modern. The same tensions which exist in the nation today with excessive power being drawn more and more into the hands of a central government raise again the eternal questions of Centralist vs. Federalist organization. The average civil rights liberal of 1962 knows as much about the Second Amendment to the Federal Constitution as a hoot owl; but of all the civil rights, this is the one which retains its meaning when all else is gone. The Southern States knew this even in the midst of a War for survival, and ratified the same sentiment into their own Constitution. They recognized that, fighting against the centralist government in Washington to retain their own independence could cause them to become even more authoritarian in their own domestic political structure, and so lose the very liberties for their people that the Montgomery government had gone to War to preserve. This is an oversimplification, but it is not so much of one; and people need to have matters simplified for them because a quick look at the people and the times reveals but mass confusion. So we hope in this book the influence of the guns of the War upon the course of the War will not be deemed too unrealistic a simplification, but merely the necessary one. It is the historian's task, like Theseus in the labyrinth, to lay a clue in a straight path; to carry the simile further, the opening battle of the War was at Bull Run, and the bull has been running ever since.