American Rifle - Alexander Rose [234]
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15. Ibid., p. 270.
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16. Ibid., pp. 5, 8–9.
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17. Smith, Harpers Ferry, p. 185; Huntington, Hall’s Breechloaders, p. 9.
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18. Hall to Captain John Morton, June 22, 1816, quoted in Huntington, Hall’s Breechloaders, p. 11.
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19. L. A. Garavaglia and C. G. Worman, Firearms of the American West, (1803–1865, 1866–1894) (Niwot, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, 1997–98), p. 1:6.
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20. Hall to Morton, June 22, 1816, quoted in Huntington, Hall’s Breechloaders, p. 11.
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21. M. R. Smith, “Military Entrepreneurship,” in O. Mayr and R. C. Post, eds., Yankee Enterprise: The Rise of the American System of Manufacturers (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), p. 66.
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22. See K. Alder’s interesting “Innovation and Amnesia: Engineering Rationality and the Fate of Interchangeable Parts Manufacturing in France,” Technology and Culture 38, no. 2 (1997), pp. 272–311.
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23. See A. Halsey Jr. and J. M. Snyder, “Jefferson’s Beloved Guns,” American Rifleman 117 (November 1969), pp. 17–20.
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24. Jefferson to Jay, August 30, 1785, in Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
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25. Irvine to John Armstrong, June 12, 1813, in Hicks, Notes on Ordnance, p. 44.
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26. Irvine to Whitney, October 26, 1813, ibid., p. 42.
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27. Irvine to Whitney, November 17, 1813, ibid., p. 43.
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28. Irvine to Armstrong, June 28, 1814, ibid., p. 43.
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29. On Wadsworth, see C.W. Reed, “Decius Wadsworth, First Chief of Ordnance, U.S. Army, 1812–1821,” pts. 1 and 2, Army Ordnance 24 (1943), pp. 527–30; and 25 (1943), pp. 113–16.
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30. Smith, “Military Entrepreneurship,” p. 68.
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31. Smith, Harpers Ferry, pp. 107–8. On the pattern models for the Model 1816 musket, see the correspondence between Wadsworth and Roswell Lee, superintendent of Springfield throughout 1816 and 1818, in Hicks, Notes on Ordnance, pp. 49–51.
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32. A recent narrative of the battle is R. V. Remini’s The Battle of New Orleans (New York: Viking, 1999).
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33. Quoted in J. W. Ward, Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 5–6.
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34. See Sawyer, Our Rifles, p. 10.
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35. C. Gayarré, History of Louisiana (New York: W. J. Widdleton, 1867), p. 4:452.
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36. Quoted in H. W. Brand’s excellent Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (New York: Doubleday, 2005), pp. 275–76.
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37. National Intelligencer, June 29, 1815, quoted in Ward, Andrew Jackson, p. 23.
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38. Huntington, Hall’s Breechloaders, p. 12. A. Hatch, Remington Arms: An American Company (New York/Toronto: Rinehart & Co., 1956), p.60, unfairly castigates Talcott as a “man of resolute stupidity” owing to his report (expressed in a letter to William Wilkins, secretary of war between 1844 and 1845) that “a prejudice against all arms loading at the breech is prevalent among officers, and especially the dragoons,” before going on to say that many of the patented types of arms then floating about “will ultimately all pass into oblivion.” First, Talcott was merely reporting the true facts about many officers’ distrust of breech-loaders, not discussing his personal views, which conformed with Ordnance policy. And second, it was a long-standing Ordnance complaint that inventors were claiming impossible feats for their patents, few of which bore out their assertions. As General Ripley would say during the Civil War, he wished they would all go away and leave it to the arsenals to get