American Rifle - Alexander Rose [257]
72. Miles, Personal Recollections, pp. 317–18. According to a hostile obituary of Geronimo in the New York Times in 1909 (“crafty, bloodthirsty, incredibly cruel and ferocious, he was all his life the worst type of aboriginal American savage”), it was only when Miles “showed him the white man’s uses of the steam engine and telegraph” that he “acknowledged the uselessness of contending further against the military authorities of the United States.” “Geronimo,” New York Times, February 18, 1909.
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73. See W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, 3d ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), p. 250.
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74. W. C. Church, “American Arms and Ammunition,” Scribners Monthly 19, no. 3 (1880), p. 436.
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75. Quoted in Jamieson, Crossing Deadly Ground, p. 64.
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76. Quoted in Garavaglia and Worman, Firearms of American West, p. 2:44.
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77. H.W.S. Cleveland, “Rifle-clubs,” Atlantic Monthly 10, no. 59 (September 1862), p. 306.
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78. Quoted in A. Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982), p. 70.
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79. On the army-navy game, see S. W. Pope, “An Army of Athletes: Playing Fields, Battlefields, and the American Military Sporting Experience, 1890–1920,” Journal of Military History 59, no. 3 (1995), p. 439, and pp. 440–41 for Wingate’s activities; W. C. Church, “Foot-ball in Our Colleges,” Century 47, no. 2 (1893), pp. 315–16.
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80. G. S. Patton, War As I Knew It (1947; reprint Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), p. 336.
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81. For a summary of these incidents, see Trachtenberg, Incorporation, pp. 39–40.
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82. J.K. Mahon, “Civil War Infantry Assault Tactics,” Military Affairs 25, no. 2 (1961), p. 62, citing F. N. Maude, “Evolution of Modern Infantry Tactics,” Lectures, Aldershot Military Society, no. 78 (London, 1908), p. 14.
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83. “Col. Berdan’s Sharp-shooters,” New York Times, August 7, 1861; Katcher, Sharpshooters of Civil War, pp. 14–15.
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84. Quoted in Gilmore, “New Courage,” p. 99.
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85. Ibid. As late as 1917 Ely, by then a colonel, was still trying to interest the army in his admittedly intriguing invention. He did succeed in attracting to his standard Scientific American, which ran a long but undetailed article about what Ely was calling his “battle control” device. He claimed that when it had been tested at the School of Musketry, the evidently progressive director had decided not to adopt it because, said Ely, the mechanism was “not an instrument of precision.” Precision, added the magazine, is “a hobby of this school.” Anon., “The Battle Control for the Rifle,” Scientific American 97, no. 25 (December 22, 1917), p. 474.
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86. Gilmore, “New Courage,” p. 99; Jamieson, Crossing Deadly Ground, pp. 75–76.
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87. On the evolution of the Springfield after the Civil War, the Allin system, ballistics developments, and internal Ordnance politics—all of which combined to produce the 1873 Springfield—see R. I. Wolf, Arms and Innovation: The United States Army and the Repeating Rifle, 1865–1900 (Unpub. Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1981), pp. 32–41, 48, 5–65, 70–73; Garavaglia and Worman, Firearms of American West, pp. 2:11, 16–17; “Improvement in Breech-Loading Fire-arms,” Patent no. 49,959, September 19, 1865 (available at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website); T.T.S. Laidley to A. Dyer, January 22, 1866, in J. E. Hicks, Notes on United States Ordnance: Small Arms, 1776 to 1940 (Mount Vernon, N.Y.: James E. Hicks, 1940), pp. 90–91; C. W. Sawyer, Our Rifles (Boston: Williams, 1946), p. 168; R. Pinckney, “The Tragedy of the Trapdoor Springfield,” Invention and Technology 10, no. 4 (1995), available online at www. americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1995/4/1995_4_28_print.shtml; W. H. Hallahan, Misfire: The History of How America’s Small Arms Have Failed Our Military (New York: Charles Scribner