American Rifle - Alexander Rose [27]
To this end Morgan stipulated that all members of the regiment be issued rifles. This request was almost as easily done as said. There were actually too many rifles available and not enough muskets. After Lexington and Concord state committees of safety had purchased as many firearms as they could for the influx of excited volunteers, without stopping to coordinate with one another or waiting to see what the army most required. Thus Virginia’s committee, befitting its frontier heritage, bought 3,325 muskets and 2,098 rifles between September 18, 1775, and July 5, 1776.39 The abnormally high proportion of rifles to muskets—two for every three—was vastly more than could be issued to competent marksmen, especially since most of the riflemen brought their own pieces anyway.
By October 1776 the secretary of the Board of War went so far as to tell the Maryland Council of Safety that “there is a superabundance of riflemen in the army.” “Were it in the power of the Congress to supply muskets,” he continued, “they would speedily reduce the number of rifles, and replace them with the former.”40
Unfortunately, Congress was hardly likely to acquire that power, at least in the immediate future, since there were no large-scale production facilities, no centralized arms industry, and no major gunpowder refineries in the colonies. Indeed, the few small gunpowder mills that existed—mostly in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts—were producing only “miserable trash” (in the words of one government inspector).41
The gun situation was not much better. Every weapon had to be made in a one- or two-man gunsmith’s shop whose average output was twenty per month. There were just twelve such smiths in Maryland. At that rate Washington would need until the turn of the century to outfit his army with uniform muskets. Even that goal was bound to be frustrated, for each one’s barrel length, caliber, and quality varied from state to state, county to county, and even town to town or smith to smith, depending on the maker’s whims, experience, and talents.42
To make up for the musket shortfall, Congress relied on clandestine arms shipments from abroad. In January 1776 two enterprising French merchants, Messrs. Pliarne and Penet, approached Congress’s Secret Committee and divulged that the French royal armories might be persuaded to sell some surplus stocks on the quiet. Armed with a congressional contract, Pliarne and Penet sailed home and sent ten thousand model 1763 “Charleville” muskets.43
Domestic gunpowder production was still lagging. In 1777 the French again came through. King Louis XVI created a dummy corporation theatrically named Roderique Hortalez and Company that was run by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais—author of The Barber of Seville and a prodigiously talented gunrunner. Hortalez & Co. arranged to smuggle another 30,000 Charlevilles and 300,000 pounds of prime-grade gunpowder to America in the spring of 1777. Some of these shipments were intercepted, but no fewer than 21,000 muskets and 100,000 pounds of gunpowder were issued to American troops.44 The imbalance between the numbers of rifles and muskets was well on its way to being righted.
Hence, Colonel Daniel Morgan was able to outfit his regiment as he wished—and with Washington’s blessing. For his part, Washington