American Rifle - Alexander Rose [51]
The percussion cap arrived just as Hall was perfecting his rifle. Nevertheless the order came down from on high at the War Department that he was to redesign the gun using a percussion mechanism. The change did not require a thorough overhaul of the weapon, but Hall knew it meant inventing yet another machine and certainly a whole new round of tests. Not for years would his gun again reach the production stage.
By 1830, however, Hall had lost his youthful energy, and he was growing ever more irascible, carbuncled, and stubborn with age. He truckled to the War Department’s commands but was reluctant to introduce the new technology. Continually beset by money problems, Hall convinced himself—with some justice—that enemies lurked everywhere, and he turned increasingly operatic, secretive, and controlling.
The rest of the decade tried Hall’s soul, and he received no relief from the War Department, where the new guard began urging him to retire gracefully, to allow younger managers into his fiefdom of the Rifle Works, so that it could move with the times. Truth be told, Hall’s unwillingness to keep up with the pace of technological development was delaying production of the breech-loading percussion carbines that the army wanted for the cavalry, and by now he was refusing to make even important revisions to his rifle.67 To give him a gentle nudge, which the prickly Hall interpreted as a violent shove, in 1834 the department demoted him to the rank of master armorer, cutting his pay to a risible $600 a year. Bomford reassured his old friend that, no, it wasn’t a real demotion, but Hall knew different and ascribed the move to his unseen foes in Washington. Though Bomford managed to get him a temporary raise to $2,646, Hall was confronted by a highly visible enemy in 1837, in the form of Edward Lucas.
As the new superintendent of Harpers Ferry and a Jacksonian appointee, Lucas was levelheaded but ruthless at playing politics at the armory, a habit that further contributed to Harpers Ferry’s decline relative to Springfield. Between 1837 and 1840 Lucas fired thirty-four highly skilled employees (of whom twenty-eight were enemy Whigs) and replaced them with less-talented men more to his liking, who just happened to be Democrats.68 He was most displeased by what he incorrectly thought were the continuing problems with interchangeability, a prejudice no doubt exacerbated by Hall’s refusal to toe the party line. Convinced that “arms cannot be made, that will interchange, and at the same time closely and accurately, at a reasonable price, and without sacrificing other and greater advantages” (such as mass production), Lucas thought that “the sooner the attempt to accomplish it be dispensed with, the better.”69 Support for the Rifle Works was hence slowly, but inexorably, withdrawn, but the interchangeable genie was already out of the bottle.
Models of rifles and muskets from the early 1840s onwards would be fully interchangeable. Nevertheless, they would be muzzle-loaders—despite Hall’s heroic efforts to supersede them.
Hall would never see the death of his breech-loader. His health had greatly deteriorated, and in 1840 he went on leave of absence.70 Few, apart from Bomford (who was weakening himself), were keen to see him return. In the succeeding winter Hall’s symptoms worsened, and he died on February 26, 1841. He chose to be buried in Darksville, Missouri, as did his wife, Statira, and as late as the 1970s their tombstones were visible, enclosed by a rusting iron fence. Bomford, now left isolated at the Ordnance Department, resigned in 1842 and followed his friend to the grave six years later.
It was John Hall, nevertheless, who had the last, if posthumous, laugh over his rivals. Since the days when he had struggled to persuade official Washington and the army that rifles were a feasible alternative to muskets, the world had changed.
No longer were riflemen regarded