American Rifle - Alexander Rose [68]
Taking his cue from Smith & Wesson and Winchester, Spencer was intrigued by the new rimfire cartridge technology and conceived a repeater of his own—but with a twist. Instead of storing the ammunition in a tube under the barrel, he kept it in a tube contained in the wooden butt behind the breech. Pulling a lever under the breech drew a spring-loaded bullet from the stock and pushed it into the chamber. After cocking the hammer and firing, the shooter pulled the lever down again to eject the spent cartridge and load a fresh round. In the winter of 1859, he patented a .36-caliber prototype and devoted himself afterward to enlarging the bore to .44 in order to compete with the Henry’s heavier ordnance, though at the cost of fitting fewer cartridges into the magazine.
At .44, let alone .36, the new repeaters were distinctly underpowered, at least according to the Ordnance Department’s stricture that ammunition should conform to the standard rifle-musket’s caliber of .58. Spencer nevertheless felt his weapon would pass muster, if only given the chance. Lacking Winchester’s and Colt’s money, and finding it impossible to establish a connection with Ordnance, at the outbreak of the Civil War Spencer turned to his old patrons, the Cheneys, and assigned them the rights to the rifle in exchange for a royalty of one dollar per gun made.
Charles Cheney happened to be a neighbor of Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, who asked the commandant of the Washington Navy Yard, John Dahlgren, an experienced firearms designer himself, to test the weapon. The hope was that the navy would be more open to new ideas than the army, and that Welles could press Spencer’s case with President Lincoln.
Dahlgren was mightily impressed with the rifle, having fired its entire seven-round magazine in ten seconds and additionally shot it 91 times in 29 minutes. Over the course of two days five hundred rounds were fired with but one failure (caused by a faulty cartridge). In his report Dahlgren supported adopting the piece for naval use, and the navy’s Ordnance Bureau ordered seven hundred Spencers at $43 each plus 70,000 rounds. By this time, the army’s Ordnance Department could not afford to look as if it were dragging its feet, and Captain Alexander Dyer carried out a few preliminary tests. He too reported favorably, but nothing happened. Silence.
Wondering what was going on, in October 1861 the Cheneys retained R. S. Denny, a Washington lobbyist, to prod the Ordnance Department into action. Despite several letters, there was no follow-through from the department. It was almost as if Ordnance had decided that Spencer didn’t exist.75
He wasn’t the only one having problems. Oliver Winchester was suffering the same befuddling experience. No one could understand why. After all, for arms-makers those times were indeed auspicious. Lincoln had been elected president of the United States, and after Fort Sumter in April 1861 he had called for 75,000 volunteers, all of whom, Winchester and Spencer had shrewdly predicted, were in desperate need of weaponry. But strangely, when Winchester wrote to the new chief of ordnance, Brigadier General James Ripley, about the Henry rifle, his inquiry also went ignored.
Ripley represented all that was best about the Ordnance Department and all that was worst. Dignified and regal with his swept-back hair, impressively aquiline nose, and towering forehead, Ripley was notorious for his starchy bearing, absolute