American Rifle - Alexander Rose [81]
A passion for precision was the key to successful arms production on a mass scale. To ensure perfection, workmen at the Springfield and Harpers Ferry national armories were issued with toolboxes containing dozens of gauges and other measurement tools. This one was used to inspect Model 1841s.
Major Alfred Mordecai—among the greatest of America’s ordnance experts—during his 1850s tour of Europe that examined, quantified, and classified the small-arms arsenals of the Great Powers. His subsequent report, its outlook and conclusions inspired by Darwin’s The Origin of Species, was regarded as so important that Congress ordered it be made publicly available.
What industrialization wrought (I): gunmaking machinery at Springfield Armory.
What industrialization wrought (II): stockpiling rifles at Springfield Armory. The sight of thousands of them inspired the visiting poet Longfellow to write, in a mixture of awe and horror: “From floor to ceiling,/Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms.”
The Sharps rifle owned by John Brown. These rifles were popular among antebellum abolitionists, especially during the Bleeding Kansas clashes with proslavery guerrillas. The junior class at Yale presented a local infantry captain with one enscribed Ultima Ratio Liberarum—“the final argument of liberty.”
This customized Henry repeater, the forerunner of the famous Winchester, was presented to Lincoln during the Civil War.
Sharpshooting riflemen were long regarded with distaste by regular soldiers. The regulars particularly disliked sharpshooters’ insolence, their independence, and their habit of targeting officers. This picture of California Joe, a well-known marksman of the Civil War, captures the rifleman’s prevailing image.
The talented General James Ripley, the Union’s ordnance chief in the early stages of the Civil War. Imperious, all-knowing, patronizing, he was widely loathed—and yet brilliantly efficient at producing unparalleled numbers of firearms.
Alexander Dyer, a successor to Ripley at the end of the Civil War, who grappled with the complex issue of arming the military during the Indian Wars.
A contemporary engraving depicting breech-loader trials in 1867. The question by that time was not whether they would supersede muzzle-loaders, but if the future lay with accurate single-shot rifles or rapid-fire repeaters.
The great Spencer repeater, a favorite among Union soldiers and the bane of Confederate ones, but a weapon eventually overtaken by the Winchester.
The Winchester Model 1866, the greatly improved successor to the Henry. Its popularity out West propelled its maker to the front rank of America’s gun companies.
Repeaters were also popular among less upstanding citizens. This Winchester belonged to the outlaw Jesse James.
By the 1870s, Indians were among the repeater’s most zealous fans, and were widely (but falsely) believed to be better armed than the soldiers sent to fight them. This cartoon insinuates that Native Americans were keener on fighting than farming.
Since the Colonial era, Indians had decorated their rifles using a variety of brass tacks, leather, and silver inlays. This Winchester was once, evidently, a prized possession.
The thrill of “buff-running,” or buffalo hunting on the Plains. Repeaters could be used only at close range, but professional hunters (like the young Wyatt Earp) kept their distance and insisted on employing only single-shot rifles.
The terrible aftermath of the buff-running craze.
The Henry Rifle
Chapter 5
THE “GREWSOMEGRAVEYARD”
No sooner had that national convulsion, the Civil War, passed than the country began dismantling its colossal martial apparatus and attempted a return to normalcy. Fleeing the blasted South and the over-crowded North, hundreds of thousands of emigrants set their sights westward—to the alluring Plains, to the Rockies, to the Southwest, even to fabled California. They traveled by horse, wagon, foot, and stage-coach