I really get excited about this. I love this period of history and can never do it justice within the time slot of an elevator pitch. I feel a bit like Peter Falk in The Princess Bride, trying to sell his grandson on how awesome his story is.
Grandfather: “And this is a special story. It was the story my father used to tell me when I was sick, and I used to tell it to your father, and today, I’m gonna tell it to you.”
Grandson: “Does it got any sports in it?”
Grandfather: “Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, True Love, miracles..”
Grandson: “Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll try and stay awake.”
Grandfather: “Oh. Well thank you very much. Very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.”
Most gun collectors nerd out on history, but it still surprises me when I run into seasoned collectors of old military arms who know nothing of the US military’s effort to decide on a new battle rifle after the Civil War.
Here’s the shortest summary I can do, though I expect I’ll be expanding on the topic in later articles. The late nineteenth century was a period of remarkable innovation and invention, which according to Vaclav Smil, has been unmatched in times before or since with the exception of the Han Dynasty in China (200 BC-9AD) – y’know, when they invented paper, the wheelbarrow, the blast furnace, new plow designs, drilling techniques, the suspension bridge, etc. That period and the late 18th century are, according to his studies, unique in their combination of rapid invention, innovation, and broad integration of this work product into the daily lives of the general population.
Against the backdrop of the industrial revolution and turbocharged by the promise of lucrative military contracts during the Civil War, the late half of the 19th century was the golden age of firearms design. This period of history refined most of the actions you’re familiar with today, from the lever action to the bolt action. Most of the names you know – Samuel Colt, Ollie Winchester, John Marlin, Horace Smith & Dan Wesson, Christian Sharps, and Eli & Phil Remington – come to us from this period in history. Many more names you may never have heard of – Gilbert Smith, Bethel Burton, Chris Spencer, Erskine Allin, Eli Whitney, Warren Evans, to name but a few – were also contributing to the evolutionary tree of rifle design.
In fact, scores of new designs flooded the market – or at least the patent office. If this dizzying variety testified to anything, it was the antiquated nature of the muzzleloading musket. Imagine you’re still standing around with a cell phone that only makes simple voice calls when everyone around you is talking about the mini supercomputer in their hands, capable of video conferencing as an afterthought. Applying that analogy, you’re standing here with a pile of muzzleloaders while Napoleon III is sweeping over Europe with needle guns. Conspicuously unworried about the wars occurring out West, newspapers on the East Coast worried about the wars in Europe coming to America. How, they wondered, could America be prepared with its sea wall defenses in shambles, the treasury broke, and its rifles outclassed by the modern breechloaders used by the Prussians and the French?
Well, selling the muzzleloaders to raise some cash is a nice option, providing you can find some bulk buyers. How about converting the muskets into breechloaders? Fantastic idea. How much does that cost? Which breechloading design do we settle on? Springfield Armory had started producing a conversion, known as the “Allin conversion”, and known today as the Trapdoor Springfield. Was this economic conversion better than the Sharps falling block? Better than the Remington rolling block? Better than the lever action repeater made just at the end of the civil war by Christian Spencer? Maybe we should be adopting one of the guns used overseas, proven in a modern battlefield.
The War Department’s “Office Board on Tactics, Small Arms, and Accoutrements” was thereby ordered by General Sherman in 1869 to:
“endeavor, if possible, to adopt small arms of a pattern and caliber suitable to both branches of the service, with common ammunition and parts interchangeable. . . The Board will embrace in its examination the arms and accoutrements now in use, or any that may be sent to it from any quarter whatever, . . .all persons interested in small arms. . .are hereby invited to submit their samples to the inspection and test of this Board.”
Ordnance Memoranda 11, page 3.
The Government needed a new battle rifle — a standard design — and you were welcome to throw your hat in the ring. And not just you, but you, me, and our grandma in a tree: “all persons”, “from any quarter whatever”.
This was the major crucible into which all the rifle designs of the age were thrown. Over the next three years, the fortunes for many of the branches on the evolutionary tree of firearm design would be broken. The board hosted designers to give presentations on their submissions, inventoried parts, did time and motion studies on operation, tested accuracy, devised torture tests for overpressure, dust, rust, carbon buildup and heat. Field trials were conducted out West. More cattle calls, teardowns, photographs, and torture tests were done in 1873. Many inventors were competing for the same bag of government contract cash in a zero-or-hero clash of titans, and we have the receipts.
All these designs contributed to the growth of the evolutionary tree. Obviously, we have lost many of these designs to the dustbin of history. Some designs went through the trials, were discarded, and found commercial success outside the military. But each submission represents the pressure to progress firearm design generally — each iteration a step forward. In the twilight of the Civil War and facing the coming dawn of the twentieth century, the rifle trials represent a contemporaneous and studied evaluation of period firearms using objective criteria, during a historically unique surplus in mechanical design ideas.
So where are the giants and monsters, the chases and escapes? All through this story, and we’ll get to the details in later posts.
