Yesterday I published an article from the Evening Post, dated September 22, 1870, entitled “Small Arms for Infantry”. About a month later, the Springfield Republican, hometown paper to Springfield Armory, published an editorial criticizing the Evening Post’s missive. It’s titled “Arms for Infantry”. I find it makes a pretty compelling argument. Without further ado, here it is. Some comments will follow. Enjoy!
Arms for Infantry
The Evening Post, in an article upon this subject, suggested by the thorough trial that is being given to the needle gun of Prussia and the Chassepot rifle of France, in the present European war, takes a very gloomy view, founded on inadequate information, of the infantry armament now possessed by our government, and available for use. It says: —
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Even the 'improved Springfield rifle' (muzzleloading), which stood the test of our civil war so well, and was thought so lately as 1865 to be the most formidable gun with which an army could be trusted, is now antiquated; and a regiment carrying it would be merely subjects for butchery by a company supplied with the best breech-loaders. Thus, the army of the United States, in comparison with the French or German army of to-day, is an unarmed body of men; and, what is worse, the arsenals of the United States contain no arms which would be worth anything in a war with a great European power. We have not even the machinery to make the arms our citizen soldiery would need; nor is it fully decided what arms they ought to have.“The last half of this extract is very far from the truth. The United States could not, indeed, put an army of half a million men into the field at once, all armed with modern, breech-loading guns, but the weapons could be furnished nearly if not quite, as fast as the men could be enlisted. Since the war 100,000 muzzle loading muskets of the old pattern have been altered into breech-loaders at the armory in this city, all of which are now in the service or stored at the various arsenals. Nearly 35,000 of them being still at the arsenal here, ready to meet any demand for them. Fifty thousand of these muskets are of the latest and best model, considered by good military authorities a far better gun than either the needle gun or the Chassepot, while the 50,000 altered first are but little inferior. Beside these the government has a large number (21,000 at the arsenal in this city) of Sharpe’s carbines on hand. The Sharpe is also a good gun, placed third in the list of arms passed upon by the recent examining board at St. Louis, the Remington having been considered the best, while the Springfield rifled musket, altered from a muzzle loader, was given the second place on the list.
We have no hesitation, then, in saying that our government could at once, or as soon as it could raise the men, put an army of 150,000 men in the field, armed with guns every way as efficient as those used by any army in the world, while it has the machinery, the contrary assertion of the Post notwithstanding to increase the number very rapidly. The production of new guns reached as high a figure as 1000 a day at the armory in this city during the late war, and it would not take many weeks, or at most months, to put the shops in a condition to turn out as many breech loaders. There are now in the arsenal here 208,000 muzzle loading muskets of the old pattern, which can be altered into breech loaders at about half the cost of a new gun, and there are all the facilities here for the manufacture of entirely new weapons that there ever have been.
Considering that we have a regular army of only 30,000 men, and that before it can be increased the men must be enlisted, drilled and equipped with many other things beside guns, the supply of improved arms on hand must be acknowledged to be quite adequate to our needs, and the wail of the Post was entirely uncalled for. If it was our policy to maintain a large standing army, and to compel other nations to keep the peace toward us by a show of warlike preparations, — as fortunately it is not, and we trust never will be, — the course of the government in regard to small arms for infantry ought still to meet the approval of every thinking citizen. Providing enough for immediate use, of the best model known, it is now waiting to see what improvements are to be made in firearms before proceeding further. The Post acknowledges that the gun made for our soldiers five years ago is now antiquated, and would it have the government go on and make and store up half a million or a million of guns of the best model at present, to find them equally antiquated, perhaps, five years hence? The people, we are sure, do not care to be taxed for any such purpose, and have no fears but that, when there is any need of them, the arms will be furnished, and that the American soldier will have at least as good a gun as any other.
Continual experiments are going on with arms for infantry, and this is as it should be. The board at St. Louis has given its opinion on the various kinds of guns submitted to it, founded on such trial as it was able to make, and now, we understand, three regiments in the field are to be armed respectively with the Remington, the Springfield breech-loader and the Sharpe, and the manner in which each bears the test of actual service carefully noted. The experiment will be of much value in testing the real worth of these arms, and may reverse some of the decisions of the examining board of officers.
Wow. There’s a lot in there.
What jumps out at me still every time I read this is the following: “If it was our policy to maintain a large standing army, and to compel other nations to keep the peace toward us by a show of warlike preparations, — as fortunately it is not, and we trust never will be. . . .”
How far we’ve come from those days, eh? This is explicitly our nation’s policy today. This editorial informatively reminds us that this policy was not always our nation’s assumed position, and indeed it was thought ridiculous that it should ever be.
Anyway, back to the issue at hand. This is the hometown paper, and their ability to simply jog down to the arsenal and ask some pointed questions about production capacity, run rates, and obtain opinion from the Ordnance Department is on full display here. The reporter could literally get expert opinion (albeit biased) from Erskine Allin on modern breechloading systems a short walk from his or her own office. How cool is that??
I even see the editorial’s title as a solid turn of phrase. The Post titled their own editorial, “Small Arms for Infantry”, obviously referring to the individual guns the infantry troops would carry. A major thrust of the Republican’s editorial is that, forget weapons — you couldn’t get enough able-bodied men into the field to carry them even if you had them. In that sense, titling their rejoinder “Arms for Infantry” seems deliberate and brilliant.
The most effective reply to the Post’s “wail”, however, is the logical point that if they (The Post) find the best arms from merely five years ago now outdated, why should the taxpayer fund the manufacture of today’s hotness when it too may be outmoded in another quick five years?
Good points.
This editorial makes light of, or you could say glosses over entirely, the Post’s valid side glance at General Dyer basically scrapping the entire effort out of St. Louis and kicking the can down the road for another TWELVE months (it would turn into something more like 24 months).
The Springfield Republican does note that the guns are headed out West for trial, so we can say they’re aware that there’s a fight out there – or at the very least a sandbox to test weapons in. I heard it said by someone, maybe Dan Carlin, that the United States didn’t really take the Plains Indian Wars seriously – and certainly didn’t view them as an existential threat – until General Custer’s run-in with the Tribes in 1876. This was, to use his phrase, the proverbial turd in the punchbowl of the Country’s 1776 centennial. It shocked the nation, turned the painfully intense focus of the US war machine to the West, and within two years the Plains Indian Wars were, in all meaningful ways, resolved to the Government’s enduring favor.
This is a topic that certainly warrants its own examination in detail some other day, but to drive home the point about what the East Coast was worried about, here’s a screen grab from the same issue as the editorial above:
The paper contains no articles about events out West. The coverage of the European war(s) were a daily feature of any paper, probably akin to the coverage we see about Ukraine here in the Spring of 2022.
Anyhow, hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did. I ran across it before the Post’s article and had a devil of a time tracking that one down.
The newspapers from these days are far more interesting to me than anything in the news today, both in style and substance. I hope to publish a few more of these old articles in the future, or even some of the “gossip around town” bits as they can be rather humorous, dark, or darkly humorous at times.
