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 LINCOLN 
 
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 and 
 
 the Tools of War 
 
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 by Robert V Bruce 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 and 
 
 the Tools of War 
 
 This is an account of the arming of the Union 
 forces in the Civil War and of Lincoln's part in it. 
 In any comprehensive way it has never been told 
 before, and it shows Lincoln in a new and engag- 
 ing light. For the specialist, it offers quite a quan- 
 tity of previously unpublished material. Its biggest 
 merit is, however, that it is just plain fascinating 
 reading, the kind of book no one should start late 
 in the evening if he wants any sleep. 
 
 In the White House, Lincoln was determined to 
 win the war. His generals seemed unable to give 
 him a victory. If they couldn't, he reasoned, Yankee 
 ingenuity would have to produce a more efficient 
 weapon, which would do the job. Even at his busi- 
 est, he was always ready to listen to an inventor. 
 Besides, he liked gadgets. 
 
 In the Winder Building sat his main opponent, 
 old General James W Ripley, in charge of army 
 ordnance. He believed the war would be short and 
 didn't want a vast supply of expensive arms left 
 over. Standardized guns and ammunition made 
 supplying the troops in the field easier. He wanted 
 nothing new to add to the existing complications. 
 He was a devoted, honest obstructionist, expert at 
 filing a letter unanswered and at postponing defi- 
 nite action. 
 
 Behind them at varying distances were hosts of 
 others— manufacturers and importers, inventors, 
 lobbyists, experts such as Captain Dahlgren of 
 the Washington Navy Yard and Stephen Vincent 
 Benet of West Point, senators and cabinet mem- 
 
 (Continued on back flap) 
 
 $5.00 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/lincolntoolsofwaOObruc 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 and 
 THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ORDNANCE EDITION 
 
 Autographed by the author 
 for the members of the 
 
 CIVIL WAR 
 BOOK CLUB 
 
Lincoln and the Tools of War 
 

 TV 
 
 
 <rfpy 
 
 National Archives 
 
 LINCOLN CHAMPIONS A MACHINE GUN 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 and 
 
 the Tools of War 
 
 By ROBERT V. BRUCE 
 
 Foreword by BENJAMIN P. THOMAS 
 
 The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 
 
 Publishers 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS • NEW YORK 
 
COPYRIGHT © 1956 BY THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 56-6779 
 
 First Edition 
 
<? 
 
 To My Mother and Father 
 
"The Ordnance Department . . . functionary . . . 
 exclaimed, 'What does Lincoln know about a gun?' " 
 
 — The Scientific American 
 September 19, 1863 
 
Foreword 
 
 Behind the solemn, furrowed countenance of Abraham Lincoln was 
 an inquisitive mind. It ranged over the abstract and the infinite, the 
 absolute and the immediate. It was philosophical, and at the same 
 time intensely practical. 
 
 On the practical level Lincoln's curiosity directed itself, among 
 other things, to mechanical devices. A fellow lawyer remembered 
 that whenever Lincoln encountered a new piece of farm machinery 
 on his rounds of the old Eighth Circuit, "he would carefully examine 
 it all over, first generally and then critically; he would 'sight' it to 
 determine if it was straight or warped; if he could make a practical 
 test of it, he would do that; he would turn it over or around and 
 stoop down, or lie down, if necessary, to look under it; he would 
 examine it closely, then stand off and examine it at a little distance; 
 he would shake it, lift it, roll it about, up-end it, overset it, and thus 
 ascertain every quality and utility which inhered in it, so far as acute 
 and patient investigation could do it." 
 
 As a young man seeking to improve his education, Lincoln ac- 
 quired a fondness for mathematics. The months he spent surveying 
 roads, bounding farms and platting town sites taught him to respect 
 the exactness and precision of the trained engineer. His taste for 
 mechanics carried over into the law, making him proficient in han- 
 dling patent cases. He took out a patent of his own on a device for 
 lifting vessels over shoals. He prepared and delivered a lecture on 
 "Discoveries and Inventions." Living on the periphery of the ma- 
 chine age in America, he was keenly aware of the technological ad- 
 vances that were taking place about him. He pondered on the impact 
 of those advances on mankind. 
 
 The war came, and Lincoln the President, in whatever time he 
 could spare from other duties, turned his mechanical bent to the im- 
 
 vii 
 
Vlll LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 provement of the tools of war. The subject, though touched upon by 
 students, has never been adequately explored. In developing it fully, 
 Robert V. Bruce has written an original and exciting book, one 
 which probes new recesses of Lincoln's mind and personality. And 
 there is a great deal more to the story than has been supposed. 
 
 Seldom do author and subject mesh so perfectly, for Bruce com- 
 bines a sure grasp of history and the demands of historical method 
 with expertness in technology. A New England Yankee, with the 
 Yankee's predilection for mechanical contrivances, he originally in- 
 tended to become an engineer, and studied for two years at Massa- 
 chusetts Institute of Technology. Then war broke out and he was 
 called to military service with the Enlisted Reserve Corps. The army 
 assigned him to the University of New Hampshire, where he ac- 
 quired a B.S. in mechanical engineering, and then sent him to the 
 Pacific theater with the combat engineers. He had always enjoyed 
 history, sometimes more than engineering, though he regarded it 
 merely as a hobby. Gaining a new perspective in the far reaches of 
 the Pacific, he decided that it was his true interest in life, and deter- 
 mined to make it his profession. At war's end he entered the grad- 
 uate school at Boston University, where he received an A.M. in his- 
 tory in 1947, and after an interval of teaching, was awarded a Ph.D. 
 in 1953. He is now a member of the history department at that in- 
 stitution. 
 
 A tireless and enthusiastic researcher, he has ransacked the manu- 
 script collections of the Library of Congress and the National Ar- 
 chives, including the complete Civil War files of both the Army and 
 Navy Ordnance Bureaus, reading hundreds of documents and un- 
 knotting the faded red tape from bundled letters undisturbed for 
 many years. He has used the Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of 
 Abraham Lincoln's papers and the recently published Collected 
 Works of Abraham Lincoln, and has turned up some thirty Lincoln 
 notes, letters and endorsements relating to ordnance, which are not 
 included in the Collected Works. He has brought to light an impor- 
 tant and hitherto unknown journal kept by Mrs. Gustavus Vasa Fox, 
 wife of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. 
 
FOREWORD IX 
 
 The search led him on to other repositories of manuscript mate- 
 rial: the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Springfield Armory 
 Library, the New York Public Library, the New York Historical So- 
 ciety and numerous university libraries. Files of yellowing news- 
 papers, obscure magazine articles, bulky congressional documents 
 yielded additional facts. His findings in sum total unveil a new as- 
 pect of the Civil War and of Lincoln's role as commander in chief. 
 
 Eager to utilize the North's superiority in the mechanical arts as a 
 factor in winning the war, Lincoln made ordnance one of his special 
 concerns during the first two years of his presidency. Thereafter, 
 when it seemed less likely that new devices might be developed 
 quickly enough to affect the outcome of the conflict and with weap- 
 ons experiments entrusted at last to men of boldness and vision, he 
 devoted less time to the subject, though his vigilance never flagged. 
 
 Lincoln's interest in new or improved instruments of combat em- 
 braced small arms, light and heavy artillery, rockets, projectiles, 
 explosives, flame throwers, submarines, naval armor and mines. He 
 was responsible for introducing machine guns and breech-loading 
 rifles into the Union army. Wishing to render the United States 
 independent of niter from India in the event of war with Great 
 Britain, he by-passed the War and Navy Departments and set up a 
 secret project, under his personal control, to develop a new explo- 
 sive using a chlorate as a base. He favored the development of rifled 
 cannon. On one occasion he narrowly escaped death or serious in- 
 jury when an experimental rocket exploded in its launcher while he 
 stood watching near by. 
 
 That many of these devices failed does not mean that Lincoln was 
 naive or absurdly visionary. In many instances he was on the right 
 track but simply ahead of his time. The ideas with which he experi- 
 mented were often sound, as modern warfare has demonstrated. 
 But only with technological progress would they become practicable. 
 
 Men whose part in the war effort was important but unspectacular 
 take on new shadings and dimensions under Bruce's scrutiny: hide- 
 bound, hotheaded General James W. Ripley, Chief of Army Ord- 
 nance, and his successors, earnest but bumbling General George D. 
 
X LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Ramsay and General Alexander B. Dyer, abler than the others but a 
 late-comer to the office. The President developed close relations with 
 General Joseph G. Totten, Chief of the Army Engineer Corps, and 
 Lieutenant Henry A. Wise of the Navy Ordnance Bureau. Over at 
 the Smithsonian Institution was the celebrated Dr. Joseph Henry, 
 one of Lincoln's learned cronies, who marveled at the President's 
 grasp of scientific matters. Between them they made possible the 
 first successful air force in America — Professor Lowe's balloons. 
 
 Up at West Point, Lincoln discovered a young, forward-looking 
 ordnance officer, Stephen Vincent Benet, grandfather of the poet; 
 he tested arms for Lincoln when higher officialdom thwarted the 
 President. Playing a strong outstanding role was keen, wiry Captain 
 John A. Dahlgren, the Navy's leading ordnance expert. The only 
 man in the President's entourage, at the beginning, who combined 
 the requisites of intelligence, special training and an open mind 
 toward new weapons, he won Lincoln's affections as well as his 
 esteem, and his office at the Washington Navy Yard became a sort 
 of presidential hideaway. 
 
 Moving frequently into the forefront of the story with Lincoln 
 are devious, trigger-tempered Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, 
 and his able, hard-working assistant, Peter H. Watson, who had 
 learned the intricacies of machines through his extensive patent law 
 practice. And providing color and frequently a comic touch is the 
 parade of inventors, many of them strange specimens of the human 
 breed. Rebuffed by government functionaries, they would often 
 write to Lincoln. Many of their letters never reached the President; 
 his secretaries tossed them in the wastebasket. And yet they seem to 
 have fared better on the whole than the other White House mail, for 
 Bruce discovered more than two hundred of them, some with nota- 
 tions made by Lincoln, in the National Archives. 
 
 In many cases the inventors beset Lincoln in his office, often 
 bringing their contraptions along. He listened to them patiently, 
 amused by their eccentricities but alert for new ideas, and whenever 
 a device showed promise, he arranged for it to be tried. Often he 
 
FOREWORD XI 
 
 turned up in person at these tests, and he sometimes tried out new 
 weapons himself in the Treasury Park behind the White House. 
 
 Besides finding a fresh theme in the much-tilled Lincoln field, 
 Bruce has presented it delightfully. His style is facile. His characters 
 breathe. He explains technical matters with such simple ease that 
 they cease to be technical. The world's frantic search for new weap- 
 ons in our day adds to the book's significance. 
 
 I can vouch at first hand for Bruce' s expertness in tracking down 
 elusive facts, because for some six months, more than two years ago, 
 he worked for me in Washington as a research assistant on one of 
 my own projects. From my first acquaintance with him at that time 
 I have hopefully watched this book in gestation. I am pleased and 
 proud to help give it a healthy start in life. With something of the 
 same sense of satisfaction an obstetrician must feel in ushering a 
 sound, sturdy, appealing creation of another sort into the world, I 
 slap it heartily on the backside of the cover and commend it to your 
 careful attention. 
 
 Benjamin P. Thomas 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 Foreword by Benjamin P. Thomas 
 
 i. Captain Dahlgren 
 
 2. General Ripley 
 
 3. Men Without Guns . 
 
 4. No Time for Novelties 
 
 5. Inventors in the White House 
 
 6. Ramsay and the Arsenal . 
 
 7. Bureaucrats and Breechloaders 
 
 8. The Coffee-mill Gun 
 
 9. Lincoln's Field Artillery . 
 
 10. Patent Nonsense 
 
 11. The Trent Affair 
 
 12. Winter of Discontent 
 
 1 3. An Encounter at Hampton Roads 
 
 14. The President Perseveres . 
 
 15. Trial by Combat 
 
 16. Admiral Dahlgren . 
 
 17. Gunning for Charleston . 
 
 18. Ripley's Last Stand . 
 
 19. Farewell to Arms 
 
 20. A Peal of Ordnance . 
 
 Notes 
 
 Sources Cited 
 
 Acknowledgments . 
 
 Index ..... 
 
 page 
 vii 
 
 3 
 22 
 
 37 
 59 
 75 
 89 
 
 99 
 118 
 
 124 
 131 
 145 
 151 
 171 
 i79 
 194 
 207 
 228 
 249 
 268 
 289 
 301 
 
 345 
 355 
 358 
 
List of Illustrations 
 
 Lincoln Champions a Machine Gun . . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Three Ordnance Officers and a Scientist . . .14 
 
 Brigadier General James W. Ripley, Brigadier General George 
 D. Ramsay, Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, Dr. Charles 
 M. Wetherill 
 The Washington Navy Yard, 1861 . . . . 15 
 
 A Parrott Rifled Field Piece on the Road . . .15 
 
 The Mechanism of the Spencer Repeating Rifle . .112 
 
 Lincoln Sees a Rifle . . . . . . .113 
 
 A Rocket Threatens the Existence of The United States 113 
 
 What Lincoln Saw on June 24, 1862 144 
 
 A Wiard Steel Cannon at the Washington Arsenal, De- 
 cember 1861 . . . . . . . .145 
 
 An Invention Which Interested Lincoln . . .145 
 
 Lincoln's Most Expensive Weapon .... 208 
 
 Four Inventors Whom Lincoln Helped .... 209 
 
 George H. Ferriss, James C. C. Holenshade, Isaac R. Diller, 
 James Woodruff 
 A Lincoln Weapons Project Pays Off .... 240 
 
 The Machine Gun Which Lincoln Introduced into Warfare 241 
 
Lincoln and the Tools of War 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 1 
 
 Captain Dahlgren 
 
 On the morning of march 4, 1861, 
 peril hung over the city of Washington. Though civil war had not 
 yet begun, it was plainly near, and its first shock was expected to 
 tumble Virginia and Maryland into the new Confederacy; caught 
 between them, the national capital would be cracked like a thin- 
 shelled nut. The city's pro-Southern majority longed for the event 
 and seemed disposed to hasten it. For weeks secessionists had been 
 whispering on street corners and plotting in taverns; and on this 
 day of transition menace more than ever filled the air. 
 
 President-elect Abraham Lincoln, his rawboned features newly 
 softened by a growth of black beard, sat waiting in Willard's 
 Hotel for his inaugural procession to form. The weather was fit 
 for the times, bleak and blustery, though the sun still shone. Out- 
 side on Pennsylvania Avenue, a March wind whipped through 
 bare ailanthus trees, rustling crinoline and imperiling plug hats 
 in the throng which pressed around the whitewashed tree boxes. 
 The broad avenue's ill-kept course of cobblestones had been dis- 
 interred for the occasion, but dust, whirling from unpaved side 
 streets, whitened lips and made eyes water. Southern sympathizers 
 glowered from windows and balconies overlooking the avenue. 
 
 As noon struck and militiamen with loaded rifles moved to their 
 posts on the housetops, gray-faced President James Buchanan 
 emerged with his lanky successor from a side door of the Willard. 
 A military band struck up "Hail to the Chief" with synthetic 
 
 3 
 
4 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 sprightliness. Buchanan and Lincoln climbed into a waiting 
 barouche, the driver seized the reins and the carriage began to jolt 
 over the cobblestones, accompanied by a troop of restless cavalry. 
 Wordlessly the two men rode toward the Capitol, where the 
 travail of one would end and that of the other begin. Lincoln 
 stared into the crowd that lined the avenue and from time to time 
 lifted his glossy silk hat in greeting. The crowd stared back, im- 
 passive and inscrutable. 
 
 Among the onlookers stood Commander John A. Dahlgren, 
 United States Navy, a slender man with piercing eyes narrowed 
 beneath thin, straight brows. As is often the case with men of 
 spare physique, his age was hard to judge, and some took him to 
 be no more than forty. He was actually fifty-one, only nine 
 months younger than the President-elect. At the moment fore- 
 boding lay heavy on him. As chief ordnance officer at the Wash- 
 ington Navy Yard, Dahlgren had already run up against the 
 disloyalty which riddled the Federal Government; and unlike 
 some of his colleagues, he loved the Union he served. 
 
 After the procession had clattered by, the crowd surged toward 
 Capitol Hill to see the inaugural ceremony, and Dahlgren, his 
 weather-beaten countenance still grim with apprehension, fol- 
 lowed after them. Like the Union itself, the Capitol was in a 
 state of upheaval. Its new, unfinished dome stood open to a 
 turbulent sky, while scattered about the grounds lay marble blocks 
 and scrolls, fragments of lumber and other debris. Dahlgren 
 watched tensely as Lincoln stood tall on the platform and in a high- 
 pitched, resonant voice delivered his inaugural address, a sincere 
 and reasoned appeal to past ties and present sense. "We are not 
 enemies, but friends," Lincoln told the South; "we must not be 
 enemies." There was a burst of applause, and cadaverous Chief 
 Justice Taney swore in the sixteenth President — and, for all he or 
 anyone else could know, the last. 
 
 Suddenly the air shook with the prophetic thunder of guns, a 
 salute from two batteries of light artillery which loyal, elderly Gen- 
 eral Winiield Scott had prudently posted near by. The spectators 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN 5 
 
 dispersed, some relieved, others disappointed. Without violence — 
 or much enthusiasm — Abraham Lincoln had been installed as 
 President of the United States. Breathing more easily, Commander 
 Dahlgren returned to his duties at the Navy Yard. 
 
 Dahlgren's duties were to his taste. The taste may have been in- 
 herited : his American mother had a knack for designing, and the 
 family of his Swedish father had included several eminent physi- 
 cians and chemists. Young Dahlgren had joined the Navy as a 
 keen-eyed, ambitious boy of seventeen, at about the time Abe Lin- 
 coln had become a ferryman on an Indiana creek. But after Dahlgren 
 had put in a few years of sea duty, his heredity asserted itself, and 
 he turned to the study of weapons. An ambitious young officer could 
 scarcely have made a wiser move; for while a long peace was deny- 
 ing glory to sea-fighters, vast horizons were opening in the field of 
 ordnance. The new technology which had revolutionized industry 
 was about to transform the art of war. And Dahlgren was to have a 
 hand in the transformation. 
 
 It was in 1847, the year when Abraham Lincoln first came to 
 Washington as a freshman Congressman, that Lieutenant Dahlgren 
 arrived at the Washington Navy Yard to supervise the manufacture 
 of Hale's newfangled war rockets. Beginning with one end of a 
 timber shed as a workshop, Dahlgren took hold with characteristic 
 zeal. Within two months his duties spread to other ordnance ac- 
 tivities. He set up foundries and machine shops, established the 
 waters off the yard as a firing range and carried on elaborate experi- 
 ments. Within a few years the emphasis of the yard's work changed 
 from shipbuilding and fitting to ordnance, and the yard became in 
 fact what it now is in name also — the United States Naval Gun 
 Factory. 
 
 Meanwhile Dahlgren won an enviable reputation as a designer 
 of weapons. His contributions to naval armament included a bayonet 
 for Navy rifles and a light boat howitzer. When Commodore Perry 
 opened up Japan in 1854, he gave the Japanese a model of Dahl- 
 
6 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 gren's howitzer, and those eager learners paid it the sincere compli- 
 ment of wholesale imitation. 
 
 Dahlgren's proudest achievement in those years was his cannon, 
 which for years after the Civil War was to remain the principal 
 armament of the United States Navy. Sweeping aside convention 
 and founding his design on reason and experiment, Dahlgren sys- 
 tematically fitted strength to strain at all points. In so doing, he 
 shifted the weight of metal back from the forward part to the breech 
 and created, as a result, a cannon with a slim chase flowing smoothly 
 out of a bulbous breech, a gun that drew on itself the nickname of 
 "soda-water bottle." This frivolity grated on the inventor, who was 
 always quick to see an affront to his dignity. 
 
 Then came secession. 
 
 Dahlgren was a Philadelphian by birth, but most other officers at 
 the Washington Navy Yard were Southerners. As the lower South 
 fell away from the Union, Dahlgren's colleagues, in his words, 
 "gradually receded from that frank communion which is apt to exist 
 between officers of the same service." Even the commandant of the 
 yard, a hawk-faced Marylander named Franklin Buchanan, made 
 little effort to disguise his Southern sympathies; although when the 
 naval officers of the capital, brightly decked out in gold lace and gilt 
 buttons, paid their official respects to Lincoln shortly after the in- 
 auguration, Captain Buchanan assured the President unctuously that 
 he could always depend on the Navy to support the honor and dig- 
 nity of the flag. ( A year or so later this patriot was to command the 
 Confederate ironclad Merrimac.) 
 
 As chief of the yard's ordnance department during the secession 
 crisis, Dahlgren held a crucial post. Though the stock of arms in his 
 charge was not large, it was choice, and the placid-looking Maryland 
 countryside a few hundred yards across the river swarmed with se- 
 cessionists. The yard's defenses were meager. It was bounded on 
 the south by the Anacostia River, a branch of the Potomac, on the 
 north and east by a brick wall, and on the west, where precious 
 artillery, rifles and powder were stored, by nothing more than a 
 rickety wooden fence. Some weeks before the inauguration, being 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN 7 
 
 disposed for the moment to uphold his trust, Captain Buchanan had 
 made the yard as ready for attack as circumstances allowed. For his 
 part, Commander Dahlgren had hustled all the breech-loading rifles 
 and light artillery into the most defensible building available, laid 
 in a store of fuel and water, barred all but a few trusted men, secretly 
 piled up the powder stores in the loft of a large ordnance workshop 
 within range of his shellfire and braced himself for a siege. 
 
 Thus stood matters on Inauguration Day, and, knowing this, one 
 can understand Dahlgren' s forebodings as the reins of government 
 passed from the limp hands of James Buchanan to the untried grasp 
 of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 As it turned out, neither inaugural violence nor a siege of the 
 Navy Yard came to pass. But Dahlgren's readiness had its reward. 
 The resolute loyalty he had demonstrated and his high professional 
 standing marked him as a coming man in the Union Navy, especially 
 when his Southern colleagues began leaving. So it happened that a 
 famous war correspondent, William H. Russell of the London 
 Times, drove down to the Navy Yard that March to view and inter- 
 view the rising ordnance officer. 
 
 At the yard's massive stone gate, the portly, soft-spoken visitor en- 
 countered two sentries carrying brightly polished arms and dressed 
 smartly in dark-blue tunics with yellow facings and eagle buttons, 
 white Berlin gloves, and caps — "all very clean and creditable," he 
 thought. Inside the yard Russell was impressed by the "air of agree- 
 able freshness" about its red-brick buildings, picked out with white 
 stone, and its two or three green grassplots, fenced in with pillars 
 and chains and bordered by trees. Down by the river stood the great 
 covered shipways, a huge barnlike structure with a gaping mouth 
 big enough to swallow a ship whole. Indeed, the ribs of one ship 
 rested there at that moment, as if in the process of being digested. 
 Dark plumes of smoke trailed over the yard from two big stacks, 
 and the noise of steam and machinery was everywhere. 
 
 Russell found his man in a modest office, surrounded by books, 
 papers, drawings and models, shell and shot and racks of arms. The 
 
8 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 two men talked for a couple of hours and were mutually impressed. 
 Russell reflected that "all inventors . . . must be earnest self-reliant 
 persons, full of confidence, and, above all, impressive, or they will 
 make little way in the conservative, status- quo-lowing world," and 
 he justly assigned Dahlgren to that formidable category. 
 
 But Russell's account, perhaps unwittingly, played an unflattering 
 light on Dahlgren's high-strung temper. "He has to fight," Russell 
 told the world, "with his navy department, with the army, with 
 boards and with commissioners — in fact with all sorts of obstruc- 
 tors." However true this may have been, however real the "parsi- 
 mony of the department" which Dahlgren was quoted as deplor- 
 ing, such criticism by Dahlgren of his colleagues and superiors 
 looked a little peevish, not to say indiscreet, in cold print; and Dahl- 
 gren was understandably annoyed with the clever Mr. Russell when 
 it came out. "How is Dahlgren?" wrote Russell penitently a few 
 months later to a mutual friend. "I hope the dear old man's dander 
 has gone down now — & that he will go on making his guns in peace 
 & quietness." 
 
 March passed, and still Commander Dahlgren had seen the Presi- 
 dent only from a distance — not that Dahlgren suffered from diffi- 
 dence, but that, in his own words, "the throng that gathered about 
 the President was impenetrable." It was Lincoln who made the first 
 move toward a meeting, and a surprise move at that. 
 
 Perhaps Lincoln was concerned for the safety of the Washington 
 Navy Yard under pro-Southern Franklin Buchanan; perhaps curi- 
 osity alone drew him. Whatever the reason, Navy Yard officers were 
 astonished, one gray, gusty day about a month after the inaugura- 
 tion, to see Lincoln and his family drive up to the great stone gate 
 and into the yard. Despite a hubbub of impromptu ceremony and a 
 twenty-one-gun salute, Lincoln drove straight to Dahlgren's office 
 and asked for that spirited supporter of the Union. Dahlgren hap- 
 pened to be away just then. It was Captain Buchanan, therefore, who 
 took the callers on a two-hour tour of the establishment. 
 
 There was much for Lincoln to see: heavy steam hammers for 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN 9 
 
 forging anchors; a blast furnace and steam hammer for working up 
 scrap iron; the chain-cable shop with its hydrostatic press for testing; 
 the pyrotechnical laboratory; the rolling mill; the boilermaking 
 shop; the machine shop; the foundries, brass and iron, where boat 
 howitzers and fieldpieces were turned out; and an assortment of 
 steam-driven machinery for boring, turning, planing and other 
 operations. Lincoln was delighted with it all — not only with the 
 ingenious machinery and the busy shops, but also with the cool, 
 cavernous shipways and the general neatness of the yard. So, it may 
 be supposed, were the Lincoln boys, Tad and Willie. How much of 
 the first lady's rapture was real and how much merely polite is harder 
 to gauge, and similarly unfathomable are the feelings of secessionist 
 Franklin Buchanan as he escorted his Black Republican superior 
 about the establishment. 
 
 Hoping, perhaps, to hold Buchanan's loyalty by a show of good 
 will, the President had consented to give away the captain's daugh- 
 ter Nannie in marriage to a Marine Corps lieutenant at the com- 
 mandant's quarters the next night. When the time came, Lincoln 
 was late. The wedding itself, in fact, was over when the Presidential 
 carriage drew up and its occupant alighted. 
 
 On that dark, chilly night, few guests could have lingered on the 
 white-columned veranda that skirted the big brick residence, but 
 inside, the spacious rooms were crowded with Washington society, 
 gay in blue uniforms or fashionable evening dress. The mixed 
 sentiments of the guests may have constrained talk of gathering 
 war clouds, of Federal forts like Sumter and Pickens, holding out 
 precariously along the coast of a new nation which called itself 
 the Confederate States of America. Washington partygoers were 
 schooled in glib self-possession, and they doubtless maintained the 
 proper volume of innocuous chatter. But many eyes grave with 
 fears and racking indecisions turned toward Lincoln as he walked 
 in. Perhaps they found a moment's reassurance. Lincoln seemed to 
 have left his cares at the great stone gate, and presently he was 
 chatting and joking with the gaiety that could so astonishingly 
 transfigure his deep-lined countenance. 
 
10 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Dahlgren was there, too, and doubtless holding his own. With 
 all his usual austerity, the commander could be convivial enough 
 when he chose. "In New York," one of his friends once wrote him, 
 "I heard that you could not get a glass big enough to hold a bottle of 
 beer, so I have ordered one cast for you the size of a fifteen-inch 
 shell and sent for your own especial tippling." At any rate, if he 
 nursed chagrin at having missed Lincoln the day before, Dahlgren' s 
 feelings were assuaged when someone brought him over to the 
 President. 
 
 Lincoln took an immediate fancy to the man he saw standing 
 before him, a man of earnest and thoughtful mien, utterly without 
 self-consciousness, whose thin nostrils expanded with the intensity 
 and enthusiasm of his speech. The President grasped Dahlgren' s 
 hand in both of his as if the two men had been friends for years; and 
 an easy, offhand conversation ensued until interrupted by the claims 
 of others. Lincoln had found his chief adviser on the tools of war. 
 
 As Dahlgren stood chatting with Lincoln that evening, he could 
 not have realized how much they had in common. Like the rest of 
 the world, Dahlgren accepted the rail-splitter image of Lincoln, so 
 firmly established by the Presidential campaign of i860. And well 
 he might have, for there was much truth in it. Born in a log cabin, 
 brought up on a farm, having struck out for himself in a prairie 
 hamlet, Lincoln could scarcely have disguised the country flavor of 
 his manners and speech had he tried; and he never tried. In his 
 accent, in his homely turn of phrase, in his whole way with people, 
 Lincoln was the complete Westerner, careless of ceremony and 
 brimming with broad humor. His long limbs with their large-sized 
 extremities; his farseeing gray eyes set deep in a lean, weatherbeat- 
 en, craggy face; his unruly, tousled hair; his firm but cautious stride 
 — all suggested the American pioneer, not the engineer or scientist. 
 
 Yet, as Dahlgren soon discovered, there was a streak in Abraham 
 Lincoln that reflected young America's delight in the Machine Age, 
 a streak that had more in it of Eli Whitney than of Henry Thoreau. 
 
 Lincoln had witnessed and welcomed the coming of machines, 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN II 
 
 and he loved them, not only as an ex-rail-splitter might love a cir- 
 cular saw, but also as a mathematician loves a difficult equation 
 neatly solved. Lincoln had the engineer's exact and tenacious mind, 
 not quick and facile like that of his hero Henry Clay, but marked by 
 deliberation and reflective analysis. "I am never easy when I am 
 handling a thought," said he, "till I have bounded it north, bounded 
 it south, bounded it east, and bounded it west." 
 
 To be sure, because he had lived most of his life in half-tamed 
 wilderness or prairie town, Lincoln had missed personal contact 
 with certain refinements of technological progress. The White 
 House was only six years ahead for him when gas lights first flared 
 through the darkness of Springfield's main square. On the circuit 
 he went to a little show at a local academy and afterward rambled 
 on by the fire about the electrical machine, the magic lantern and 
 other scientific toys he had seen there. His fellow lawyers were not 
 impressed. They had known about those things as schoolboys. 
 "Yes," said Lincoln sadly, "I now have an advantage over you, for 
 the first time in my life seeing those things which are, of course, 
 common to those who had, what I did not, a chance at an education 
 when they were young." 
 
 But no China Wall encircled Illinois. During the fifties, the 
 Machine Age began to take hold in Springfield. Steam engines 
 hissed and pounded in its mills, ready-made clothes piled up on its 
 counters, reapers clattered over its tributary farms. As Lincoln 
 walked along a Springfield street one day in 1856, he spied a self- 
 raking reaper on exhibition, the first he had ever seen. Here was 
 technology helping to feed the millions who tended its shops and 
 mills. Fascinated, Lincoln stared long at the new device. His imagi- 
 nation carried it to an Illinois wheat field and set it going; his supple 
 mind followed the complex evolutions of sickle, revolving rake and 
 reels. Presently the little group of spectators around him listened 
 with profit while the prairie lawyer explained, clearly and succinctly, 
 the mechanical principles involved. 
 
 A few months later Lincoln stopped to watch a young telegra- 
 pher, Charles Tinker, at his work. The onlooker asked questions, 
 
12 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 and young Tinker explained the workings of the wonderful con- 
 traption: the key, the making and breaking of the circuit, the elec- 
 tromagnet. Tinker found Lincoln an apt and intelligent pupil, "al- 
 ready well furnished with knowledge of collateral facts and natural 
 phenomena." 
 
 Lincoln had picked up some of those collateral facts from the 
 Annual of Scientific Discovery, which he had come across in 1855 
 among the books of his law partner, Billy Herndon, and liked so 
 well that he bought his own copy. Lincoln's judgment was sound. 
 The Annual, edited by a youthful Yankee named David Wells 
 (whom Lincoln was to meet and like during his Presidency), cov- 
 ered the year's progress in science and technology for both general 
 readers and specialists. Its contributors were able men, including 
 such savants as Louis Agassiz and Jeffries Wyman. To their efforts 
 were added two or three hundred pages of scientific and technologi- 
 cal news from books and magazines here and abroad. There was a 
 classified list of new patents; and for those readers whose thirst for 
 knowledge remained unslaked the Annual provided a bibliography 
 of recent scientific publications. "I have wanted such a book for 
 years," Lincoln told his partner, "because I sometimes make experi- 
 ments and have thoughts about the physical world that I do not 
 know to be true or false. I may, by this book, correct my errors and 
 save time and expense." 
 
 By keeping his eyes open to the world around him, by asking 
 shrewd questions and by reading intelligently, Lincoln learned much 
 more about the new Machine Age than the world at large gave him 
 credit for knowing. 
 
 And he was more than just an interested bystander. 
 
 When he was in his twenties, Lincoln worked for a few months 
 as a surveyor, studying geometry and trigonometry, bounding farms 
 and mapping towns with neat lines and clear, careful script, learn- 
 ing to respect the painstaking accuracy of engineering. Later, when 
 he became a lawyer, patent cases were his meat, and in them his 
 analytical mind and taste for mechanics served his clients well. 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN 13 
 
 From Lincoln's legal work for railroads came his greatest suc- 
 cesses as a lawyer, and with them a further insight into the impact of 
 technology on human life. Through his connection with the Illinois 
 Central, Lincoln met a compact, forceful, redheaded West Pointer 
 and Mexican War veteran named George B. McClellan, who had 
 become the road's chief engineer and vice-president in 1857. "More 
 than once," McClellan recalled in later years, "I have been with 
 him in out-of-the-way county-seats where some important case was 
 being tried, and, in the lack of sleeping accommodations, have 
 spent the night in front of a stove listening to the unceasing flow of 
 anecdotes from his lips." In those nocturnal gab fests Lincoln had 
 an opportunity to learn about the latest progress in weapons, for 
 McClellan had just returned from a thorough study of European 
 military technology, with special attention to developments in the 
 Crimean theater of war. 
 
 By then Lincoln had come to feel that he had some special ac- 
 quaintance with technology. He demonstrated his self-confidence 
 when, venturing forth in 1858 for the first and only time as a 
 popular lecturer, he chose "Discoveries and Inventions" as the sub- 
 ject of his talk. 
 
 The lecture evolved from a piece by George Bancroft which a 
 colleague had read to Lincoln on the circuit. After mulling it over, 
 Lincoln got up a similar talk, one which leaned heavily on the 
 development of ancient technology as revealed in the Bible, and 
 delivered it before the Young Men's Association at Bloomington, 
 Illinois. When he made bold to repeat it for the Ladies' Library As- 
 sociation in the same town, the public rendered a harsh verdict. "I 
 paid a quarter and went early to get a seat," wrote a young law stu- 
 dent to his father some months later. "It was a beautiful evening, 
 and the lecture had been well advertised but for some reason not 
 explained, only about 40 persons were present, and Old Abe would 
 not speak to such a small crowd, and they paid us back our quarters 
 at the door." 
 
 Despite the lecture's cold reception, its subject stayed with Lin- 
 coln. He rewrote his talk completely at some time during the ensuing 
 
14 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 year, leaving out most of his Biblical lore and bringing in the influ- 
 ence of patent laws and the printing press on the development of 
 technology. As an essay in technological history, the effort was weak; 
 Lincoln himself presented it more as a humorous piece with political 
 overtones, and even in that light its merit was uneven. Trying out 
 his second effort on another audience in January i860, he made no 
 better impression than before. 
 
 Lincoln's failure as a lecturer on technological history hurt him. 
 He drew back, crestfallen. Asked to deliver a lecture at Galesburg, 
 he begged off on the ground that he "must stick to the courts 
 awhile," adding in deprecation of his previous effort, "I read a sort 
 of lecture to three different audiences during the last month and this; 
 but I did so under circumstances which made it a waste of no time 
 whatever." He expressed his mortification more directly when teased 
 by a friend about the episode. "Don't," he said good-naturedly; 
 "that plagues me." 
 
 Yet time healed the cut. A few weeks before his death, Lincoln 
 spoke of the "Discoveries" lecture in talking with Louis Agassiz. 
 "When I get out of this place," he told the scientist wistfully, "I'll 
 finish it up, perhaps, and get my friend [Noah Brooks] to print it 
 somewhere." 
 
 The lecture fiasco notwithstanding, those who knew Abraham 
 Lincoln at the closing of his prairie years acknowledged his knack 
 for mathematics and machinery. In 1859, a generation after his 
 junkets with compass and chain, Lincoln's opinion on a disputed 
 point was sought by a convention of surveyors who met in Spring- 
 field. And one of Lincoln's former law partners said of him in 
 i860: "Has an inventive faculty. ... Is always studying into the 
 nature of things." 
 
 When Lincoln came to the White House, he felt himself compe- 
 tent to tackle problems of technology. If he had ever believed him- 
 self infallible in such things, his lecturing experience had taught 
 him proper humility; but he had also learned as a surveyor and 
 patent lawyer that he could study those matters out and see through 
 them, if need be. Certainly he showed as President the same zest for 
 
Brigadier General James W. Ripley 
 
 National Archives 
 
 Brigadier General George D. Ramsay 
 
 The Library of Congress journal of Chemical Education 
 
 Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren Dr. Charles M. Wetherill 
 
 THREE ORDNANCE OFFICERS AND A SCIENTIST 
 
t • 
 
 i • < " 
 
 The Library aj Congt 
 
 THE WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, 1861 
 A drawing by Alfred Waud. 
 
 TV 5 
 
 : .'•■V' 
 
 f JMi 
 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 A PARROTT RIFLED FIELD PIECE ON THE ROAD 
 
 A drawing by Edwin Forbes. 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN 15 
 
 mechanical novelties he had manifested at the little show on the 
 Illinois circuit. 
 
 Of this Presidential proclivity Commander Dahlgren was soon to 
 be aware. 
 
 The friendship which had sprung up so quickly between Lincoln 
 and Dahlgren took firm root and flourished. Events gave Dahlgren 
 ample opportunity to cultivate it. On April 4, 1861, the day after 
 Nannie Buchanan's nuptials, Dahlgren received a requisition for 
 howitzers which cryptically referred him to the President for further 
 details. He "posted to the White House." At first Lincoln himself 
 was nonplussed, but it finally transpired that the guns were for an 
 expedition to provision Fort Sumter. Civil war was at hand. At Lin- 
 coln's request, Dahlgren called again early the next day. He found 
 the President "ill at ease, and not self-possessed." 
 
 Early on the morning of April 12a Confederate signal shell burst 
 over the dim outline of the fort in Charleston Harbor, and by night- 
 fall both North and South blazed with war fervor. Five days later, 
 as Northern men by the thousand answered Lincoln's call for vol- 
 unteers, the state of Virginia seceded from the Union and left the 
 capital of the United States wide open to capture by the Confeder- 
 acy. 
 
 From his office window President Lincoln looked out over the 
 Potomac to enemy territory on the west, while across the Anacostia 
 River to the east the state of Maryland wavered on the brink of seces- 
 sion. Baltimore mobs attacked the 6th Massachusetts Regiment as it 
 passed through the city to reinforce Washington. Maryland seces- 
 sionists tore up railroad tracks and cut telegraph lines. Washington 
 was cut off from the North and for a few days waited for some rebel 
 blow as helplessly as a captive with his head on the block. 
 
 Seceding states drew their native sons with them, and the armed 
 services of the Union lost many of their finest officers. In Washing- 
 ton Colonel Robert E. Lee and Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston 
 were among the leavetakers. Next door to the White House, at the 
 little brick Navy Department building, disaffection rallied around 
 
l6 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 the Chief of Navy Ordnance, Captain George A. Magruder, who 
 resigned on April 22 and after a period of agonized indecision set- 
 tled in Canada. When Magruder left, so did everyone connected 
 with his bureau except the draftsman, the messenger and a Navy 
 lieutenant named Henry Wise — of whom more will be heard later. 
 
 Magruder' s successor as Chief of Navy Ordnance was Captain 
 Andrew A. Harwood, an amiable officer of some ability but no tech- 
 nical training in the subject of his new command. The new chief 
 confined himself to administering bureau affairs with the help of 
 Lieutenant Wise. Even in this limited role he was unhappy. As for 
 technical questions, in those Harwood gave carte blanche to the 
 knowledgeable Dahlgren. 
 
 On the same day that Captain Magruder resigned, Captain Frank- 
 lin Buchanan mistakenly concluded that his native state of Maryland 
 was about to follow Virginia out of the Union. One of the steps he 
 took in consequence was a letter to Dahlgren : 
 
 As I have this day resigned my Commission as a Captain in the 
 Navy, and consider myself only temporarily in command here, you 
 will . . . superintend the defence of the yard when necessary. I shall 
 not take any part in the defence of this Yard from this date. 
 
 In this step, at least, Buchanan was in harmony with Secretary of the 
 Navy Gideon Welles, who had already divined Buchanan's inten- 
 tions and had told Dahlgren to take over. Undismayed by his eleva- 
 tion at so desperate a time, Dahlgren spent the rest of the momen- 
 tous day arming and fitting some river steamboats, and worked far 
 into the night posting his little force for defense. 
 
 At the close of his life Dahlgren underscored his service in that 
 emergency as "the best which I ever rendered to the country." An 
 exodus of rebel sympathizers left Dahlgren with only about a hun- 
 dred and fifty men to defend the yard, while Confederate territory 
 lapped at the city's western edge and threatened to ring it round. 
 Dahlgren rose to the occasion. In the prophetic words of William 
 H. Russell, he was "self-reliant . . . full of confidence, and, above 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN 17 
 
 all, impressive" — just the sort of man for the crisis. One of Lin- 
 coln's private secretaries encountered Dahlgren in those perilous 
 days and was at once impressed by his "great coolness & power." 
 Lincoln saw the importance of Dahlgren' s services and hinted to 
 him of promotion "when the proper time arrived." After the arrival 
 of Northern troops ended the crisis, certain Navy captains began 
 vying for Commander Dahlgren' s billet, since the law earmarked it 
 for their rank. Lincoln declared: 'The Yard shall not be taken from 
 the Captain; he held it when no one else would, and now he shall 
 keep it as long as he pleases." And for Dahlgren' s benefit Congress 
 amended the old law — an action which Dahlgren called "the best 
 compliment I ever received." 
 
 By early May Washington had passed from under the shadow of 
 rebel capture. In the Navy Yard, the 71st New York Regiment 
 pitched its white tents, "adding not a little to the picturesque view 
 from the entrance." When the regiment invited Lincoln to a concert 
 by its fine band on the afternoon of May 9, he cheerfully accepted. 
 
 A thirty-four-gun salute proclaimed the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Abraham Lincoln at the Navy Yard. The carriage rolled up to the 
 concert hall, a big storeroom which had been festooned with banners 
 for the occasion and which was now further ornamented with Cab- 
 inet members, Army and Navy officers and "a crowd of the ton of 
 Washington" to the number of two or three hundred. The ton 
 of Washington rose to its elegant feet and remained standing 
 while the lanky President and his short, plump first lady walked 
 down the aisle to their seats in the front row. Lincoln listened to a 
 much applauded program of march tunes and sentimental ballads 
 and asked at the end for the "Marseillaise," which was vigorously 
 rendered by one of the singers. (A Southern hymn tune had been re- 
 christened "John Brown's Body" and was catching on among Union 
 troops, but it still awaited lyrics that would equal this occasion. ) 
 
 After the concert Lincoln asked to see the n -inch smoothbore 
 Dahlgren gun fired, so Dahlgren took the Presidential party aboard 
 the Pensacola to watch the practice. The day had been nearly cloud- 
 
18 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 less, and by the time the President and his friends boarded the vessel 
 the last white streaks of cloud had drifted over the edge of the hor- 
 izon before a fresh breeze from the northwest. The river sparkled in 
 the sunlight of a springtime afternoon. On shore sat a gleaming new 
 Dahlgren n-incher. The gun crew performed their evolutions, the 
 great gun boomed, and almost at once, as it seemed, the black shell 
 could be seen hurtling through the air two thirds of the way to the 
 wooden target in the river. The target was about as far from the 
 gun as Fort Sumter had been from the nearest rebel battery, thirteen 
 hundred yards. All the three rounds fired struck the target, one di- 
 rectly and two on ricochet from the water. Young John Hay, one of 
 Lincoln's private secretaries, described the scene in his diary: 
 
 The splendid course of the n inch shell flying through 1300 
 yards of air, the lighting, the quick rebound, & flight through the 
 target with wild skips, throwing up a 30 ft. column of spray at 
 every jump, the decreasing leaps and the steady roll into the waves 
 were scenes as novel and pleasant to me as to all the rest of the party. 
 The Prest. was delighted. 
 
 Dahlgren, gay with gratified pride, took note of Lincoln's good 
 spirits and wished that he, as commandant of the yard, could offer 
 the President some hospitality. But he still had no other quarters 
 than his office, so Lincoln just stood on the office piazza and re- 
 viewed the 71st Regiment on dress parade. Thus the pleasant after- 
 noon ended. A salute was fired, the Marine Band struck up "Hail to 
 the Chief," and the Presidential carriage rolled out through the 
 great stone gate as the Stars and Stripes dropped from the flagstaff. 
 
 Lincoln was acquiring a taste for guns and for the company of 
 the keen, earnest, loyal officer who knew so much about them. On 
 May 24 the President was back again at the yard on a sad errand, 
 that of viewing the remains of his young friend Colonel Elmer E. 
 Ellsworth, who had been shot by a rebel innkeeper in Alexandria. 
 On June 2 Lincoln brought along his Secretary of State, the bland, 
 shrewd William H. Seward, and the eminent pair were saluted with 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN 19 
 
 twenty-one guns on leaving. Before long the President's visits were 
 to become too frequent for such fanfare. 
 
 A great transformation was coming over Washington in those 
 stirring days. Visitors who came in by train were warned of it by 
 troop encampments on both sides, larger and closer together as the 
 train neared the city. The fields around Washington resounded with 
 shouts of command and the tramp of marching men and flashed 
 with wheeling arms. Washington's magnificent distances turned out 
 to be good for something. Parks of artillery studded the waste 
 ground, and long trains of white-topped wagons filled up open 
 spaces in the suburbs. Coming back to Washington that summer and 
 driving up Pennsylvania Avenue, William H. Russell was aston- 
 ished to find the drab thoroughfare he had last seen in March now 
 "all red, white, and blue with flags, filled with dust from galloping 
 chargers and commissariat carts; the side- walks thronged with peo- 
 ple, of whom a large proportion carried sword or bayonet; shops full 
 of life and activity." At the Navy Yard Dahlgren had gas fixtures 
 put up, and he kept things humming day and night and Sundays. 
 Working in shifts around the clock, the ordnance department at the 
 yard was turning out two hundred shells, twenty-five thousand per- 
 cussion caps, and thirty-five thousand Minie and musket balls every 
 day, besides rifling cannon and casting, finishing and mounting 
 howitzers. 
 
 Lincoln kept coming back to the Navy Yard, as if he drew fresh 
 confidence from the grim efficiency he found there. Early in June 
 Dahlgren was writing that "the President often comes to see the 
 Yard, and treats me without reserve" ; a few days later the command- 
 er recorded that he had dined at the White House. The journal en- 
 tries indicate that the rail-splitter President was becoming a familiar 
 figure in the shops and foundries of the Navy Yard. 
 
 In August, at Lincoln's prompting, the Navy Department offered 
 Dahlgren command of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography 
 in place of Captain Harwood, a change which Harwood himself 
 would have welcomed. Dahlgren chose to remain at the Navy Yard. 
 "Washington," he reasoned, "had again become the center of great 
 
20 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 operations, and the importance conferred on the Yard made it equal 
 to any naval trust that could be given." Besides, Dahlgren had no 
 taste (and in the opinion of some officers, slight capacity) for ad- 
 ministrative work. His heart was with the drawing board, the prov- 
 ing ground and the foundry. 
 
 Lincoln's visits to the yard continued. "The President came down 
 in his usual off hand way," wrote Dahlgren on one occasion, "and 
 sat some while in the office conversing with me on various matters." 
 On fine days Lincoln and Dahlgren and sometimes Secretary Seward 
 would go off on "a pleasant jaunt" down the river, but even the com- 
 ing of cold weather did not keep Lincoln away from the yard. 
 "Scarcely a day passes," Dahlgren noted, "but that I meet with our 
 principal men, discussing our affairs, so that the company at Wash, 
 never has been of like interest. The President everywhere — and 
 always the same kind sagacious gentleman." Others at the yard 
 shared Dahlgren' s liking for their frequent visitor. As the President 
 and "a part of his family" drove around the yard one day, "many 
 of the worthy workmen expressed sentiments of high regard for 
 the unostentatious and affable Chief Magistrate" — which was prob- 
 ably the National Intelligencer's sedate way of reporting a hearty 
 cheer for Old Abe. 
 
 And yet Dahlgren could not escape occasional misgivings about 
 his easy friendship with so high a personage as the President of the 
 United States. One day in August 1861 Russell of the Times made 
 one of his revealing visits to the Navy Yard and reported Dahlgren 
 as being "rather inconvenienced by the perpetual visits of the Pres- 
 ident, who is animated by a most extraordinary curiosity about naval 
 matters and machinery, so that he is continually running down 'to 
 have a talk with Dahlgren.' " This deprecatory reference to Lin- 
 coln's visits must, on the face of it, have come from Dahlgren him- 
 self. 
 
 There was some reason for Dahlgren to shun the appearance of 
 toadyism. Even the Secretary of the Navy, bewigged and bewhisk- 
 ered Gideon Welles, whose patriarchal benignity led the President 
 to nickname him "Father Neptune," suspected Dahlgren of being 
 
CAPTAIN DAHLGREN 21 
 
 prone to that unattractive vice. Ever watchful of his authority, Mr. 
 Welles further objected to the President's habit of passing him by 
 and dealing directly with Dahlgren. While praising the "dis- 
 tinguished Commandant of the Washington Yard" to the skies in 
 official reports, the Secretary relieved his feelings with some biting 
 asides in his famous diary. There he characterized Dahlgren as "al- 
 ways attentive and much of a courtier." The deadly diarist gave the 
 captain full credit for intelligence and ability and conceded that he 
 would "gallantly sustain his chief anywhere," but added that "he 
 is intensely ambitious, and, I fear, too selfish. ... He shuns and 
 evades responsibility." 
 
 There was much truth in Welles's estimate of Dahlgren, but 
 whatever else he may have been, the captain was no hypocrite. His 
 pleasure in the President's company was no less real because he dis- 
 played it to Lincoln himself; he confided it with equal or greater 
 force to his own private journal. 
 
 And why did Lincoln, for his part, seek Dahlgren's company? 
 Most of the reasons have already appeared : Dahlgren was a man of 
 intelligence and vigor; he had proved his loyalty and earned the 
 President's gratitude at a time when the fabric of government 
 seemed to be dissolving; and his unsurpassed knowledge of ord- 
 nance made him useful, as will be seen, to a President as busy in 
 such matters as was Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Aside from Dahlgren's personal qualities, Lincoln found refuge 
 and refreshment in the atmosphere and activity of the Navy Yard. 
 This lure to yard excursions was clearly revealed by an episode in 
 December 1861. When Lincoln came alone late that month and pro- 
 posed a trip down the river, Dahlgren took him aboard the Pensa- 
 cola to Craney Island and back again. "We had a quiet time," wrote 
 Dahlgren of the trip. "The President looks grave and absorbed, and 
 a little the worse for his cares." Lincoln rambled on about many 
 things to Dahlgren, until at last the Pensacola anchored off Alex- 
 andria and the two men landed. "Well," said Lincoln gratefully as 
 they stepped ashore, "there has been a pleasant day. Such a relief 
 from politicians!" 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 2 
 
 General Ripley 
 
 At the corner of fourteenth street 
 and Pennsylvania Avenue, symbolically close to the Treasury Build- 
 ing, rose the six-story, quadrangular pile of Willard's Hotel, an 
 establishment noted for its gargantuan meals and for the multitudes 
 of place-seekers and place-bestowers who jammed its smoke-fogged 
 corridors and lobbies. From this hive swarmed most of the petty 
 politicians whose buzzings drove Lincoln to the Navy Yard; through 
 its doors pushed men and women of many purposes, good, bad and 
 inscrutable, as well as those who came merely to look on. One of 
 the last-named category, Russell of the Times, estimated late in 
 March 1861 that Willard's held "more scheming, plotting, plan- 
 ning heads, more aching and joyful hearts, than any building of the 
 same size ever held in the world." 
 
 But the noise of Sumter startled the crowds, and the secession of 
 Virginia sent them scurrying. Outside on the broad, ill-paved ave- 
 nue, shops were shuttered, blinds pulled down, public buildings 
 sandbagged and barricaded. Inside, an unwonted silence fell in the 
 empty halls, broken by little more than the echoing footsteps of 
 servants. The thousand guests had dwindled to fifty. 
 
 One of those nonconformists was a sharp-faced lieutenant colonel 
 who had arrived in the capital on or about April 20, 1861, just as 
 frightened crowds were jamming the last trains to Baltimore. It was 
 not the first time in his forty-seven years of Army service that this 
 West Pointer had swum against the current; he had done it often and 
 
 22 
 
GENERAL RIPLEY 23 
 
 seemed to find the exercise congenial. Despite his white hair and 
 his sixty-six years, he had an air of soldierly vigor. His grave, regu- 
 lar features, his high forehead, even his rather formidably aquiline 
 nose suited both his uniform and his stiffly formal bearing. To those 
 despondent stragglers who passed him in Willard's desolate lobby, 
 the old warrior must have been a bracing sight, a blue-clad incar- 
 nation of all the military virtues, an embodiment of the nation's 
 proud past and a living reproach to its inglorious present. 
 His name was James Wolfe Ripley. 
 
 "There has been nothing remarkable in my life," Ripley insisted 
 in his retirement, "nor do I intend to make it appear otherwise. 
 I have simply endeavored to do a soldier's duty." And accordingly 
 the aged veteran refused to furnish autobiographical information to 
 those — chiefly editors of encyclopedias — who requested it. Largely 
 because of old Ripley's inconvenient reticence, our view of young 
 Ripley's first twenty-four years is confined to his birth in Connecticut 
 in 1794, his entry into West Point in 181 3, his commission as a sec- 
 ond lieutenant of artillery in 1814 and his promotion to first lieu- 
 tenant in 1 81 8. 
 
 But an unguarded letter of reminiscence gives us a closer look at 
 Lieutenant Ripley soon after his first promotion, and we see that by 
 18 18 the twig had already bent precisely as the tree was to incline. 
 Ripley wrote: 
 
 I have not forgotten that during the Creek War a requisition was 
 made on a certain lieutenant of ordnance [meaning himself], sta- 
 tioned at the South, which he refused to comply with, on the 
 ground that it had not reached him through the channel pointed 
 out by the regulations. He soon after received a message from 
 General [Andrew] Jackson, the substance of which was that if he 
 did not make the issue immediately he would send a guard to arrest 
 and bring him into camp, and there hang him on the first tree. The 
 requisition was, of course, promptly complied with. 
 
 After his run-in with Old Hickory, Ripley served here and there 
 on recruiting service. In 1823 he was back in Florida surveying 
 
24 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Indian tracts with Colonel James Gadsden (whose name was to be 
 perpetuated thirty years later by the nation's final addition to its 
 continental territory). In the following year Lieutenant Ripley 
 married Sarah Denny, a Massachusetts girl, and presently began to 
 dream of a more settled life than the Army offered. For some time 
 he weighed his Army career against the possible charms of life as a 
 Florida sugar planter. But he already had a decade and a half of 
 military service to his credit; Colonel Gadsden warned him of the 
 large capital he would need for the plantation and admonished him 
 to "be not precipitate in resigning"; and it may be that Ripley's 
 later repugnance to the idea of change had even then begun to stir. 
 After a last trip to Florida in 1829 Ripley talked no more of leaving 
 the Army. 
 
 By that time children were coming along, but of the nine born 
 to James and Sarah Ripley, only three — all girls — lived to maturity. 
 Ripley grieved for his children who died and gave his heart to those 
 who lived. After little Roland died in 1838 at the age of four, the 
 sorrowing father put his dead son's belongings in a small trunk and 
 carried them about from post to post as long as he lived. In the 
 early eighteen thirties he sent his small daughter Adie to the "model 
 boarding school" of a shy, intense spinster named Dorothea Dix, 
 who later became one of the great humanitarian reformers of the 
 nineteenth century. "Mind that you do not spoil the idol," Miss Dix 
 felt obliged to caution the captain; "she is very fond of indulgence." 
 
 After Andrew Jackson came to the White House, Ripley per- 
 formed a service for his irascible commander that more than made 
 up for the Seminole War blunder of a dozen years before. South 
 Carolina presumed in 1832 to nullify the tariff of that year. Jack- 
 son, dead set on enforcing the law, strengthened the garrison of 
 Fort Moultrie at Charleston. For a breathless moment civil war 
 loomed. During those tense days at Fort Moultrie, Ripley, newly 
 commissioned a captain, did well for himself and his country. That 
 remarkable Charlestonian Joel Poinsett wrote President Jackson 
 that Captain Ripley's "indefatigable exertions to prepare his post 
 to resist the lawless attacks which threatened it, and his gentlemanly 
 
GENERAL RIPLEY 25 
 
 deportment have won the esteem and respect of the friends of the 
 government in this city." And Major General Winfield Scott, who 
 had been on the scene during the crisis, warmly commended Ripley 
 to the Secretary of War: 
 
 He has no superior in the middle ranks of the Army, either in 
 general intelligence, 2eal or good conduct. . . . His arrangement for 
 [Fort Moultrie's] defense was admirable. . . . No one left a higher 
 reputation, either with our officers or the citizens of Charleston. 
 
 The years which did most to make James Ripley what he was in 
 1 86 1 were those he spent as commanding officer of the national 
 armory at Springfield, Massachusetts. Before Ripley came there in 
 1 84 1, the armory had been more or less governed by a civil super- 
 intendent who could be removed by vote of the men and who was 
 neither respected nor obeyed by them. Every day at eleven in the 
 morning and four in the afternoon, the men would drop work, go 
 down to the spring back of the shops and regale themselves with 
 rum, cider brandy and impromptu wrestling matches. Ripley set 
 out to restore military discipline and order to the establishment and 
 immediately became the center of a storm that shook the town. 
 When he shut down the plant for repairs and reopened it without 
 hiring back his opponents among the workmen, fury burst on him; 
 but he ignored it. He cut wages. He struck against a hostile news- 
 paper by threatening to fire any armory workers who subscribed to 
 it. There is evidence to suggest that he also used such threats to in- 
 fluence Springfield town meetings — and even to recruit converts to 
 his own religious denomination, Episcopalianism. Three times dur- 
 ing his superintendency the unmoved disciplinarian was hanged in 
 effigy from the top of the armory flagpole. 
 
 Howl as they might against his methods, few denied that Ripley 
 was improving the state of the armory. Amid a flurry of suits and 
 countersuits he enlarged the grounds around the armory, graded 
 them, landscaped them and began, after a while, to put up a heavy 
 iron fence which still stands. He added new machinery, too, and 
 
26 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 during the last four years of his regime at Springfield more muskets 
 were made every year than ever before, at a lower cost per arm. 
 
 The author Jacob Abbott paid a visit to the Springfield Armory in 
 1852, near the close of Ripley's superintendency, and was charmed 
 by what he saw — the elegant buildings symmetrically arranged 
 within a great square, the gardens and shrubbery, the broad, neat, 
 tree-shaded walks. High on the brow of a hill stood Lieutenant 
 Colonel Ripley's official residence, a new house of ample propor- 
 tions, overlooking the town and the Connecticut Valley on one side 
 and the armory grounds on the other. No rum-prompted roisterings 
 broke the stillness of the scene, only the peaceful sounds of an oc- 
 casional pedestrian or carriage, a distant train rumbling over a 
 wooden viaduct or a dog barking somewhere in the town. In his 
 article for Harper's Monthly Abbott paid admiring tribute to the 
 "great resolution and energy" with which Ripley had brought about 
 "the order, the system, the neatness, the almost military exactness 
 and decorum which pervade every department of the works." 
 
 Thus pleasantly situated, Lieutenant Colonel Ripley must have 
 felt a pang when his Springfield idyll came to an end in 1854. The 
 Springfield Republican, just beginning its rise to national influence 
 under Samuel Bowles, had supported Ripley vociferously; now it 
 predicted that under Ripley's civilian successor, James Whitney, the 
 armory would suffer from "just that system of political corruption 
 which is and will ever be the great evil of the civil superintendence." 
 There were, however, those who received the change philosophi- 
 cally, consoling themselves with a parade, a banquet and the firing 
 of salutes. And as it happened, the Springfield Republican's pro- 
 phecy was not fulfilled. Though Whitney, "a politician of consider- 
 able ability, and a gentleman of popular manners," might not have 
 been able to bring order out of disorder as Ripley had done, he 
 was able to maintain order once it was established. In his six years 
 as superintendent the politician proved to be quite as efficient and 
 successful as the soldier. What was more, Whitney avoided quar- 
 rels, while enlisting the support of the War Department, the poli- 
 ticians, the townspeople and Ripley himself. The armory had never 
 
GENERAL RIPLEY 27 
 
 been in better shape than it was in i860, when the suave Whitney 
 left to become Collector of the Port of Boston. 
 
 For a time after his departure from Springfield, Ripley traveled 
 about inspecting arsenals; then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis 
 sent him to California as Chief of Ordnance on the Pacific Coast. 
 On June 23, i860, the day Stephen Douglas was nominated for the 
 Presidency by one fragment of the Democratic party, the pro-South- 
 ern Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, sent the redoubtable Yankee 
 officer to Japan in charge of certain arms and military stores to be 
 presented to the Shogun. Before returning, Ripley was supposed to 
 "visit and examine professionally the most important arsenals and 
 military manufactories in Europe and England." He never made the 
 tour. When he heard of the Southern rebellion on his way back 
 from the Japanese court, Ripley took the swiftest course for home. 
 "Your country needs you," said a friend, as Ripley stepped from 
 the gangplank of the Persia. "It can have me," he said, "and every 
 drop of blood in me." 
 
 His entrance speech may have been a little florid, but his timing 
 was perfect. Within a week after he checked in at Willard's, James 
 Wolfe Ripley was Chief of Army Ordnance. 
 
 In retrospect it all seemed logical enough, even inevitable. The 
 change, wrote an astute ordnance officer shortly afterward, was one 
 "which I had expected as soon as I heard of Col. Ripley's return 
 from abroad." And yet there was an element of chance in it, too. 
 
 In March 1861 Colonel Henry Knox Craig, Chief of Army Ord- 
 nance, was seventy years old. For thirty years he had served in the 
 Ordnance Corps; for ten years he had been its head. He was honest, 
 and he was loyal to the Union. But his age, his long years of peace- 
 time service and the convenient proximity of an experienced assis- 
 tant had all confirmed the colonel in habits of sloth and inefficiency. 
 It was that fact which made his removal inevitable. 
 
 To understand why the change hung fire until Lieutenant Colonel 
 Ripley was able to arrive on the scene, we must consider the new 
 Secretary of War, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania. Cameron was 
 
28 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 a tall, slender, thin-lipped man with a 'marked Scotch face," keen 
 gray eyes, a high forehead and luxuriant gray hair — a man of Sena- 
 torial mold, though affably democratic in manner. Indeed, he had 
 been a Senator and was to be one again. Moreover, though he was 
 no military man, he had been highly successful in business and so 
 might have been expected to run his department competently. But 
 Simon Cameron's political honors were tributes not to his states- 
 manship so much as to his skill in political bargaining, for he was 
 a prime specimen of the nineteenth-century American political boss. 
 And whatever the reason may have been, he showed no administra- 
 tive talent in the War Department. 
 
 Throughout the unhappy negotiations which trapped Abraham 
 Lincoln into giving Cameron the War Department, the aspirant 
 seems to have regarded his objective less as an opportunity for 
 patriotic service than as the deepest, fattest and fullest pork barrel 
 within his reach at the time. Much of the new Secretary's attention 
 during his first six weeks in office apparently went to rewarding 
 past political services and making sure of future ones. His course, 
 it must be said, had the incidental virtue of clearing out rebel 
 sympathizers. So charitable was the Secretary to fellow Pennsyl- 
 vanians that by mid- April the War Department had lost its tradi- 
 tional Southern character and resembled an outpost of Harrisburg. 
 But the command of the Ordnance Bureau was not a matter of 
 patronage; and though Cameron mended his political fences with 
 admirable foresight, he had less thought for his duty to the nation. 
 
 At length, in the third week of April 1861, with Sumter fallen, 
 Virginia out of the Union and most jobs disposed of, Simon Camer- 
 on's attention swung round to the two large facts that a Civil War 
 had begun and that he was Secretary of War. On April 22 the com- 
 fort-loving functionaries of the War Department were startled and 
 dismayed by an order from the Secretary: they were to keep the var- 
 ious bureaus open for business till five o'clock in the afternoon. This 
 was war! 
 
 At that heroic moment the Secretary discovered that his Chief 
 of Ordnance, having injudiciously yielded to a minor illness two or 
 
GENERAL RIPLEY 29 
 
 three days before, had left his duties to the temporary care of others. 
 
 Colonel Craig's absence at so trying a time annoyed Secretary 
 Cameron exceedingly. He talked it over with General Winfield 
 Scott, then commanding the Army, and the general agreed with 
 him that Craig fell decidedly short of what the times demanded. 
 Scott further pointed out that Lieutenant Colonel Ripley, next in 
 seniority to Craig, was available at Willard's. Looking back to Rip- 
 ley's competence and good judgment at Charleston some thirty 
 years before, and perhaps also to his energy and firmness at Spring- 
 field, the general was moved to recommend him as a successor to 
 Craig. And there may have been another recommendation. More 
 than once in his career Ripley had shown a peevishness toward 
 Democrats and an affinity for Whigs and Republicans which the 
 politically minded Mr. Cameron must have thought eminently suit- 
 able, if he knew of it — as he probably did. 
 
 Thus originated Special Order Number 115, which appeared on 
 April 23, 1 86 1, and assigned James W. Ripley to the charge of the 
 Army Ordnance Department "during the feeble health of its chief." 
 It was, perhaps, a measure of Craig's sluggish wit that he was 
 surprised as well as aggrieved at being thus superseded. When he 
 had recovered himself, he protested furiously; he believed the 
 assigned reason for his removal to be "a pretense" shielding "the 
 machinations and misrepresentations of unprincipled speculators 
 and military officials." His view, incidentally, was shared by the 
 Washington correspondent of the New York Times. The irate old 
 soldier called upon the influence of his friend Postmaster General 
 Montgomery Blair to win him reinstatement. In reply Craig was 
 told by Cameron that "the exigency of the present crisis demands 
 young, healthful, vigorous faculties, especially in your Department, 
 & it is this necessity alone that makes the change, not my will." 
 Craig kept fighting. He appeared before a board of officers, which 
 generously pronounced him able to carry out the duties of Chief of 
 Ordnance. Then he appealed to President Lincoln himself. 
 
 Craig wrote his note of protest to Lincoln just as the 7th New 
 York Regiment reached Washington to break the spell of fatalistic 
 
30 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 despair which had settled like a choking fog over the city. Once 
 the capital's fear of rebel capture had been dissipated, government 
 activity quickened with fresh confidence. Beset by details, Lincoln 
 had little leisure to investigate an old man's grievance. Indeed, there 
 seemed no reason why he should; nor did there appear to be grounds 
 for appointing anyone but Ripley as Craig's successor. The adjective 
 "young" may have been somewhat strained as applied to a gentle- 
 man of sixty-six, but Ripley's faculties seemed to be "vigorous" as 
 specified. And Craig could not qualify on either count. 
 
 To be sure, still younger and more vigorous men than Ripley 
 were at hand, but seniority was not to be regarded lightly even by 
 the President. Secretary Cameron's opposition gave Lincoln plenty 
 of trouble a few weeks later when he ignored seniority in appoint- 
 ing an energetic and intelligent Quartermaster General. "Doubtless 
 you begin to understand," wrote Lincoln to General Scott on that 
 occasion, "how disagreeable it is to me to do a thing arbitrarily, 
 when it is unsatisfactory to others associated with me." In reject- 
 ing Ripley as Chief of Ordnance, Lincoln would have run counter 
 not only to Cameron, but to Scott also. 
 
 Lincoln therefore declared that he could not interfere with the 
 arrangements which the War Department deemed essential for the 
 efficiency of the service; his note passed from Cameron to Craig, 
 and the old man temporarily subsided. Ripley, it seemed, was 
 secure in his triumph. 
 
 Across Seventeenth Street from the small, brick War Department 
 stood the "Northwest Executive" or Winder Building, where the 
 Army Ordnance Department had its headquarters during the Civil 
 War. The Winder Building (pronunciation as in "stem- winder" ) 
 was a plain, boxlike, brick structure five stories high, with marble 
 facing on the basement and a plaster coating over the remainder. 
 In Lincoln's time the double doors of its main entrance opened onto 
 the pavement — not, as now, onto a flight of stone steps — and there 
 was an iron grillwork balcony along the second floor which made 
 a convenient reviewing stand when soldiers of the Union paraded 
 
GENERAL RIPLEY 31 
 
 down the dusty street below. Otherwise the Winder Building stands 
 today with much the same face it first presented to Washingtonians 
 when Zachary Taylor lived in the White House across the street. 
 
 To find the Chief of Ordnance during the Civil War, a visitor 
 climbed a wide, iron staircase to the second floor, where he found 
 himself in a dark and dingy hallway — "a disgrace to any public 
 office, " wrote the Chief of Ordnance one day in 1864, shortly after 
 President Lincoln had paid him a visit. In cloudy weather the hall 
 was so murky that the office numbers were scarcely distinguishable, 
 and if brighter weather revealed them it exposed also the places 
 where paint had worn or peeled away from the grimy woodwork. 
 Not until the last year of the war was the corridor brightened by 
 fresh paint on the woodwork and frosted glass in the office doors. 
 From the hallway the visitor entered a room with a cold, stone floor 
 and an arched ceiling, a room crowded with desks and bookcases, 
 gun models, ledgers and papers, clerks, officers and probably a dis- 
 gruntled inventor or contractor. That was the office of the Chief of 
 Ordnance. 
 
 And that was what James Ripley saw when on April 24, 1 861, he 
 pushed through the Winder Building's double doors, mounted its 
 iron staircase and walked into his new office. The normal ruddiness 
 of his stern face was perhaps somewhat heightened by triumph. 
 If so, events would justify him. There he would rule through the 
 climactic years of the Civil War, through First and Second Bull Run, 
 through the Peninsula Campaign, through Shiloh and Fredericks- 
 burg, through Antietam and Chancellorsville, Vicksburg and Get- 
 tysburg. There he would stick while Scott gave way to McClellan, 
 McClellan to Burnside, Burnside to Hooker and Hooker to Meade. 
 And there, while thousands poured out their lives into the mud of 
 Chantilly or Marye's Hill or the Chickahominy, the balance on 
 which they had thrown such terrible weight would be tipped back 
 by the scratch of an endorsement, the filing of a letter or the curt 
 dismissal of an inventor. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was to be protagonist and General Ripley 
 
32 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 antagonist in the hidden struggle over new weapons which was 
 played out in those fearful years and which is the principal subject 
 of this book. In following the course of that struggle, we see the 
 general in his least admirable role. What will be said of him in these 
 pages will not be pleasant. Yet there was a great deal more to the 
 arming of the Union than simply deciding which types of weapons 
 were to be used; and since we are to haul James Ripley from the 
 historical limbo in which he has been mercifully sheltered for 
 ninety years, simple justice to the old man's memory calls for a few 
 words about what he faced and what he did in those other respects. 
 
 All of Ripley's troubles were complicated by the peacetime office 
 routine which he had inherited and which he was content to pass 
 on intact to his successors. Perhaps this was because he also inherited 
 Captain (later Colonel) William Maynadier, the grand vizier of 
 the Ordnance Office, whose fifteen years of bureau experience made 
 him indispensable to any chief with a decent respect for red tape. 
 "From the time I took charge of the Ordnance Office till the day I 
 left it," wrote Ripley later, "Colonel Maynadier occupied the same 
 room and a desk beside me, and was cognizant of almost every 
 business matter that occurred during that time." In spite of May- 
 nadier — or because of him — the Ordnance Office fell behind in its 
 paper work. Ripley was a year late in filing his monthly return for 
 April 1 86 1. Yet it did not occur to Ripley that procedure might be 
 streamlined; he could think of no better remedy than frequent in- 
 creases in the number of clerks. 
 
 Far worse than office inefficiency was the desperate shortage of 
 trained ordnance officers which lasted all through the war and for 
 which Ripley can scarcely be blamed. At the end of i860 the Ord- 
 nance Corps had only fifty-nine officers, and many of the best 
 dropped from the ranks when war came. Some joined the rebels; 
 others, like Oliver O. Howard and Jesse Reno, took field commands 
 in the Union Army. In the summer of 186 1 an act of Congress per- 
 mitted volunteer officers to perform field duties for the Ordnance 
 Department. (The same act made Ripley a brigadier general.) In 
 1863 another act raised the corps's authorized officer strength to 
 
GENERAL RIPLEY 33 
 
 sixty-four. But sixty-four officers were far from enough to command 
 all the arsenals, contract for arms, inspect arms, deliver arms, serve 
 at the several field headquarters and at the same time consider the 
 hundreds of new weapons urged on the Department. 
 
 The Northern state governors, especially Dennison of Ohio, 
 Curtin of Pennsylvania and Morton of Indiana, joined in beating 
 an epistolary tattoo on General Ripley's official skull. Governor 
 Morton, for example, wrote the Secretary of War that he had "had 
 embarrassment in transacting business with General Ripley from 
 the beginning of the war." In the same letter, he denounced an 
 offending officer as "superannuated, fretful, and slow, and not very 
 much superior to General Ripley as a business man." 
 
 According to the governors, the troops of their respective states 
 never had a fair share of arms, the arms they got were no good, and 
 they did not get them soon enough. Not content with writing angry 
 letters, the governors in the first few months of the war sent out 
 state agents to compete with one another and with the Federal Ord- 
 nance Department in the purchase of arms. This drove prices sky- 
 high. But the states were not dismayed, since the Federal Govern- 
 ment was obliged to reimburse them for every cent expended. 
 
 As if the governors were not enough, the generals in the field gave 
 a rousing performance of the "Anvil Chorus" with the Chief of 
 Ordnance as the anvil. They clamored incessantly and often un- 
 reasonably for more and better arms. Some, like John C. Fremont 
 and Benjamin Butler, took it on themselves to order arms directly, 
 regulations notwithstanding. Perhaps Ripley derived some bleak 
 consolation from the disclosure that General Fremont, the worst 
 offender, had been royally swindled. 
 
 General Ripley might have made a stinging reply to some of 
 those generals, but he forbore. Captain Kingsbury, Chief Ordnance 
 Officer of the Army of the Potomac, was not so magnanimous. On 
 one occasion he wrote caustically: 
 
 It may be observed that to a certain extent, the Ordnance Depart- 
 ment has been compelled to supply both armies. Since the Army of 
 
34 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 the Potomac landed at Fort Monroe, fifty-three pieces of field 
 artillery, with caissons, carriages, etc., and perhaps twenty-five 
 thousand stands of small arms, have been transferred to the enemy, 
 while a single 1 2 pdr. bronze howitzer, captured by General Butter- 
 field, is the only field trophy yet rendered as an equivalent. 
 
 Antiquated routine, dearth of officers, carping governors, im- 
 patient generals, defeat in the field — troubles like these explain the 
 short temper for which Ripley became notorious, and they make his 
 achievements more notable. After all, however Union troops may 
 have come out of battle, they seldom went in without a fair number 
 of serviceable arms and a good supply of ammunition. After a 
 spring and summer of heavy campaigning in 1862, for instance, 
 the Chief of Artillery for the Army of the Potomac wrote: 
 
 The Ordnance Department in the main kept the supply con- 
 stantly up to the demand, and by the cheerful and ready attention 
 to complaints, and the prompt creation of the requisite means en- 
 abled me to withdraw inferior material, and substitute such as 
 was found to be more reliable. 
 
 Full credit for this cannot be given to Ripley personally, but he de- 
 serves at least a share of it. 
 
 One more thing Ripley did which deserves a grateful remem- 
 brance: by his characteristically dogmatic insistence that all small 
 arms be produced with interchangeable parts, he gave a powerful 
 impetus to the American system of mass production. 
 
 These trials and achievements must all be weighed in Ripley's 
 favor before judgment is delivered. 
 
 General Ripley did not have to seek out his President. Whenever 
 possible, Abraham Lincoln preferred exercising his own legs to 
 sending a messenger. Almost every day he could be seen strolling 
 casually along the tree-shaded brick walk that ran from the White 
 House to the War Department. What with his interest in weapons 
 and the convenient proximity of the Winder Building, Lincoln be- 
 
GENERAL RIPLEY 35 
 
 came a frequent visitor in General Ripley's office. Once, for ex- 
 ample, Lincoln got a letter from an eccentric Hoosier inventor and 
 referred it to the War Department. There, a day or two later, Lin- 
 coln saw the same letter, now earmarked for General Ripley. So he 
 took it along to the Ordnance Office, where an impressed clerk 
 labeled it Left by His Excellency the President. 
 
 General Ripley was not a man to fawn on the great. He was al- 
 ways ready to point out bluntly to Lincoln wherein His Excellency 
 erred — as in the case of Lieutenant Harris. Senator Ira Harris of 
 New York was one of Lincoln's particular cronies. Early in Septem- 
 ber 1 86 1 Lincoln gave the Senator's son an appointment away from 
 the Ordnance Corps, to which the young West Pointer belonged. 
 Ripley objected vigorously: the President's act was against regula- 
 tions, worked "great injury to the operations of the Department" 
 and deprived Lieutenant Harris of the professional experience he 
 needed for future advancement in the Corps. Ripley could only 
 explain Lincoln's aberration by supposing that these "serious objec- 
 tions . . . were probably not known or considered, when this paper 
 was endorsed." 
 
 Ripley's readiness to take issue with Lincoln was not the work of 
 a passing impulse. Later that month, a Maine man named Charles 
 Weston asked to be made a military storekeeper in the Ordnance 
 Department. Since Weston's brother George was an influential 
 newspaper editor, Lincoln was inclined to listen sympathetically; 
 he agreed to make the appointment if General Ripley would re- 
 quest it in writing. Weston, however, could get nothing more out 
 of Ripley than a note conceding his probable competence for the 
 job. This was not what Lincoln had wanted, but he wrote Secre- 
 tary Cameron in support of Weston's appointment. Presently Wes- 
 ton came back to complain that someone else had got the job and 
 to ask for some other appointment. Lincoln patiently wrote an ac- 
 count of the situation to George Weston, adding, "I went to 
 Gen. Ripley, who told me plainly, he did not ask for his appoint- 
 ment, and could not be induced to ask for it. I have got the Sec. of 
 War to promise to try to fix a place for him." 
 
36 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 A place was duly fixed, and Weston became military storekeeper 
 at the arsenal in Watertown, Massachusetts. There he vindicated 
 Ripley's forebodings. Within a year Ripley had removed him for 
 neglect of duty and disobedience to orders. Political wheels turned. 
 Prodded by two Maine men, Vice-President Hamlin and Senator 
 Lot Morrill, Lincoln looked into the case once more. The Assistant 
 Secretary of War warmly assured the President that Weston's ac- 
 counts were "not only in arrears, but in great confusion, demon- 
 strating conclusively his unfitness for the office." After much delay, 
 and probably with misgivings, Lincoln nevertheless reinstated Wes- 
 ton. "Through all these weary months," wrote the latter, "I never 
 doubted, if you examined the case, you would do me justice." What 
 General Ripley thought was not recorded, but then it scarcely 
 needed to be. 
 
 Brother George Weston, having become editor of the Nation- 
 al Republican in Washington, took up gun peddling on the side. In 
 trying to palm off a lot of carbines on the Ordnance Office, Editor 
 Weston became so "pertinaciously offensive" that he was "ejected, 
 per nape of neck and a posteriori — hatless, breathless, and um- 
 brella-less." Presently his editorials were thundering against Rip- 
 ley's "disdainful refusal to examine and adopt the improvements 
 in arms and materiel by which the superior civilization of the free 
 States could have put down this semi-barbaric rebellion." But Ripley 
 cared nothing for that. As early as the fall of 1861, Ripley had 
 shown his determination to be cowed by no man, not even President 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 3 
 
 Men Without Guns 
 
 The news of fort sumter's fall struck 
 the North like a blow in the face of a sleeping giant. With a rush 
 men offered themselves to the Union. How many troops would 
 Ohio send? "The largest number you will receive," replied Gover- 
 nor Dennison. Iowa? "I am overwhelmed by applications," declared 
 Governor Kirkwood. Massachusetts? "How many regiments 
 will you take?" asked Governor Andrew. The response was mag- 
 nificent, inspiring, a phenomenon. It was also embarrassing. "The 
 plain matter-of-fact is," confessed Lincoln, "our good people have 
 rushed to the rescue of the Government, faster than the government 
 can find arms to put into their hands." 
 
 When the war began, enough old-fashioned smoothbore muskets 
 were on hand to equip the army of two hundred and fifty thousand 
 then envisioned. The first task of the Chief of Ordnance was to get 
 those smoothbores into the hands of the troops who were pouring, 
 eager but unarmed, into Washington and into camps all over the 
 North. That job alone was formidable, what with the guns scattered 
 in arsenals from Maine to California and the railroads choked with 
 traffic, but it was only a start. For the day of the smoothbore gun 
 was past, and the day of the rifle had come. 
 
 Rifled guns had been born centuries before, when some gun- 
 maker discovered that an elongated projectile would hold straight 
 and true in flight if given a spin about its long axis. The spin could 
 
 37 
 
38 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 be imparted by spiral grooves in the bore of the gun; and these 
 grooves, as well as the process of making them, were called 
 "rifling." Without that all-important spin, elongated projectiles 
 would tumble and wobble through space, unpredictable in both 
 course and impact. For that reason, most projectiles to that time 
 had been made spherical. But the volume, and hence the weight, 
 of a spherical projectile was limited by the diameter of the bore, 
 whereas an elongated shot could be made much heavier, and there- 
 fore much more formidable in range, accuracy and penetration. 
 
 Until the middle of the nineteenth century, however, rifled small 
 arms were loaded at the muzzle. The bullets had to fit tight enough 
 to take the grooves, and ramming them home by main force was too 
 conspicuous and protracted an operation to be feasible in open com- 
 bat. But in 1855 the Annual of Scientific Discovery printed, to the 
 edification of Abraham Lincoln among others, excerpts from the 
 latest report of the Secretary of War*, which told of not just one 
 but two promising answers to the problem of loading rifles. One 
 solution had come with the recent development of efficient rifles 
 which could be loaded at the breech. The other, favored by the 
 Secretary, was a newfangled bullet with a concave base which ex- 
 panded on firing, so as to take the rifle grooves. Using such bullets, 
 especially one developed by Captain Minie of the French Army, the 
 nations of the world began that year to adopt muzzle-loading rifles 
 as their standard infantry arm, and one of those nations was the 
 United States. 
 
 In 1 86 1 smoothbore muskets, well polished, still looked smart 
 enough on parade. They served as well as any other arm for prac- 
 ticing the drill manual. Some of them had value as historical cur- 
 iosities. But when life itself depended on their performance, not 
 even raw recruits would take them without protest, and the soldiers' 
 complaints were backed by the home folks. "It is the opinion of all 
 military men here," wrote Ripley's gadfly, Governor Morton of 
 Indiana, "that it would be little better than murder to send troops 
 
 * None other than Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 39 
 
 into battle with such arms as are a large majority of these [smooth- 
 bore] muskets altered from flint to percussion locks." 
 
 As a son of the frontier the President knew firsthand how much 
 better rifles were than smoothbores. When Lincoln's grandfather 
 was felled by an Indian bullet, he left behind him an "Old Smooth 
 bore" and two "Riffle" guns; if the grandson did not use those par- 
 ticular relics, he had ample opportunity to try others like them. A 
 knowledge of firearms came naturally with such a childhood as 
 Lincoln had known, in half-tamed country where game was both 
 plentiful and welcome. Seven-year-old Abraham Lincoln, armed 
 with a rifle that must have been longer than he was, fired through a 
 crack of his Indiana cabin and killed a wild turkey outside. He never 
 after pulled a trigger on any larger game, he said later; but that did 
 not necessarily mean that he ceased to use guns. In the days of 
 the Black Hawk War some sixteen years later, young Captain A. 
 Lincoln wrote that he had "Received, April 28, 1832, for the use of 
 the Sangamon County Company under my command, thirty muskets, 
 bayonets, screws and wipers, which I oblige myself to return upon 
 demand." 
 
 And Lincoln had some feeling for the beauty of a good weapon. 
 At his own expense during the Civil War, he once presented the 
 King of Denmark with a pair of Colt revolvers inlaid with gold in 
 "beautiful arabesque, with representations of the mechanic arts, 
 agriculture and commerce elegantly designed." When Seth Kins- 
 man, the California hunter, visited the White House, an artist 
 sketched Lincoln holding the hunter's long rifle and regarding it 
 with evident pleasure. On the sketch is scribbled a note: Titivate 
 Lincoln. 
 
 As an inventor's agent once remarked, President Lincoln was 
 "not entirely a novice in such matters." 
 
 It seemed, however, that even as late as the spring of 1861 some 
 authorities did not see eye to eye with Lincoln on the subject of 
 rifles. "Colonel Ripley says, Mr. Lincoln," remarked a White House 
 
40 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 secretary, "that men enough can be killed with the old smoothbore 
 and the old cartridges, a ball and three buckshot." 
 
 "Just so," replied Lincoln. "But our folks are not getting near 
 enough to the enemy to do any good with them just now. We've got 
 to get guns that'll carry further." 
 
 Lincoln's views on this subject and his readiness to take a hand 
 in weapons policy were brought home to Ripley a few days after 
 that hot-tempered warrior took charge of the Ordnance Office. 
 
 Early in May 1861, the 1st Vermont Volunteer Regiment was 
 alarmed by rumors that the Ordnance Department was about to 
 foist a lot of worthless Belgian muskets on it, even though in New 
 York, where the Regiment was due next day, a cargo of new 
 Enfield rifles waited in the harbor. On the appeal of Governor Fair- 
 banks, a Vermont-born Treasury official named Lucius Chittenden 
 took up the cause of the Green Mountain boys. 
 
 War Department officials sent Chittenden to see the Chief of 
 Ordnance. At the Winder Building, Chittenden found his quarry 
 "hedged in by more successive guards than the Secretary of War." 
 Vermont's champion plunged valiantly through the cordon and 
 into the office of Ripley himself, "an elderly gentleman . . . with 
 very white hair and a very red face." Cutting short Chittenden's 
 apologies for the intrusion, Colonel Ripley asked the visitor what 
 he wanted. 
 
 "An order from the War Department on the proper office in 
 New York," Chittenden said, "to deliver one thousand Enfield 
 rifles to the governor for the use of the First Vermont Regiment." 
 
 Ripley's face "deepened into crimson." "Such an application is 
 unheard of!" he snapped. "Why was it not made regularly through 
 the Secretary of War?" Before Chittenden could answer, Ripley 
 continued fiercely: "It is too late. The guns for that regiment have 
 been issued and the orders signed. They will not now be changed." 
 
 "I supposed the order had been issued," said Chittenden. "It is 
 that order which I wish to have changed. I know that the Depart- 
 ment has Enfield rifles; the Vermonters want them. ... If I cannot 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 41 
 
 get the order for them here or elsewhere, I must go to the Pres- 
 ident." 
 
 At this, Ripley was speechless. His face and hands turned to "a 
 dark purple" as he struggled to express his feelings. He bounded 
 from his chair with a rush which the startled Vermonter thought 
 for a moment was aimed at him; but the impetus carried the 
 colonel to a corner of the room where stood an old Springfield 
 flintlock musket altered to the use of percussion caps. Except for its 
 percussion lock, Chittenden noted, "it was the identical arm which 
 frightened the crows from the cornfields in my boyhood." 
 
 The old man seized the gun in both hands, raised it above his 
 head and shook it furiously. "These volunteers don't know what 
 they want!" he roared when he had recovered his voice. "There is 
 the best arm that was ever put into the hands of a raw volunteer! 
 When he throws that away, as they generally do, he does not throw 
 away twenty-five dollars' worth of government property!" 
 
 Retorting huffily that Vermonters had no use for guns to be 
 thrown away, Chittenden quit the room. Back in the War Depart- 
 ment he got the order for the rifles without further difficulty. "The 
 fact that President Lincoln could be reached in this case was con- 
 trolling," the triumphant civilian wrote in his recollections of the 
 incident. 
 
 In this instance, Ripley was not as obtuse as he seemed. What 
 the White House secretary had said about him was superficially 
 true. So long as Ripley had to pass out smoothbores, he sang their 
 praises. To an importunate general, for example, Ripley wrote: "Ex- 
 cept for fighting at long distances I consider the smooth bore more 
 efficient. It is equally as good with the bayonet, and is also suitable 
 for use with ball and buckshot, which is not the case with rifled 
 arms." But notice that he was writing only about action at close 
 range. To suppose that Ripley recommended smoothbores as the 
 basic infantry arm would be to do the old, man an injustice. After 
 all, the 1855 Springfield rifle, the first rifle adopted for the general 
 
42 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 use of United States troops, had been largely designed during Rip- 
 ley's regime at the armory, and Ripley was intensely proud of it. 
 
 If the Chief of Ordnance seemed to entertain an archaic affection 
 for smoothbores, it was because he had little else at the moment to 
 give the troops. There were not enough Springfield rifles and rifle 
 muskets on hand to arm one regiment in ten. In his heart Ripley 
 knew as well as Lincoln that sooner or later all smoothbores would 
 have to be replaced by rifles. What he did not know was where to 
 get those rifles. 
 
 Government manufacture offered little immediate relief. In April 
 1 86 1, after the fortunes of war had brought destruction on the 
 United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, only one impor- 
 tant small-arms manufactory remained in government hands. This 
 was Ripley's old demesne at Springfield, Massachusetts. Toward the 
 end of April Lincoln ordered the building of a government small- 
 arms factory at Rock Island, Illinois, but progress there was slow 
 until 1863. During the arms shortage of 1 861 -1862, therefore, 
 government-made rifles had to come from Springfield. And when 
 war began, the armory's capacity was only twelve hundred rifles per 
 month. 
 
 What about private manufacturers, then? After June 1861 a 
 contract for small arms was handed to almost every firm that would 
 accept one at fairly reasonable rates, and subcontracts for rifle parts 
 were filled by firms that had heretofore made solar compasses, rules 
 and levels, bells or sewing machines. "Every possible exertion is 
 being made," insisted Ripley, "to obtain additional supplies by con- 
 tract, by manufacture, and by purchase." But the special imported 
 iron needed for gun barrels was scarce, as also skilled labor, and 
 machine tools were at a premium. In laboring from June of 1861 
 through June of 1862, American manufacturers brought forth less 
 than fifteen thousand rifles. 
 
 One other possibility remained: foreign arsenals. In the early 
 weeks of the war Ripley proposed to buy a hundred thousand arms 
 in Europe to supplement those on hand and being made. Confed- 
 erate authorities had the same idea, and their overseas agents were 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 43 
 
 already hard at work. But Secretary Cameron thought such measures 
 extravagant and unnecessary. In his opinion, the Union had too 
 many soldiers for its guns, rather than too few guns for its soldiers. 
 As late as July he was saying, "We have already an army composed 
 of more than 300,000 men, a number greater than we need for the 
 actual crisis." As a loyal son of industrial Pennsylvania, moreover, 
 Cameron insisted that all guns be bought at home. 
 
 The distractions of politics and patronage soon crowded Ripley's 
 foreign-arms proposal out of Cameron's mind. Ripley spoke once 
 more, scaling down his recommendation to fifty thousand arms, and 
 then subsided helplessly. For more than three precious months 
 Simon Cameron held in check the tremendous power of the United 
 States Government to pre-empt the European arms market and 
 forestall the arming of the Confederacy. That delay was one of the 
 costliest blunders of the war — which is saying a great deal. 
 
 From the start Abraham Lincoln had a keener appreciation of 
 the need for more rifles than did his Secretary of War. "While in 
 the Ordnance Office," wrote Dahlgren in May, "the President came 
 in with the Secretary of State, seemingly on ordnance matters. The 
 President was exercised about communications by the Potomac, the 
 quantity of arms, &c. I hinted deficiency of nitre and powder." 
 
 For a while, Lincoln left the purchasing of arms to Cameron and 
 Ripley. But the distribution of arms, so long as all needs could not 
 be satisfied, was a matter of high military and political policy, and 
 Lincoln did not shrink from assuming his share of that burden. His 
 policy was consistent: in the arms-distribution dilemma of 1861, 
 President Lincoln stood forth as special pleader for the border 
 states. 
 
 In this Lincoln took care not to seem dictatorial. He had already 
 learned that Ripley could get his back up in a hurry if rubbed the 
 wrong way; and with Ripley, all ways seemed wrong. So Lincoln 
 sought Ripley's help as a friendly favor, rather than as obedience 
 to a command. Early in May, for example, when Lincoln urged 
 Ripley to send arms to the Kentucky borders of Indiana and Illinois, 
 
44 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 he added soothingly: "Of course you understand this subject better 
 than I; and therefore this is to be taken as a general suggestion, and, 
 in no sense as dictation." All the same, Lincoln was in earnest. 
 
 Lincoln's determination to arm the loyal men of the border 
 states was consistent with his kindly nature. He knew that in those 
 regions the crisis had visited neighborhoods and even families with 
 an agony of internal suspicion and hate. He knew that brave men 
 risked much for the Union in the midst of secessionist communities. 
 And he never forgot that he himself was a son of that middle border. 
 But another consideration guided him more strongly than sympathy. 
 Lincoln realized that the states through which the great division 
 ran were vital to the Union in the most severely practical sense, both 
 politically and militarily. 
 
 Of all the border states, Kentucky was first in the delicacy of its 
 balance between Union and Confederacy, and first also in Lincoln's 
 heart. Through a pass in Muldraugh's Hill, a stern upthrusting of 
 limestone some miles south of Louisville, ran a fast, clear stream 
 called Knob Creek, and on that creek had been the farm that was 
 Abraham Lincoln's first remembered home. Lincoln's childhood on 
 Knob Creek had not been easy. His earliest memory was of a dis- 
 astrous freshet that washed out his father's spring planting. The 
 boy's food was coarse, his clothes homemade. Winter cold struck 
 through cracks in the cabin walls. But Lincoln's Knob Creek years 
 went by in the sparkling time of life when everything new was 
 good and all was new — warm sunlight and cool earth, tumbling 
 water and still cliff, green-sprouting corn and slow-falling leaves. 
 His mother, who had been Nancy Hanks, was alive in those years. 
 Though Lincoln left Kentucky when he was seven, Kentucky never 
 left him; and his wife Mary in 1861 still called him "the tall Ken- 
 tuckian." 
 
 The bitterness that split the nation in 1861 ran like a raw gash 
 through the length of Kentucky. Muldraugh's Hill was secession 
 country. Abraham Lincoln was hated and reviled along Knob Creek. 
 This he well knew. In i860 he had written a Kentuckian corre- 
 spondent ironically: "You suggest that a visit to the place of my 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 45 
 
 nativity might be pleasant to me. Indeed it would. But would it be 
 safe? Would not the people lynch me?" 
 
 As war began Kentucky hung trembling in the balance, and many 
 of her people hugged the vain hope of neutrality. But not all. There 
 was danger and daring in that country. Once it had been the "Dark 
 and Bloody Ground," and now it seemed on its way to being so 
 again. From loyal citizens of Adair County came an appeal to Lin- 
 coln. "Being as we think in danger of our lives living in Secession 
 neighborhood," they wrote, "we . . . call upon you to furnish us at 
 least one good musket each for the purpose of defending the Union 
 and you in your Constitutional rights." From Garrettsburg near the 
 Tennessee line came a letter for Secretary Cameron. In that hotbed 
 of secessionists was a secret company of Union men, "all excellent 
 marksmen," who begged for a hundred good rifles. "We are now 
 almost entirely unsuspected," they wrote, "and intend as soon as we 
 receive them to seize by surprise the camp and stores of a party of 
 about 75 Secessionists encamped near the borders of Tennessee." 
 
 Lincoln was already moving in the matter. Remembrance and 
 compassion urged him on, but he had a larger motive still. "To lose 
 Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game," he reasoned. 
 "Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Mary- 
 land. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large 
 for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including 
 the surrender of this capitol." On the fate of Kentucky hung the 
 life of the nation. 
 
 The chief difficulty aside from getting the arms, as Lincoln saw 
 it, was to see that they were "put in the hands of friends, and not of 
 enemies." At first Lincoln depended for this on three trustworthy 
 and loyal Kentuckians, one of them his old friend Joshua Speed of 
 Louisville. Then early in May, he found his right-hand man in the 
 Kentucky matter, a remarkable naval lieutenant named William 
 Nelson. 
 
 Lieutenant Nelson was himself a tall Kentuckian, six feet four 
 inches in height, weighing three hundred pounds, with a deeply 
 tanned face and bushy black hair. For all his bulk he was active in 
 
46 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 both mind and body. He read widely and could repeat verbatim 
 page after page of his favorite authors. He was also fluent in several 
 languages, including the variety known as billingsgate, which at last 
 cost him his life at the hands of an insulted Union general. Most 
 important of all to Lincoln just then, the extraordinary Kentuckian 
 w2ls stanchly pro-Union. Russell of the London Times met him at 
 dinner in Washington and thought him "the very largest naval 
 officer I have seen in company. . . . He inveighed fiercely, and even 
 coarsely, against the members of his profession who had thrown 
 up their commissions. . . . Sumter and Pickens are to be reinforced 
 [this was in March], Charleston is to be reduced to order, and all 
 traitors hanged, or he will know the reason why; and, says he, 'I 
 have some weight in the country.' " 
 
 Visiting Kentucky that spring, Nelson found disunionists hold- 
 ing most of the state's guns. He was not the sort to wring his hands 
 and weep. Instead, as soon as he returned to Washington, he called 
 on Lincoln to warn him that arms must be given to the Union men 
 of Kentucky. Lincoln assented heartily, and then, pointing out the 
 risks involved, asked expectantly where he could find the man for 
 the job. "Cast your eyes," said the fierce lieutenant, "on a little man 
 of my size." That was all Lincoln needed; he began at once to dis- 
 cuss the details of Nelson's mission. 
 
 Nelson's task was too delicate for written credentials. Kentucky 
 secessionists might make too much capital from such orders if they 
 got hold of them. So Lincoln gave Nelson a verbal message for 
 Joshua Speed, and, as soon as the President had ordered five thou- 
 sand muskets sent to Cincinnati, Nelson took the train to Louisville. 
 There he convinced Speed of his genuineness, and by mid-May the 
 guns were being quietly passed out where they would do the most 
 good. Early in June, Lincoln sent five thousand more muskets to 
 Nelson and another thousand to be distributed by ex- Congressman 
 Emerson Etheridge of Tennessee. In July the Navy sent its burly 
 alumnus three hundred Sharps breech-loading rifles and a Dahlgren 
 howitzer. 
 
 Lincoln's gamble paid off handsomely and at once. Early in June 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 47 
 
 he got a letter from his old acquaintance Brigadier General George 
 B. McClellan, then commanding the Department of the Ohio: "The 
 issue of the arms to Kentuckians is regarded by the staunch men 
 as a masterpiece of policy on your part, & has — if I may be per- 
 mitted to say so — very much strengthened your position among 
 them." Lincoln's stratagem was not so abrupt as to nudge his native 
 state off her fence and into the Confederacy. Yet Kentucky se- 
 cessionists were wholesomely aware of what was going on; in fact, 
 the disloyal element considerably overestimated the number of arms 
 reaching loyal hands and were daunted in proportion. 
 
 In their anger and frustration disunionists cursed what they 
 dubbed "Lincoln guns." Loyal Kentuckians caught up the name as 
 readily as they had caught up the muskets and shouldered their 
 "Lincoln guns" with confident pride. Joshua Speed wrote Lincoln 
 jubilantly, "We are fast getting them on the hip." He went on to 
 tell his old friend the merry story of how pro-Southern Governor 
 Beriah Magoffin had paid sixty thousand dollars for arms to give 
 secessionists, only to find that the guns had no touchholes, could not 
 be fired and, worst of all, had been foisted on him by a sly Yankee. 
 
 Meanwhile, sharing Cameron's cheerful assumption that the war 
 would be just a summer outing, the North clamored for an imme- 
 diate advance into Virginia. The pressure proved irresistible, and on 
 July 1 6 General Irvin McDowell led a gaily confident army out of 
 Washington in the direction of Richmond. Sun glinted from the 
 army's serried bayonets, but misgivings darkened its general's heart. 
 His fears were realized : at the end of the road lay, not Richmond, 
 victory and peace, but Bull Run, defeat and the real beginning of 
 war. 
 
 July 21 was a fine, quiet Sunday. At about six in the evening 
 Lincoln drove down to the Navy Yard for the ride and, as Dahlgren 
 rode with him, remarked that the armies were hotly engaged and 
 the other side getting the worst of it. When he got back to the 
 White House, Lincoln found that Secretary Seward had been there, 
 haggard and hoarse, with news that the battle was lost and the army 
 
48 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 in full retreat. Darkness came, and rain. Lincoln lay sleepless on a 
 sofa. Midnight found him listening to stories of the disaster. By 
 daybreak what had been the Union's hopeful army began streaming 
 past, now only a rain-soaked mob. 
 
 Four days later Lincoln put George B. McClellan in command 
 of the army. Lincoln's engineer friend of Illinois Central days had 
 youth, vitality, brains, self-confidence and even some small victories 
 to his credit. He was short, like Napoleon, but broad-shouldered 
 and muscular; his eyes were light gray, his complexion ruddy, his 
 chin firm and his auburn hair so thick it looked like a wig. No better 
 choice could have been made for the emergency. McClellan was a 
 born organizer, a meticulous planner, who could simultaneously 
 command discipline and enthusiastic liking among his men. Later, 
 when McClellan' s excessive caution began playing into rebel hands, 
 Lincoln spoke rather irritably of his engineer friend's "special talent 
 for developing a stationary engine." But in the days after the rash 
 and ill-prepared excursion to Bull Run, McClellan' s tireless preoc- 
 cupation with details met the nation's great need. 
 
 Among its other consequences, the defeat at First Bull Run 
 brought about a salutary change in War Department thinking. 
 Within the week Secretary Cameron was writing the chairman of 
 the Senate Military Affairs Committee that "in order to supply arms 
 to the five hundred thousand volunteers to be accepted by the Presi- 
 dent, a further appropriation of $10,000,000 will be needed im- 
 mediately." 
 
 Government arms production was still meager. Despite Ripley's 
 repeated urgings and advice, despite the doubling of the working 
 force and an increase in the working day to eleven and a half hours, 
 the output of the Springfield Armory during August was only four 
 thousand rifles. In that month, through Ripley's influence, the civil- 
 ian superintendent was replaced by an energetic ordnance officer 
 named Major Alexander B. Dyer; and under Dyer production rose 
 to ten thousand a month by January 1862. That was still not enough 
 to equip an army of half a million men and keep it equipped 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 49 
 
 through a number of difficult and mostly unsuccessful campaigns. 
 
 After Bull Run, therefore, Ripley returned to his initial views 
 on foreign purchases, carrying Cameron with him. Lincoln moved 
 even faster. Before July was over the President had dispatched Col- 
 onel George L. Schuyler to Europe as his special agent, with two 
 million dollars for the purchase of arms. 
 
 By then most of the first-class arms had gone to the Confederacy 
 or other buyers, and prices for the leavings had soared. Further- 
 more, Schuyler got little support from the War Department. Never- 
 theless, Lincoln's agent sent back about a hundred and twenty thou- 
 sand rifles, mostly Austrian and Saxon, as well as thousands of 
 sabers and revolvers and ten thousand cavalry carbines. Presently the 
 War Department stirred itself, and by the summer of 1862 the 
 United States Government had bought another six hundred thou- 
 sand European arms. 
 
 A heavy price in lives and money had to be paid for Simon Cam- 
 eron's wasted months. Before Bull Run the War Department had 
 moved too slowly in ordering foreign arms. Afterward it moved too 
 fast — or at any rate, too recklessly. Cameron trustingly referred 
 contract hunters to his fellow Pennsylvanian, Assistant Secretary 
 Thomas A. Scott, who fired off orders broadside. Though Cameron 
 gave him standing instructions to consult Ripley on quality and 
 price, Scott wrote off the Chief of Ordnance as a querulous old fogy, 
 remarking that "if the gun business were left to General Ripley, the 
 government would get no guns." 
 
 Notwithstanding Scott's mockery, Ripley himself was temporarily 
 stampeded. He gave out contracts without advertising for bids or 
 even requiring written proposals; and he let certain ordnance officers 
 buy up all the arms they could find, without regard to price. 
 
 Easy profits found ready takers. Middlemen with no qualification 
 but political influence gorged at the War Department trough. 
 United States Senator James F. Simmons of Rhode Island charged 
 one contractor a ten-thousand-dollar fee in return for wangling a 
 rifle contract. Henry Wikoff, a debonair adventurer who had cap- 
 tivated Mrs. Lincoln with his flattery, complained to Cameron about 
 
50 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 General Ripley's "obstinate imbecility" in refusing to give him a 
 rifle contract. "Please order these contracts to be made forthwith," 
 Wikoff demanded; and Cameron complied. 
 
 In New York men deserted the stock market and dropped all 
 other business to get in on the arms-contract bonanza; and imported 
 guns, or promises of them, were offered the government by "law- 
 yers, brokers, hatters, and apothecaries." In Europe, reported the 
 junketing politician Thurlow Weed, "the knowledge that our gov- 
 ernment needed arms has sharpened the cupidity and wits of all 
 who deal in them." By early 1862 contracts had been given out for 
 1,903,000 rifles and muskets, more than half of which were never 
 delivered, and charges of corruption and waste had swelled from a 
 whisper to a general uproar. 
 
 Some of the foreign arms that were purchased turned out to be 
 rank swindles, useless, if not positively dangerous to the men who 
 carried them. Hard pressed by demands from the field, Ripley's 
 undermanned Ordnance Department sometimes snapped up arms 
 on hasty inspection, and far too many of those worthless guns found 
 their way into the hands of troops. Lincoln himself heard about 
 them from the colonel of the 101st Illinois Regiment, an outfit 
 which included many personal friends of the President. "The Guns 
 with which we are supplied are entirely useless," Colonel Fox wrote 
 Lincoln. "They are what is termed the Austrian Rifle Musket, evi- 
 dently from their Manifacture were intended for sale but not for 
 use. We have 720 of them, and not more than one half of them 
 can be discharged." 
 
 Yet these purchases of foreign arms, tragically belated as they 
 were, marred as they were with corruption and recklessness, had 
 been worth making. 
 
 More than half of the Union regiments that went into battle be- 
 fore the fall of 1862 were armed with foreign rifles and muskets. 
 The 104th Pennsylvania, for example, got Austrian rifles early in 
 1862, found them "rough, but good and reliable," and carried them 
 for the rest of their three years in service. The 23 rd Pennsylvania 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 51 
 
 started out with Harper's Ferry rifled muskets, "most miserable 
 weapons, in bad condition and the hardest kind of kickers." They 
 were overjoyed to exchange them for Austrian rifles. "Most efficient 
 firearms" they were called by the regiment's historian, who recalled 
 firing sixty rounds from his Austrian rifle at Malvern Hill without 
 any trouble. 
 
 Thus European arms helped sustain the Union through its dark- 
 est hours. 
 
 For the most part Lincoln kept clear of the arms-contract mess; 
 reading a parody of the Episcopal church service in which his name 
 was invoked as the Lord's, Lincoln was amused most of all by the 
 line, "The noble army of contractors, praise Him!" But there was 
 heavy pressure on him. In the office of a White House secretary, for 
 example, stood a musket rejected by the Austrian government. The 
 gun was to be "a speculation for somebody," wrote the secretary, 
 "if the agent who represents a shipload like it can induce the Presi- 
 dent to force an unwilling Ordnance Bureau to buy them." 
 
 In September 1861 came a letter from Herman Boker and Com- 
 pany of New York City offering a hundred thousand European 
 rifled muskets, and on the letter Lincoln scribbled a note to Cam- 
 eron: "I approve the carrying this through carefully, cautiously, and 
 expeditiously." It was not Lincoln's fault that Cameron accepted 
 the Boker offer without consulting Ripley and thus fell into the 
 hands of sharpers. 
 
 Two days later Lincoln heard of an abortive scheme to buy Euro- 
 pean arms, inflate the price by thirty or forty per cent and sell them 
 to the government. He listened to the two men who had planned to 
 split the profits, and then he made a memo which set down the 
 twists and turns of the affair with troubled particularity. 
 
 A different case was that of two New York contractors, Josiah 
 Heddon and John Hoey, who had agreed to deliver fifty thousand 
 Prussian arms by January 15, 1862. Twenty-eight thousand were 
 delivered by that time, accepted and paid for; but the remainder, 
 
 UBRARY 
 
 faNIVERSITY OF IkUNOi: 
 
52 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 which arrived only ten days after the deadline, were refused by the 
 Ordnance Department simply on the grounds of time. Presently the 
 Ordnance Department repented its fit of punctilio, and an old friend 
 of Lincoln's, Congressman George Ashmun of Massachusetts, asked 
 the President to authorize receipt of the Heddon-Hoey guns. Lin- 
 coln never let red tape stand in the way of justice and the national 
 interest. Carefully explaining the situation to the Secretary of War, 
 he added: "If this statement be true, and these men acted in good 
 faith, I think they should not be ruined by the transaction, but that 
 the guns should be accepted & paid for." When the Secretary hesi- 
 tated, Lincoln gave a flat order to receive the arms, and justice was 
 done. 
 
 Nothing could have shown Lincoln the need for rifles more poig- 
 nantly than the tragedy at Ball's Bluff in October 1861. There, a 
 few miles up the Potomac from Washington, Union troops armed 
 with smoothbores had been led across the river into foolhardy battle 
 against heavy odds. There they had fallen and died under the deadly 
 accurate fire of rebel rifles, some of which were breechloaders made 
 in Massachusetts before the war. And there a rebel sharpshooter had 
 sent his rifle bullet smashing into the brain of Lincoln's old friend 
 Colonel Edward Baker, a friend so dear that his name had been 
 given to Lincoln's second son. When the telegraph chattered news 
 of Colonel Baker's death, tears ran down Lincoln's cheeks, and he 
 stumbled as he left the room. This, he said long after, was the keen- 
 est blow of the war for him, smiting him "like a whirlwind from a 
 desert." At Baker's funeral Lincoln saw his dead friend's bullet- 
 torn uniform — pathetic evidence of what rifles could do. 
 
 Lincoln did more than grieve. On the day after the funeral he 
 strode down the slope of lawn south of the White House and 
 through an unkempt waste lot called the Treasury Park, stopping 
 finally at the edge of an inlet where the abandoned city canal joined 
 the Potomac. With him walked an inventor named W. B. Chace and 
 the Secretary of the Interior, a smooth-shaven Hoosier politician 
 named Caleb Smith. One of the three carried a smoothbore musket, 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 53 
 
 the sort of weapon which had been of so little help to the men who 
 had died upstream at Ball's Bluff and whose bodies were still being 
 found within sight of the White House. Chace claimed to have a 
 bullet that would make such smoothbores as good as rifles, and he 
 probably spared Lincoln none of the details as the trio made their 
 way toward the water. Once there, Chace began firing specimens of 
 his bullet in alternation with regulation bullets. A chill wind blew 
 acrid white smoke out over the Potomac. Standing near by, President 
 Lincoln scanned the leaden river and calculated distances as bullets 
 struck spurts of white from its cold, gray surface; it seemed plain 
 enough to him that the new bullets outdid the old. As he walked 
 back to the White House, a cautious hope rose in his heart. 
 
 The mere thought of General Ripley already seemed to paralyze 
 inventors. "I am aware," wrote Chace to Lincoln three days later, 
 "that I ought to make application to the Ordnance Bureau, but the 
 stereotyped reply of the Chief of that Bureau, 'han't got time,' will 
 be certain to be given to any request for a Board of Examination for 
 any purpose." Lincoln probably read the letter with a smile, recog- 
 nizing the accuracy of Chace' s prediction. Without bothering to 
 comment on the inventor's charge, Lincoln turned the letter over 
 and wrote his own report on the back: "I saw the projectile men- 
 tioned within, fired alternately, with the ordinary round ball 
 cartridges, from the same smooth-bore musket, at the same eleva- 
 tion, and the projectile carried a full third, or more, farther upon 
 the water of the Potomac than the round ball. I therefore believe 
 it is worthy of a regular test." And he sent the paper over to the 
 War Department. 
 
 A clue to Ripley's reception of the document survives. All letters 
 coming into the Ordnance Office were regularly summarized in 
 ponderous registers. But the entry for Chace' s letter contains only 
 the date and sender, the beginning of a summary, and a penciled 
 note: "Handed back to Gen Ripley without copying." To General 
 Ripley's way of thinking, it seems, his commander in chief had 
 tacitly endorsed a reflection on his competence, and the clerk's puz- 
 zled memorandum suggests a picture of the choleric veteran snatch- 
 
54 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ing away the letter before his ignominy could be spread on the 
 record. 
 
 Once Ripley had read that letter, Chace was not likely to win 
 favored treatment from the Ordnance Office. To be sure, the War 
 Department had given Ripley direct orders to test the bullet, as 
 recommended by Lincoln, and so that was done. But no report sur- 
 vives, and no Chace bullets were bought. Perhaps the Union suf- 
 fered little loss thereby. In the ninety years since, no one has 
 achieved what Chace claimed; and in all likelihood, therefore, 
 neither had Chace. 
 
 In his quest for better small arms Lincoln wasted no time waiting 
 for a report on the Chace bullet. Before the week was out he had 
 turned his attention to an offer made by Solomon Dingee and Com- 
 pany of New York City to deliver fifty thousand Austrian rifles, sup- 
 posed to be as good as English Enfields, at nineteen dollars apiece. 
 Of all contracts for European arms, this was the one that was to in- 
 volve Lincoln most deeply. 
 
 Lincoln was not alone in welcoming the Dingee offer. General 
 McClellan, insistent on the best in weapons as in everything else, 
 thought the offer a bargain, and both Lincoln and Cameron caught 
 his enthusiasm. An early obstacle arose, however, in the person of 
 the Ordnance Department's representative at New York City, Major 
 Philip V. Hagner, commandant of the New York Arsenal — "a 
 charming gentleman socially, and a cranky and perverse autocrat 
 officially." From the first Hagner seemed to detect a fishy odor 
 about the Dingee proposal. He hung back from making the order 
 until pressure from above became irresistible. And when the first 
 delivery fell short of contract specifications as to caliber, weight, 
 material and finish, Hagner cancelled the contract in toto, even 
 though most of the guns were serviceable. 
 
 Dingee and his allies were too much for the cranky major. Gen- 
 eral McClellan, for one, supported the contractor. "Entire regiments 
 and brigades of this army ought to be rearmed at once," the general 
 protested, "and all the available arms in the country should be sent 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 55 
 
 hither immediately." Lobbyists for the Dingee Company descended 
 on Washington in force, and its business agent laid siege all day to 
 the President's office. Finally Dingee engaged the services of Oliver 
 S. Halsted, Jr., universally known as "Pet" Halsted, a fast- talking 
 New Jersey lawyer who already had some influence with Abraham 
 Lincoln; and Halsted put the case before the President. 
 
 According to Halsted, Lincoln expressed his "decided disappro- 
 bation" of Hagner's action and declared that he "wanted substantial 
 justice done." At the lobbyist's suggestion, Lincoln ordered Major 
 Hagner to accept all the Dingee arms that lived up to the letter of 
 the contract, reject those that were actually unserviceable and buy 
 the remainder at a reasonable valuation. Three days later Hagner 
 and Dingee agreed on a schedule of prices for the last category. 
 
 When Hagner left to serve on a commission investigating arms 
 contracts, a new complication arose. Hagner's place as autocrat of 
 the New York arsenal was taken by Captain Silas Crispin, "a man 
 of erratic temper, a consistent drinker, and a bachelor." Instead of 
 adhering to Hagner's price schedule for substandard arms, Crispin 
 insisted on appraising each shipment as it came in. Once more Din- 
 gee brought Pet Halsted' s powers into play. Presently the lobbyist 
 stalked into General Ripley's office flourishing Lincoln's written de- 
 cision on the point at issue: 
 
 It is said that in the case of the contract of S. Dingee & Co. in re- 
 lation to arms a dispute has arisen as to the proper construction of a 
 clause in an order signed by me, which clause is in these words : 'and 
 that all not conforming thereto' ( the contract ) 'be appraised by the 
 ordnance officer at New York, and received at such price as he may 
 determine.' 
 
 This order was prepared with reference to a definite number of 
 arms expected to be delivered within a definite time, and not in ref- 
 erence to an indefinite number to be delivered in an indefinite time. 
 I certainly did not expect that under the clause in question a lot of 
 guns would be appraised at one price at one time, and another lot 
 of precisely the same quality appraised at different prices at another 
 time. I expected that when under the clause the price of a particular 
 quality of gun was fixed it would stand throughout the transaction, 
 neither going down or up. I still think this is the just construction. 
 
56 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 That point was settled, but Crispin had another string to his bow. 
 When some of the Dingee arms arrived after the delivery deadline, 
 the crusty captain declined to receive them. Halsted promptly in- 
 formed General Ripley that "this is one of that class of futile ob- 
 jections which / do know was intended to be forborne and overcome 
 by the President as immaterial, unjust, and unbecoming [to the 
 government]." After offering to deliver Enfields in lieu of the re- 
 jected arms, Halsted added, "Should it be deemed necessary to see 
 the President again, I will cheerfully accompany the general, or get 
 the President to make an appointment to see us together at an early 
 day." The Enfields were accepted. 
 
 It would seem, however, that even with Pet Halsted' s help, Din- 
 gee's enterprise was not a complete success. As late as December 
 1862, Halsted was still asking for an extension of delivery dead- 
 lines. And Ordnance Office records through 1867 show total pay- 
 ments to Dingee of only $385,947.37 — which would account for 
 less than half of the original contract. 
 
 Such was the course of Lincoln's sole essay at personally direct- 
 ing a transaction in foreign arms. Environed with difficulties, he 
 had made no misstep. On the one hand, despite the outcries of Mc- 
 Clellan and the blandishments of Dingee' s business agent, Lincoln 
 had refused to take unserviceable weapons; on the other, despite the 
 hairsplitting protests of Hagner and Crispin, he had accepted serv- 
 iceable arms at fair prices. He saw, in short, to the core of the ques- 
 tion: what would best advance the cause of the Union. 
 
 Through the summer of 1861 Lincoln kept an eye on the arms 
 situation in Kentucky. "The Union men of Kentucky are still plead- 
 ing for arms with which to defend themselves," wrote Colonel 
 Lovell H. Rousseau from a camp near Louisville on July 26. "The 
 distribution already made has saved her from Secession. A further 
 distribution will bring her with whatever power she has into the 
 fight." Lincoln was ready to act. In early August, Tennessee seces- 
 sionists were getting ready to invade southern Kentucky. When two 
 delegates from the imperiled region got no satisfaction from their 
 
MEN WITHOUT GUNS 57 
 
 Congressman or from Secretary of War Cameron, Lincoln ordered 
 a thousand arms put at the disposal of each. 
 
 At the same time Lincoln kept his perspective. In September, for 
 example, a wire came to him from Joshua Speed in Louisville : "Men 
 plenty but no arms." On the same day came one from Governor 
 Gamble of Missouri: "For God's sake get me arms for infantry and 
 cavalry." And Lincoln gave priority to Missouri. 
 
 It was Governor Morton of Indiana who stung Lincoln into an 
 explanation of the arms situation and his policy toward it. For weeks 
 Lincoln had done what he could to pacify the excitable governor, 
 who howled incessantly for arms for both his own state and neigh- 
 boring Kentucky. "Morton is a good fellow," Lincoln remarked 
 wryly, "but at times he is the skeeredest man I know of." At last, 
 toward the end of September, Lincoln told the clamorous governor 
 what was what: 
 
 I wish you to believe of us (as we certainly believe of you) that 
 we are doing the very best we can. You do not receive arms from us 
 as fast as you need them; but it is because we have not near enough 
 to meet all the pressing demands; and we are obliged to share around 
 what we have, sending the larger share to the points which appear 
 to need them most. We have great hope that our own supply will be 
 ample before long, so that you and all others can have as many as you 
 need. ... As to Kentucky, you do not estimate that state as more 
 important than I do; but I am compelled to watch all points. While 
 I write this I am, if not in range, at least in hearing of cannon-shot, 
 from an army of enemies more than a hundred thousand strong. I 
 do not expect them to capture this city; but I know they would, if I 
 were to send the men and arms from here, to defend Louisville, of 
 which there is not a single hostile armed soldier within forty miles, 
 nor any force known to be moving upon it from any distance. 
 
 Lincoln's judgment proved sound. By the time of his wire to 
 Morton twenty thousand arms had been shipped to Kentucky, and 
 the crisis was just about over in that state. A few weeks later, in 
 December, Joshua Speed was able to write home from Washington: 
 "I have now ordered and on the way to Kentucky as many guns of 
 
58 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 good quality as we will need for some time to come." And five days 
 before that Lincoln had told Congress: "Kentucky, too, for some 
 time in doubt, is now decidedly, and I think, unchangeably, ranged 
 on the side of the Union." 
 The game had not been lost. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 4 
 
 No Time for Novelties 
 
 The gods may have bound Prometheus, 
 but they failed to confine his spirit. It walked in Lincoln's time as it 
 has always walked. Then, as ever, men played with fire. "The ques- 
 tion of ordnance," said the New York Times blandly in 1863, "is 
 one for discussion in every drawing-room and in all polite circles." 
 The Times might have added that the question was not restricted to 
 drawing rooms. For in cellars and garrets, in barns and woodsheds 
 all over the North, the disciples of Prometheus were laboring over 
 diagrams and piecing together crude machines meant for the more 
 efficient dealing of death. In this they saw good for their country 
 and glory for themselves. 
 
 Most were pitifully deluded. But the smiles of the antiquarian 
 who comes across their plans may well be tempered with another 
 emotion than pity. For among those long-forgotten schemes one sees 
 in silhouette almost all the feral implements of modern war: the 
 machine guns, the rockets, the armored tanks, the submarines, the 
 poison gases, the air-borne incendiaries — everything but the ulti- 
 mate force of nuclear bombs. And even this last peerless goal was 
 being groped toward by some in Lincoln's day. In the spring of 
 1862, as armies stirred in Virginia, young Professor James Clerk 
 Maxwell of King's College, London, was turning his mind to the 
 nature of energy and matter. At the same moment, and not far from 
 Maxwell's garret laboratory, young Henry Adams, son of Lincoln's 
 minister to England, played the uncanny light of his historical in- 
 
 59 
 
jSo LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 tuition over the same tremendous theme. He wrote his brother in 
 the Union Army: 
 
 I tell you these are great times. Man has mounted science, and is 
 now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries 
 more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have 
 invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day science 
 may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human 
 race commit suicide by blowing up the world. 
 
 If Lincoln, with his feeling for the course of history, shared the 
 forebodings of Henry Adams, he left no record of it. But the pro- 
 totypes of modern armament commanded his close attention, and 
 he had a real if unstoried share in fixing their destiny. Of all that 
 Lincoln had to do with the tools of war, his experiences with new 
 weapons and his struggles to overcome the inertia of the bureau- 
 crats are the most fascinating to modern eyes and perhaps the most 
 meaningful to our times. 
 
 Lincoln's introduction to the world of the inventors came long 
 before the outbreak of the Civil War. He was only a freshman Con- 
 gressman from Illinois when, in the year 1848 or thereabouts, he 
 walked with his small son Robert down a wheel-rutted earthen road, 
 bordered by occasional clusters of low, wooden houses, which Wash- 
 ingtonians knew as F Street. Down the way stood the beginnings of 
 the Treasury Building, a columned facade with nothing behind it. 
 And at the intersection of Seventh and F Streets, the Post Office and 
 the Patent Office faced each other "like white Greek temples in the 
 abandoned gravel-pits of a deserted Syrian city." 
 
 The man and the boy were bound for the Patent Office, a massive 
 structure, Greek in style, but built of Virginia freestone and Mary- 
 land marble. Its collection of models, not its architecture, made the 
 Patent Office one of the great sights of Washington. Even the acidu- 
 lous Charles Dickens, predisposed against most things American 
 outside Boston, had seen in the Patent Office of the 1840s "an ex- 
 traordinary example of American enterprise and ingenuity." Temple 
 
NO TIME FOR NOVELTIES 6l 
 
 architecture suited the building, for it was the shrine of America's 
 peculiar genius. Indeed, in his first report after Lincoln's arrival in 
 Washington, the Commissioner of Patents slipped for a moment 
 into the exalted language of a high priest: 
 
 While the steam engine, most potent of all the creations of 
 genius, is daily coursing before our eyes, wafting as upon the wings 
 of the wind its precious freight of human life, and its countless 
 treasures of industry and commerce; while the mysterious telegraph 
 speeds our thoughts with the swiftness of lightning which is its 
 obedient and trusty messenger; while magnificent manufactories 
 stud our land, stunning but delighting us with the never-ceasing 
 movement of their wonder-working machinery, it seems unneces- 
 sary to remark upon the incalculable value of the labors of the in- 
 ventor and his claims upon society for protection in the enjoyment 
 of his just rights. 
 
 Some factory workers may have been more numbed than delighted 
 by "the never-ceasing movement of their wonder-working machin- 
 ery," but there were few others in the America of 1848 who would 
 not have joined heartily in the Patent Commissioner's hymn of 
 praise. And Congressman Lincoln emphatically concurred with the 
 majority. 
 
 Up the temple's monumental steps and past great fluted Doric 
 columns trudged the two visitors, stopping at last in one of the 
 model rooms. In five years the "immense number of models" seen 
 by Dickens had more than doubled; they were now a tax on avail- 
 able space about which the Patent Commissioner had complained 
 five distinct times to Congress. Since cramped conditions prevented 
 a systematic arrangement of the models, their total effect must have 
 left Congressman Lincoln and his son slightly dizzy. Here and 
 there they might have seen models of John Ericsson's screw pro- 
 peller, Alfred Vail's printing telegraph, Jonas Chickering's grand 
 piano with iron frame, Stephen Fitch's turret lathe, Elias Howe's 
 sewing machine, or Richard Hoe's rotary printing press. Jumbled 
 together with these were hopeful gadgets designed to expedite al- 
 most every conceivable object from the writing of letters to the 
 
62 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 propulsion of ships — there was even an "electrifying machine" and 
 a device with the forbidding name of "sacrificator." The man and 
 the boy, whom his father feared would be "one of the little rare-ripe 
 sort that are smarter at about five than ever after," stared in amaze- 
 ment at the variety of offspring to which American ingenuity had 
 already given birth; and Congressman Lincoln seriocomically agreed 
 with his small son that nothing remained to be invented. 
 
 Lincoln himself was presently to refute that notion. In 1849, J ust 
 after his single term in Congress, he patented an invention of his 
 own for buoying vessels over shoals. On each side of the craft were 
 to be great collapsible chambers which could be expanded by an in- 
 genious system of ropes and pulleys and forced down into the river 
 like a combination of water wings and stilts. Though Lincoln 
 dreamed briefly of becoming the Fulton of the West, he did little 
 or nothing to promote his invention; and so his little wooden 
 model sat in its corner of a Patent Office showcase, stolid and unno- 
 ticed under the dust of the 1850s. 
 
 After Lincoln's election to the Presidency, his invention enjoyed 
 a measure of belated notoriety. In December i860, a few days before 
 South Carolina left the Union, the Scientific American allotted 
 nearly all of one column to the device, expressing the modest hope 
 that the President-elect would have "better success in presiding as 
 Chief Magistrate over the people of the entire Union than he has 
 had ... in introducing his invention." For a few days after the se- 
 cession of Virginia in April 1861 it seemed likely that the Scientific 
 American's hope would be blighted by rebel seizure of the capital, 
 chief magistrate and all. But the arrival of Northern troops assured 
 Lincoln of a fair chance to do better as President than he had as an 
 inventor. 
 
 When the first Northern regiments came to deliver Washington 
 from its peril in the spring of 1861, they found temporary shelter 
 in public buildings. At the Capitol the 6th and 8th Massachusetts 
 skylarked and staged mock debates with the 7th New York. The 
 
NO TIME FOR NOVELTIES 63 
 
 5th Massachusetts set up housekeeping in the Treasury. The 1st 
 Rhode Island happened to draw the Patent Office. 
 
 Since 1848, when Congressman Lincoln and his little son had 
 visited the Patent Office, that establishment had spread hugely. Two 
 more wings had sprouted from the Greek temple on F Street, leav- 
 ing yet unrealized only one of the four wings originally planned. 
 Nevertheless, the Patent Office proved to be cramped quarters for 
 twelve hundred Rhode Islanders and their mass of baggage, which 
 included two portable forges and three washerwomen. For two days 
 and nights army wagons, backed up hub to hub, lined F Street for 
 two blocks to unload the regiment's impedimenta. Bunks were set 
 up on tessellated marble floors between glass cases in the three great 
 model halls; in the central hall the cabinets were jammed together 
 on one side to make room for dining tables. A civilian visitor had 
 to move a couple of dozen muskets in order to see the model of a 
 plow. In such conditions awkward incidents were inevitable. In 
 their fortnight's occupancy of the Patent Office, with all it implies 
 of horseplay, jostling, the setting up of bunks and the handling of 
 muskets in close quarters, twelve hundred Rhode Islanders between 
 them broke some four hundred panes of glass. A few models van- 
 ished — though no one with larcenous leanings noticed the model of 
 a boat with the name of Abraham Lincoln inscribed on its prow — 
 and one morning a pistol ball went crashing through two model 
 cases. But on the whole the Yankees restrained themselves. 
 
 It behooved the Rhode Islanders to deal tenderly with the Patent 
 Office. Its exhibits were gratifying and often lucrative testimonials 
 to their own mechanical aptitude and that of their Yankee neigh- 
 bors. The colonel of the regiment, genial Ambrose Burnside, was 
 best known at that time for his patent breech-loading rifle, a model 
 of which doubtless reposed behind glass somewhere in his regi- 
 ment's quarters. (His rifle, however, did not stand up under combat 
 conditions, and Burnside' s name found its way into the dictionary 
 on the strength of his whiskers rather than his weapons.) "Here," 
 the regimental chaplain wrote, "were models of all kinds of ma- 
 
64 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 chines, which our mechanics viewed with perpetual interest. . . . 
 Here a soldier would find the model of a machine which had been 
 invented by some member of his own family — perhaps by him- 
 self." Now and then the chaplain would see a man "intently study- 
 ing some new arrangement of mechanical forces, which would be 
 suggestive of subsequent investigation." Perhaps some followed up 
 those suggestions after the war; others did not, among them An- 
 drew White, Paul Downes and Albert Burdick, machinists, who 
 fell at Bull Run in July. 
 
 On the first of May Abraham Lincoln revisited the Patent Office 
 as President of the United States. The Rhode Islanders, looking fit 
 and businesslike in their simple, coarse uniforms of gray pants, dark- 
 blue flannel shirts and Army hats turned up at the side, were as- 
 sembled under arms on F Street, facing the building. At noon Lin- 
 coln came out on the portico with members of his Cabinet and 
 hoisted a large American flag to the top of the staff, where the 
 breeze unfurled it amid the hurrahs of soldiers and spectators. Then 
 there were cheers for the President and Secretary Seward, a drill ex- 
 hibition by the regiment and the presenting of arms. Next day the 
 regiment was formally mustered into United States service, and a 
 few days later it moved to a more conventional camp outside the city. 
 
 The cramped conditions under which the 1st Rhode Island had 
 sojourned in the Patent Office could not be laid wholly to the regi- 
 ment's excess of baggage. Though the Patent Office's available space 
 had trebled since the Mexican War, it had not kept up with Yankee 
 fecundity in mechanical invention. About the time Lincoln patented 
 his device for getting vessels over shoals, the number of patented 
 mechanical inventions began to rise in an exponential curve which 
 did not pass its peak till the first quarter of the twentieth century. 
 Far from bearing out the jesting prophecy of Congressman Lincoln 
 that the great days of invention were over, the last of the fifties saw 
 applications flooding in on the Patent Office as never before. The 
 golden age of gadgetry had dawned. 
 
NO TIME FOR NOVELTIES 65 
 
 Those were the days when a lone inventor could succeed without 
 capital or formal training, so long as he had imagination, mechanical 
 ingenuity and a few tools. Invention was a pastime still wide open 
 to the general public. During the war years, for example, a family 
 newspaper like the Boston Transcript made room in its four pages 
 for a regular weekly list of patents granted to New Englanders, and 
 a long list at that. In the nation at large Abraham Lincoln was not 
 the only prominent nonprofessional to get his name on the lists of 
 patents granted; so did such others as Eli Thayer, the abolitionist, 
 and William Rosecrans, later to command the Army of the Cumber- 
 land. 
 
 Curiously enough, the number of patents granted by Union au- 
 thority dropped sharply during the first eighteen months of the war. 
 Those granted in the first ten months of 1862, for example, num- 
 bered less than half as many as in the corresponding months of i860. 
 The unexpected development was brought home to Lincoln by ap- 
 peals from dismissed Patent Office employees. Patent Commissioner 
 David P. Holloway laid off Edward W. Jones in August 1 861 on the 
 grounds of decreased business. Jones tried in vain to see the Secretary 
 of the Interior, then called on Lincoln with a letter of recommenda- 
 tion written several months before by former Secretary of War 
 Joseph Holt. "Mr. Jones," Lincoln said, "I have only your say so 
 for it, but if Mr. Holt will express a wish that you shall be retained 
 in office, I will direct you to be reinstated." In September Lincoln 
 reviewed the case of J. E. Holmead, who had been dismissed as a 
 patent examiner despite his ability, promptness and "unchanging 
 suavity of manners"; but Commissioner Holloway insisted that 
 business was too slack to warrant keeping him. 
 
 Lincoln's first annual message to Congress, in December 1861, 
 blamed the decline in patents on a temporary business depression 
 which had followed the outbreak of war. Commissioner Holloway 
 suggested as an additional factor that "the great inventive mind of 
 the country" had been "attracted in another direction by the startling 
 scenes of rebellion" — by which he presumably meant that the Army 
 
66 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 and Navy had absorbed a lot of active or potential inventors. The 
 Scientific American thought there must be more to it than that. 
 "Where are the inventors?" asked the magazine, mindful perhaps of 
 its heavy stake in the matter (it operated a flourishing patent agency 
 on the side). "Certainly," it insisted, "half of them cannot have 
 gone to the war." 
 
 Scientific American to the contrary, it often seemed that half of 
 the nation's inventors had indeed "gone to the war." The ist Rhode 
 Island was not unique. As a preview of exploits to come, there 
 had been the experience of Major General Benjamin F. Butler and 
 his troops at Annapolis in April 1861. With the fate of the capital 
 still uncertain, a dismantled locomotive in the Annapolis engine- 
 house threatened to delay the Massachusetts troops in their race to- 
 ward the city. Butler assembled his men and asked them if any of 
 them could repair it. A stalwart Yankee stepped from the ranks. 
 "Well, General," said he, "I rather think I can. I made that 
 engine." In a few hours the locomotive was in order, men were 
 found to run the engine, man the brakes, feed the fires and con- 
 duct the train; and the secessionist ears of Annapolis were ser- 
 enaded by its triumphant whistle, dying away in the direction of 
 Washington. 
 
 At the siege of Fort Pulaski a year later a mortar battery lay idle 
 for want of fuse plugs for its shells. Suddenly the ordnance officer 
 had a happy thought: "There was a Yankee regiment on the island; 
 all Yankees are whittlers; if this regiment could be turned out to- 
 night, they might whittle enough fuse-plugs before morning to fire 
 a thousand rounds. So . . . the 6th Connecticut was ordered out to 
 whittle, and did whittle to advantage, providing all the plugs that 
 were used in Battery Totten on the two succeeding days." 
 
 Similar, if less dramatic, incidents were common throughout the 
 war. Streams were spanned, canals cut, railroads built and rebuilt 
 — all with skill drawn from the ranks. "Among the national pe- 
 culiarities developed by the war," commented the Scientific Ameri- 
 can, "not the least striking is the versatility of our soldier me- 
 
NO TIME FOR NOVELTIES 67 
 
 chanics." But convenient as the military may have found its re- 
 serves of skill to be, few patents proceeded therefrom. 
 
 Whether business depression or the demands of the military or 
 both together caused the slackening in patent activity, it was no 
 more than a temporary dip. The upturn had begun by the end of 
 1862. Meanwhile, Northerners needed only to look south to revive 
 their spirits. In fertility of invention the Northern states, with their 
 industries and diversified farming, had long surpassed the one- 
 crop South with its unskilled slave labor. During the week in May 
 1849 when "A. Lincoln of Springfield, Ills." received his patent 
 for an improved method of lifting vessels over shoals, nineteen 
 other inventors were granted patents. Only two of them lived in 
 slave states, and one of those two had patented an improved cotton 
 gin. The sample was a fair one, and the pattern had not changed 
 by 1861. 
 
 The Civil War forced the South to recognize and repent its der- 
 eliction in that respect. The Confederacy exempted its cobblers 
 from military service, and still its troops went shoeless; while after 
 a year of war, the North had the McKay sewing machine, which 
 could sew a hundred pair of shoes for every pair sewed by hand. 
 Lack of rails and rolling stock almost paralyzed Southern railroads; 
 while the North set a new record for iron- rail production in every 
 year of the war except the first. Much the same overwhelming dis- 
 parity held true for almost every kind of industry. 
 
 Even if the South had been given the machines, it would have 
 lacked the skill to maintain and run them. "The truth is all of the 
 engine runners on our roads are Yankees," complained one South- 
 erner to his wife just before First Bull Run, "and I hear in various 
 quarters of the delay of troops attributed to them." In at least one 
 case, the rumors were well founded. Thus the South which had 
 lately scorned and repelled skilled workers as "mudsills" missed 
 them badly in wartime. 
 
 And Southern inventiveness did not spring into action at the 
 
68 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 call of war. "There are at least forty inventions, each of them in- 
 fallible, for totally demolishing the Yankee fleet and army," com- 
 mented the Richmond Enquirer sarcastically. But the Confederate 
 Patent Office issued only two hundred and sixty-six patents during 
 the whole war, as against more than sixteen thousand granted by 
 the Union. 
 
 The military implications of "Yankee ingenuity" were not lost 
 on some Northern commentators, who cheerfully assumed that the 
 weapon would be wielded promptly and energetically against the 
 rebels. "Take our word for it," trumpeted the Philadelphia En- 
 quirer, "these geniuses will yet produce some patent Secession- 
 Excavator, some Traitor- Annihilator, some Rebel-Thrasher, some 
 Confederate States Milling Machine, which will grind through, 
 shell out, or slice up this war, as if it were a bushel of wheat or an 
 ear of corn, or a big apple." 
 
 Even after a year of war had shown the Confederacy to be some- 
 what less digestible than a big apple, John Ericsson, the designer 
 of the Monitor, wrote to Lincoln in the same vein: 
 
 The time has come, Mr. President, when our cause will have to 
 be sustained, not by numbers, but by superior weapons. By a proper 
 application of mechanical devises alone will you be able with ab- 
 solute certainty to destroy the enemies of the Union. Such is the 
 inferiority of the Southern States in a mechanical point of view, that 
 it is susceptible of demonstration that, if you apply our mechanical 
 resources to the fullest extent, you can destroy the enemy without 
 enlisting another man. 
 
 In the last prewar Congress, Senator Jefferson Davis of Missis- 
 sippi had managed to put through a law prohibiting the use of 
 patented articles by the Army or Navy, ostensibly in the interests 
 of economy; but after the desertion of its Southern members, Con- 
 gress swept away the disability and overhauled the patent laws 
 generally. After that, hopes ran high among those with ideas for 
 new weapons. "The patentees of articles used in camps and by the 
 
NO TIME FOR NOVELTIES 6$ 
 
 army are reaping a rich harvest," reported the Scientific American 
 in the first weeks of the war. "There is an enormous demand for 
 improved firearms, cannon, shells, projectiles, explosive grenades 
 and military accouterments of all kinds." 
 
 The Scientific American spoke too soon, hoping, perhaps, to drum 
 up business for its patent department. Its alluring picture sprang 
 not from fact but from assumption, and the assumption turned 
 out to be unfounded. The Scientific American and its eager clientele 
 had reckoned without the Chief of Army Ordnance. 
 
 It was on June n, 1861, that Colonel James W. Ripley, Chief 
 of Army Ordnance, drew up a memorandum which deserves to be 
 recognized as one of the basic documents of the Civil War. Ripley's 
 manifesto — for such it was — set forth his unalterable views on mili- 
 tary inventions in general and newfangled small arms in particular. 
 It reads as if its author had drawn a long breath and set out vigor- 
 ously on a course from which he knew there could be no turning or 
 retreat. And from the bitter determination with which he held to 
 that course ever after, the impression would seem to be accurate. 
 
 The core of Ripley's declaration is in the following passage: 
 
 A great evil now specially prevalent in regard to arms for the mil- 
 itary service is the vast variety of the new inventions, each having, 
 of course, its advocates, insisting on the superiority of his favorite 
 arm over all others and urging its adoption by the Government. 
 The influence thus exercised has already introduced into the serv- 
 ice many kinds and calibers of arms, some, in my opinion, un- 
 fit for use as military weapons, and none as good as the U. S. 
 musket, producing confusion in the manufacture, the issue, and the 
 use of ammunition, and very injurious to the efficiency of troops. 
 This evil can only be stopped by positively refusing to answer any 
 requisitions for or propositions to sell new and untried arms, and 
 steadily adhering to the rule of uniformity of arms for all troops 
 of the same kind, such as cavalry, artillery, infantry. 
 
 Ripley had good reasons for his stand. Certainly, any major 
 
70 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 change in weapons, with its necessary disruption of production, 
 would have been risky in the middle of a desperate war. 
 
 But if a new weapon promised to be valuable in battle and was 
 not prohibitively expensive, the Chief of Ordnance, especially at 
 the start of a war, should have racked his brains for ways to pro- 
 duce it outside the regular sources or to bring about a gradual 
 change-over. Ripley did no such thing. Instead of seeking out better 
 designs, he applied his ingenuity, which was considerable, to 
 fighting them off. And on occasion he put that great object above 
 truth, above honor, even above Army regulations. 
 
 In 1852 a War Department regulation had spelled out the policy 
 which the Ordnance Department was expected to follow in dealing 
 with that pestiferous creature, the civilian inventor. First, the in- 
 ventor had to explain the nature and advantages of his device. 
 Then, if the Ordnance Department thought it worth a test, the 
 inventor had to furnish the test model. This helped to discourage 
 the more grandiose paper projects. The regulation was printed in 
 circular form, and Ripley occasionally sent it out to inventors when 
 he thought it would silence them. But Ripley usually refused to 
 make tests, whether a model was supplied or not, without a direct 
 order from his superiors — which generally meant President Lin- 
 coln. 
 
 Ripley's customary excuse for such a refusal was lack of time. 
 To do him justice, this was no imaginary obstacle. In the words 
 of one prominent ordnance officer, "every officer had so much to 
 do that he could not spend much time on inventions." Had it 
 been otherwise, the corps might have come up with some good 
 things itself; for it had many talented officers and at least one, 
 Major Thomas J. Rodman, who approached genius. But Rodman 
 testified that what little time he and his colleagues could spare for 
 research and experiment had been used for "testing and consider- 
 ing the plans proposed by inexperienced persons." 
 
 To plead the pressure of business may have been valid within 
 limits. But Ripley's tone with applicants suggested that if that 
 excuse had not existed, he would have invented it. Ripley seemed 
 
NO TIME FOR NOVELTIES 71 
 
 to regard the chastening of inventors as an act of virtue in itself. 
 Inventors who made the futile pilgrimage to the Winder Building 
 were received with undisguised contempt. The clerk in charge of 
 Ordnance Office correspondence once appeared before a court of 
 inquiry. "Has it been the custom," he was asked, "to enter into 
 scientific and theoretical discussions with inventors when they pre- 
 sented their inventions to the department?" "Oh, no!" replied the 
 astonished witness. 
 
 The fog of mutual detestation that rose between Ripley and 
 the inventors soon became thick beyond dispelling. In an editorial 
 entitled "Impertinence of the Ordnance Department toward In- 
 ventors" the Scientific American charged Ripley with "rudeness 
 and circumlocution of the rankest kind." Against such treatment 
 the periodical waged a determined campaign — which probably did 
 more to widen the breach than to close it. "Things have reached 
 such a pass," the magazine complained presently, "that inventors 
 are shy of presenting plans that have to be experimented upon by 
 Government before acceptance, and the consequence is that the 
 country suffers." 
 
 Inventors fared somewhat better at the hands of the Navy Ord- 
 nance Bureau. That bureau's problems and responsibilities never 
 rose to the proportions that overwhelmed its Army counterpart, 
 and so its officials had more time for the exercise of tact and pa- 
 tience. Their rules for dealing with civilian inventors were essen- 
 tially those of the Army Ordnance Department: tests would be 
 made by the government if models were furnished, and if success- 
 ful would lead to trial in service. It was the Navy Department's 
 attitude from the top down that made the difference. Secretary 
 Welles himself, impressed by the flood of inventors' proposals 
 pouring in on the Department, asked Congress in March 1862 for 
 $100,000 to be used in experiments and in trials of proposed in- 
 ventions. He did not get the money, but he made the gesture, 
 which was more than Secretary Cameron or his successor thought 
 of doing. 
 
72 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Nevertheless, the Navy Ordnance Bureau's kindliness gave 
 small comfort to most applicants. Its spirit was willing, but the 
 Navy had too few ordnance officers, and these had too little time 
 to hear out all comers. Besides, there were many types of weapons, 
 such as small arms, which the Navy was not likely to want in 
 quantity, however ingenious and effective they might be. And so, 
 gruffly dismissed by Ripley and suavely put off by Dahlgren, the 
 resourceful inventor looked elsewhere for help. 
 
 One possibility was an appeal to a general in the field. Despite 
 regulations, military commanders often bought arms without con- 
 sulting the Ordnance Department, and often enough the War De- 
 partment honored their vouchers. If the generals had scruples 
 against breaking Army regulations, they could still pester General 
 Ripley with requisitions for particular kinds of arms, standard or 
 otherwise. In both these lines of approach, Fremont and McClellan 
 were, to General Ripley's mind, maddeningly active. 
 
 Still more often generals were persuaded to give inventors testi- 
 monials and letters of recommendation; but no such letter, how- 
 ever warm, ever melted General Ripley's heart. 
 
 By all odds the most gadget-minded of the generals and there- 
 fore the sharpest thorn in Ripley's side was Benjamin F. Butler, 
 Major General of Volunteers. Butler was a "political general," ap- 
 pointed not for his military experience or talent — he had none — 
 but for his utility as a powerful Massachusetts Democrat who 
 might carry along some of his party in support of the war. He was 
 a strong, heavy man in his early forties, quick in wit and manner, 
 with shrewd, fleshy features, thinning hair and heavy eyelids, one 
 of which drooped oddly, as if to suggest the moral obliquity of 
 which he was so persistently accused. The South execrated him, 
 calling him "Beast Butler," while the North half admired him for 
 his blunt insensitivity and sly opportunism. Butler rushed in where 
 angels feared to tread, but he was no fool, for all that. "A viva- 
 cious, prying man, this Butler," said Russell of the London Times, 
 "full of bustling life, self-esteem, revelling in the exercise of 
 power." 
 
NO TIME FOR NOVELTIES 73 
 
 Historians have often pointed out how fertile the mind of 
 Benjamin Butler was in unorthodox political and legal expedients; 
 none, not even Butler himself, seem to have realized how strikingly 
 this same bold originality characterized his approach to military 
 technology. Few if any new devices appeared during the war of 
 which Butler was not either the first or a very early champion. In 
 the summer of 1861 he became the first American general to em- 
 ploy aerial reconnaissance. "It is greatly to his credit," says the 
 leading historian of Civil War balloon activities, "that he en- 
 couraged a branch of military science then in its infancy in this 
 country, where his administrative superiors failed or refused to 
 recognize its possibilities." Butler heartily endorsed the use of 
 wire entanglements in the static warfare along his front at Bermuda 
 Hundred in 1864. During that same period he devised a kite which 
 was sent over the Confederate lines with a bundle of Lincoln's 
 amnesty proclamations to be released by a string and showered 
 upon the rebel troops. A submarine was built for him, and what 
 appears to have been a steam-driven helicopter had been nearly 
 completed, with encouraging results, when construction was halted 
 by his final departure from the Army. 
 
 If Ben Butler and his fellow generals remained cold, the hope- 
 ful inventor could invoke civilian influence, Congressional or other- 
 wise. 
 
 The Scientific American cynically advised a correspondent that 
 "your only chance of making anything by your invention is to get 
 some person of capital and influence interested with you by giving 
 him a good share." It is to be hoped that solicitude for constituents 
 moved them, rather than vile avarice; but in any case, some Con- 
 gressmen came to know the dusky second-floor hallway of the Win- 
 der Building as well as they knew the Capitol Rotunda. A law re- 
 quiring the Chief of Ordnance to publicize lobbying done by Con- 
 gressmen was finally passed; but at least once the chief had to be 
 reminded rather sharply that the law did not apply merely to pro- 
 posals initiated by Congressmen. 
 
 Men in almost every walk of public life transmitted inventors' 
 
74 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 requests and applications to the Ordnance Office. Vice-President 
 Hannibal Hamlin put in a word for a fellow townsman in Bangor, 
 Maine, who had a steel point for slugs. Secretary of the Interior 
 Caleb Smith took an interest in a patent shell. Spencer F. Baird, 
 noted geologist and Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian In- 
 stitution, paused in the labors of pure science to notify the Office 
 that his brother Thomas, a Pennsylvania iron founder, wanted an 
 order. The President's private secretary, John Hay, asked a hearing 
 for one Adalbert Parsch, who had an explosive bullet. On the 
 stationery of the New York Customs House, Collector Hiram Bar- 
 ney invited General Ripley's attention to the bearer, Mr. William 
 Page, "the distinguished artist & author, who has made an inven- 
 tion in fire arms which he wishes to place at the disposal of the 
 Government." H. F. Mann, a Pittsburgh inventor, wanted a job as 
 assistant inspector in conducting trials of his own breech-loading 
 cannon, and in this ambition he was sustained by Schuyler Colfax, 
 Speaker of the House of Representatives. The Chief of Ordnance 
 respectfully dissented. "It would scarcely be proper," he explained 
 to the affable politician, "to employ Mr. Mann to test his own in- 
 vention." The point seems well taken. 
 
 The inventor in search of a government order thus had more 
 than one string to his bow. But in spite of everything, in spite of 
 their appeals to the Army Ordnance Department, to the Navy 
 Ordnance Bureau, to the generals and to the politicians, somehow 
 inventors found themselves unable to "grind through, shell out, 
 or slice up this war" as so many had hoped they would. And so 
 they turned to the one man in the United States Government who 
 had both the will and, they supposed, the power to push the develop- 
 ment of new weapons. 
 
 That man was President Abraham Lincoln. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 5 
 
 Inventors in 
 the White House 
 
 Scarcely had parade torches guttered 
 out, campaign songs died away and votes been counted in the elec- 
 tion which made Abraham Lincoln sixteenth President of the 
 United States, when inventors began writing the successful candi- 
 date. Three weeks after the election a newspaperman at Lincoln's 
 Springfield headquarters observed that inventors were ''exceedingly 
 liberal with circulars and samples." One man wrote: "It looks 
 like war. I have invented a machine which will fire 400 bullets 
 simultaneously; write me if you wish me to explain it to you." 
 Across the letter Lincoln jotted down a note for his secretary, the 
 serious, methodical young John Nicolay: "Need not answer this." 
 
 Nicolay must have welcomed such instructions, for the inventors 
 who wrote Lincoln had plenty of competition from constituents 
 with other interests. From the time of his election until he died, 
 Lincoln never lacked for unsolicited advice of all sorts on all sub- 
 jects and from all quarters. Millions who never laid eyes on him 
 somehow felt that he was a reasonable man, and tens of thousands 
 were encouraged by that feeling to enlighten him by mail. Every 
 weekday morning during the Civil War a perspiring messenger 
 with a mail sack mounted the stairs to the second floor of the 
 White House and spread the writing public's offerings before the 
 President's three private secretaries. 
 
 Besides Nicolay, Lincoln had brought along the brilliant, flip- 
 
 75 
 
~j6 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 pant, slightly snobbish John Hay, an Illinoisan two years out of 
 Brown University; and early in April 1861 the two were joined 
 by a young ex-newspaperman named William O. Stoddard. Stod- 
 dard screened the incoming correspondence, depositing a good 
 part of it in two big wicker wastebaskets on either side of his desk. 
 Most of the rest was referred to appropriate departments by one 
 or another of the secretaries without troubling the President. The 
 remainder — only one in fifty of the total received, according to 
 Hay's casual recollection — went to Lincoln, to be referred else- 
 where by him or to be answered and then filed in pigeonholes of a 
 tall desk in his office. 
 
 Surviving records indicate that the secretaries gave Lincoln at 
 least three times as large a proportion of inventors' letters as they 
 did of other kinds. The secretaries' partiality no doubt stemmed 
 mostly from their awareness of Lincoln's special interest in new 
 weapons, but their own bias may have had something to do with 
 it. Nicolay, Hay and Stoddard were all in their twenties and 
 therefore, presumably, receptive to novelties. The later writings of 
 Hay and Stoddard, moreover, show that both felt an amused 
 affection for the inventors. And, subject to some adjustments with 
 one Columbus Johnson of Pike County, Missouri, Nicolay him- 
 self was the proud inventor of a shot charger, on which he patented 
 improvements during the war. 
 
 Why did the inventors write Lincoln instead of the ordnance 
 bureaus? Looking at some of the scrawled, blotted, misspelled 
 scraps that reached him, one suspects that the unsophisticated 
 writers simply did not know of anyone else to address. The same 
 difficulty probably applied to foreign inventors. Lincoln received 
 letters about new weapons from Germany, Italy, Spain and Mexico; 
 and nearly a score came from England and France. (The French 
 took the numerical lead and also the prize for the most unlikely 
 proposal, one from St. Sulpice which promised to combine, in some 
 unspecified and inconceivable fashion, the destructive elements of 
 incendiary and plague. ) 
 
 But ignorance could account for only a small fraction of in- 
 
INVENTORS IN THE WHITE HOUSE 77 
 
 ventors' letters to Lincoln. Some were inspired by regard for and 
 trust in the President personally. An Illinoisan confided in him 
 because he had seen and heard him debate with Douglas. "From 
 the estimate I then formed of your character," the inventor wrote, 
 "I believe you would despise the being who would fear to address 
 you on a subject of importance to our common country, & of vital 
 interest to his very, very, needy family." Soldier-inventors, who 
 increased in number as battle experience gave them ideas, shared 
 the regard of their comrades for the commander in chief. "You 
 are the only man with whom I will trust the secret," wrote one 
 veteran with a projectile to offer. And from Auburn, New York, 
 Secretary Seward's home town, a disabled veteran explained: "I 
 take the liberty of addressing you with no other excuse than that 
 I knew you to be the friend of the Soldier even though he be a 
 Private." He had written the Ordnance Department, said the in- 
 valid, but had got no answer. (This time the Ordnance Office did 
 answer — and promptly. ) 
 
 Others turned to Lincoln as a last resort. "I have tried every 
 means a poor man could, to get a hearing by the Government, 
 without success," a New Yorker wrote; "I now appeal to you." 
 Some echoed an inventor who wrote Lincoln in June 1861: "I 
 applied at first to the Ordnance office and was there told, that, 
 Government would be at no expense, that my modell was too 
 small for a satisfactory experiment, and that I must construct and 
 bring here, a large gun, at my own expense, which I am unable 
 to do." A Michigan experimenter had written a letter to Secretary 
 of War Stanton, but suspecting that the Secretary "threw it into the 
 fire and called it a thing," he appealed to Lincoln. (His guess as to 
 Stanton's disposition of his missive was a shrewd one; just a month 
 before, Stanton had said of another inventor's letter: "It might 
 as well be put in the fire.") An East Tennesseean wrote Lincoln 
 from New York because White House ushers had barred him from 
 a personal interview with the President; all he asked was "a 
 friendly note of recommendation" to manufacturers so that he 
 might get backing for a trial gun. 
 
78 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Young and old alike sent ideas to the President. A Brooklyn 
 teen-ager named James Littlefield wrote to offer the plan of "a Air 
 gun, made in a different way from any gun that I ever saw" for a 
 modest compensation of "not lest than $800, per year during 
 life," with the reasonable proviso that "if the gun proves unsuccess- 
 ful say nough about it." A venerable Bostonian named William 
 Foster wrote Congressman Samuel Hooper to outline a plan for 
 twenty small boats, each with a gun, all fixed together in an arc and 
 so arranged as to discharge all guns at once at the same point. As 
 an engineer on the defenses of Boston Harbor in 181 2, he had 
 made the same suggestion without avail; but he was not easily dis- 
 couraged. "If what has been said do not find ears," he wrote, "I am 
 willing to live ninty more years for a trial. . . . Will you please to 
 hand this to the President after giving two reading, if you have 
 time?" (Hooper sent the letter to Nicolay, suggesting a "compli- 
 mentary acknowledgement . . . signed by the President.") 
 
 Ideas and suggestions for new weapons came to Lincoln from 
 unexpected quarters. An Ohioan wrote the President in Quaker 
 style "to send thee a diagram of an improved shell." In the humani- 
 tarian tradition of Dr. Guillotin, the medical profession was also 
 represented. Dr. McCabe of Auburn, Iowa, offered Lincoln a gun 
 that would bombard Norfolk from Fortress Monroe; Dr. Wallace 
 of Buffalo, New York, offered the President a projectile; and from 
 Dr. Richardson of Matherton, Michigan, Lincoln received a pro- 
 posal for an incendiary shell. 
 
 The record for impudence was probably achieved by a Phila- 
 delphia lawyer named A. M. Densmore, representing a cannon in- 
 ventor named William Beschke, who claimed to have been a tutor 
 in the family of Secretary Seward. Without even describing 
 Beschke' s cannon, Densmore asked the President for money or in- 
 fluence or both. When Assistant Secretary Watson asked him for 
 more details about the gun, Densmore did not reply. Instead he 
 wrote Lincoln again and insisted that mere drawings or descrip- 
 tions could not do justice to the cannon's ineffable merits. But a 
 model might, so would the President kindly contribute $500 toward 
 
INVENTORS IN THE WHITE HOUSE 79 
 
 one? Densmore exhorted the President on his duty to the nation in 
 a matter of such "extreme importance," but both his screeds wound 
 up unanswered in the Ordnance Office's files. 
 
 Not all inventors were like Densmore and Beschke. A Kentuck- 
 ian wrote Stanton in May 1862: "I sent a moddle of this invention 
 to the President last summer, about the last of July, with a request 
 that he would have it used against the rebles. I would have taken 
 out a Patent, but I was fearful that in that way the rebels would get 
 hold of it. I am very poor, and love profit; but I love my country 
 more." It would be pleasant to learn that Lincoln saw that letter, 
 but the evidence is against it. 
 
 Inventors usually had better luck with Lincoln when they met 
 him face to face. It was not as hard then as it is now to see the 
 President — not nearly hard enough, thought Lincoln's secretaries. 
 All through Lincoln's Presidency, Hay, Nicolay and Stoddard 
 strove to erect barriers against the constant interruptions that 
 wasted the President's time and sapped his strength. Lincoln him- 
 self was always the first to break the barriers down. "You will wear 
 yourself out," remonstrated Senator Wilson of Massachusetts. 
 With a sad smile Lincoln replied, "They don't want much; they 
 get but little, and I must see them." 
 
 Most inventors took their chances with the crowds who hung 
 about in the corridors and anterooms from morning till night. 
 While waiting for others to be done, those in the President's own 
 office had plenty of time to study its simple furnishings: the up- 
 right desk with its well-filled pigeonholes, a big cloth-covered oak 
 table at which the Cabinet met on Tuesdays and Fridays, a marble 
 fireplace with brass fender and irons, a few straight-backed chairs 
 and two sofas, glass-globed gas jets and, on the walls, military 
 maps, an old engraving of Andrew Jackson and a photograph of 
 John Bright, the English liberal leader. Two tall windows looked 
 south over the White House lawn and the unkempt White Lot, past 
 a brackish canal grandly designated the Tiber, across an expanse of 
 churned-up mud and grass on which hundreds of cattle grazed, to 
 
80 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 the squat marble stump of the unfinished Washington monument 
 and the dusky-red towers of the Smithsonian Institution, built in a 
 style which the British visitor Trollope pungently labeled "bastard 
 Gothic." Beyond lay the broad Potomac and the Virginia shore. In 
 an armchair flanked by the windows and with a table before him, 
 President Lincoln sat listening to his callers. The inventors might 
 scan his leathery, deep-marked, wise, sad face, but they could not 
 see the "tired spot" far within him which no rest or laughter could 
 reach, which grew with the slow passage of every war-racked day. 
 
 Lincoln was resourceful in handling the touchy and unpredict- 
 able inventors. Once, for example, three men, backers of some war- 
 like device, crowded petulantly before the President. "Now," said 
 their spokesman. "We have been here to see you time and again; 
 you have referred us to the Secretary of War, to the Chief of Ord- 
 nance, and the General of the Army, and they give us no satisfac- 
 tion. We have been kept here waiting, till money and patience are 
 exhausted, and we now come to demand of you a final reply to our 
 application." 
 
 At this impertinence another man might have stood stiffly on his 
 Presidential dignity or even burst into a tirade. Lincoln merely 
 listened quietly until the men had finished what they had to say, 
 and then he smiled. "You three gentlemen remind me of a story 
 I once heard," he said. A little boy, he related, had been doing 
 well in Sunday school until the teacher came to the trials of Shad- 
 rach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. That was too big 
 a dose. The boy could neither spell, pronounce nor remember those 
 three outlandish names. He was given another chance, but when 
 the next lesson came around, he was still stumped. The teacher 
 gave him one last chance. "Now," he said sternly when the time ar- 
 rived, "tell me the names of the men in the fiery furnace." "Oh," 
 the boy said, "here come those three infernal bores! I wish the devil 
 had them!" 
 
 The "three infernal bores" got the point and departed, red-faced 
 and silent. 
 
INVENTORS IN THE WHITE HOUSE 8l 
 
 On another occasion, Lincoln found himself harassed by a West- 
 ern farmer who wanted the government to adopt his repeating 
 carbine. The President had more important business to conduct 
 with another visitor, yet he was too kindhearted to dismiss the in- 
 ventor abruptly. Just then Adjutant General E. D. Townsend came 
 in on business, and Lincoln saw a way out of his dilemma. Town- 
 send was greeted cheerily with the remark that he had come just in 
 time to examine a new carbine and advise its inventor better than 
 the President could as to what should be done with it. Townsend 
 had nothing to do with ordnance, but he was rather flattered at 
 Lincoln's confidence in his judgment. The inventor in his turn was 
 encouraged by the newcomer's military rank. So Lincoln and his 
 other visitor were left to talk in peace while Townsend and the 
 ingenious farmer contentedly discussed the carbine. Finally Town- 
 send delivered the hopeful inventor to the not-so-tender mercies of 
 General Ripley. (The gun was not adopted. ) 
 
 Whatever else might be said about the inventors, they were not 
 dull. John Hay remembered them as "more a source of amusement 
 than annoyance." Lincoln had always enjoyed meeting odd speci- 
 mens of the human race, and the inventors were usually, in Hay's 
 words, "men of some originality of character, not infrequently car- 
 ried to eccentricity." Furthermore, the devices they lugged in with 
 them appealed to Lincoln's zest for things mechanical. "Specimens 
 of new rifles and cannon came to him by the dozen," Stoddard 
 wrote somewhat hyperbolically, "with a large variety of new shell, 
 pistols, torpedoes, and gunboats." Stoddard's office in particular 
 became a sort of executive arsenal. "Newly- invented guns, and 
 specimens of all manner of old-time weapons offered for sale to 
 the Government, stood leaning against the wall in corners, or lum- 
 bered the desks and tables." 
 
 Lincoln's indulgence toward inventors did not proceed merely 
 from caprice or a desire for amusement. He fully appreciated the 
 weight of weapons in the scales of war; and he soon came to realize 
 that if he did not encourage the development and use of better 
 
82 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 weapons, no one would. Lincoln's concern for the tools of war was 
 a distinct phase of his role as commander in chief. 
 
 Lincoln got no thanks from the ordnance bureaus for his pains. 
 "What does Lincoln know about a gun?" one functionary growled. 
 "We're bothered to death with these inventors running here all the 
 time." To the bureaucratic way of thinking, Lincoln should have 
 left such matters strictly to their proper arbiters: the chiefs of the 
 two ordnance bureaus. But Lincoln was no respecter of red tape. 
 "He did despise forms and almost hated those that loved them," 
 wrote his former law partner Herndon. 
 
 Lincoln knew his own technical limitations. He also knew that 
 Captain Harwood of the Navy Ordnance Bureau was a stopgap ad- 
 ministrator, not an ordnance expert. And General Ripley was un- 
 doubtedly correct in taking Lincoln's endorsement on W. B. 
 Chace's letter as an expression of no confidence. So Lincoln put no 
 trust in either Harwood or Ripley and looked about him instead for 
 men who had technical training and yet were not dismayed by new 
 ideas. 
 
 For a while during the winter of 1861-1862, he turned to Briga- 
 dier General Joseph G. Totten, Chief of the Army Engineer Corps. 
 Like Ripley, General Totten was an old Connecticut Yankee, born 
 at New Haven the year his state ratified the Constitution. During 
 the War of 18 12 Totten had been chief engineer of the army on the 
 Niagara frontier and had won a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy for 
 gallantry. He had served with distinction under Scott at Vera Cruz 
 in 1847. Though he was fifty-six years out of West Point when the 
 Civil War began, the vigor of his mind belied his age. 
 
 As will be seen, Lincoln called on General Totten several times 
 in the first winter of the war for advice about proposed new weap- 
 ons. Presently, however, Totten betrayed some distaste for his new 
 role. "I give my opinion at your command," he wrote Lincoln on 
 one occasion, "but with distrust of my ability to decide on matters 
 as to which I have general knowledge only — having had therein no 
 technical experience." And when Totten began to show delicacy 
 
INVENTORS IN THE WHITE HOUSE 83 
 
 about treading on the ground of his fellow officer in the Ordnance 
 Department, Lincoln gave up the experiment. 
 
 Totten was only one of the experts to whom Lincoln turned for 
 help in judging the tools of war. Now and then the President left 
 his office to cross the Mall and visit the Smithsonian Institution, 
 which in those days came near to being the lengthened shadow of 
 its secretary, Joseph Henry. In Henry, Lincoln found not only a 
 good companion, but also an able guide through some of the tech- 
 nological tangles which confronted him. 
 
 Born in 1797 at Albany, New York, Joseph Henry had grown 
 up to become the greatest American scientist since Benjamin Frank- 
 lin. Like Franklin, he was best-known for his contributions in elec- 
 tricity; but, also like Franklin, he was active in many other scientific 
 fields. He had genius of a technological as well as of a purely scien- 
 tific sort; six years before Morse's experiments, Henry had not only 
 discovered and stated a basic principle of the telegraph, but had 
 also made and demonstrated a working instrument. In 1846 this 
 remarkable man made a hard decision. It was to give up full- 
 time research for an administrative post as secretary of the new 
 Smithsonian Institution. Now and then he felt the weight of the 
 sacrifice. "Of all places in the country, Washington is, I think, the 
 worst in which to pursue scientific investigations," he wrote dis- 
 piritedly in July 1 861. "The constant drudgery and anxiety of an 
 office unfits a man for profound and continuous thought; and as he 
 is under the restraint of the sentiment of the dominant party, he 
 finally loses his manly independence and that love of truth which 
 constitutes an honest man." But despite his moments of regret, 
 Henry's thirty years as head of the Smithsonian were in themselves 
 a magnificent contribution to the advancement of science. 
 
 Among the annoyances Henry had to endure when civil war 
 came were the suspicions that dogged him for his prewar Southern 
 sympathies. Fearful of a misstep, he insisted that nonscientific lec- 
 turers using the Smithsonian hall make a set announcement dis- 
 claiming Smithsonian responsibility for the lecture. One night 
 
84 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 when Horace Greeley came to speak, the chairman set the audience 
 chuckling over a burlesque disclaimer of responsibility for the sen- 
 timents expressed by the Smithsonian Institution. Lincoln was 
 there, and afterward he dropped in on Henry's quarters in the east 
 wing and teased the scientist. "The laugh was rather on you, 
 Henry," said the President with a smile. 
 
 Lincoln and Henry were bound to meet. As official head of the 
 Smithsonian, the President was expected to attend the regular meet- 
 ing held every spring. Once in a while Lincoln passed on to Henry 
 some communication he had received as titular head of the institu- 
 tion. A few days after the outbreak of war, a letter from Henry 
 had informed Lincoln that the latest volume of the Smithsonian 
 Contributions had been sent by messenger for the White House 
 library. The weight of war was settling on Lincoln, and so he mere- 
 ly glanced through the volume. But he kept in touch with Henry. 
 "I had the impression the Smithsonian was printing a great amount 
 of useless information," Lincoln later remarked. "Professor Henry 
 has convinced me of my error. It must be a grand school if it pro- 
 duces such thinkers as he is. He is one of the pleasantest men I have 
 ever met; so unassuming, simple, and sincere. I wish we had a few 
 thousand more such men." Henry, in his turn, was won over com- 
 pletely by Lincoln's transparent honesty and surprised by the Presi- 
 dent's grasp of scientific matters. 
 
 More than once Lincoln drew on Henry's knowledge and wis- 
 dom in matters not usually within the Smithsonian's range. Henry 
 steered Lincoln right on the alleged coal deposits in a proposed 
 freedmen's colony in Central America, and the scientist also helped 
 expose a fake spiritualist who had preyed on Mrs. Lincoln's grief 
 for the Lincolns' dead son Willie. Lincoln looked to Joseph Henry 
 for advice on military technology also. 
 
 One such episode had an unexpected sequel. Lincoln, Henry and 
 some others stationed themselves in a tower of the Soldiers' Home 
 outside Washington one gentle summer evening to watch an ex- 
 periment with night signals. A calcium light in the tower was 
 equipped with a screen that permitted the light to be blinked in 
 
INVENTORS IN THE WHITE HOUSE 85 
 
 Morse code. From across the darkened capital an answering light 
 flashed from the tower of the Smithsonian. Lincoln enjoyed the 
 demonstration and predicted that the system would be of great use 
 to both Army and Navy. 
 
 A few evenings later, while Lincoln chatted with a couple of 
 friends, an agitated citizen was ushered in to see the President 
 with a tale of treasonable signals from the Smithsonian — everyone 
 knew that Professor Henry had secesh leanings. After the story was 
 told, Lincoln turned and said solemnly, "This is Professor Henry; 
 perhaps he will be able to answer for himself." Then he burst out 
 laughing. But the President took pains also to thank his abashed 
 informant for his patriotic vigilance. 
 
 In the first summer of the war, Lincoln and Henry between them 
 ushered into being the first successful military air force in Ameri- 
 can history. Balloons, of course, were nothing new in warfare. As 
 a means of reconnaissance they dated back to the Battle of Fleurus 
 in 1794. The dean of American aeronauts, John Wise, had offered 
 to drop bombs on an enemy citadel in the Mexican War. Some- 
 thing about aeronautics, however, fascinated men less steady and 
 sensible than John Wise, and Lincoln's favor was wooed by balloon 
 inventors whose claims were more apt to be inflated than their gas- 
 bags. 
 
 Lincoln never assumed that an idea must be mad because mad- 
 men pursued it. When Joseph Henry came to the White House one 
 June evening in 1861 with a young balloonist resoundingly named 
 Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, Lincoln listened attentively. 
 
 Lowe, a twenty-eight-year-old New Hampshire man, dreamed of 
 a transatlantic flight with the aid of prevailing winds, but on 
 Henry's advice he had first tried his theories with a jaunt from Cin- 
 cinnati to South Carolina. The sky-borne Yankee had triumphantly 
 landed in South Carolina about a week after Sumter was attacked 
 and had become (he later asserted) "the first prisoner of the Civil 
 War." Now, as Lincoln listened, he enthusiastically sketched the 
 possibilities of military balloon reconnaissance, even including a 
 
86 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 plan for telegraphic air-ground communication. Lincoln fell in 
 with the notion, and the War Department furnished funds for tests 
 and demonstrations. 
 
 Only a week after the interview, Lincoln received what he 
 labeled the "First Balloon Dispatch": 
 
 To President United States 
 
 This point of observation commands an area near fifty miles in 
 diameter — The city with its girdle of encampments presents a su- 
 perb scene — I have pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever 
 telegraphed from an aerial station and in acknowledging indebted- 
 ness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating 
 the availability of the science of aeronautics in the military service 
 of the country. 
 
 T. S. C. Lowe 
 
 Lowe's captive balloon hovered for a while over the armory be- 
 tween Sixth and Seventh streets with Lowe's friend Henry watch- 
 ing from the crowd. After the demonstration, the Enterprise was 
 hauled down and towed along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White 
 House, its gaseous dome bobbing above the rooftops as if the 
 Capitol had broken loose and was moving on Lincoln's works. Lin- 
 coln watched from an upper window while the outlandish contriv- 
 ance was moored for the night on the White House lawn. Next 
 day, June 19, several ascents were made, and the captivated corre- 
 spondent of the Boston Transcript wrote: 
 
 A balloon is now floating nearly over the President's house. The 
 plan of sending telegraphic messages is found to work admirably. 
 A bugler was just sent up and the strains of the bugle grew clearer 
 and more distinct as he mounted. 
 
 Armed with a letter of introduction from Lincoln, Lowe called 
 on General Scott, but found that the old commander of the army 
 was "very infirm, pompous, and with many of the affectations that 
 sometimes go with extreme age, and it was extremely difficult to 
 engage his attention. His mind was centered on the make-up of an 
 
INVENTORS IN THE WHITE HOUSE 87 
 
 army as he had always known it, and he did not care for innova- 
 tions. It was evident that the General of the Army had no interest 
 in a balloon corps." 
 
 A month slipped by and First Bull Run was history when Lowe 
 saw Lincoln again. The President wondered why Lowe had not 
 gone ahead with his plans. "Professor," Lincoln said, "I wish you 
 would go and confer with General Scott again." He wrote out an- 
 other note: 
 
 Will Lieut. Gen. Scott please see Professor Lowe once more 
 about his balloon? 
 
 July 25, 1 861 A. Lincoln 
 
 In the morning Lowe went to Scott's headquarters in the Winder 
 Building and sent in Lincoln's card. An orderly reported that the 
 general was busy. A couple of hours later Scott was still busy, then 
 eating lunch, finally sound asleep and not to be disturbed. Fuming 
 inwardly, Lowe strode back to the White House and told Lincoln 
 how he had been put off. Lincoln looked at him sharply, then 
 laughed and rose to his angular height of just under six feet four 
 inches. "Come on," he said, clapping on his fuzzy, old stovepipe 
 hat. 
 
 The two men marched through the White House grounds, across 
 Seventeenth Street and into the Winder Building. Sentries snapped 
 to attention. The courtly old general gave respectful ear to Lowe's 
 story and promised immediate action. He kept his word. Lowe's 
 services were accepted, and in his Army balloon the young man 
 made frequent and valuable ascensions through the fall of 1861. 
 By 1862 his air corps included seven balloons and a Navy vessel on 
 the Potomac — the nation's first official aircraft carrier. Some of 
 Lowe's telegraphic reports, especially those at Fair Oaks and 
 Gaines's Mill in 1862, were of inestimable value to the Union 
 Army. 
 
 In the public mind Lincoln long remained associated with bal- 
 loon warfare, but in fact his active part in promoting Lowe's mili- 
 
88 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 tary fortunes ended with his walk to the Winder Building. This 
 was unfortunate, for despite his spectacular successes Lowe never 
 managed to find a niche in Army organization. His corps remained 
 a waif of the services, tossed from one jurisdiction to another, al- 
 ways unwanted. Without an Army commission Lowe was at the 
 mercy of every bewildered lieutenant or captain who found him- 
 self in temporary charge of the aggregation. Shortly after Gettys- 
 burg Lowe blamed his troubles on "first, the very limited means 
 allowed, secondly, want of authority to properly organize a Corps, 
 and thirdly, the very few persons experienced with glasses to take 
 observations from the Balloons." About that time he quit, and 
 thereafter the corps declined rapidly until it was abandoned; the 
 Confederates never understood why, but were thankful nonethe- 
 less. 
 
 In such matters as night signaling and aerial reconnaissance, to 
 which good sense and general scientific knowledge were sufficient 
 keys, Joseph Henry was the man to see, and Lincoln consulted him 
 on occasion almost to the end of the war. But hard facts remained : 
 that Henry was not a specialist in ordnance; that Totten, though 
 experienced and able, hated to tread on Ripley's toes; that Har- 
 wood was inexpert; and that Ripley was fiercely and unalterably 
 opposed to any change in weapons. 
 
 In the end Lincoln turned to Captain Dahlgren as the only man 
 he knew who combined the requisites of intelligence, special train- 
 ing, a forward outlook and willingness to be adviser to the Presi- 
 dent. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 6 
 
 Ramsay and the Arsenal 
 
 Abraham Lincoln always liked to see 
 things for himself. And in 1861 especially he indulged that fancy 
 to a degree which some found slightly ludicrous. "This poor Presi- 
 dent!" wrote Russell of the Times that October. "He is to be pitied; 
 surrounded by such scenes, and trying with all his might to under- 
 stand strategy, naval warfare, big guns, the movements of troops, 
 military maps, reconnaissances, occupations, interior and exterior 
 lines, and all the technical details of the art of slaying. He runs 
 from one house to another, armed with plans, papers, reports, rec- 
 ommendations, sometimes good-humored, never angry, occasion- 
 ally dejected, and always a little fussy." 
 
 Lincoln saw a lot of weapons trials, most of them held at his in- 
 stance. Some Ordnance Bureau people regarded these trials with 
 annoyance and contempt, feeling that they were rigged to impress 
 the President, rather than to test the weapons. Since ordnance offi- 
 cers ran the tests, such misgivings might seem a little illogical, not 
 to say disloyal to the corps. But the misgivings existed, neverthe- 
 less. "That kind of experiments did not have much weight with the 
 bureau," testified one Ordnance Office factotum. "They were what 
 we usually denominated champagne experiments." 
 
 Many of the "champagne experiments" which Lincoln attended 
 were conducted by Captain Dahlgren or his subordinates at the 
 Navy Yard. Most of the others took place at the Washington Ar- 
 
 89 
 
90 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 senal, located south of the White House on Greenleaf's Point, 
 where the Anacostia joined the Potomac. 
 
 Greenleaf's Point was split by a sluggish rivulet called James 
 Creek, and the arsenal stood on the tongue of land to the Potomac 
 side of the creek. On both sides of the mile-long peninsula low 
 tide uncovered noisome mud flats, reminiscent of the point's origi- 
 nal name, 'Turkey Buzzard." Aside from that regrettable untidi- 
 ness of Nature, the grounds were carefully kept. Hundreds of guns 
 in neat ranks and thousands of projectiles in symmetrical piles 
 lined the sea walls and blighted the grass between the arsenal's nu- 
 merous trees. Had ordnance been removed and grass permitted to 
 flourish in the yellowed squares where shot piles had been, the 
 arsenal, with its weathered brick buildings ranged in hollow-square 
 formation about a verdant, tree-shaded lawn, would have looked 
 very much like the campus of some quiet university. 
 
 Two wharfs jutted into the Potomac from the arsenal grounds, 
 and sometimes Lincoln used them in making his river junkets. 
 More often his presence at the arsenal betokened the firing of some 
 new weapon. From the middle of the river rose five posts or piles, 
 about ten feet apart and about fourteen hundred yards from the 
 gun. By the position of the waterspout in relation to the posts, the 
 projectile's line of flight was roughly determined. The approximate 
 range was found by plane-tables: one in a summerhouse near the 
 commandant's quarters, one behind the gun and one down at the 
 dock. Because the spout disappeared so fast that it was hard to spot 
 accurately, regular targets were erected in the fall of 1864. All the 
 trials that Lincoln saw, however, were made with the posts as aim- 
 ing points. 
 
 At the tip of the little peninsula was the old arsenal property, 
 where most of the buildings were. Halfway up, the tongue of land 
 was cut across by the United States Penitentiary. And from there 
 northward to the city proper ran a tract of land called the Exten- 
 sion, which had by way of improvements little more than a railway 
 track and half a mile of rough, muddy road. Midway through the 
 
RAMSAY AND THE ARSENAL 91 
 
 war Lincoln had Secretary of the Interior Smith move the prisoners 
 out of the penitentiary and transfer the building to the War De- 
 partment for arsenal purposes. In a matter of weeks, according to 
 the Washington Star, the building and its grounds were "filled 
 with formidable weapons of war." 
 
 The use to which the old prison was put typified the function of 
 the arsenal as a whole. The Washington Arsenal was not a manu- 
 facturing establishment like the nearby Navy Yard. Rather, it was 
 a depot for the storage and distribution of arms. But the tremen- 
 dous war which it fed taxed its capacity even in that limited role. 
 The arsenal buildings were crammed with guns and ammunition 
 in bewildering variety and profusion. Temporary buildings were 
 thrown up, and those too were quickly filled. In the stormy month 
 of January 1862 an observer saw great stores of valuable equipment 
 left out in rain and snow because available cover was needed for 
 still more valuable materiel. The rumble of Army wagons, an un- 
 ceasing obbligato to life everywhere in wartime Washington, rose 
 to a crescendo at the arsenal. In February 1862 it was estimated 
 that five hundred wagons per day were jolting in and out of the 
 arsenal grounds, rutting the dirt roads and scraping bark from the 
 shade trees. 
 
 Storage and distribution, though the arsenal's chief functions, 
 were not its only ones. Troops in the field soon made the happy dis- 
 covery that when their muskets and rifles got fouled, rusted or 
 caked with mud, the weapons could sometimes be turned in as un- 
 serviceable. Clean ones would be issued in exchange, and the dirty 
 work would be passed on to the Washington arsenal. So the ar- 
 senal's overworked force spent a great deal of time on routine up- 
 keep that should have been done in the field. 
 
 Furthermore, though the arsenal buildings were small and too 
 closely spaced to be enlarged, the peacetime manufacture of small- 
 arms ammunition was continued through the war. A visitor in 
 June 1 86 1 found one building occupied by over two hundred boys, 
 from twelve to sixteen years of age, preparing about a hundred and 
 
92 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 thirty thousand cartridges a day. Each boy earned from sixty to 
 eighty cents a day, "thus enabling them to render important assist- 
 ance to — in many cases — their widowed mothers." 
 
 Men and women were also employed in such work. And under 
 the pressure of war, their operations sometimes led to the creation 
 as well as the support of widows. One afternoon, for example, a 
 workman used a cold chisel to cut a defective fuse out of a spheri- 
 cal case shot. A spark from the chisel ignited the fuse, the shell 
 exploded, seven or eight other shells — some in the hands of work- 
 men — were detonated, and deadly fragments of iron flew in all di- 
 rections. Surprisingly, only one man was killed outright, though 
 three were terribly mangled. The explosion lifted the ceiling, blew 
 out doors, buckled walls and set ammunition boxes ablaze. In the 
 smoke-filled building were more than thirty-six thousand artillery 
 shells and nearly seven million rounds of small-arms ammunition. 
 But for the cool courage of the arsenal commandant, who came at 
 once and supervised emergency measures till the fires were out, a 
 fearful disaster might have struck Washington. 
 
 Despite wartime exigencies, the setup at Storehouse Two did not 
 reflect credit on the commandant's judgment. But in that emer- 
 gency, Colonel George Douglas Ramsay's pluck and luck made up 
 for what he had lacked in foresight and intellect. It is perhaps not 
 too farfetched to see in that incident a key to Ramsay's remarkable 
 career. 
 
 Son of a Scottish-born merchant of Alexandria, Virginia, young 
 Ramsay grew up in the capital. After graduating from West Point 
 in 1820, he served in the light artillery and then in the Ordnance 
 Corps. In 1835 he became a captain, and a captain he remained for 
 twenty-five years, though his gallantry at Monterey earned him the 
 brevet rank of major. At last, on April 22, 1861, the day before 
 Ripley's appointment as Chief of Ordnance, Ramsay became a full- 
 fledged major. 
 
 Twenty-five years a captain! Something was surely lacking in 
 George Ramsay, and, studying his photograph alone, one might be 
 
RAMSAY AND THE ARSENAL 93 
 
 tempted to guess what it was. His bland, unfur rowed features, 
 though not without their solid dignity, suggest an American coun- 
 terpart of the proverbial British colonel, heroic under stress, but 
 handicapped by an unimaginative and somewhat sluggish mind. 
 There is some corroboration for such an estimate. A quick-witted 
 Creole named Lieutenant Stephen V. Benet served under Brevet 
 Major Ramsay at the St. Louis Arsenal before the war. ''When or- 
 ders come," Benet wrote rather smugly at the time, "I am cool and 
 collected for the work, because I have all along anticipated it. The 
 Major thinks it the most extraordinary circumstances and hands 
 them over to me." And another long-time intimate of Ramsay 
 testified as to his technical aptitude and knowledge: "I cannot say 
 that his opinion had very great weight with me." 
 
 Yet it was of this man that Abraham Lincoln's close friend 
 Joshua Speed wrote in October 1861: "He is rendering great serv- 
 ice & has been sadly neglected. I know Lincoln's appreciation of 
 him to be very high." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln's faith in George Ramsay was not misplaced. 
 True, Ramsay could be flustered by surprises, and many things sur- 
 prised him. Professionally, moreover, he was no Thomas Rodman 
 or John Dahlgren. But he was a hard and conscientious worker. In 
 September 1861 General McClellan found him "untiring in ener- 
 getically pushing forward the work in hand." Four months later, 
 the Secretary of War sent Miles Greenwood, a Cincinnati indus- 
 trialist, to report on affairs at the arsenal. Greenwood gave Ramsay 
 "great praise for the performance of his arduous duties with such 
 inadequate means." And in September 1862 General McClellan's 
 chief of artillery paid warm tribute to Ramsay's "promptness, in- 
 dustry and active general co-operation." 
 
 More than that, Ramsay was a man of rare personal qualities. If 
 wit and learning were not among them, neither were certain other 
 common ingredients of success, such as cold ambition, guile, ego- 
 tism and readiness to barter self-respect for advancement. On the 
 contrary, Ramsay displayed a trustful naivete that charmed even 
 those who used it for a steppingstone. 
 
94 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Like most genuinely courageous men, Ramsay had an even tem- 
 per. His quiet affability and unstudied courtesy won the instant 
 liking of those who met him. In the spring of 1861 a Pennsylvania 
 newspaper correspondent came to the arsenal and called on Ram- 
 say, "who (though intently engaged in writing and receiving requi- 
 sitions from the War Department, and issuing orders) very po- 
 litely requested us to be seated. . . . He insisted on our remaining 
 and accompanying us to see everything of interest, with which we 
 were both surprised and delighted beyond measure, and which was 
 greatly enhanced by the manner in which it was done. . . . After 
 visiting Major Ramsay's residence, located immediately on the 
 bank of the Potomac and in the midst of a beautifully shaded and 
 extensive grove, and satisfying the inner man, we took our leave." 
 The friendship of a man like Ramsay is the kind cherished by kings 
 — and presidents. 
 
 Lincoln's "champagne experiments" would have brought him 
 often into Ramsay's company, whatever the personal relations of 
 the two might have been. But beyond their official or quasi-official 
 encounters Lincoln and Ramsay were good friends personally. One 
 tangible sign of this is the tone of their correspondence. "Mr. Lin- 
 coln was kindly disposed towards me," Ramsay said after the war. 
 "He wrote me the most familiar notes." Such a note survives, dated 
 October 17, 1861 : "The lady — bearer of this — says she has two sons 
 who want to work. Set them at it if possible. Wanting to work is so 
 rare a want, that it should be encouraged." Lincoln wasted no such 
 wry humor on General Ripley. But with his knack for divining 
 character the President detected in Ramsay a distinct sense of hu- 
 mor beneath the accumulated starch of forty years in the Regular 
 Army. Ordnance Office records are no mine of witticisms; yet even 
 here Ramsay's endorsements now and then betray a lively sense of 
 the ridiculous, as in the following: 
 
 Respectfully returned. On an exhibition of the carbine, by the 
 person referred to within, to dispel my doubts as to its safety — the 
 cartridge exploded and I barely escaped accident. And as I do not 
 
RAMSAY AND THE ARSENAL 95 
 
 believe it would be safe to introduce such an arm into the service, I 
 declined giving it further trial. 
 
 General Ripley's horror of new ideas has robbed history of much 
 information about Lincoln's "champagne experiments" at the ar- 
 senal. Presumably because of Ripley's attitude, Lincoln often had 
 Ramsay test inventions without formal orders, and for that reason 
 no records were kept or reports made. Nevertheless, such trials are 
 mentioned in certain little-known correspondence of the period, 
 and in terms that suggest their extensiveness. There was, for in- 
 stance, the case of Chaplain Jones's gun carriage. 
 
 In October 1861, the month when he so astonished Dr. Russell 
 with his multifarious activities, Lincoln found time to listen to the 
 Reverend Paul Franklin Jones, chaplain of the 1st New York Vol- 
 unteers. Jones delighted the President with an ingenious plan for a 
 coastal gun mount with a worm-gear elevating mechanism and a 
 rack and pinion arrangement for traversing. Lincoln did more than 
 merely praise the chaplain's scheme. To begin with he sent a note 
 to the Patent Commissioner: "The Invention of P. Franklin Jones 
 being deemed of practical importance to the Government it is de- 
 sirable that it should be taken up and passed upon at once." What 
 he did thereafter was summed up later by Jones himself: 
 
 In perfecting of this plan, the President has rendered me every 
 means at his command and given me the encouragement of his per- 
 sonal presence wherever and whenever it would tend to facilitate 
 the object. . . . The invention has been thoroughly tested in the 
 presence of the President, who expressed his decided approval of 
 its great merits. 
 
 Although in the Jones case, as in others, no official record was 
 made of any arsenal tests during 1861, surviving correspondence 
 refers to the exhibition of a full-scale model at the arsenal for sev- 
 eral months. And the words of Chaplain Jones, fortunately pre- 
 served, are enough to fill in the picture. Reading them, we can see 
 Lincoln escorting Chaplain Jones to the War Department, as he 
 
96 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 had done with Professor Lowe, the aeronaut. We can picture the 
 President putting in one or more appearances at the arsenal to ar- 
 range with Ramsay for the setting up of the Jones gun carriage. We 
 can picture Lincoln on the tree-shaded riverbank, inspecting the 
 completed model and delightedly twirling the crank which moved 
 a ponderous gun so easily. (The scene recalls that of Lawyer Lin- 
 coln entranced by his first sight of a self- raking reaper. ) 
 
 To make the Jones gun carriage standard equipment in Union 
 fortifications would have taken a lot of money and a lot of work, 
 and Lincoln wanted reassurance from the experts before proceed- 
 ing. The reassurance did not come. Lincoln first asked General Tot- 
 ten for his opinion of the device, "whether the government should 
 have it, and on what terms." Totten took his assignment seriously 
 (unless a seven-page report can be called frivolous). Cannily he 
 pointed out to Lincoln that the mechanisms were too much exposed 
 and too delicate to stand up long under fire; that, despite Jones's 
 claims, just as many men would be needed to operate the new car- 
 riage as the old; and that the cost of installing the device along the 
 Atlantic Coast alone would be nearly a million dollars. Totten con- 
 ceded what Lincoln had already discovered — that Jones's carriage 
 made elevation and traversing easy and quick; but the general took 
 the pains to present a better way of achieving the same ends. When 
 Jones complained that Totten was unfair, the patient President had 
 Major James G. Benton of the Ordnance Department submit a 
 separate report. Benton's report read like an echo of Totten's. 
 
 The reports of Totten and Benton were enough for Lincoln. 
 Some months later Lincoln's good friend Senator Orville Browning 
 of Illinois saw the Jones gun mount at the arsenal and took a fancy 
 to it. "Seems to me a great invention," he noted in his diary. He 
 and Mrs. Browning called at the White House with Chaplain Jones 
 to argue the case. But no Jones gun mounts were ever ordered. 
 
 Not all the trials ordered by Lincoln were conducted under his 
 own eye. As the war continued, more and more were carried out at 
 West Point, or at the Parrott gun foundry in near-by Cold Spring, 
 
RAMSAY AND THE ARSENAL 97 
 
 New York, by a slender, quiet ordnance officer named Benet, who 
 sympathized heartily with what the President was trying to do. 
 
 Captain Stephen Vincent Benet was to be the grandfather and 
 namesake of the author who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his 
 epic poem on the Civil War, John Brown' s Body. Dignified and 
 serious as a rule, with a resolute gleam in his keen, dark eyes, the 
 captain could nevertheless relax into pleasant geniality among 
 friends. Born in Florida of Spanish stock, as a boy he had planned 
 to be a lawyer, and, by his father's order, had got through Black- 
 stone's Commentaries before he was twelve. Though West Point 
 diverted him from the law, Benet found scope for his legal talents 
 in his Military Law and the Practice of Court-Martial, which went 
 through several editions in the 1860s. He wrote also on military 
 subjects, translated such classic military authors as Jomini and, 
 while stationed in St. Louis before the Civil War, wrote newspaper 
 articles under various pseudonyms. In his private letters occur fore- 
 tastes of his grandson's talent for imagery. 
 
 Though Southern-born and married to a Kentucky girl, Benet 
 put the Union first when the test came. He spent most of the war 
 stationed at West Point or, as the Ordnance Department's repre- 
 sentative, at Robert P. Parrott's Cold Spring Foundry. The com- 
 parative calm of those posts may explain why the Ordnance De- 
 partment so often chose him to try out Lincoln's pet inventions. Or 
 the choice of Benet may have been Lincoln's idea. In Captain Benet, 
 Lincoln clearly found a kindred soul. Benet' s attitude toward new 
 weapons presented a striking contrast to that of General Ripley. 
 Benet looked for the good points of inventions. He seemed to feel 
 that a new weapon should not be scorned unless its worthlessness 
 was either self-evident or proved by a fair trial. Ripley searched for 
 the flaws in any proposal. To him, a new weapon must be assumed 
 worthless unless proved otherwise — and he was not prepared to do 
 any of the proving. 
 
 Whether or not Lincoln's "champagne experiments" had prac- 
 tical effects on ordnance, the President drew strength from them. 
 
98 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Whether in the company of Dahlgren, the keen, wiry, nervous 
 climber, or Ramsay, the earnest, brave, trustful, good-humored 
 plodder, Lincoln enjoyed a respite from politicians. In each of the 
 two men, Lincoln saw the substantial good and winked at the in- 
 consequential bad; in him, each of them found a warm and kind 
 friend. 
 
 Perhaps whoever coined the phrase "champagne experiments" 
 spoke more aptly than he knew. The weary leader's excursions to 
 the arsenal and the Navy Yard did indeed serve as a tonic and 
 stimulant. In the absorbing novelty of some warlike device, in the 
 sharpening of logic and wit as he sought to master its intricacies 
 and expose its flaws, in the wind, air, sun and sound of the proving 
 grounds, in the sober, precise talk of technical experts, Lincoln 
 found refreshment of mind and renewed steadiness for the grind- 
 ing days ahead. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 7 
 
 Bureaucrats and Breechloaders 
 
 One clear, still morning in the early 
 summer of 1861 Abraham Lincoln set out across the south lawn of 
 the White House with his young secretary William O. Stoddard. 
 Lincoln carried a repeating rifle (probably a Henry) and Stoddard 
 a Springfield rifle which had been converted into a breechloader. 
 The nine pounds of wood and metal in Lincoln's hand offered a 
 key to victory, and Lincoln was beginning to sense the fact. It 
 was the grim question of muzzle-loaders versus breechloaders, and 
 not the beauty of the morning, that absorbed the two men as they 
 strolled across the grass. 
 
 Lincoln and Stoddard were well acquainted with the tedious 
 process a soldier had to go through to load and fire the regulation 
 Springfield muzzle-loading rifle. Reaching into his cartridge pouch, 
 the soldier took out a paper cartridge containing the powder charge 
 and the bullet. Holding this between his thumb and forefinger, he 
 tore it open with his teeth. Next he emptied the powder into the 
 barrel and disengaged the bullet with his right hand and the thumb 
 and two fingers of the left. Inserting the ball point up into the bore, 
 he pressed it down with his right thumb. Then he drew his ramrod, 
 which meant pulling it halfway out, steadying it, grasping it again 
 and clearing it. He rammed the ball halfway down, took hold of 
 the ramrod again, and drove the ball home. He then drew the ram- 
 rod out and returned it to its tube, each movement again in two 
 stages. Next he primed the piece by raising it, half cocking it, tak- 
 
 99 
 
100 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ing off the old cap, taking a new one out of the pouch and pressing 
 it down on the nipple. At last he cocked the gun, aimed it and fired. 
 And if he had a particular target in mind, which was unlikely in all 
 the excitement, he probably missed it clean. 
 
 An experienced man with steady nerves could fire three rounds 
 per minute at the most. Choked by fear and battle smoke, unnerved 
 by the shrieking of shells and the whining of bullets, rattled by the 
 screams of dying men and the wolfish yipping of the charging en- 
 emy, not many soldiers did so well. And entirely aside from speed, 
 a lot could go wrong if a man got overexcited. He might ram the 
 bullet into the barrel before he poured in the powder. He might 
 leave the ramrod in the barrel and then fire it off, past retrieving. 
 He might load the cartridge, paper and all, without breaking it 
 open. 
 
 If he made any of those easy mistakes, his gun was useless, prob- 
 ably for the rest of the battle. On the field of Gettysburg more than 
 twenty-four thousand loaded muskets and rifles were found. Six 
 thousand of them had one load apiece, twelve thousand had two 
 loads each and six thousand had from three to ten loads. One fa- 
 mous specimen had twenty-three loads rammed down in regular 
 order. 
 
 The obvious solution was a gun which could be loaded at the 
 breech. At a stroke, almost all the pitfalls and complexities of load- 
 ing would be eliminated. The soldier with a breechloader could 
 not, even if he tried, put in more than one load at a time. He would 
 not have to worry about a ramrod in loading. He could lie prone 
 and load just as rapidly and easily as when he was standing. Not 
 only would loading be gloriously simple, but breech-loading rifles 
 would be better than muzzle-loaders in range and accuracy also, 
 since tighter-fitting bullets could be used. And with such advan- 
 tages would come the priceless asset of confidence, especially in the 
 face of an enemy armed only with muzzle-loaders. 
 
 In retrospect, the dependence of the Union Army on muzzle- 
 loaders seems inexcusable. 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS 101 
 
 Breechloaders had been known for centuries. Two made during 
 the reign of Henry VIII were exhibited in London during the 
 1860s and found to be remarkably like the contemporary Snider 
 rifle. The breech-loading rifle of a British officer named Patrick Fer- 
 guson was used to good effect at Brandywine in 1777. An Ameri- 
 can named John Hall patented a breech-loading rifle in 181 1, and 
 in 1825 two companies at Fortress Monroe were armed with it and 
 liked it. 
 
 But before whole armies could be given breechloaders, new ma- 
 chine tools and techniques had to be developed. Only then could 
 breech mechanisms be made cheap, efficient and safe. Only by pre- 
 cision manufacture could the breech be tightly sealed against the 
 escape of gas. Some types of breechloaders were tried by the Army 
 before this stage had been reached; and so, by the early 1840s, old- 
 er officers had acquired a stubborn prejudice against all such arms. 
 Just before the Mexican War, therefore, the Ordnance Department 
 abandoned the manufacture of breechloaders. 
 
 Within two or three years Christian Sharps had patented his 
 single-shot breechloader, and the breech-loading rifle began to meet 
 the requirements of a good military weapon. Other good breech- 
 loaders followed in close order. During the fifties Secretaries of 
 War Jefferson Davis and John B. Floyd had some tried, with ex- 
 cellent results both on the proving ground and in the field. "Some 
 of these arms," reported Floyd in 1857, "combine, in a very high 
 degree, celerity and accuracy of fire, with great force, at long 
 range." In i860 Floyd discarded all reservations and wrote: 
 
 The long habit of using muzzle-loading arms will resist what 
 seems to be so great an innovation, and ignorance may condemn; 
 but as certainly as the percussion cap has superseded the flint and 
 steel, so surely will the breech-loading gun drive out of use those 
 that load at the muzzle. 
 
 It was a truer prophecy than most made by that unlucky Virginian. 
 
 If by i860 Davis and Floyd had carried their point, if they had 
 
 adopted a regulation breechloader and had begun converting the 
 
102 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Springfield Armory to its production, how different the course of 
 history would have been! An able and intelligent Confederate gen- 
 eral who encountered Yankee breechloaders during the war later 
 maintained that the Confederacy would have gone down within a 
 year had Federal infantry been thus armed at the start. Conversion 
 begun as late as i860 may not, probably would not, have been com- 
 plete when war came. But if a large part of the Union Army had 
 been given breechloaders by late 1862, Gettysburg would certainly 
 have ended the war. More likely, Chancellorsville or even Fred- 
 ericksburg would have done it, and history would record no Get- 
 tysburg Address, no President Grant, perhaps no carpetbag recon- 
 struction or Solid South. Instead, it might have had the memoirs 
 of ex-President Lincoln, perhaps written in retirement during the 
 administration of President Burnside or Hooker. 
 
 But it did not happen that way. The Chief of Ordnance, Colonel 
 Henry Knox Craig, was preoccupied with artillery and paid no 
 heed to new small arms. Army officers remembered only the un- 
 happy experience of the forties. The War Department, dazzled by 
 the variety of good breechloaders and the rapidity of improve- 
 ments, sat back and twiddled its thumbs, waiting for the perfect 
 weapon. 
 
 And the war came. 
 
 So matters stood when Lincoln and Stoddard took their morning 
 stroll south of the White House. At the end of the lawn was a low 
 retaining wall, and beyond it lay a tract of land known then as the 
 Treasury Park and later as the White Lot. This was their destina- 
 tion. 
 
 The Treasury Park was a humpy stretch of weeds, grass and 
 gravel, surrounded by a wooden fence about shoulder high. At each 
 end of the north side stood a cluster of wooden sheds and stables, 
 and close to the fence along the other three sides ran a fringe of 
 trees. The center of the lot was bare, except for one or two small 
 huts, a big woodpile and a half-mile race track. 
 
 At the far end of the Treasury Park was a little estuary into 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS 103 
 
 which the abandoned city canal emptied before joining the Poto- 
 mac, and beyond that lay the marshy grounds about the Washing- 
 ton Monument. Over these grounds, called the Mall, ranged scores 
 of cattle, pastured there by the Army and moving obliviously about 
 a macabre reminder of their purpose in life — a government slaugh- 
 terhouse close by the unfinished monument. The Mall was not a 
 lovely sight, and other senses than the visual were assaulted by the 
 slaughterhouse, the muddy field and the stagnant canal, which was 
 essentially an open sewer. Worse still, those were the days before 
 window screens, and so White House occupants resigned them- 
 selves to regular visitations of "the ague." "A more unfit position 
 for the Executive Mansion could not well be imagined," scolded 
 the Washington Star. 
 
 The Treasury Park, not much prettier, at least had pleasant 
 uses. One day, for example, the Maryland Club of Baltimore 
 played baseball there with the National Club of Washington, 
 Baltimore winning thirty-three to thirty-one. On another summer's 
 day, a soulless policeman surprised a pair of star-crossed lovers in 
 their Treasury Park tryst. The gentleman ungallantly "skedad- 
 dled," but his Juliet, less fleet of foot, was nabbed and sent to the 
 workhouse. And midway through the war, Company K of the 
 150th Pennsylvania — the "Bucktails" — pitched camp there for 
 the duration. 
 
 Most notably of all, the lot served as President Lincoln's per- 
 sonal rifle range and weapons proving ground, and more than one 
 passing citizen stopped to watch the tall Kentuckian fire at a tar- 
 get pinned to the woodpile.* Lincoln's usual companion on these 
 shooting expeditions was Nathan Mullikin, an ex-soldier from 
 Maryland, who had since 1836 been a messenger at the Ordnance 
 Office. But in the morning, before Mullikin came to work, and in 
 the evening, after he had left, Lincoln had to look for other com- 
 
 * At nine o'clock one night in November 1862 a musket ball from the Treasury 
 Park went through the side of Mrs. Grady's house on Fifteenth Street and lodged 
 in the opposite wall, near a startled young lady. But this can doubtless be laid to 
 an exuberant member of the newly arrived Bucktails. 
 
104 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 pany. Thus William Stoddard enjoyed the honor on this morning 
 of breechloader competition. 
 
 Both men favored breechloaders, and the only difference be- 
 tween them on this occasion was over the relative merits of repeat- 
 ers and single-shot rifles. Lincoln took the more conservative view. 
 To him the single-shot rifle seemed the weapon of the future. Yet 
 even on this point, he told his young companion, "the Bureau 
 officials" were against him. 
 
 Down at the Treasury Park, Lincoln and Stoddard commenced 
 to bang away at a board leaning against the big woodpile. Gunfire 
 had been banned in the capital, and a detail of men presently 
 charged up, led by a noncom who shouted, between curses, "Stop 
 that firing! Stop that firing!" When the unmistakable eminence of 
 President Lincoln loomed up through the drifting smoke, the as- 
 tounded guardians of public tranquillity beat a hasty retreat. 
 "Well," said Lincoln, looking after them, "they might have stayed 
 and seen the shooting." 
 
 Few Civil War battles were so epochal in their consequences as 
 the battle over breechloaders. And since few have received so little 
 notice from historians, we might do well at this point to review the 
 pros and cons. 
 
 Those who opposed the breech-loading rifle talked about "its 
 complication of mechanism and the danger of its being disabled by 
 accident in hurried loading." Even if this had been true, the ex- 
 perience of Gettysburg would suggest that muzzle-loaders were no 
 better. But it was not true. Breechloaders proved themselves reli- 
 able and durable in many a Civil War action. On one occasion, to 
 be sure, some Sharps rifles became "so choked with dirt and dust, 
 and so heated with the rapid and continuous firing, as to be almost 
 unserviceable." But that was after two hundred rounds apiece, a 
 record no muzzle-loader was likely to equal. 
 
 The old guard claimed, somewhat inconsistently, that men with 
 breechloaders used up ammunition too fast and recklessly. It was 
 true that toward the end of the war troops with repeaters carried a 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS 105 
 
 hundred rounds instead of the usual forty. The added weight made 
 itself felt on a long march, and in one such regiment "sometimes 
 the bundles of cartridges were surreptitiously lightened." But 
 greater fire power was to be welcomed, not avoided. If ammunition 
 ran short, the real problem was how to get more, not how to use 
 less. And as for the charge of reckless waste, troops with breech- 
 loaders soon learned to husband their ammunition. In three days of 
 fighting at Gettysburg, with twenty per cent casualties, one experi- 
 enced outfit armed with breechloaders fired an average of only 
 thirty-two rounds per man. Moreover, even when ammunition did 
 run out, the confidence engendered by breechloaders seemed to per- 
 sist. At Wapping Heights troops with breechloaders drove the en- 
 emy back a mile. While waiting for more ammunition, they stayed 
 put and nonchalantly picked blackberries. 
 
 Men with muzzle-loaders were notoriously apt to fire wildly. 
 Were men who used breechloaders likely to be even more careless 
 in aiming, as the old guard claimed? Consider a letter written to 
 the Army and Navy Journal in 1864 by one who signed himself 
 "Soldier": 
 
 Let them come to the front armed with one Springfield musket, 
 and oppose themselves to an equal number of Rebs armed with re- 
 peaters or breech-loaders. If they can stand that, let them go to the 
 picket line, and while fumbling for a cap and trying to get it on 
 the cone one of these cold days, offer themselves as a target to some 
 fellow on the other side who has nothing to do but cock his piece 
 and blaze away. If they don't throw down their bungling, slow- 
 shooting gun in disgust, they may be excused for indulging in re- 
 marks not complimentary to those who compel them to the unequal 
 contest. The objection has been urged that we fire too many shots 
 with our present muzzle-loaders, and consequently it would be folly 
 to add to the waste of ammunition by affording us greater ease or 
 facility in loading. Do our good friends ever reflect that the loss of 
 time in loading is the great cause of haste, and consequent inac- 
 curacy in firing? . . . 
 
 More plausible was Ripley's argument that ammunition must be 
 standardized. At Malvern Hill one regiment had to leave the fight 
 
106 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 because no more Sharps cartridges could be obtained. At Second 
 Bull Run the chief ordnance officer requisitioned eleven different 
 kinds and calibers of small-arms ammunition, of which five were 
 for breechloaders. Ripley was obsessed by the problem, and he 
 seemed to blame it all on breechloaders. In the summer of 1861, 
 for example, he warned Massachusetts that if she gave her men 
 breechloaders they had better bring their own ammunition. 
 
 One easy answer to this argument was the existence of good 
 breechloaders which used the regulation muzzle-loader paper car- 
 tridge. But there was more to it than that. Breechloaders could use 
 metallic cartridges, which were much better than the paper kind. If 
 these had been adopted, the South, which could not turn out metal- 
 lic cartridges in quantity, would have been unable to use the 
 captured arms on which it counted for survival. Of course, if muz- 
 zle-loaders had still been used along with the breechloaders, at 
 least two types of ammunition would have been needed. But in 
 actuality, breechloaders or no breechloaders, Civil War ammunition 
 from first to last never got even that close to standardization. 
 
 Ripley's strongest argument was that breechloaders could not be 
 turned out in time to do any good. Large-scale production of 
 muzzle-loaders by American manufacturers was a year in getting 
 under way. Breechloader production would have been slower still. 
 And until the war was half over, Ripley shared the common belief 
 that it could, and probably would, end at any moment. In the cir- 
 cumstances, it is easy to understand Ripley's opposition to the or- 
 dering of expensive "fancy arms" which might never be used. 
 Furthermore, Ripley maintained, to set factories to work on breech- 
 loaders would reduce the supply of desperately needed muzzle- 
 loaders. 
 
 Yet Captain Harwood of the Navy Ordnance Bureau saw a way 
 out of the dilemma. He wrote Secretary Welles in May 1861: 
 
 The Bureau has reason to believe that facilities can be found 
 abroad — especially in the great manufacturing towns of Belgium — 
 where, should a competent agent be sent with the pattern of a 
 {breech-loading] fire arm which has been proved to combine essen- 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS 107 
 
 tial elements of success, the arms could be fabricated more speedily 
 and economically than in the United States. 
 
 In January 1862 the War Department officially forswore the 
 purchase of any more European arms. Evidently the Union was 
 prepared to supply its own muzzle-loaders thereafter. It follows 
 that if a good breechloader had then been ordered from European 
 arms makers, nothing would have been risked but expense; and by 
 the middle of 1863 at the latest much of the Union Army might 
 have been armed with breechloaders. 
 
 But if General Ripley ever heard of Harwood's proposal, he ig- 
 nored it. 
 
 The gun that William Stoddard fired in his shooting match with 
 Lincoln was probably the one invented by a Washington man 
 named Samuel Wilmer Marsh. The Marsh gun was a converted 
 Springfield rifle with a plug or bolt hinged to the upper part of 
 the breech. When the trigger was pressed forward, the plug was 
 thrown up so that the cartridge could be inserted into the breech. 
 A blow of the hand brought back the breech plug, which was held 
 in place by a steel pin. A double ring of steel, expanded by a steel 
 cone, served as a gas check. 
 
 To Lincoln, the Marsh gun seemed to forestall all objections. 
 Most good breechloaders cost at least thirty-six dollars (as com- 
 pared to nineteen or twenty for muzzle-loaders ) but Marsh offered 
 his for just under thirty. Marsh's gun used the regulation .58- 
 caliber paper cartridge. As for the bugaboo of fragility, if any- 
 thing actually did go wrong with the Marsh gun as a breechloader, 
 it could be converted back into a muzzle-loader on the field with 
 one swift and easy operation. 
 
 So pleased was Lincoln with the Marsh gun that he had Lieuten- 
 ant Benet try it at West Point that summer. Marsh lent Benet the 
 only gun he had. It was old and obviously worn. Yet escape of gas 
 was no problem, and Benet' s moistened finger easily cleaned off 
 such fouling as occurred in the gas check and breech. In the course 
 
108 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 of the trial Benet got off ten rounds in less than two minutes. After 
 firing 121 rounds, Benet reported the gun to be simple, strong and 
 not easily deranged. It had "great merit," he told Lincoln. 
 
 Marsh and his partner, a shrewd Virginian named Robert Gal- 
 laher, did not rely on Benet' s praise alone. They showed the gun 
 to two influential Tennesseeans, Senator Andrew Johnson and ex- 
 Congressman Emerson Etheridge, and the latter cannily advised 
 them to sell Lincoln the idea of arming Kentucky with Marsh 
 breechloaders. Marsh and Gallaher also hired an old friend of Lin- 
 coln, a stogy-puffing Indiana politician named Richard W. 
 Thompson, to lobby for them, and Thompson pleaded their case 
 with both Lincoln and Secretary Cameron. "If all fails," Cameron 
 assured his Hoosier friend, "I will attend to your interests." 
 
 General Ripley seemed to be the only obstacle to an order. He 
 delayed and delayed and at last spurned the Marsh-Gallaher propo- 
 sition entirely. "We do not want such arms as you offer," he told 
 the two men. 
 
 It was at this point that Lincoln stepped in and overruled his 
 Chief of Ordnance. On October 14, 1861, at Lincoln's direction, 
 Ripley reluctantly ordered twenty-five thousand Marsh breechload- 
 ers, three thousand to be delivered in four months and a thousand 
 a month thereafter.* In a last fling Ripley slipped in the unusual 
 stipulation that a single late delivery would cancel the entire con- 
 tract. He was overruled on that point also, and at least twenty-five 
 thousand Union soldiers were assured freedom from the nightmare 
 of loading muzzle-loaders. 
 
 Or so it seemed. 
 
 While Marsh and Gallaher were still seeking their order, Lin- 
 coln struck another blow for breechloaders with the help of Colo- 
 nel Hiram Berdan. 
 
 Progress often has strange allies. Some people liked Hiram Ber- 
 dan. Others decidedly did not. Old General Winfield Scott was 
 
 * This was destined to be the largest single order for breech-loading rifles given 
 during the Civil War. 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS 109 
 
 "very favorably impressed" with the man, but an associate of Ber- 
 dan called him "most unscrupulous" and "totally unfit for a com- 
 mand." Major Dyer of the Springfield Armory considered Berdan 
 "thoroughly unscrupulous and unreliable." "I accept everything 
 that Berdan tells me cum grano salts," declared Dyer shortly after 
 the war. 
 
 The subject of these remarks was an aggressive man in his 
 middle thirties with a receding hairline and a drooping mustache. 
 By profession a trained mechanical engineer with offices in New 
 York City, he was better known in 1861 for his avocation, which 
 was rifle marksmanship. In a list of the nation's best rifle shots for 
 fifteen years previous, Berdan' s name stood first. Not only could 
 Berdan draw a sure bead on his target, but he also had a keen eye 
 for the main chance. His first reaction to the outbreak of war was 
 to offer Ripley a patented musket ball. As if sensing the futility of 
 this, he next called, via the newspapers, for "the best marksmen in 
 the country, to form a corps of skirmishers" under his command. 
 By mid-June General Scott had approved the plan. Lincoln per- 
 suaded Governor Morgan of New York to equip a company in the 
 Berdan outfit, and other states followed suit. 
 
 The success of the Sharpshooters depended on their weapons. 
 Berdan knew this, and therefore, when he started recruiting, he 
 promised breechloaders, with hair triggers and telescopic sights, to 
 those who did not bring their own target rifles. But Berdan also 
 shrewdly suspected that the good will of General Ripley was worth 
 cultivating. "If I could not secure your able assistance in the mat- 
 ter," he wrote Ripley ingratiatingly, "I should have but little hope 
 of success." So when Ripley insisted that the Sharpshooters should 
 have Springfield muzzle-loaders, Berdan gave in. 
 
 Recruiting was brisk, and by early September the first few com- 
 panies were arriving in Washington. Meanwhile, something — per- 
 haps the attitude of his men — changed Berdan' s mind and he be- 
 gan once more to ask for breechloaders. To Ripley, this was basest 
 perfidy; from then on he and Berdan were enemies. 
 
 The United States Sharpshooters were scarcely settled in camp 
 
IIO LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 when tales of their marksmanship began appearing in the news- 
 papers. The oufit became a favorite with the swarms of sight-seers 
 who toured the capital's encircling camps. One sultry afternoon in 
 late September President Lincoln appeared at the Berdan camp, ac- 
 companied by three Cabinet members, the Prince de Joinville with 
 his son and nephews, and a constellation of generals, including Mc- 
 Clellan, McDowell and Mansfield. 
 
 After Lincoln had reviewed the troops, Berdan invited the party 
 to the rifle pits where a hundred Sharpshooters were engaged in 
 target practice with their own rifles. Two life-size canvas Zouaves 
 at six hundred thirty yards were subjected to some four hundred 
 shots, of which about a hundred took effect. McClellan and others 
 tried their skill with borrowed rifles, and Lincoln himself fired 
 three good shots. The President handled his borrowed weapon 
 "like a veteran marksman," to the crowd's delight. Resting the gun 
 (it weighed thirty-five pounds) on what he called a sapling, he re- 
 marked, "Boys, this reminds me of old-time shooting." A cheer 
 went up from his audience. 
 
 Assistant Secretary of War Tom Scott, who disliked the pushing 
 colonel, asked Berdan sneeringly what he knew about guns and 
 war, that he should set himself up against all these officials. This, it 
 would seem, was an oblique reference to Berdan' s fight for breech- 
 loaders. When Berdan refused to rise to the bait, Scott challenged 
 him to try his own skill, hoping, presumably, that Berdan would 
 either back down or bungle his shot from nervousness. Nerve was 
 Hiram Berdan's long suit, as Scott should have known. Berdan took 
 up the challenge, and a target was set up at six hundred yards. 
 
 The target was a man's figure, labeled Jeff Davis. Berdan ex- 
 pressed some delicacy about perforating one chief executive in the 
 presence of another, but Lincoln reassured him good-naturedly. 
 "Oh, Colonel," he said, "if you make a good shot it will serve him 
 right." 
 
 Berdan borrowed his sergeant major's rifle. "Now," said Scott, 
 "you must fire standing, for officers should not dirty their uniforms 
 by getting into rifle pits." 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS III 
 
 "You are right, Colonel Scott," Berdan said coolly, "I always 
 fire from the shoulder." He stepped forward and raised the ponder- 
 ous gun. 
 
 "What point are you going to fire at?" Scott asked. 
 
 "The head," Berdan replied, taking aim. 
 
 "Fire at the right eye!" the Assistant Secretary shouted desper- 
 ately. And Berdan fired. 
 
 When the target was brought in, Lincoln burst out laughing: 
 Berdan's bullet had cut out the pupil of "Jeff Davis's" right eye. 
 At six hundred yards, as Lincoln well knew, this was sheer coin- 
 cidence, but he was tickled to see Scott's ill-humored taunts boom- 
 erang so neatly. Besides, we may reasonably surmise, the incident 
 gave Lincoln an excuse he had been waiting for. 
 
 Still laughing, the President climbed into his carriage, settled 
 himself and then called back, "Colonel, come down tomorrow, and 
 I will give you the order for the breechloaders." 
 
 The publicity value of Sharpshooter patronage was already evi- 
 dent. From all over the North and even from Europe arms makers 
 and inventors flocked to Berdan's camp. After a course in the anato- 
 my of small arms such as fell to no other outfit, the Sharpshooters 
 gave their vote to the 1859 Sharps, a single-shot breech-loading 
 rifle. 
 
 The Sharps's action was simple: a vertically sliding breech block, 
 worked by a lever under the gun. Like most other breechloaders 
 which used paper cartridges, its earlier models had given trouble 
 with escape of gas from the breech; but the 1859 Sharps had a new 
 and effective gas check. To load the gun, one simply pulled down 
 the lever, inserted a paper cartridge (.54 caliber, not the regulation 
 .58) and pushed the lever up again. Special primers were provided, 
 little round, flat copper discs which were inserted below the ham- 
 mer, but in action troops found them undependable and preferred 
 to use the regular Army or "hat" cap. The Sharps could be fired 
 eight or ten times a minute — half again as fast as the Marsh gun 
 and three times as fast as a muzzle-loader. 
 
112 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 To General Ripley, all breechloaders were "newfangled gim- 
 cracks"; but the Sharps, at least, were scarcely "newfangled." Al- 
 ready these guns had behind them a dozen years of honorable his- 
 tory. In the struggle for Kansas, Sharps rifles had won nationwide 
 fame as "Beecher's Bibles," after Henry Ward Beecher had pro- 
 fessed to see "more moral power in one of those instruments so far 
 as the slave-holders were concerned than in a hundred Bibles." As 
 early as 1850 an Army Ordnance Board had tried and highly 
 praised the gun; as recently as January 1861 a captain of the 1st 
 United States Dragoons had informed the Ordnance Office that 
 after some years' service in the West, Sharps carbines (using the 
 same action as the rifles) were "considered exceedingly efficient." 
 
 All this was of no more concern to General Ripley than were the 
 wishes of Colonel Berdan, the Sharpshooters and President Lincoln 
 himself. With Assistant Secretary Scott backing him up, Ripley 
 flatly refused to order the Sharps. In November General McClellan 
 asked Ripley to order a thousand Colt revolving rifles, breechload- 
 ers made on the principle of the famous revolver; although the Colt 
 firm was one of Ripley's special pets, Ripley scorned the compro- 
 mise. And since the Chief of Ordnance answered directly to the 
 War Department, not to the commanding general, McClellan 
 could do no more. 
 
 Company A of the Sharpshooters appealed to their Congressmen 
 for help, promising to pay the difference between Sharps and 
 Springfields out of their own pockets. Assistant Secretary Scott 
 coldly endorsed their petition: "They will be provided with first 
 class Harpers Ferry rifles — & new pattern Springfield Rifles." 
 
 By mid-December Berdan' s men were turning ugly. Snuffing 
 trouble, a New York Post correspondent drove out to their camp, 
 past sodden, brown fields and forlorn trees. After his gloomy drive, 
 he welcomed the sight of the Sharpshooters' hilltop camp in a 
 grove of cedars. On the way up, he passed groups of men around 
 campfires, over which cooked great joints of meat and cauldrons of 
 coffee. It was sunset, and bugles were calling. "The sky was flushed 
 all over with rosy crimson, and below a silver mist was rising 
 
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 LINCOLN SEES A RIFLE 
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 A ROCKET THREATENS THE EXISTENCE OF THE UNITED STATES 
 Lincoln's brush with death, unmentioned by several diarists present, is here revealed. 
 This loose memo was tucked into a naval ledger and remained hidden for ninety years. 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS 113 
 
 through," he noted, "while from our high position the city and the 
 great white Capitol looked pale and shadowy as the city of a mi- 
 rage." The men themselves, in their dark-green uniforms, gray 
 overcoats trimmed with green, and fur-covered knapsacks, "had a 
 decidedly sylvan appearance, suggestive of Robin Hood and his 
 merry men." 
 
 Sylvan the men may have been, and there was a certain aptness 
 in comparing their commander to Robin Hood, but they were far 
 from merry. Some had their own target rifles, and fifty muskets had 
 been issued them for guard duty. Yet, as they stared out over dreary 
 fields at their shadowy Capitol, most of Berdan's men, two thou- 
 sand strong, were disagreeably conscious of being marksmen with- 
 out guns. The Post man remarked ominously: 
 
 It is a wonder that the men retain their spirits under such long 
 delay, and it speaks well for their officers that they are not dis- 
 couraged. Sharps rifles were promised them by the President and 
 ordered by General McClellan, but some trouble in the War De- 
 partment has thus far prevented their getting them. Let us hope 
 they will soon have the weapon they are so competent to wield. 
 
 While Colonel Berdan wrestled with his problems, Lincoln was 
 coming to the rescue of still another champion of breechloaders, 
 young Christopher Spencer. 
 
 Like General Ripley, Christopher Spencer was a Connecticut 
 Yankee. Other similarities between the two are hard to find. Elder- 
 ly General Ripley abhorred new ideas; the twenty-seven-year-old 
 Spencer spawned them. At thirteen, Spencer cut down his grand- 
 father's Revolutionary musket to carbine size, using a homemade 
 hack saw. At fifteen he built a working model of a steam engine 
 from information in an old volume of Cornstock's Philosophy. By 
 his late twenties he was driving to work in a steam automobile of 
 his own design. And, as evidence that youth did not make the 
 difference, Spencer at the age of eighty-seven was to take up avi- 
 ation as a hobby. When Mark Twain wrote A Connecticut Yankee 
 in King Arthur's Court, he may well have modeled the hero on 
 
114 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Christopher Spencer, who had by then lived seventeen years in or 
 near Mark Twain's Hartford. 
 
 Like Twain's Yankee, Spencer became a machinist and worked 
 in the great Colt works at Hartford. After three years there he 
 shifted to the Cheney Brothers' silk factory near Hartford, where 
 he invented an automatic silk-winding machine that revolutionized 
 the thread industry. In March i860 Spencer patented his ingenious 
 repeating rifle, the fruit of three years' experimentation. A loading 
 tube containing seven rim-fire metallic cartridges, end to end, was 
 inserted into the stock, after which the gun chamber was loaded 
 simply by working a lever. 
 
 Since Secretary Welles was a Hartford man himself and a close 
 friend of the Cheneys, Spencer had no difficulty in getting the Navy 
 to try his gun in June 1861. But Dahlgren's enthusiasm for the 
 weapon sprang from more than political pressure. Of five hundred 
 cartridges tried, only one misfired, and that because of defective 
 fulminate. After seven shots were fired in ten seconds, the barrel 
 grew ominously hot. But a sustained rate of fourteen rounds per 
 minute gave no trouble at all. Without cleaning, the gun worked as 
 well at the end of the trial as at the start. Moved by Dahlgren's de- 
 light, Harwood promptly ordered seven hundred Spencers for the 
 Navy. 
 
 Lincoln came down to the Navy Yard next day, and it was prob- 
 ably then that he was introduced to this latest marvel of Yankee in- 
 genuity. Whether he first handled the Spencer then or at a slightly 
 later time, he was soon familiar with it, in both its rifle and its car- 
 bine form. 
 
 One afternoon, feeling that the Spencer carbine-sight could be 
 bettered, Lincoln took a stick of pine and whittled his idea into 
 shape. Then he walked over to the Winder Building in search of 
 Nathan Mullikin, the Ordnance Office messenger. The building's 
 corridors were darker than ever, for evening was coming on. Up 
 and down the murky hallway paced Abraham Lincoln with his 
 Spencer carbine. In deserted offices, the pens were stilled and the 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS 115 
 
 ledgers put up. "I do wonder," he murmured to himself, "if they 
 have gone already and left the building all alone." 
 
 At last, from a doorway down the hall, a late-working Navy De- 
 partment clerk appeared. "Good evening," Lincoln said, "I was 
 just looking for that man who goes shooting with me sometimes." 
 
 Mullikin had left, but the clerk offered himself as a substitute, 
 and the pair strolled down to the Treasury Park in the early twi- 
 light. Fixing a sheet of white Congressional stationery to the wood- 
 pile (it would be interesting to know who had written the letter) 
 Lincoln turned, paced off a few score feet, faced the target, and 
 raised his carbine. Seven shots in quick succession struck in or 
 around the target. "I believe I can make this gun shoot better," re- 
 marked Lincoln, extracting his whittled sight from a vest pocket 
 and fitting it on the gun. He emptied the magazine, reloaded and 
 emptied it again. Of the fourteen shots, nearly a dozen hit the 
 paper. 
 
 The record of the Lincoln gunsight, if it can be given so formal 
 a name, ends there. But the Spencer rifle went on to fresh con- 
 quests. At Fortress Monroe in August, Captain Alexander Dyer 
 ( not yet promoted to the Springfield Armory ) fired a Spencer rifle 
 some eighty times. In the course of the trial, it was buried in sand, 
 but no clogging or other ill effect resulted. The breech mechanism 
 was soaked in salt water and exposed for twenty- four hours. The 
 gun continued to work easily. And though it was not cleaned dur- 
 ing the tests, it worked as well at the end as at the beginning, which 
 was very well indeed. The only improvement Dyer could suggest 
 was to make the extracting ratchet of tempered steel to reduce wear. 
 "I regard it," he said, "as one of the very best breech-loading arms 
 I have seen." 
 
 General McClellan shared the views of Dahlgren and Dyer. A 
 three-man board set up by him to consider such weapons had some 
 minor suggestions — a chain to prevent loss of the loading tube and 
 some spare springs for the magazine — but otherwise saw no flaws 
 in the Spencer rifle. Finding it compact, durable and "very accu- 
 
Il6 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 rate," the board recommended that it be adopted generally, if a 
 limited trial in the field proved successful. 
 
 Again it was General Ripley who struck the jarring note. The 
 Spencer rifle, he reported, was too heavy and too expensive. It re- 
 quired special ammunition. Arms should be standardized. And any- 
 way, orders had been given for "nearly 73,000 breech-loading rifles 
 and carbines." The last remark demonstrated Ripley's squidlike 
 capacity for clouding the issue. To be sure, twenty-five thousand 
 Marsh breech-loading rifles had been ordered, thanks to Lincoln. 
 But almost all the other breechloaders were carbines, which were 
 cavalry arms, whereas the question was one of arming infantry.* 
 
 Blocked by Ripley, Christopher Spencer appealed to the Presi- 
 dent. And again, Lincoln helped to make ordnance history. On De- 
 cember 26, 1 86 1, by Lincoln's direction, General Ripley ordered 
 ten thousand Spencer repeating rifles. 
 
 Lincoln intended to give Berdan's Sharpshooters a share of 
 Spencer's wonderful rifles. One of them was sent to Berdan for 
 trial. On Christmas Day, while Berdan was firing the gun, a car- 
 tridge burst prematurely, blowing powder through a slot and tem- 
 porarily blinding Berdan's right eye. But Berdan was magnanimous 
 about the incident, merely suggesting from his sickbed that the 
 Spencer Company do something "to guard against similar accidents 
 with the new guns." Although he could not bring himself to rec- 
 ommend the gun, he refrained from condemning it. The order was 
 permitted to stand, and on the last day of 1861 the Spencer Com- 
 pany accepted it. 
 
 As 1 86 1 ended, the Union Army seemed about to settle the 
 rivalry between breechloaders and muzzle-loaders. Berdan's men 
 suspected otherwise, but Abraham Lincoln's promise should have 
 
 * Not even Ripley had the face to insist that mounted men carry muzzle-loaders, 
 and so breech-loading carbines were ordered in considerable quantity from the first. 
 Their effectiveness, however, failed to attract much notice till after Gettysburg; and, 
 in any case, few people seemed to realize that infantry might profit from the experi- 
 ence of cavalry. Indeed, we shall later see how Ripley used the need for breech- 
 loading carbines to discourage orders for breech-loading rifles. 
 
BUREAUCRATS AND BREECHLOADERS 117 
 
 stilled their doubts. Thirty-seven thousand breech-loading rifles, 
 both single-shot and repeating, using both paper and metallic car- 
 tridges, had been ordered or were soon to be ordered, all of them by 
 Lincoln's direction and on his responsibility. 
 
 Lincoln could not wisely have done more. Committing the Army 
 to breechloaders without an extensive field trial would have been 
 betting the nation's life against the opinion of most experts. But if 
 breechloaders were really superior, thirty-seven thousand men 
 should be able to prove it, and prove it soon. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 8 
 
 The Coffee-mill Gun 
 
 Early in June 1861 three men of 
 Gotham signed the register at Willard's. 
 
 One of them was Simeon Draper, a small-fry New York politi- 
 cian with a loud voice, a large, long nose and a well-developed pot- 
 belly. ( He was once compared to a good-natured pelican digesting 
 a surfeit of sprats. ) Although his reputation was not spotless, he 
 stood well with Secretary Seward, and that still counted for some- 
 thing in Washington. Another was Orison Blunt, for thirty years a 
 New York arms maker and importer. He contributed quiet respect- 
 ability to the little group. No less a nabob than John Jacob Astor II 
 vouched for him as "a perfectly honest & reliable man." Blunt was 
 a patriot, too, already hard at work procuring arms for the Ord- 
 nance Department and for New York's Union Defence Committee 
 without profit for himself. 
 
 The third man, as was his custom, signed himself merely "J. D. 
 Mills." The antecedents of a New Yorker so reticent about his 
 given names must remain obscure, which is a pity. For whatever he 
 had been, J. D. Mills was soon to become the world's first success- 
 ful machine-gun salesman. 
 
 No one had yet coined the phrase "machine gun." Mills called 
 his curious device "the Union Repeating Gun . . . An Army in six 
 feet square." Just who had invented it is hard to say. Two New 
 Yorkers named Edward Nugent and William Palmer battled over 
 
 118 
 
THE COFFEE-MILL GUN 119 
 
 patent rights from the summer of 1861 to the fall of 1863, but 
 there is no record of the outcome. Mills seems to have represented 
 the Nugent faction. 
 
 If Draper and Blunt came along to open the way for Mills, they 
 did their work well and speedily. Before the week was out, Mills, 
 Blunt and Abraham Lincoln were climbing the stairs to the loft of 
 Hall's carriage shop across from the Willard. There in the loft Lin- 
 coln had his first look at the fascinating contraption. Mounted on a 
 two-wheeled light artillery carriage, the Union Repeating Gun con- 
 sisted of a single rifle barrel with an ingenious breech mechanism. 
 On top was a hopper which Mills had filled with steel cartridge 
 cases, designed to hold regular .58-caliber paper cartridges. Lincoln 
 turned a crank on the side of the gun and delightedly watched the 
 cartridge cases drop one by one into the grooves of a revolving 
 cylinder, while the mechanism automatically tripped the firing pin, 
 extracted the cylinders and dropped them into a receptacle for re- 
 loading. Seeing the level of the cases sink lower in the hopper 
 while others were spewed into the receiving tray, Lincoln drew on 
 his knack for homely imagery to dub the device a "Coffee Mill 
 Gun." The name stuck to it for the rest of the war. 
 
 It was a peculiarly Yankee notion, this substitution of cogs, cams 
 and linkages for human brain and muscle. As Elias Howe's sewing 
 machine had outmoded the sore eyes and stiff fingers of Thomas 
 Hood's seamstress, so now William Palmer (or Edward Nugent) 
 had, it seemed, made obsolete the panic and careless haste which 
 rendered thousands of muskets useless in every great battle. 
 
 A day or two later Simeon Draper badgered General Ripley into 
 having the gun fired on the Washington Arsenal grounds before an 
 audience which included five generals, three Cabinet members, the 
 governor of Connecticut and President Lincoln. All were im- 
 pressed. Gray-bearded, soldierly General Joseph K. F. Mansfield, 
 who commanded Washington's defenses, promptly asked Secretary 
 Cameron to get a number of coffee-mill guns for the city's fortifi- 
 cations. "I think it an excellent rampart gun," he wrote, "a good 
 field gun against cavalry & horse Artillery, an excellent gun to de- 
 
120 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 fend the passage of the bridge and should be thoroughly tested in 
 the field at once." 
 
 Lincoln sought Dahlgren's advice. "You have seen Mr. Blunt' s 
 new gun," he wrote the captain on June 10. "What think you of 
 it? Would the government do well to purchase some of them? 
 Should they be of the size of the one exhibited or of different 
 sizes?" Dahlgren was all in favor of buying some, although he felt 
 that "for the present emergency, it would be well to adhere to the 
 dimension now constructed." 
 
 And to General Ripley, Lincoln wrote: "I saw this gun myself, 
 and witnessed some experiments with it; and I really think it worth 
 the attention of the Government." 
 
 After this splendid beginning, the coffee-mill trio returned to 
 New York in the naive belief that an order was assured. Presently 
 Mills began to have qualms. Toward the end of June he wrote 
 Lincoln, asking him to give the matter his "personal and early con- 
 sideration." "One word from your Excellency would suffice," 
 pleaded the salesman, "and subsequent events would prove to you 
 its momentous consequences." One of Lincoln's secretaries appar- 
 ently sent the letter on to the Ordnance Department without com- 
 ment. To another letter Ripley replied that he could give no opin- 
 ion on the gun without far more extensive trials, and he gave no in- 
 dication that he would order any such trials. 
 
 When the news of Bull Run reached New York late in July, 
 Mills wrote Lincoln again, more urgently : 
 
 I am reliably informed that General Ripley thinks very favorably 
 of [the gun], but does not wish to take the responsibility of order- 
 ing anything new in arms. If no one else is willing to "take the re- 
 sponsibility," will not the President take it? 
 
 That letter, too, went to the Ordnance Office without comment. 
 
 Blunt and Draper seemed to feel that they had done their share. 
 Draper's next letter to General Ripley was in behalf of a "balloon 
 shell" (along the lines of those used by the Japanese against the 
 
THE COFFEE-MILL GUN 121 
 
 United States in World War II ) . Ripley, of course, scoffed at the 
 idea. 
 
 Early in July Orison Blunt introduced Lincoln to another ma- 
 chine-gun inventor, a Newark mining engineer named Edward B. 
 Wilder, who fired his "rifle battery" for the President. In those days, 
 a "rifle battery" usually consisted of a row of rifle barrels fixed side 
 by side and fired in volleys. But Wilder' s claim that his gun could 
 fire eight thousand regulation Minie balls an hour suggests that it 
 was more like the coffee-mill gun. Wilder' s fortunes suffered a turn 
 for the worse in September, when he was thrown into Fort La- 
 fayette on the charge of offering his invention to the rebels. Lin- 
 coln accepted his denials at face value and had him released in 
 October. But by then Wilder had given up his machine gun as a 
 dead loss, since he lacked "the influence necessary to obtain an or- 
 der from the War Department to have a few constructed." In 1863 
 the Newark directory still listed him as a mining engineer. 
 
 In September, S. D. Newbro of Lansing, Michigan, offered Lin- 
 coln a crank-operated, hopper-fed, multibarrel machine gun which 
 he claimed could fire three or four hundred shots a minute and 
 could be made for $200. But one of the White House secretaries 
 intercepted Newbro' s letter and sent it to General Ripley, who ig- 
 nored it 
 
 Forsaken by Blunt and Draper, J. D. Mills meanwhile had 
 found a new ally: benign, white-bearded old Peter Cooper, pioneer 
 of railroading, partner with Cyrus Field in the Atlantic Cable proj- 
 ect and founder of Cooper Institute, where Lincoln had made the 
 speech that won him recognition in the East. Like Blunt and Dra- 
 per, Cooper had no personal stake in the matter, but he wrote Lin- 
 coln enthusiastically in September. A few weeks later the old phil- 
 anthropist went to work on Secretary Cameron: "Half a dozen men 
 with one of these guns can do the work of a thousand. ... It is an 
 immense saving to the country in equipment and rations alone. . . . 
 Beside which, you risk the lives of but half a dozen men in place 
 of a regiment." 
 
122 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Late in October J. D. Mills turned up again in Washington, this 
 time with ten of his coffee-mill guns; and he found that Lincoln 
 had not forgotten him. The President sent a note to McClellan: "A 
 battery of repeating guns, on wheels, can be seen at the Arsenal 
 any hour to-day. Could you, without inconvenience see them at 3. 
 or 4. oclock — please answer." The dashing young general had 
 made a previous engagement to review troops, but Lincoln drove 
 down to the arsenal anyway; and before the day was over, he had, 
 on his own responsibility, bought all ten of the guns at $1300 
 apiece — although Dahlgren had estimated the cost of manufacture 
 at $615 each. 
 
 This was the first recorded sale of machine guns in history. 
 
 That evening Lincoln and young John Hay walked across Penn- 
 sylvania Avenue to McClellan's headquarters. Lincoln was elated 
 with his purchase. When the general came in, Lincoln greeted him 
 with a spirited account of his "wonderful new repeating battery of 
 rifled guns, shooting fifty balls a minute." He urged McClellan to 
 go down and see the guns, and, if proper, detail a corps of men to 
 work them. Then the two men discussed the rising clamor for an 
 immediate advance against the South. "I have a notion to go out 
 with you and stand or fall with the battle," Lincoln exclaimed 
 buoyantly. 
 
 An incident presently occurred in Boston that might have damp- 
 ened Lincoln's elation, had he known of it. Lincoln had authorized 
 Major General Ben Butler to raise troops in New England and arm 
 them "with such serviceable arms as he may deem fit." That gadg- 
 et-minded general took full advantage of the latter dispensation. 
 Among the several military novelties he purchased on the strength 
 of it were two coffee-mill guns, which arrived in Boston toward 
 the end of November. 
 
 No headquarters exhibitionist could resist cranking an unguard- 
 ed coffee-mill gun, the nearest military equivalent to a big, brazen, 
 ratchet-type noisemaker. As someone gratified that compulsion, the 
 
THE COFFEE-MILL GUN 123 
 
 racket suddenly ended with a dull twang; the mainspring, which 
 forced the hammer against the cap, had flown into pieces. 
 
 "If the guns are going to act in that way," Butler's adjutant 
 wrote to Woodward and Cox, the manufacturers, "we shall at 
 least require some spare parts immediately. . . . Please send them." 
 There survives, as evidence that the adjutant's prognosis was sound, 
 a subsequent bill of $172.91 for repairs to one of the guns. At But- 
 ler's headquarters, at least, it began to appear that Woodward and 
 Cox had not given the customers their thirteen hundred dollars' 
 worth. 
 
 In Washington the cloud was still invisible. McClellan caught 
 some of Lincoln's enthusiasm for the new weapons, and at his re- 
 quest Mills made a written offer to furnish them in quantity at 
 $1200 each. The price gave McClellan pause, and he asked Secre- 
 tary Cameron whether or not fifty should be bought on those terms. 
 This McClellanesque wavering led Lincoln to insist that the com- 
 manding general support him unequivocally. "He knows whether 
 the guns will be serviceable," Lincoln told Mills. "I do not. It 
 avails nothing for him to intimate that he has no objection to my 
 purchasing them." At last McClellan agreed to the purchase of fifty 
 coffee-mill guns at cost plus twenty per cent (which finally worked 
 out to $735 each) . On December 19, 1861, Lincoln gave the order. 
 
 The end of 1861 thus brought the machine gun, like the breech- 
 loading rifle, close to its first great battle test. And like the breech- 
 loader, the machine gun owed its first chance to a man who could 
 "take the responsibility" when others flinched. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 9 
 
 Lincoln's Field Artillery 
 
 If General Ripley's passion for stand- 
 ardizing arms had its tragic consequences, it had also its merits, 
 especially in field artillery. A requisition for field-artillery ammu- 
 nition during the Civil War was apt to be an exercise in permuta- 
 tions and combinations. Cannon might be rifled or smoothbore, 
 bronze, steel or iron. They might be Parrott, Napoleon, Wiard, 
 Whitworth, Woodruff or Ellsworth guns, mountain or prairie how- 
 itzers, mortars or coehorns. They came in nine common calibers, 
 fired solid shot, grape shot, canister, case and seven principal types 
 of shells — Dyer, Parrott, James, Shenkl, Dimmick, Hotchkiss and 
 Whitworth. The varieties of ammunition were not infinite, but by 
 late 1862 they had passed the six-hundred mark. 
 
 The resulting confusion may have been slightly comical, but its 
 effect was not. At the most critical moments in more than one 
 battle, guns fell silent for lack of some freakish type of shot or 
 shell, though great stores of standard ammunition were on hand. 
 
 Backed by such commanders as U. S. Grant, Ripley worked 
 heroically to standardize field artillery. He found a zealous ally in 
 McClellan's chief of artillery, Brigadier General William F. Barry, 
 a shrewd veteran and "a most companionable gentleman of the old 
 school." By October 1861, reported Russell of the London Times, 
 Barry had "done wonders" in reducing the numbers of calibers. In 
 the following summer, at Ripley's urgent request, Barry was made 
 "Inspector General of Artillery" with the special duty of standard- 
 ly 
 
Lincoln's field artillery 125 
 
 izing field guns; and by the time of Gettysburg, only a hundred and 
 forty kinds of ammunition were in use. The increase in efficiency 
 was unmistakable. 
 
 The circumstances explain, and perhaps excuse, Ripley's undis- 
 guised annoyance whenever President Lincoln introduced a new 
 kind of field artillery. A case in point was that of the Woodruff 
 guns. 
 
 James Woodruff, a keen-faced, sharp-minded Connecticut man, 
 migrated to Quincy, Illinois, in 1842 at the age of twenty-one, and 
 became a pillar of Quincy society, as well as a good friend of Lin- 
 coln's crony, Orville Browning. Woodruff and Browning were 
 both conspicuous in the "Great Union Meeting" held outside the 
 Quincy courthouse one warm moonlight night just after war began. 
 As his mite toward the cause, Woodruff designed a little 3 -pounder 
 wrought-iron fieldpiece to be used by the 6th Illinois Cavalry in 
 Mississippi Valley campaigning. His gun was a muzzle-loading 
 smoothbore, three feet long, weighing about two hundred and fifty 
 pounds, and having a 2^ -inch bore. It could throw round shot 
 about a mile and a quarter, and was effective at seven hundred 
 yards with a canister shell containing seven 1 -ounce lead balls. 
 
 Ripley was not impressed by the gun or by the recommendations 
 Woodruff carried from prominent Illinois politicians. If the 6th 
 Illinois Cavalry had to have light guns, he pointed out, they could 
 use mountain or prairie howitzers. 
 
 Early in November 1861 the peppery Chief of Ordnance was 
 brought up short by a note from the President: 
 
 Please see Gov. Wood and Mr. Woodruff, bearers of this, and 
 make the arrangements for arms which they desire if you possibly 
 can. Do not turn them away lightly; but either provide for their 
 getting the arms, or write me a clear reason why you can not. 
 
 Not caring for either alternative, Ripley tried one of his subter- 
 fuges : he had his right-hand man, Lieutenant Colonel Maynadier, 
 refuse Woodruff's proposition. This availed him nothing. Lincoln 
 
126 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 promptly put his foot down and ordered thirty Woodruff guns at 
 $285 each. 
 
 Except for his muzzle-loading Woodruffs, the light fieldpieces 
 favored by Lincoln were all breechloaders. In this partiality, the 
 President stood almost alone. Ripley, Ramsay, Barry and Dahlgren 
 were all opposed to breech-loading cannon. Even the newspapers 
 and magazines, though quick to support breech-loading small 
 arms, doubted that the principle could be applied to cannon. In the 
 first place, it was argued, a breech mechanism adequate for the tre- 
 mendous shock and pressure of cannon charges would be prohibi- 
 tively expensive and unwieldy. In the second place, rapidity of fire 
 in a cannon was not worth much, since the heavy smoke of Civil 
 War black powder had to clear away before the next shot could be 
 aimed. (The latter argument, of course, reflects contemporary re- 
 liance on aimed shots as opposed to saturation tactics. ) 
 
 In spite of these plausible arguments Lincoln stood ready to give 
 breech-loading cannon a fair chance. 
 
 In June 1861 a Cincinnati lawyer named Walter G. Sherwin 
 wrote the Ordnance Office in behalf of his "Cincinnati Breech- 
 loading Cannon," invented in collaboration with two local mechan- 
 ics. Ripley's reply was not cordial. But Sherwin's gun had inter- 
 ested Captain Charles P. Kingsbury, chief ordnance officer for Mc- 
 Clellan's Department of the Ohio, with headquarters at Cincinnati. 
 So when Kingsbury came to Washington with his high-flying com- 
 mander just after Bull Run, Sherwin tagged along. 
 
 A week or so after McClellan's elevation to command of the 
 Army of the Potomac, Sherwin set a model of his invention on a 
 cloth-covered table in the White House and proceeded to instruct 
 President Lincoln and his Cabinet in the workings of the device. 
 
 The breech mechanism, he explained, worked something like a 
 spigot. A movable cylinder passed through the breech from one 
 side to the other. The cylinder contained a chamber, into which the 
 cartridge was lowered through a hole in the top of the breech. By 
 means of a crank the cylinder was then given a quarter turn, which 
 
I2 7 
 
 brought the cartridge chamber into line with the bore. ( Automatic 
 alignment and a tight seal were insured by making the cylinder ec- 
 centric. ) The gun was discharged by means of a percussion cap. In 
 muzzle-loaders, Sherwin pointed out, the vent of the gun had to be 
 stopped by hand; and if the gunner carelessly took his thumb off 
 the vent, the gun was apt to take an arm off the man who was load- 
 ing. In the Cincinnati Breech-loading Cannon, the vent was auto- 
 matically cut off until the gun was ready to fire. 
 
 The gun looked good to Lincoln, and he wrote Ripley: 
 
 I have seen a model of a breech loading cannon exhibited by Mr. 
 Sherwin of Ohio and would be glad for the Ordnance Department 
 to assist Mr. Sherwin in making an experiment with a six-pounder 
 of the same patern, provided it can be done at reasonable cost, and 
 without injurious interference with the business of the Department. 
 
 Lincoln left too many loopholes. "The mechanical ingenuity ex- 
 hibited by the model you presented," Ripley informed Sherwin 
 with a hint of irony, "has favorably impressed the President, as in- 
 deed it is well calculated to do, and that ingenuity is acknowledged 
 as creditable to you." But he concluded by saying that such a gun 
 would be too heavy to handle or sight, that present guns were good 
 enough and that the Department was too busy to be bothered. 
 
 Sherwin stuck to his gun. He appealed to Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury Salmon P. Chase, a Cincinnati man. He sent testimonials. If 
 the President would only give him a token order on which to raise 
 capital, he wrote, he would give a money-back guarantee on the 
 guns. "Gen. Ripley will do nothing, if he can avoid it," Sherwin 
 informed Lincoln, who does not seem to have been much surprised. 
 
 Sherwin' s fatal mistake, it appears, lay in his impugning of Rip- 
 ley's loyalty in a letter to Secretary Cameron: 
 
 As Genl. Ripley is, in my opinion, tinctured with extreme South- 
 ern proclivities, and therefore obnoxious to me personally, pri- 
 vately, and publicly, I cannot hope to get an order from him. I can 
 only get it through the President and Cabinet. 
 
128 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Ripley's nephew, Roswell Ripley, was in fact a Confederate gen- 
 eral and was said to be "a red-hot and indefatigable Rebel." But so 
 was Lincoln's brother-in-law. Cameron's opinion of the charge may 
 be guessed from the fact that he sent the letter to Ripley himself 
 for disposal. 
 
 Finally Sherwin tried to raise and command an artillery regiment 
 — to be equipped, of course, with the Cincinnati Breech-loading 
 Cannon. Unfortunately, Governor William Dennison of Ohio did 
 not admire the voluble lawyer. "Is it possible," he asked Cameron, 
 "that you have authorized W. G. Sherwin to organize a regiment 
 of artillery? If so, for God's sake withdraw the authority. Such 
 commission will make a farce of the public service." Dennison pre- 
 vailed. The career of the Cincinnati Breech-loading Cannon was not 
 yet over, nor was Lincoln's interest in it; but W. G. Sherwin' s name 
 appears no more in its history. 
 
 "A living steam engine," one of his fellow Congressmen once 
 called Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, "a man of eccentric 
 humor and of wonderful and advanced thought, mixed with prac- 
 tical sense." At various times Thayer was an inventor, an educator 
 and a politician; in the character of abolitionist he founded the 
 New England Emigrant Aid Society, which sent free-soilers and 
 Sharps rifles into Kansas during the middle fifties. 
 
 Having bought manufacturing rights to B. F. Joslyn's new 
 breech-loading rifle, the imaginative Yankee applied the same de- 
 sign to a little breech-loading fieldpiece and sent a dozen specimens 
 out to chastise the Kansas "border ruffians." In April 1861, when 
 the conflict flared up again on a continental scale, Thayer sold two 
 of his little cannon to the Union Defense Committee of New York, 
 for the use of Elmer Ellsworth's Zouave regiment. Thereafter he 
 called his cannon the "Ellsworth Gun." 
 
 This curious hybrid, somewhere between a Brobdingnagian rifle 
 and a Lilliputian cannon, fell under Lincoln's interested scrutiny in 
 September 1861. The gun Lincoln saw was four feet long, had a 
 1 y 2 -inch bore and weighed about three hundred pounds without its 
 carriage. Like the Joslyn rifle, its breech mechanism consisted of a 
 
LINCOLN'S FIELD ARTILLERY 129 
 
 cone and expanding rings, held in place by a tapered steel key 
 which passed through the shank of the breech and was operated by 
 a compound lever. A handle opened the breech piece. The conical 
 chilled-iron ball, wound with tallow-soaked cord, fitted into a cup 
 at the end of a brass cartridge; and the 3 -ounce charge was ignited 
 through perforations near the other end. Instead of a limber, the 
 carriage had a drag rope attached for hauling by manpower. 
 
 Thayer made much of the gun's maneuverability, cheapness and 
 rapidity of fire; and Lincoln at last consented to order twenty guns 
 at $350 each, subject to the inspection of McClellan's chief ord- 
 nance officer (who had now become Colonel Kingsbury). When 
 the guns arrived late in November, Kingsbury pronounced them 
 "in many respects superior" to the original model, and they were 
 duly paid for. 
 
 Lincoln took pride in his purchase. "Col. Ramsey," he wrote on 
 one occasion, "please see Mr. Hegon, and show him one of the 
 little breech-loading cannons I got of Hon. Eli Thayer." At the ar- 
 senal where they were stored, however, the guns were regarded 
 with tolerant skepticism. "I never supposed the gun would be in- 
 troduced into the service," Ramsay confessed later, "and I gave 
 little or no attention to it." As we shall see, Ramsay was mistaken. 
 
 Before the year was out, one other small breech-loading field- 
 piece captured Lincoln's interest. 
 
 One day in November 1861 John H. Gage of Nashua, New 
 Hampshire, came into Lincoln's office and spread out the plans of 
 a gun invented by George A. Rollins, the young proprietor of a 
 Nashua machine-tool factory. The gun was a breech-loading iron 
 fieldpiece, about four and a half feet long, and having a 2 -inch 
 bore. Five ounces of powder, Gage told Lincoln, could send the 
 gun's 4-pounder ball as far as two and a half miles. Moreover, the 
 Rollins gun was phenomenally rapid in operation. One had been 
 fired a hundred times in six minutes without overheating. Lincoln 
 was a busy man. But by now, after his examination of the Cincin- 
 nati Cannon and the Ellsworth gun, he was decidedly interested in 
 breech-loading cannon; and so he spent three quarters of an hour 
 
130 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 poring over the plans and discussing them with Gage. Before Gage 
 left, the President had promised to order a test of the gun, if only 
 Governor Berry of New Hampshire would see one fired and write 
 a letter approving the results. 
 
 A few days later the governor wrote a letter that was all Lincoln 
 could have asked. Lincoln endorsed it and sent it on: 
 
 I believe my promise is one that upon the writing of this letter by 
 the Gov. of New Hampshire, the gun mentioned should be exam- 
 ined and reported upon by a competent officer — I therefore will 
 thank the Secretary of War to send a competent officer to Nashua, 
 N. H. to test and report upon the gun. 
 
 Months before, Ripley had received a letter about the Rollins gun 
 and had refused the gun, sight unseen. Lincoln's interest in the 
 weapon left the general unmoved now. When the War Depart- 
 ment ordered him to send an officer to Nashua, if possible "in the 
 present state of the service," Ripley promptly replied that the state 
 of the service did not permit it. As the spring of 1862 began, some- 
 thing, presumably an order from Lincoln, made Ripley change his 
 mind. But he was equal to the emergency. The officer's report was 
 neither filed nor recorded; Lincoln had weightier matters pressing 
 on him. No Rollins guns were ever ordered. 
 
 In his fight against breech-loading artillery General Ripley thus 
 far had more reason to congratulate himself than in the case of 
 machine guns and breech-loading rifles. President Lincoln had, to 
 be sure, forced him to order the Woodruff and the Ellsworth guns. 
 But the former were conventional in all but their dimensions, and 
 both had been ordered in small quantity. Against these minor set- 
 backs, Ripley could pride himself on having withstood the Cin- 
 cinnati Cannon and stifled the Rollins gun. 
 
 And yet, the old soldier's mind could not have been very easy. 
 His adversary was, after all, commander in chief; and who could 
 tell what newfangled gimcracks might presently seize the man's 
 fancy? 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 10 
 
 Patent Nonsense 
 
 Before passing from the hopes of 1861 
 to the realities of 1862, we must add one more element to complete 
 the group portrait of the inventors who pressed their ideas on Lin- 
 coln and Ripley. Without that addition we could not fully appre- 
 ciate Lincoln's patience. Nor could we fully understand Ripley's 
 chronic rage. This is the category of cranks and dreamers. 
 
 Because he was President, and because he was known as a sympa- 
 thetic listener, Lincoln drew more than his fair share of such 
 originals. "Lunatics and visionaries are here so frequently," John 
 Nicolay wrote to his fiancee, "that they cease to be strange phe- 
 nomena to us, and I find the best way to dispose of them is to dis- 
 cuss and decide their mad projects as deliberately and seriously as 
 any other matter of business." 
 
 The President's secretary used his technique skillfully in dealing 
 with Edward Tippett, a mad machinist who boarded in George- 
 town during the war. One of his letters to Lincoln ran: 
 
 I have told you that this war is of God to liberate the Slaves, but 
 that you must have my balloon to put down all foreign foes. I 
 again warn you against secret enemies. Watch well, and you will 
 find the golden wedge, and the aeon too [evidently referring to 
 Joshua, VII; 21]. I say, you cannot conquer without my navigating 
 balloon. Have it examined speedily, and do your duty to God; for 
 1864 is drawing nigh. 
 
 As the years passed, Tippett' s mind drifted further and further 
 
 131 
 
132 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 from reality. One of his last letters was four pages of nonsense in 
 beautiful handwriting, offering among other things a machine to 
 run "by gravity" which had appeared to him in a vision in 18 16, 
 along with a preview of the Civil War. One passage in the letter, 
 however, suggests the ingenious defense Nicolay had evolved by 
 then. Nicolay had assured him, wrote Tippett to Lincoln, "that the 
 problem is correct; and that if the mechanical actions can be effect- 
 ed, it is a discovery of great magnitude to the world." Very neat, 
 but Lincoln's analysis of the proposition was neater. He simply 
 labeled the letter: Tippett. Crazy-man. 
 
 Some self-styled inventors suffered from what in Lincoln's time 
 was called "monomania." They were men who appeared — indeed, 
 who were — highly intelligent and eminently reasonable on almost 
 every subject, who carried on businesses, followed careers, mingled 
 in society, all with scarcely a sign of aberration. But they had some- 
 how got their lives entangled with a single wrong idea, and some 
 subtle weakness kept them from casting it off. When that fixed 
 delusion came into question, their narrow madness showed itself. 
 
 Such a man was Peter Yates of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1879, 
 when he died at Grand Rapids, Michigan, Yates was appreciatively 
 recalled in the sober Collections of the Wisconsin State Historical 
 Society as "a prominent and able lawyer ... a man of much pluck, 
 zeal, and pertinacity, both in his profession and in political con- 
 tests"; nothing in his long letters to Lincoln impugns that estimate. 
 Yates's letters have eloquence, persuasiveness, cogency and charm. 
 Rarest attribute of all among inventors gone astray, they show a 
 lively sense of humor which did not spare their writer's own crosses 
 and crotchets. In asking for an interview Yates once asserted: 
 
 Mr. President, I may write like a crazy man — in truth, my par- 
 ents while living, my sisters & brothers & many of my friends and 
 clients, have all accused me to my face of being a monomaniac upon 
 this subject, & this for the last 15 years — but I am not crazy in the 
 knowledge & practice of the law, as all admit, & as the Law Reports 
 of our state will attest. . . . and I assure you, that however crazy I 
 will not bite. 
 
PATENT NONSENSE 133 
 
 "More than twenty-five years since," wrote Yates, "my attention 
 was directed to an improvement in the Steam Engine." His "im- 
 provement" apparently consisted of a device to eliminate a sup- 
 posed (but actually nonexistent) loss of power incurred in using a 
 crank mechanism with a reciprocating engine. "I have spent some 
 ten years of time in building models & making experiments, and 
 about fourteen thousand dollars in money upon it," Yates con- 
 tinued. "Mr. President," he insisted, "my invention is the greatest 
 of the age, & worth more than twenty Millions of Dollars, and I 
 not only believe, but know it." He wanted to build a river boat on 
 the Mississippi, using his invention, and he asked Lincoln to ap- 
 point him postmaster of Milwaukee "as a means to this End." 
 
 One evidence of Yates's shrewdness was his effort to draw paral- 
 lels between himself and Lincoln. In one letter, for example, he 
 referred to himself as "a lawyer of 32 years practice, a man of your 
 own age, and who never voted a Democratic ticket in his life." He 
 wrote further: "It is said that your Excellency has likewise been an 
 inventor & the recipient of a Patent therefor. It is this circumstance 
 that emboldens me to make the request of assistance I now ask." 
 And in an earlier letter Yates had written: "Your Excellency can 
 fully appreciate the motives, or rather heart yearnings, of the in- 
 ventor who for more than a quarter of a century has given his time, 
 his money and his health to the perfection of what he esteems, if he 
 can but find the means and theatre for its display, an Enduring 
 monument of his fame." 
 
 In 1862 Joshua Speed talked with Lincoln about the forthcom- 
 ing Emancipation Proclamation. "In that conversation," Speed re- 
 called, "he alluded to an incident in his life, long passed, when he 
 was so much depressed that he almost contemplated suicide. At the 
 time of his deep depression he said to me that he 'had done noth- 
 ing to make any human being remember that he lived,' and that to 
 connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and gener- 
 ation, and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with 
 something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man, 
 was what he desired to live for." 
 
134 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 It would not be surprising if Lincoln, reading the letters of Peter 
 Yates, a middle-aged Midwestern lawyer who sought remembrance 
 through an invention for the improvement of steam vessels, saw 
 himself, save for certain elements of power and stability, as the 
 author of just such heartsick appeals. Certainly Yates's anxiety for 
 "an enduring monument" bore an uncanny resemblance to Lin- 
 coln's own melancholy longings of fifteen or twenty years before. 
 But Milwaukee already had a postmaster, and when the city's col- 
 lectorship fell vacant, it was humanity's good fortune that Lincoln 
 gave it to a newspaper editor named Christopher Sholes, thus 
 affording that gentleman enough leisure to invent the typewriter. 
 So Peter Yates moved on into eternity, via Grand Rapids, with no 
 "enduring monument" to mark his passage through life. 
 
 Other devices were presented to Lincoln for which "mad" 
 would be too strong a word, devices which worked but had no 
 practical value. There were, for example, the water walkers. 
 
 One crisp, clear day late in December 1861 Lincoln drove down 
 to the Anacostia River to see the Army engineers build a pontoon 
 bridge. Attorney General Bates, Jesse Dubois of Illinois and Con- 
 gressman Schuyler Colfax of Indiana rode with him in his carriage. 
 The engineers bridged the icy river with speed and efficiency; the 
 Presidential party crossed over and were followed by a battery of 
 artillery. While they were there, the party watched a man "walk 
 the water" with each foot in a little watertight canoe and with a 
 slender paddle in his hands, apparently for both propulsion and 
 balance. 
 
 Water walking was a minor fad at the time. At Vincennes, 
 France, it was said, troops had done it with two-layer, one-piece 
 boots and trousers, in which the space between inner and outer lay- 
 ers was inflated. According to the reports, the French soldiers had 
 sunk only two feet into the water and had moved along rapidly, 
 loading and firing their muskets as they went. Whether or not there 
 was any affiliation between French and American water-walking 
 interests, President Lincoln was not convinced by the Anacostia ex- 
 
 
PATENT NONSENSE 135 
 
 hibition that the scheme would be useful. Water walkers bobbed up 
 again in the pages of the Scientific American for 1863, but not in 
 the Union armies. 
 
 Another passing vogue was that of body armor. The well- 
 dressed but slightly apprehensive recruit of 1861 often wore such 
 garb as the divided breastplate made from thin spring steel by J. S. 
 Smith of New York. The Smith vest lay unobtrusively (its wearer 
 hoped) between the cloth and lining of a military vest, with the 
 two leaves lapping over where the vest was buttoned. Weighing 
 three and a half pounds, it was supposed to resist bayonet or sword 
 thrusts. 
 
 Body armor continued to receive serious attention through the 
 spring of 1862. "A suit of steel armor" was tested at the Washing- 
 ton Arsenal in January, and in March the Scientific American re- 
 ported experiments at Hartford with "a steel vest fastened to a 
 tree." The Hartford armor was dented by an Enfield rifle, and a 
 Colt rifle penetrated it at fifty yards. 
 
 Such armor was reported to have served its purpose in the early 
 battles of 1862. Hood's jewelry store on Pennsylvania Avenue ex- 
 hibited a steel vest, about an eighth of an inch thick, taken from the 
 body of a Confederate captain at Williamsburg early in May. A 
 glancing ball had dented it slightly; a Minie ball had made a deep 
 indentation, but had not penetrated; a grapeshot had made "an 
 ugly looking breach, the ball evidently carrying with it a portion of 
 the plate." At Fair Oaks on June 25 two balls struck a Union lieu- 
 tenant squarely on his steel vest, neither penetrating. "He frankly 
 confesses," wrote a correspondent, "that when he discovered the 
 first ball did not hurt him, he was ten times as brave' as he had 
 been." 
 
 Steel-vest inventors made their way into the White House in the 
 early months of the war; Stoddard's office exhibited a "pretty blue 
 shell of polished steel" among other models whose makers aspired 
 to Presidential support. Lincoln reportedly disposed of steel-vest in- 
 ventors by offering to let the inventor wear his own device in a test. 
 
136 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 The same anecdote was told of Secretary Stanton, with more con- 
 vincing detail; and for that matter, it was also attributed to the Duke 
 of Wellington before the war ended. 
 
 Whatever value such apparel had in battle, no steel vest ever 
 managed to turn aside the barbs flung at it by the unshielded com- 
 rades of its wearer. After the owner had been labeled a coward and 
 reminded to wear his "cuirass" behind in battle, the heavy encum- 
 brance usually ended its military service derelict on a Southern 
 roadside. On the morning of October 24, 1862, for example, the 
 newly organized 14th New Hampshire Regiment began a move- 
 ment westward from its camp on Capitol Hill to its first military 
 assignment. The regimental historian recorded the march : 
 
 The first halt was made in front of the White House, and at least 
 one-third of the battalion took a vigorous account of stock. The 
 men with bullet-proof vests — their hope and pride — in Concord — 
 vowed that they would prefer to risk Rebel bullets rather than 
 carry so much old iron any farther. Steel breast-plates sufficient to 
 coat a small gunboat were hurled into the gutter in front of Father 
 Abraham's marble cottage. 
 
 Though body armor was rarely heard of after 1862, there were 
 exceptions. A Wisconsin inventor of German origin offered Lin- 
 coln a coat of mail or "Panzerhemd" as late as July 1864. And in 
 that same month L. E. Chittenden, the Treasury official who had 
 once stimulated such remarkable changes in the complexion of 
 General Ripley, rode out to Fort Stevens in the outskirts of Wash- 
 ington to watch the attack of the Confederate General Jubal Early. 
 Near a large fallen tree he saw the body of a Confederate officer 
 with a rifle in his hand. Placing his hand on the officer's chest to see 
 if life remained, Chittenden felt a metallic substance. It turned out 
 to be a shield of boiler iron molded to fit the man's body and 
 fastened in back by straps and buckles. Trusting to that protection, 
 the officer had gone out that morning to gun for Yankees. But di- 
 rectly over his heart, through the shield and through his body, was 
 a hole "large enough to permit the escape of a score of human 
 
PATENT NONSENSE 137 
 
 lives." Chittenden was reminded of a quaint epitaph in his native 
 Vermont over one who had died from vaccination: 
 
 The means employed his life to save, 
 Hurried him headlong to the grave! 
 
 Proposals came to Lincoln for more cumbersome battlefield 
 armor. A Wisconsin man wrote the President about his individual 
 handbarrow-type portable breastworks; while a Connecticut Yankee 
 who would have been well received in King Arthur's Court sug- 
 gested iron shields for the front ranks. From Massachusetts and 
 Kansas came other proposals for portable breastworks. A horse- 
 drawn affair was suggested independently by a New Yorker and a 
 Londoner. T. G. Boetig of Cincinnati boasted that his iron field 
 casemates could be assembled in five seconds and wanted to show 
 them to the President; but, perhaps not having five seconds to 
 spare, Lincoln sent Boetig' s letter over to the War Department next 
 door. 
 
 From Pawnee City, Nebraska, came a letter advocating an iron- 
 clad battery propelled by an armored locomotive; but the Nebras- 
 kan was late, for such precursors of the armored tank had already 
 been used in battle and would be used again before the war ended 
 — one of them by Ben Butler. As for armored vehicles intended to 
 move freely on the battlefield, several inventors put forward sug- 
 gestions — one even included the Gatling machine gun as arma- 
 ment. But a practical armored tank had to wait on the invention of 
 the caterpillar tread. 
 
 Some curious substitutes for conventional artillery were brought 
 to Lincoln's attention. One was the Perkins steam gun. 
 
 Old Jacob Perkins, an American who had died in England a 
 dozen years before the Civil War, left many useful inventions be- 
 hind him; but his steam gun, which applied steam pressure directly 
 to the missile, could hardly be classed among them. Confronted 
 with the old Yankee's inspiration, the Duke of Wellington was 
 
138 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 said to have remarked, "Well, if steam guns had been invented 
 first, what a capital improvement gunpowder would have been." 
 
 Early in September 1861 Senator Henry Wilson of Massachu- 
 setts commended the Perkins steam gun to General Ripley's atten- 
 tion, remarking, "It seems to me there is something in it." Ripley 
 was less witty than the Iron Duke, but quite as final. The Messrs. 
 Perkins had stated that their steam 12 -pounder gun would dis- 
 charge ten balls per minute with an initial velocity of five thousand 
 feet per second, using steam at a pressure of fifteen hundred 
 pounds per square inch. Ripley declined to comment on the feasi- 
 bility of using steam at that pressure, but he pointed out that in a 
 conventional 42 -pounder gun the maximum pressure was forty-five 
 thousand pounds per square inch, declining to forty-five hundred 
 pounds per square inch as the ball left the muzzle; yet even with 
 such vastly greater pressures than the Perkinses commanded, the 
 initial velocity was only twelve hundred feet per second. He drew 
 the inescapable conclusion that the Perkins claims were unworthy 
 of credence. 
 
 Wilson thereupon sent President Lincoln a petition in behalf of 
 the Perkins gun, a petition which bore such distinguished names as 
 Peter Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, George P. Putnam, Parke 
 Godwin, Edwin D. Morgan and J. W. Harper. Whatever Lincoln 
 thought of the gun, he could scarcely ignore the eminent persons 
 who were so unaccountably enamored of it. So he asked Benjamin 
 F. Isherwood, the brilliant Engineer in Chief of the Navy, to exam- 
 ine the documents in the case and give "an opinion as to the reason- 
 ableness and plausibility of their statements." In reply Isherwood 
 declared his disbelief that "any steam gun can be made to compare 
 in effect with the powder gun." On that note of agreement with the 
 Iron Duke, the Perkins affair ended. 
 
 Whereas the Perkins gun brought steam to bear directly on the 
 projectile, a type of gadget which in May 1861 seemed to be "the 
 rage among inventors" used steam power indirectly. This was the 
 centrifugal type of gun, of which the most publicized specimen was 
 
PATENT NONSENSE 139 
 
 one captured by Butler's troops near Baltimore. Ross Winans, a 
 fiery, pro-Southern Maryland millionaire, was popularly supposed 
 to be that gun's inventor and manufacturer. Actually it was made 
 in Boston under the direction of the true inventor, Charles Dickin- 
 son. 
 
 In principle, the Dickinson centrifugal gun added little to the 
 slingshot of David. In elaborating on that principle, however, the 
 gun became a mechanical Goliath of formidable appearance, served 
 by a crew of four men, a team of horses, and a steam engine. Balls 
 were poured from a hopper into the center of a horizontal wheel or 
 drum, which was driven at high speed by the engine. A mechanism 
 permitted the balls to fly out on reaching the proper point for dis- 
 charge at the enemy. The four-man crew worked and fed the gun, 
 the horses drew it, and an iron shield supposedly protected the en- 
 semble from enemy fire. 
 
 Dickinson labored under a misconception common to inventors 
 of that time, who seem to have supposed that a battlefield, like a 
 pool table or a bowling alley, presented the objects of attack in a 
 single convenient plane, to be cut down from front ranks to strag- 
 glers in one bloody swoop. "For use on the battle field," Dickinson 
 wrote of his gun, "the musket caliber engine would mow down op- 
 posing troops as the scythe mows standing grain." In August 1862, 
 a year after one of his guns was captured by Butler, he wrote Lin- 
 coln to explain that the southward journeying of his dizzy device 
 had been the work of secessionist thieves; he offered to construct an- 
 other for $10,000. His offer was not accepted. 
 
 Lincoln took more notice of Dickinson's rival, Robert McCarty. 
 Perhaps the word "rival" is a misnomer; "predecessor" might be 
 more just. How long Dickinson worked at developing his centri- 
 fugal gun does not appear; but when the Civil War broke out, 
 McCarty had spent some ten years on his device. The New York 
 Herald called the McCarty gun "one of the most singular imple- 
 ments of war that has ever been exhibited to the American people" 
 and believed that it placed Dickinson's gun "entirely in the shade." 
 On June 20, 1861, a hand-cranked model of the McCarty gun — in- 
 
140 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 tended, according to the inventor, merely to demonstrate the prin- 
 ciple — was exhibited at the foot of Thirty-third Street in New 
 York. Two men cranked the apparatus. Geared to the crank at a 
 ratio of sixty-four to one, curved tubes revolved inside an iron drum 
 about three feet across. Four-ounce balls were fed into an upright 
 hopper at the center of the drum and were sent flying through an 
 external barrel toward a wooden target at the edge of the North 
 River, a hundred yards away. Except for the clanking of the balls 
 as they dropped into the drum, the contraption sounded much like 
 a threshing machine. About a hundred balls struck the target; most 
 fell into the water about a hundred yards offshore. 
 
 There is some evidence that it was Senator Henry Wilson, a 
 fancier of steam guns, who introduced McCarty to Lincoln. At any 
 rate, the inventor and his gun appeared at the arsenal one day with 
 a note from the President. Ramsay's opinion of the McCarty weap- 
 on must have been exceedingly low. With none of his usual urban- 
 ity the colonel complained that he had no time to waste on the gun 
 and no place to put it, but he supposed the President's order must 
 be carried out. When Lincoln came down with John Hay, Ramsay 
 tried to lure them away from the trial to watch some troops drill, 
 and failing that, he harassed the inventor with "constant objections 
 and remarks." Such guns, Ramsay pointedly insisted, were an old 
 and rather funny story; he had seen one tried and found wanting 
 twenty years before. When McCarty undertook to point out the dif- 
 ferences between the two machines, Ramsay snapped, "Oh, well, 
 it is the same thing, same thing." According to one of the inven- 
 tor's friends, the crusty colonel was "a perfect thorn all the time, 
 hurrying and making remarks, making McCarty feel very uncom- 
 fortable." 
 
 Because of all this, McCarty claimed later, he failed to adjust 
 the barrel properly, and it "threw the shot down, striking the upper 
 part of it." When Lincoln cranked the drum, the balls rattled off 
 the near-by target and came bounding back among the shins of the 
 bystanders. This sent Lincoln into what John Hay described as 
 "peals of Homeric laughter." It also ended Lincoln's active interest 
 
PATENT NONSENSE 141 
 
 in the device, although the same gun later redeemed itself by send- 
 ing a ball across the Potomac which "struck a mule in the hip and 
 wounded him so that he was brought over to Washington." 
 
 Oddly enough, Captain Dahlgren took the McCarty gun serious- 
 ly, tried it at the Navy Yard and persuaded his department to fi- 
 nance the building of a steam-driven 12 -pounder. When finished, 
 this fired (or flung) fifteen shots in sixteen seconds, with a range 
 of a mile and a half at 15 ° elevation. But the gun was fearfully in- 
 accurate and almost shook to pieces the building which housed it. 
 
 McCarty continued to lobby for his gun all through the war, and 
 in 1864 ne managed to get it tried again at the arsenal before a 
 board of three Army officers. But it was never adopted, and the sole 
 casualty of centrifugal gunfire during the Civil War seems to have 
 been one ill-starred Army mule. 
 
 Of all the weird notions predicated on a level battlefield and a 
 co-operative enemy, the most widespread and persistent was that of 
 forked cannon firing chain shot. From two diverging cannon, join- 
 ed at the breech, were to be fired two projectiles linked by a chain. 
 As the two shot spread apart, the chain between them was sup- 
 posed to snap taut and cut a terrible swath through rebel ranks. 
 Letter after letter came to the Ordnance Office with that sugges- 
 tion — from England, from Mexico, from a teen-age prodigy in 
 Rochester, New York — who offered also an incendiary shell — and 
 from almost every state in what remained of the nation. 
 
 Every writer was certain that his idea was a new thing in the 
 world. A disgruntled Hoosier maintained that the model he had 
 sent Lincoln must have been intercepted, for he had read of just 
 such a gun being made in Connecticut. Yet the model of such a 
 contraption glowered schizophrenically from a Patent Office show- 
 case at that moment, and had since 1859; at the same time the 
 Scientific American was being serenaded with innumerable varia- 
 tions on the same theme — "all impracticable," it sourly declared. 
 
 The "inventors" of double cannon did not spare Lincoln. Two 
 days after Sumter was fired on, a correspondent who signed him- 
 
142 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 self "Citizen of Rhode Island" sounded the opening blast. It was 
 echoed from San Francisco, and presently Upper Savoy in France 
 brightly contributed the suggestion of "Boulets a Chaines." Most 
 persistent of all was one Charles Raymond of Norwalk, Connecti- 
 cut, who wrote Lincoln five long letters on the subject. 
 
 The Confederates built a double chain-shot cannon, but bad luck 
 attended it. When the guns failed to fire simultaneously, the chain 
 swept back and killed most of the crew. The gun was never fired 
 again, though it survives to this day in Athens, Georgia. In the 
 North, twin cannon were fired without such mishaps, one at Ro- 
 chester, New York, and another near Boston. The Ordnance De- 
 partment finally tested one. "One difficulty," it reported, "seemed 
 to be to give both projectiles the same initial velocity, without 
 which they do not spread out effectually; but the chain, if it does 
 not break, moves in an oblique direction without covering much 
 space in front of the enemy." 
 
 As the gun crew of the Confederate double cannon found out 
 too late, there was physical danger in trying some new weapons. 
 Abraham Lincoln exposed himself to that risk in his "champagne 
 experiments," and more than once narrowly escaped accidental 
 death. Furthermore, his risk was double, for death or injury might 
 have come to him not only by accident, but also by design. 
 
 Consider how easily an assassin reckless of his own life might 
 have entered Lincoln's office with a repeating rifle or a bomb. Many 
 men did just that, although none, luckily, with murder in their 
 hearts. "On my arrival at the White House," one inventor re- 
 marked matter-of-factly, "I was ushered immediately into the re- 
 ception room, with my repeating rifle in my hand, and there I found 
 the President alone." 
 
 Another instance is that of Joshua Stoddard of Worcester, Mass- 
 achusetts. Stoddard's best-known invention was not a weapon — 
 though the London Athenaeum thought it "richly calculated to ex- 
 cruciate all who come within its sphere." It was the steam calliope, 
 now so mellowed by associations. The war turned Stoddard from 
 
PATENT NONSENSE 143 
 
 the peaceful arts (if the phrase is applicable to the steam calliope) 
 and brought him into Lincoln's office with a model of his "novel 
 construction of Gunboats, with a new method of opperating the 
 Guns." Perhaps this "new method" involved some sort of rocket. 
 At least, when Stoddard struck a match and applied the flame to 
 his model, Lincoln prudently took shelter down behind a desk. 
 "Mr. Lincoln," Stoddard said, "you make a better President, I 
 guess, than you would a soldier." After seeing how Stoddard's de- 
 vice worked, Lincoln said he was much pleased with it, and told the 
 inventor he could go and practice on the rebels all he wanted to. 
 
 A Massachusetts man once notified Lincoln of his intention to 
 call with a bomb disguised as a shoeblacking box, his scheme being 
 to enter rebel vessels as a seaman and then jump ship, leaving his 
 infernal machine behind. That the Yankee got his interview is un- 
 certain, but not unlikely. 
 
 An assassin who had a little acting ability — a man, for example, 
 like John Wilkes Booth — might easily have passed for such a well- 
 meaning inventor. Or the President could equally well have died at 
 the hand of some crank inventor, maddened by some fancied or 
 real rebuff. Such things could be. In 1863 a Bay State inventor who 
 had quarreled with his agent sent him a box through the mail. 
 Doubting that affection had inspired the present, the agent put it 
 into the hands of a detective. The gift was placed between two rock 
 ledges and opened with a long rope. Fifteen pounds of gunpowder 
 went off with a roar heard for miles. 
 
 In spite of Lincoln's incredible accessibility to armed inventors, 
 events seemed to justify his fatalism. Hannibal Hamlin served out 
 his term as Vice-President; and when Andrew Johnson acceded to 
 the Presidency, he owed his elevation not to a deranged inventor or 
 a proving-ground mishap, but to the little Derringer pistol of a 
 warped tragedian. 
 
 By midsummer of 1861 the wild schemes offered to Lincoln had 
 become a Washington byword, and so had Lincoln's readiness to 
 give them a hearing. The satirist Orpheus C. Kerr found rich com- 
 
144 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 edy in the "champagne experiments." "I visited the Navy Yard 
 yesterday, and witnessed the trials of some newly-invented rifle 
 cannon," began one Kerr skit. "The trial was of short duration, and 
 the jury brought in a verdict of 'innocent of any intent to kill.' ' 
 Kerr went on about the "double back-action revolving cannon for 
 ferry-boats" to be delivered "in time for the next war," and a 
 scheme for taking privateers with a pair of huge clamps which 
 would hoist them up and into the Federal hatches. "The President's 
 gothic features lighted up beautifully at the words of the great 
 inventor," Kerr wrote, "but in a moment they assumed an expres- 
 sion of doubt," and Lincoln was supposed to have disconcerted the 
 inventor by asking what would happen if the enemy fired mean- 
 while. 
 
 Even when he was the subject, Lincoln liked the solemn non- 
 sense and ludicrous truth of Orpheus C. Kerr, often reading selec- 
 tions to his friends and laughing with them. If he read the 
 aforementioned sketch, his "gothic features" probably lighted up 
 with a smile. Lincoln was not afraid of laughter. Inventors still 
 came to him, and, ridicule notwithstanding, the President listened. 
 
^^^WEST; yOiNT F01WBRY~C01.II SPRiES 
 
 WHAT LINCOLN SAW ON JUNE 24, 1862 
 
 Harper's Weekly 
 
, * *J 
 
 Library of Congress 
 
 A WIARD STEEL CANNON AT THE WASHINGTON ARSENAL, 
 DECEMBER 1861 
 Brigadier General Daniel Sickles is standing by the gun, and the Potomac River is in 
 the background. 
 
 • *?&£Si 
 
 Scientific American 
 
 AN INVENTION WHICH INTERESTED LINCOLN 
 An artist's conception of Obadiah Hopkins' cannon mount. There is no evidence that 
 a full-scale model was ever built. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 11 
 
 The Trent Affair 
 
 Eighteen sixty-one ended dramatic- 
 ally, but with the spotlight on London, not Richmond. Early in 
 November Captain Charles Wilkes of the United States man-of- 
 war San Jacinto stopped the British mail steamer Trent in the Ba- 
 hama Channel and removed two Confederate diplomats bound for 
 Europe. England roared with anger at the Yankee impudence. 
 "This nation means to make war," Henry Adams wrote from Lon- 
 don. Yet the Northern public cheered as wildly as the British 
 raged. Lincoln faced a dilemma: to hold Mason and Slidell would 
 mean war with England; to release them might mean political de- 
 feat at home. In either case, the final result might be the death of 
 the Union. 
 
 For a century Lincoln's handling of the affair has been left, not 
 unreasonably, to the analysis of specialists in diplomatic history. 
 But while ably canvassing the points of international law involved, 
 these historians have said little or nothing about certain other fac- 
 tors in Lincoln's calculations. The omission is understandable. 
 Those factors were not such as come readily to the mind of the po- 
 litical or diplomatic historian, and indeed it has not heretofore been 
 known that Lincoln himself was aware of them. 
 
 Nevertheless, Lincoln and his Cabinet based their decision at 
 least in part on two considerations: rifled cannon and niter. 
 
 When Roger Bacon and his Oriental predecessors first mixed 
 
 M5 
 
146 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 potassium nitrate (known to commerce as niter or saltpeter) with 
 equal parts of sulphur and charcoal and touched the mixture with 
 fire, they did not understand that the charcoal and sulphur ex- 
 plosively robbed the niter of its oxygen. But men, though long in 
 learning the theory, were quick to learn the unholy uses of that 
 chemical commotion. And as they gained experience in the new 
 art of making black powder, they used a larger and larger propor- 
 tion of niter, until by the eighteenth century it accounted for seven- 
 ty-five per cent of gunpowder by weight. "This villanous saltpetre," 
 as Shakespeare called it, had become one of the prime essentials of 
 warfare. 
 
 By the middle of the nineteenth century the world was getting 
 most of its niter from India, a British possession; niter had there- 
 fore become a potent instrument of British diplomacy. For years, 
 Lincoln's friend Joseph Henry had seen the danger in this, and in 
 1857 he had urged Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to finance a 
 search for some other source of niter or its equivalent. Davis sup- 
 ported the idea, but he was soon out of office, and his successor did 
 nothing. In i860 Lieutenant Henry Wise went on a good-will mis- 
 sion to Japan and, at Dahlgren's instance, investigated that nation's 
 possibilities as a niter source. He made little headway with the 
 Shogunate. 
 
 When the war began in 1861, the Army had three million 
 pounds of niter on hand. This it proposed to hold in reserve against 
 the possibility of "a maritime war," leaving gunpowder contractors 
 to find their own. Ripley, expecting a short war, felt that this was 
 enough. The Navy was more conscious of British naval power. 
 Early in May Commander Harwood was disturbed to learn from the 
 president of the Du Pont Company that only six months' supply of 
 niter was in the country, en route or being loaded, and that spec- 
 ulators were busily striving to corner the market. Dahlgren "hinted 
 deficiency of nitre and powder" to Lincoln and Seward a few days 
 later. But Ripley insisted all was well, and so Harwood stopped 
 worrying. 
 
 By fall niter stocks were dwindling rapidly, imports were falling 
 
THE TRENT AFFAIR 147 
 
 off and prices were rising. On behalf of the Navy, Lammot Du 
 Pont hastened to England and quietly but swiftly bought up all 
 available niter — about four and a half million pounds. Before load- 
 ing of the niter had been completed, word of the Trent incident 
 reached England, and the British slapped a ban on niter exports. 
 
 Lincoln's government took immediate alarm at the British action. 
 In Paris, Thurlow Weed held a worried conference with the Amer- 
 ican ministers to France and Belgium about chances of buying niter 
 elsewhere. Uneasiness became manifest at home, and to allay it the 
 government planted a reassuring article in the New York Evening 
 Post which declared niter stocks to be "sufficient for all emergen- 
 cies." Privately, Lincoln and Seward were not so cheerful. 
 
 The North was not unanimous in defying Great Britain. In the 
 coastal cities there was a good deal of peace sentiment. These cities 
 had nothing to fear from the rebels, but the British Navy was some- 
 thing else again. New York businessmen feared a sneak attack like 
 the one by which the British had destroyed much of Copenhagen 
 during the Napoleonic Wars. What made such an attack seem 
 most dangerous was the fact that England had recently begun 
 armoring her vessels. In the late fall of 1861 every coastal gun in 
 the North was a smoothbore; and smoothbore guns were already be- 
 ginning to be obsolete. 
 
 During the fifties artillery had followed small arms in adopting 
 rifling. Like other weapons, rifled cannon had to breach thick walls 
 of tradition. "I can't say I think much of the new guns," a British 
 artillery commander remarked in i860. "We won Waterloo with- 
 out them, and what do we want with them after that." But they 
 made their way, nevertheless. Ripley's predecessor, Colonel Craig, 
 had an open mind on the subject of artillery, and, when the Civil 
 War began, the Ordnance Department had already made some ex- 
 periments with rifled guns. One of Craig's last acts as Chief of 
 Ordnance was to send an officer to Cold Spring, New York, to see 
 Robert Parrott's new rifled 10-pounder, reinforced by a wrought- 
 iron band shrunk over the breech; on the strength of Captain Ben- 
 
148 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ton's report, a number were ordered. When Ripley took over a few 
 days later, he promised to take all the guns Parrott could make in 
 the next year. 
 
 Ripley's defenders made much of his early support of rifled can- 
 non. "This is one instance, at least," commented a Washington 
 newspaper, "in which he has encouraged and aided a new idea, and 
 not only a new one, but a good one." Yet even here, Ripley had 
 his reservations. The round shot fired by smoothbores could skip 
 and ricochet, whereas rifled projectiles burrowed into the ground. 
 For this reason, perhaps, Ripley expressed his opinion early in June 
 that "with our present knowledge" rifled batteries would be found 
 less efficient than smoothbores. And a year later he still insisted that 
 in small calibers smoothbores were better. 
 
 From the start Lincoln liked rifled cannon. As early as April he 
 helped the James T. Ames Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts, 
 get a large order for rifled cannon, probably of the type patented 
 by Charles T. James of Rhode Island. In June he met with Cam- 
 eron and Ripley at the Washington Arsenal, where they watched 
 "some interesting experiments with the new rifled cannon now be- 
 ing brought into use." It may have been Lincoln's influence, as well 
 as the success of the trial, that led Ripley shortly after to give rifled 
 cannon more support. 
 
 By July public opinion had set strongly in favor of Lincoln's 
 views. "Experiments in our army, as well as in all others," the 
 Scientific American commented, "are rapidly convincing military 
 men that the day for smooth-bored cannon has gone by, and that 
 all artillery must henceforth be rifled." People were becoming 
 aware that only the power and penetration of rifle projectiles offered 
 an answer to the new ironclad warships of the British. And so, 
 when the Trent crisis came, seaboard towns clamored for heavy 
 rifled Parrotts. 
 
 As British warships were being conditioned for sea and British 
 bands were practicing "Dixie," General McClellan, always method- 
 ical, set up a Military Armament Board to decide on the number 
 and kind of guns needed for field batteries and permanent fortifi- 
 cations. 
 
THE TRENT AFFAIR 149 
 
 Six more distinguished authorities on the design and use of can- 
 non could scarcely have been assembled. Old General Totten, Chief 
 of Engineers, presided; his corps was further represented by the 
 Army of the Potomac's chief engineer, John G. Barnard, a sharp- 
 eyed, long-faced West Pointer who had just published two books 
 on coastal defense. The Ordnance Corps provided its cranky chief, 
 General Ripley, and its most brilliant officer, Captain Thomas Rod- 
 man. For the Artillery appeared General Barry, noble of nose and 
 square of jaw, whose Burnsides, verging on Dundrearies, gave him 
 the look of a stage milord; and also McClellan's aide, Colonel Hen- 
 ry Hunt, an able and vigorous West Pointer from Michigan. Dahl- 
 gren was there for the Navy, but soon went off in a sulk when he 
 was outvoted six to one on the question of harmonizing Army and 
 Navy calibers. 
 
 Lincoln kept in close touch with the board. Early in its proceed- 
 ings Lincoln submitted a letter from the designer of a new steel 
 cannon. General Ripley promptly had the letter tabled. A few days 
 later Lincoln sent along Obadiah Hopkins, inventor of a new coast- 
 al gun carriage. The Hopkins device was a sort of seesaw, carrying 
 a gun at each end, mounted on a revolving platform. The idea was 
 to load one gun below the barbette of the fort while the other was 
 raised for firing. 
 
 In the circumstances the board had to listen to Hopkins, but it 
 made short work of his models and drawings. "While the inventor 
 has displayed much ingenuity," it reported politely, "the Board can- 
 not recommend his arrangement for adoption." Two days later, the 
 President himself escorted Obadiah Hopkins into the room where 
 the august six were deliberating on the coastal defenses of Massa- 
 chusetts. Lincoln and the board looked on solemnly while Hopkins 
 put his model through its paces — firing real charges from two small 
 brass guns by way of artistic verisimilitude. Despite the fireworks 
 display, the board would retreat only to the extent of admitting 
 itself unqualified, in Dahlgren's absence, to pass on the naval value 
 of the device. 
 
 The next day General Totten sent Lincoln an indignant letter 
 marked "Not official." Hopkins, it seemed, had approached Totten 
 
150 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 that morning in a confidential way and offered the old soldier a half 
 interest in the gun carriage. "The least I could do, I did," wrote 
 Totten, "which was to order him out of the room." In writing his 
 letter, of course, Totten did one thing more: he ended Hopkins's 
 chances with Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 But Lincoln's meetings with the Military Armament Board were 
 not wasted. Coastal armament was the chief subject of those meet- 
 ings; and if Lincoln had not known before of the North's vulnera- 
 bility to British ironclads, he learned of it then. 
 
 On Christmas Day, 1861, less than two weeks after the Hopkins 
 affair, Lincoln met with his Cabinet to discuss the British ultimatum 
 in the Trent case. Thanks to the Military Armament Board, Lincoln 
 came in the knowledge that not one gun in Northern ports could 
 stop even the most lightly armored British warship. Secretary Sew- 
 ard, who shared Lincoln's conciliatory views, had kept himself fully 
 informed of the niter situation through Lammot Du Pont and Cap- 
 tain Dahlgren, and he brought with him reports from both those 
 watchdogs of the niter supply. No transcript was made of Cabinet 
 proceedings that day, but if one existed it would surely have re- 
 corded warnings from Lincoln and Seward that a war with Great 
 Britain would mean the unhindered bombardment of Northern 
 ports and the swift onset of gunpowder starvation. The Cabinet 
 dispersed not yet convinced, but a night's rumination permitted 
 them to digest the unpalatable truth. Next day Seward dispatched a 
 note to the British announcing that Mason and Slidell would be re- 
 leased. 
 
 As if by reflex action, the end of the crisis cut short the sessions 
 of the Military Armament Board, and only the emergence of a 
 rebel ironclad revived interest in rifled coastal guns. Meanwhile the 
 British lifted their niter embargo, and Du Pont's purchases arrived 
 to swell Army and Navy stock piles. 
 
 But the future of Anglo-American relations remained clouded 
 for nearly two years more, and Lincoln did not forget the lessons 
 of 1861. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 12 
 
 Winter of Discontent 
 
 The new year began for Lincoln with 
 the ordeal of handshaking which an admiring republic then inflict- 
 ed annually on its chief executive. Wearied by that and by the 
 mounting cares of his office, he fled next day to the Navy Yard, ac- 
 companied by his Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a rotund, affable, 
 full-bearded Yankee named Gustavus Vasa Fox. Although Fox was 
 the picture of easygoing joviality, he could perform incredible 
 feats of labor, and his encyclopedic mind held about all there was 
 to know of things naval. "A live man," Lincoln had called him, 
 "whose services we cannot well dispense with." 
 
 After watching a rifled cannon plunge its 150-pounder missiles 
 into far reaches of the Anacostia, Fox and Lincoln went with Dahl- 
 gren to his quarters, the big brick house where Lincoln had been so 
 cheerful at the wedding of Nannie Buchanan. A change had been 
 wrought by the energetic new commandant since those anxious 
 days. Grading and graveling, for instance, had made the ap- 
 proaches to the wharves and slips permanently hard and dry, and 
 the mudhole on the west side of the yard was now a fine avenue of 
 gravel and cinders leading to the ordnance department. 
 
 But national affairs were not so tidily in hand, and Lincoln was 
 gloomily aware of the fact. The "On to Richmond!" clamor had 
 risen to a new crescendo now that McClellan, the cocky, redheaded 
 "Little Napoleon," had shaped a splendid army from beaten re- 
 cruits. The press and the politicians longed to avenge Bull Run and 
 
 151 
 
152 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Ball's Bluff, or rather to have them avenged; but week after week 
 slipped by with nothing but more drilling, more inspections, more 
 requisitions for more arms. Symptoms of what Lincoln would come 
 to call "the slows" already showed themselves in the young general. 
 And the same complaint seemed to afflict General Henry Halleck in 
 the West, where destiny had not yet made alliance with a stumpy, 
 dogged fighter named U. S. Grant. An expedition was on the verge 
 of departing for the North Carolina coast. It had been on the verge 
 for some time now. The subject came up as Lincoln sat talking de- 
 spondently with Dahlgren. "No one is ready!" said Lincoln with 
 feeling. 
 
 The weather, to which Lincoln's moods had always been sensi- 
 tive, stayed mostly clear that afternoon. The next day, however, a 
 light hail fell from dark skies, the prelude to what one old Wash- 
 
 ingtonian called "just the d ndest weather that ever was sent to 
 
 poor afflicted warriors. First it rains a few days, & then it snows, & 
 then it hails and then it drizzles, & then they all come together, & 
 then the snow gets about six inches deep, and then comes one day 
 of sunshine, & the roads are rivers of slosh & mud, and then it 
 freezes, & then it rains again & snows again & so on — and our 
 armies are stuck in the mud and there is no forward — it is all up 
 and down like a cow's tail!" On the sixth of January Congressman 
 Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts stared moodily at the snow fall- 
 ing past his hotel window and then resumed a half -finished letter 
 to his wife: 
 
 The times are exceedingly dark and gloomy — I have never seen a 
 time when they were so much so. Confidence in everybody is shaken 
 to the very foundation. The credit of the Country is ruined — its 
 arms impotent, its Cabinet incompetent, its servants rotten, its ruin 
 inevitable. . . . The Govt, can't survive sixty days of such a life as 
 it is now living. 
 
 Lincoln, who bore the responsibility, could not sit back and 
 let the Union go to smash, but he must have felt as if he were neck 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT 153 
 
 deep in January molasses. "Have arms gone forward for East-Ten- 
 nessee?" he asked General Buell. They had not. "Delay is ruining 
 us, and it is indispensable for me to have something definite," he 
 wired General Halleck. Halleck wired back: "I have no arms." 
 That evening at a White House reception, Lincoln seemed "a little 
 careworn" to the Washington Star man. 
 
 On the tenth of January Lincoln awoke to find a cold fog press- 
 ing against his windows. During the day he sent Secretary Camer- 
 on a copy of the latest from Halleck. "It is exceedingly discourag- 
 ing," Lincoln commented. "As everywhere else, nothing can be 
 done." Wandering restlessly through the fog, Lincoln found his 
 way to Quartermaster General Meigs's new office in the Winder 
 Building. He took a chair in front of the open fire and stared bleak- 
 ly into the flames. "General," he asked, "what shall I do? The peo- 
 ple are impatient; Chase has no money and he tells me he can raise 
 no more; the General of the Army has typhoid fever. The bottom 
 is out of the tub. What shall I do?" 
 
 In Cabinet meeting that day, Attorney General Bates urged Lin- 
 coln "to take and act out the powers of his place, to command the 
 commanders." Lincoln was about to do just that. And he began 
 next day, by accepting Simon Cameron's resignation. 
 
 By mid- January of 1862 Simon Cameron had given offense in 
 too many ways to be longer tolerated as Secretary of War. He had 
 been careless and profligate in awarding contracts. He had brazenly 
 sought, in defiance of the President, to capture abolitionist support 
 by inserting a plea for immediate emancipation into his annual re- 
 port to Congress. So when the conveniently distant post of Minister 
 to Russia fell vacant, Lincoln gave it to Cameron, willy-nilly. Into 
 Cameron's old place came his former adviser and the sometime 
 Attorney General in Buchanan's Cabinet, Edwin M. Stanton. 
 
 In naming Stanton, Lincoln ignored a rude snub administered to 
 him by that Pittsburgh lawyer half a dozen years before; and if he 
 knew of them, he also ignored the slurs and epithets still flung at 
 him behind his back by the same stubby, whiskered, ill-tempered 
 conniver. For all his churlish outbursts, and bullyings, his lies, his 
 
154 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ready tears, Stanton offered the nation a combination of energy, 
 loyalty and official integrity that was hard to match. He wasted no 
 time in digging his spurs into the War Department. "As soon as I 
 can get the machinery of the office working, the rats cleared out, 
 and the rat holes stopped, we shall move," he wrote a New York 
 newspaperman. 
 
 A few days after Stanton's appointment, Joshua Speed came to 
 the War Department in search of more guns for Kentucky. Instead 
 of "that loose shackeling way of doing business" he had seen so 
 much of before, he now found "order, regularity and precision." 
 Speed told Stanton what he wanted; Stanton asked to have it in 
 writing; Speed wrote out the request, and Stanton immediately en- 
 dorsed it: "To the Chief of Ordnance — fill the order at once, if 
 not in whole as much as could be done at once." And this was done. 
 "I shall be much mistaken," wrote Speed, "if he does not infuse 
 into the whole army an energy & activity which we have not seen 
 heretofore." 
 
 Unknown to Berdan's Sharpshooters, as they fretted still un- 
 armed on their hilltop outside Washington, their fortunes were in- 
 volved with those of Simon Cameron. One of Cameron's last acts 
 as Secretary of War on January 13 had been to order the signing 
 of a contract for two thousand Sharps rifles for the Sharpshooters. 
 (One senses in this sudden move the hand of Abraham Lincoln, who 
 was now beginning to "command the commanders.") But Camer- 
 on's resignation transpired on the very day Ripley received the or- 
 der, and so Ripley felt safe in delaying. A few days later, he 
 persuaded Stanton that he should suspend the order "until further 
 direction." 
 
 When word of this leaked out, the Colt Company offered a 
 thousand of their revolving rifles for immediate delivery. Ripley 
 was no fool. With Lincoln's impatience growing more and more 
 evident, the Chief of Ordnance prudently contented himself with 
 a partial victory: better a thousand Colts than two thousand Sharps. 
 Colonel Post of the 2nd Sharpshooter Regiment thought well of 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT 155 
 
 the Colts; and so, although with misgivings, Colonel Berdan went 
 along with the compromise. 
 
 Then came unexpected drama. Colonel Post had misjudged his 
 men. The Colts were breechloaders, all right, and very pretty to 
 look at; but they were also inaccurate, unreliable, prone to get out 
 of order and even dangerous to the users. The men of the 2nd 
 Regiment, seven hundred strong, were fed up with the delay and 
 outraged by what seemed a betrayal of the President's promise. 
 Rather than take the Colts, or indeed anything else but the Sharps, 
 the regiment threatened to mutiny. The crisis was kept out of the 
 newspapers, but it was real nonetheless. Determined to keep order, 
 Berdan armed a hundred reliable men and, in his own words, "was 
 about to use force." For a while it looked as though a bloody skirm- 
 ish between Union troops might erupt within sight of the Capitol 
 itself. 
 
 An Army mutiny at that moment, however small in scale, simply 
 could not be permitted to happen. The Union still floundered in a 
 slough of despond. Stanton's appointment had brought hope, but it 
 seemed to admit past failure. The new Secretary meant the empha- 
 sis of his administration to be on organizing victory, not suppress- 
 ing mutiny. 
 
 The authorities therefore hastened to placate the grumblers. 
 Colonel Post conferred earnestly with his men and at last persuaded 
 them to take the Colts if Secretary Stanton would promise solemnly 
 to substitute Sharps as soon as they could be procured. McClellan 
 supported Post's action, and Stanton made the desired promise with 
 almost unseemly speed. "In the meantime," the new Secretary 
 wrote, "it is hoped the patriotic feeling of the troops and their 
 sense of duty will prevent their doing anything to the prejudice of 
 their good character and military discipline." And Ripley wired the 
 Sharps Company for a thousand of their rifles with accoutrements 
 and ammunition "as soon as possible." 
 
 A few days later, the New York Tribune referred vaguely to 
 "the difficulties in Col. Berdan's Regiment," but the whole truth 
 was never publicly revealed. Among the few who knew it, more 
 
156 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR' 
 
 spectacular events crowded it into forgetfulness. Many years later, 
 a historian of the Sharpshooters alluded mysteriously to "demoral- 
 ization ... in an alarming form." The other and better known 
 chronicler of the corps said even less about the affair. 
 
 When the Sharpshooters got their marching orders some weeks 
 after the near mutiny, their Sharps had still not arrived, and there 
 were mutterings. But the military situation had improved, and 
 Hiram Berdan was not the man to let mutiny become a habit. "I 
 armed the most of my men with such arms as I could get," he wrote 
 a few months later, "and those that refused I had court martialed 
 and they are now cracking stone at the Rip Raps." The delay, after 
 all, was only temporary. In a month or two all the Sharpshooters 
 were proudly carrying (and formidably using) their long-awaited 
 breechloaders. 
 
 During that season of mud and melancholy in which Stanton 
 took over the War Department, a storm blew up which, to those 
 who figured in it, came to be known as "the mortar business." 
 
 The idea sprang from the fertile brain of Gustavus Fox. In the 
 summer of 1861 the Assistant Secretary of the Navy foresaw that 
 warfare in the West would follow the rivers — the Tennessee, the 
 Cumberland, the Mississippi — which ran through the heart of the 
 Confederacy and had long served that region in lieu of roads and 
 railways. Fox also perceived that in those campaigns the Navy would 
 face an unaccustomed assignment: siege warfare at close quarters. 
 
 On land such operations were so old a story that special artillery 
 had long since been designed for them. These were the mortars. 
 Squat, wide-mouthed and uptilted, like the utensils from which 
 they took their name, the mortars sent heavy shells roaring into the 
 blue, to drop at a steep angle inside forts and entrenchments. The 
 Navy had had little use for them before. Now, with a river war in 
 prospect, Fox suggested building a number of solid little craft, 
 each to carry a mortar, which would present smaller targets than 
 full-sized ships, could be deployed more flexibly and could take 
 cover more easily. 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT 157 
 
 In July Fox's scheme won the support of General Fremont, who 
 had charge of operations on the Mississippi. The War Department 
 contracted with Knap, Rudd and Company of Pittsburgh for thirty 
 ponderous thirteen-inch mortars, the largest size; and Fremont 
 ordered the construction of thirty-eight small mortar boats. 
 
 On the Upper Ferry at St. Louis, a curious little fleet presently 
 began to take shape. Its components were "nothing more than rafts 
 or floating platforms for one large mortar each, with iron parapets 
 or rifle screens, and an awning overhead." Solid layers of timber 
 formed the basis for the craft. In the timbers were openings for 
 eight magazine pits thirty inches deep and about five feet square. 
 Armored oak bulwarks rose up about twenty inches along the edges, 
 and above those stood rifle screens of boiler plate three-eighths of 
 an inch thick and six or seven feet high, sloping in and pierced with 
 loopholes. Each boat was shaped like a rectangle, twenty yards by 
 eight yards, with the four corners cut off to sharpen the bow and 
 stern. Its draft was three feet when loaded, and it was worked by 
 oars or sweeps or was towed by one of eight steam tugs which Fre- 
 mont ordered for the purpose. 
 
 Complications began in November, when General McClellan for 
 some reason requisitioned fifteen of the mortars then being made 
 for Fremont. Complications increased five days later, when Com- 
 mander David D. Porter, vigorous, enterprising and well endowed 
 with the gift of gab, came to town with a plan for taking New Or- 
 leans. The leading element of Porter's plan was a forty-eight hour 
 bombardment of the city's defenses by thirteen-inch mortars, each 
 mounted in a small, specially reinforced schooner. 
 
 It seems to have been Porter who first aroused Lincoln's interest 
 in mortar boats. And the commander's eloquence prevailed with 
 Secretary Welles and General McClellan, as well as with the Pres- 
 ident. McClellan' s fifteen requisitioned mortars were turned over to 
 the Navy, and Porter set briskly to work on his flotilla at the Brook- 
 lyn Navy Yard. At first Porter planned to build fifteen vessels, one 
 for each mortar. In the end he had twenty-one schooners, ranging 
 from one hundred sixty to two hundred fifty tons, each one filled 
 
158 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 in almost solidly with heavy timber to strengthen the deck against 
 the tremendous concussion, and each carrying a crew of about forty. 
 Porter's zeal burned high. When his flotilla was completed, he 
 promised McClellan, it would be "the terror of the secessionists" 
 and the "most formidable arm of offense yet put afloat," ready, with 
 the aid of the other vessels' Dahlgren n-inchers, to "destroy every 
 fortification it can get within reach of." 
 
 The Navy had ordered twenty-one mortars from Knap, Rudd 
 and Company. Porter bombarded the company with telegrams and 
 letters until it agreed to fill this order with the mortars originally 
 made for Fremont's flotilla. By January 1862 the giant mortars 
 were arriving in New York. 
 
 Mortar beds presented a problem. Such beds had to be more than 
 the single-piece cast-iron affairs used in the past. The huge new 
 thirteen-inch mortars required a ton and a half of wrought iron and 
 woodwork, with roller rings, recoil buffer, slide frame and other 
 pieces. Fortunately for his plans, Porter had an energetic ally in 
 Lieutenant Henry Augustus Wise of the Navy Ordnance Bureau. 
 
 "I am no politician," Wise wrote, "but I listen to what people 
 say." In his forty-two years of life, the listener had already heard 
 and seen much. When he was five, his father, a Navy captain, died; 
 and the boy was reared in his grandfather's house on Craney Island 
 near Norfolk, Virginia. During the Mexican War, Wise's dark 
 complexion and linguistic facility helped him in carrying important 
 dispatches through the enemy lines. His cousin and one-time guard- 
 ian was Henry Alexander Wise, the fire-eating Governor of Vir- 
 ginia who let John Brown hang in 1859; the lieutenant met his 
 cousin at a railroad junction, "just from the scene of the Brown ex- 
 ploits," and heard about "the whole matter from beginning to 
 end." In i860 Wise toured the Orient aboard the U.S.S. Niagara 
 with a lively company which included Lieutenant Colonel James W. 
 Ripley. 
 
 Unfortunately for his reputation as a serious ordnance officer, 
 Wise was a born wit and raconteur, who wrote books on his travels 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT 159 
 
 in both hemispheres; and so the world came to regard Harry Wise 
 affectionately as "a smart young fellow, with no particular fond- 
 ness for his profession." He enjoyed life and its pleasures, includ- 
 ing those of the hop and the grape. 'The fact is you don't drink 
 enough," he wrote his grim Virginian cousin, "a little old brandy is 
 better than pills." Later, another convivial traveler and observer, 
 Russell of the London Times, was much taken with the "lively, 
 pleasant, and amusing little sailor," and the two became boon com- 
 panions and fellow tipplers. 
 
 Wise's first wartime job was to burn the Norfolk Navy Yard, 
 near his boyhood home. It came hard, but he did it — "as effectual- 
 ly," he cheerfully related, "as if I had been a professional arsonist." 
 In the spring days of Washington's peril he was the only officer in 
 the Navy Ordnance Bureau to remain loyal. "I made up my mind," 
 he wrote his father-in-law, Edward Everett, just afterward, "to 
 stand by the flag so long as there is a stripe in it." 
 
 Wise, in short, was not the lightweight so many thought him to 
 be; and he proved it again when David Porter called on him to 
 help outfit the mortar flotilla. "Never during the existence of the 
 Ordnance Department," Porter wrote years later, "was there more 
 zeal or ability displayed in collecting the material of an expedi- 
 tion." "We are at it here night and day in getting off the mortar 
 fleet, and then, stand from under," Wise himself wrote late in 
 December. Cooper, Hewitt and Company of Trenton, New Jersey, 
 outdid themselves in making the mortar beds; Abram Hewitt sub- 
 contracted for parts with three other establishments and saw to it 
 that the Navy was not overcharged. By early February the last of 
 the mortar schooners had been fitted out. "Day by day they quietly 
 slip their anchors," reported the National Intelligencer, "and de- 
 part for their rendezvous, nobody knows where." 
 
 While Porter and Wise hustled their enterprise to its climax, 
 Lincoln waited eagerly for news of the flotilla at St. Louis. On those 
 mortar boats, he felt more and more certain, depended the success 
 of the coming expedition through Kentucky and into Tennessee, 
 
160 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 via the Tennessee River. And by that venture he set great store. 
 New Orleans would be a grand prize, surely; but to Lincoln, the 
 Tennessee expedition counted for more, both strategically and sen- 
 timentally. It came as a stinging blow to him, therefore, when he 
 learned early in January 1862 that Fremont's mortar boat project 
 had in effect been abandoned, and that the mortar boats themselves, 
 like so many expensive toys, were swinging idly from their moor- 
 ings at St. Louis. 
 
 What was the reason for this? Primarily one which has delayed 
 the success of many a new weapon: lack of faith on the part of the 
 commanders in the field. 
 
 Fox, who first proposed the fleet, had switched his enthusiasm 
 to Porter's flotilla, a Navy rather than an Army project. Fremont 
 himself had been superseded by Major General Henry W. Halleck 
 in November 1861; and Halleck, unaware of Lincoln's enthusiasm 
 for the mortar boats, had regarded them as merely one of Fremont's 
 numerous follies. 
 
 Captain Andrew H. Foote, a pious old sailor who preferred 
 preaching to rum and a good fight to either, commanded the naval 
 arm of the Tennessee expedition. Although not against mortar 
 boats as a general proposition, he scorned the contraptions at St. 
 Louis. He had tried to have an army officer sent there to have mor- 
 tar beds made; but Halleck had been unwilling, and so Foote 
 shrugged off responsibility. To Wise he wrote: 
 
 We have palmed upon us some 30 Mortar Boats of logs banded 
 together, without a Navy or Army officer having had anything to 
 do with them. Rodgers & I told Genl. Fremont we didnt like them. 
 A Board is appointed to inspect them, & I guess "entre nous" will 
 condemn them. 
 
 No wonder Halleck and Foote sat back complacently while Port- 
 er bagged all available mortars and mortar beds. 
 
 By the tenth of January, that foggy day when he sat before Gen- 
 eral Meigs's fire, Lincoln had begun to realize the state of affairs. 
 In Cabinet meeting that day he spoke bitterly of the negligence, the 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT l6l 
 
 indifference, the lack of forethought all around him; and his bit- 
 terness was greatest on the subject of the mortar boats. They had 
 been moved to Cairo, Illinois; but, noted Attorney General Bates 
 in his diary, they were "not ready — not manned — Indeed we do 
 not know that the mortars have reached there ... no one knows any 
 thing about them." 
 
 Lincoln began to act. On that very day he had Fox wire Foote at 
 Cairo for a full report on the mortar flotilla's status, progress and 
 probable time of completion. Feeling the direction of the wind, 
 Foote commenced to veer with it. To Lincoln he replied querulous- 
 ly and at length, but without reporting the number of mortars on 
 hand. Meanwhile he fired off frantic telegrams to St. Louis and to 
 the Allegheny Arsenal at Pittsburgh, where some mortar beds were 
 being made. 
 
 Lincoln directed another searching inquiry at General Ripley, to 
 which the Chief of Ordnance replied that he had sent everything 
 Foote had asked for except some cannon powder which would 
 soon be on its way. 
 
 Ripley might have added that the Navy had assumed responsi- 
 bility for supplying Foote with at least twenty-one of the thirty- 
 eight mortars, in place of the ones sent to Porter. There was, how- 
 ever, enough ignominy to go around. It turned out that not a 
 single mortar had actually been made for the mortar boats at Cairo, 
 let alone shipped there. 
 
 Foote, prompted by McClellan, suggested that it did not matter, 
 that "we can get along without the mortar boats." Lincoln ignored 
 this cry of "sour grapes." Taking the mortar business out of the 
 hands of Foote and Halleck, he stalked into the Navy Bureau of 
 Ordnance and told Lieutenant Harry Wise to "put it through." 
 "Now," said Lincoln grimly, "I am going to devote a part of every 
 day to these mortars and I won't leave off until it fairly rains 
 bombs." 
 
 Next day Wise notified Foote of the new aspect of affairs and in- 
 structed the captain to wire the President every day "showing the 
 progress, or lack of progress in this matter." "Oh, that this tele- 
 
162 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 gram had come two months ago," mourned Foote, "but I will now 
 go ahead and obey orders." 
 
 Wise's conduct of the mortar business raised him high in Lin- 
 coln's esteem. The President, Wise recalled later, "was perplexed 
 to know how to get matters straight, but when he put me on the 
 track I made it clear to him." 
 
 Not only were mortars lacking, but it also turned out that only 
 two mortar beds had been made. Lincoln wired the Allegheny Ar- 
 senal to give top priority to Foote over both the New Orleans and 
 the Carolina expeditions, and by early February nine beds had been 
 finished and shipped out. Thirty-eight were needed in all. Wise 
 came up with the solution: Cooper and Hewitt. According to Hew- 
 itt, Lincoln wired him personally and appealed to him to save the 
 Tennessee River campaign. Hewitt surpassed his performance for 
 the Navy a month before, subcontracting for parts, cajoling, threat- 
 ening, organizing. When Hewitt promised to have the beds ready 
 by March 9, General Ripley was incredulous. Yet even this did not 
 satisfy Lincoln, who wanted the delivery date advanced to February 
 15. Hewitt agreed; and Hewitt was better than his word, for all 
 thirty beds were finished by February 14. On the cars that carried 
 them west, Hewitt had painted in glaring black and white the 
 legend: U. S. GRANT, CAIRO. NOT TO BE SWITCHED 
 UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH. 
 
 Seizing his chance to strike a blow for Ohio as well as for the 
 Union, Secretary Chase brought E. M. Shield of Cincinnati to see 
 Lincoln and Stanton about a mortar-bed contract. "Mr. Shield," 
 said Stanton, "the President, yourself, and I are Western men, and 
 the West shall be attended to." A model bed was rushed to Cin- 
 cinnati, and Shield pitched in with a zeal that rivaled Hewitt's. 
 "The honor of our Cincinnati mechanics is in some sort pledged, 
 and I want it redeemed," Chase admonished. Redeemed it was. On 
 February 15 Shield wired: "Mortar carriages ready"; and Chase 
 sent the wire to Lincoln with the triumphant endorsement: "Cin- 
 cinnati Mechanics up to time!" 
 
 Day and night Lincoln kept in touch with progress in the pro- 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT 163 
 
 duction, shipment and mounting of the mortars themselves. As late 
 as January 22 not one had been earmarked for shipment to Cairo. 
 Within three days Colonel Symington of the Allegheny Arsenal 
 had rounded up ten of the huge guns and dispatched them — prob- 
 ably drawing on those made at Pittsburgh for the other two expedi- 
 tions. Secretary Stanton deputed a Pittsburgh industrialist to check 
 on Symington's progress, and, trusting nobody, sent Assistant Sec- 
 retary Tom Scott for the same purpose. Both had only praise for 
 the colonel's work. 
 
 Despite the heat generated elsewhere, Foote remained lukewarm 
 toward the mortar business. At the end of January, he reported in 
 some perplexity that more than eleven thousand mortar shells had 
 been ordered to Cairo, whereas he wanted no more than three 
 thousand. Wise wrote promptly: 
 
 The President remarked that he thought it would be expedient 
 to receive all the mortars and shells sent to Cairo, so as to be able 
 to meet any probable amount of work that may be demanded; that 
 he wished you to be sure, when you opened fire ... "to rain the 
 rebels out," as he desired to "treat them to a refreshing shower of 
 sulphur and brimstone." 
 
 And Wise added significantly that Lincoln "is evidently a prac- 
 tical man, understands precisely what he wants, and is not turned 
 aside by any one when he has his work before him." 
 
 Foote, of course, had seen the mortar boats, and Lincoln had not. 
 Anthony Trollope, the rambling British novelist, passed disdain- 
 fully through Cairo early in February and heard about the new idea 
 in river warfare. "The grandeur of the idea is almost sublime," he 
 thought. "Could any city be safe when such implements of war 
 were about on the waters?" After a look at the sublime imple- 
 ments, Trollope changed his tune. Their magazines leaked. They 
 were roughhewn and ungainly. One was towed out into the river, 
 but could scarcely be moved against the current, even with two 
 tugboats pulling it. Trollope wrote: 
 
164 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 When we saw them, many of the rivets were already gone. The 
 small boats had been stolen from some of them, and the ropes and 
 oars from others. There they lay, thirty- eight in number, up against 
 the mud-banks of the Ohio, under the boughs of the half -clad, mel- 
 ancholy forest trees, as sad a spectacle of reckless prodigality as the 
 eye ever beheld. 
 
 On February 2 without waiting for the mortars to be installed in 
 the sad flotilla, Foote took three wooden gunboats and four iron- 
 clads up the Tennessee; and on February 6 Fort Henry fell before 
 his bombardment. "We all went wild over your success," wrote 
 Wise. "Uncle Abe was joyful, and said everything of the navy boys 
 and spoke of you — in his plain, sensible appreciation of merit and 
 skill." Brigadier General Ulysses Grant's army had landed at Fort 
 Henry. Now it marched eastward across country to Fort Donelson 
 on the Cumberland, which ran parallel to the Tennessee. Foote' s 
 flotilla steamed confidently down the Tennessee, along the Ohio, 
 and up the Cumberland to support Grant — still without the mortar 
 boats. 
 
 The omission was unfortunate. The first trial of a mortar boat 
 had been made on February 9 and had vindicated Lincoln's faith. 
 Tying the boat to the Mississippi shore, the crew aimed their mas- 
 sive gun down a broad stretch of water toward Columbus, Ken- 
 tucky. A correspondent of the Missouri Democrat described the 
 scene with verve and fidelity: "Ready! fire! A deafening concus- 
 sion, and in an instant the huge shell was seen mounting in the air 
 with a magnificent curve, and its terrible roar gradually diminish- 
 ing, as its distance from us rapidly increased. It may have risen to 
 the height of half a mile, and was almost lost to view before it be- 
 gan to make its descending curve. ... It was wonderful to wait so 
 long, the seconds lengthening out, as it seemed, to minutes. The 
 suspense was relieved by the sudden shooting up, from the water's 
 line, of a white column of spray, far down the Mississippi, and, as 
 it was estimated, two miles and a half away from us. The mortar- 
 boat was scarcely moved by the explosion, and the mortar-carriage 
 recoiled but two or three inches." 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT 165 
 
 Five sand-filled shells, each weighing two hundred and thirty 
 pounds, were fired with charges up to twenty-three pounds of 
 powder. Fears that the tremendous reaction would push the little 
 boat under proved to be groundless. Some defects were discovered : 
 the iron bulwarks made the concussion worse, and the bow and 
 stern needed altering for easier towing. But these were easily at- 
 tended to. Despite their unpromising appearance, the boats were 
 well adapted to their function, which was simply to provide float- 
 ing platforms for the great mortars. 
 
 Foote had reason to wish he had brought the boats along. At 
 Fort Donelson, his flotilla ran into a murderous fire which its con- 
 ventional guns could not silence. Shell and solid shot ripped 
 through the gunboats, driving needlelike splinters and fragments 
 of iron into the men, carrying away flagstaffs and smokestacks and 
 small boats, disabling steering gear, tearing off side armor as light- 
 ning strips bark from trees. "Before the decks were well sanded," 
 related the captain of the Carondelet, "there was so much blood on 
 them that our men could not work the guns without slipping." 
 Foote himself was wounded. And when Donelson fell, it fell be- 
 fore the land attack of Grant's men. 
 
 Day after day, night after night, through the news of Henry and 
 Donelson, Lincoln read telegrams from Cairo on progress in the 
 mounting of the mortars. At last, early in March, word came from 
 Foote that the boats were ready and would be used on the Missis- 
 sippi in an attack on Island Number Ten. On the morning of March 
 20 Lincoln read a telegram from the scene of action: "The mortar 
 shells have done fine execution; one shell was fairly landed on [the 
 enemy's] Floating Battery and cleared the concern in short metre." 
 
 A Chicago Tribune man was enraptured by the performance. 
 "The firing of a mortar is the very poetry of a battle," he wrote. "A 
 bag of powder weighing from 18 to 20 pounds is dropped into the 
 bore of the huge monster. The derrick drops the shell in; the angle 
 is calculated; a long cord is attached to the primer; the gunner steps 
 out upon the platform, and the balance of the crew upon the shore. 
 
166 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 The captain gives the word, the gunner gives his cord a sudden jerk, 
 a crash like a thousand thunders follows, a tongue of flame leaps 
 from the mouth of the mortar, and a column of smoke rolls up in 
 beautiful fleecy spirals, developing into rings of exquisite propor- 
 tions. One can see the shell as it leaves the mortar flying through the 
 air, apparently no larger than a marble. The next you see of the shell, 
 a beautiful cloud of smoke bursts into sight, caused by the explo- 
 sion." 
 
 At night, the show was equally spectacular. The burning fuse had 
 "the appearance of a star, which appears and disappears as the shell 
 rolls through the air, very like the twinkling of the celestial orbs. 
 The explosion of the shell at night is a magnificent and fearful sight, 
 sending a glow of surpassing brightness around it as though some 
 world of combustible light had burst." 
 
 Island Number Ten surrendered on April 8, and Federal troops 
 and gunboats knifed deeper into the Confederacy's vitals. Before 
 the month was out, Porter's mortar flotilla, which had been waiting 
 off Mobile, was dropping nearly seventeen thousand thirteen-inch 
 shells into Forts Jackson and St. Philip, the chief barriers before 
 New Orleans. Porter's "chowder-pots," as the big guns were called, 
 had much to do with the fall of those forts and of New Orleans. 
 
 Gustavus Fox's idea had been gloriously proved, and Lincoln's 
 support of it gloriously vindicated. 
 
 Repercussions of the "mortar business" were felt elsewhere than 
 New Orleans and Island Number Ten. Bureaucrats quaked be- 
 hind more than one Washington desk. Someone had blundered. 
 Who would be blamed? 
 
 Looking back after ninety years, we can see that no one involved 
 was wholly guiltless, and no one solely responsible. The basic diffi- 
 culty, in fact, seems to have been that lack of clearly assigned re- 
 sponsibility, a fact recognized in Lincoln's Cabinet meeting of 
 January tenth. "Strange enough," Attorney General Bates wrote in 
 his diary record of the discussion, "the boats are under the War 
 Dept., and yet are commanded by naval officers. Of course, they 
 are neglected." 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT 167 
 
 If individual scapegoats are demanded, Halleck and Foote 
 would seem to be logical candidates. Yet Halleck rode serenely 
 above the storm, by his very indifference to the affair seeming to 
 dissociate himself from it. And Foote had a powerful friend at 
 court in the person of Lieutenant Harry Wise, who saw Lincoln 
 every day and grew in his favor. "Be certain," Wise assured Foote, 
 "that I shall do all I can for you, come fair weather or foul, and I 
 make no doubt, nor ever have, but that the whole thing will re- 
 dound to your reputation and honor" — as, indeed, it did. 
 
 The Navy Department had been remiss in not replacing the mor- 
 tars it commandeered for Porter, and Gustavus Fox's New Eng- 
 land conscience seemed to recognize this. "It is impossible," Fox 
 wrote uneasily, "for us to shake off from our Department some 
 little blame with regard to these mortars, for people will never care 
 to investigate the whole facts." Nevertheless, Fox tried, rather ig- 
 nobly, to shift the blame to Foote, who took this as "the unkindest 
 cut I ever have had." 
 
 But the Navy soon became thankfully aware that Lincoln's wrath 
 had fallen on General Ripley. 
 
 The President made no secret of his feelings. "President sent for 
 Gus," noted Mrs. Fox in her diary. "Mad about mortars. . . . The 
 President says 'he believes he must take these army matters into 
 his own hands. The Navy have built their ships & mortars for 
 N. O. & are ready to go. Gen. McC. & Ripley & all are to blame.' " 
 Fox himself shed crocodile tears for the Army. "I doubt," he wrote 
 next day, "if the history of any war ever furnished such an ex- 
 posure. . . . The President has determined to remove Ripley from 
 the ordnance, and it has shaken his confidence in many others. 
 . . . Our twenty mortar vessels . . . will shame the Army people 
 for their great crime in neglecting these boats." 
 
 It was true. Ripley was marked at last for dismissal. On January 
 24, 1862, Lincoln formally authorized Stanton to make "some 
 changes" in the Ordnance Office for "the success of military oper- 
 ations and the safety of the country." Next day, that pugnacious, 
 redheaded Virginian, Major Alexander Dyer, arrived in Wash- 
 ington after a hurried trip from the Springfield Armory, got a room 
 
168 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 at the Columbian Hotel, and reported in obedience to orders. 
 Major Dyer, as the newspapers at once proclaimed, was slated to 
 be Ripley's successor as Chief of Ordnance. 
 
 Ripley's official neck was saved by his own protege from Spring- 
 field. To the surprise and confusion of Lincoln and Stanton, Major 
 Dyer declined the honor tendered him. Perhaps he was grateful 
 for Ripley's part in his earlier promotion. He based his refusal, 
 however, on the ground that he could be of far greater service at 
 Springfield, where he was in the midst of organizing large-scale rifle 
 production. Dyer assured Lincoln that he would, of course, obey 
 any order given; but Lincoln did not want a Chief of Ordnance 
 who served only under compulsion. 
 
 No other likely candidate could be found. Colonel Craig suffered 
 from the progressive and incurable disability of old age. Colonel 
 Maynadier, that master of red tape, kept his desk, but was out of 
 the question as chief. The only other ordnance officer not impos- 
 sibly low in seniority was the brilliant Major Rodman, then com- 
 manding the Watertown Arsenal; but his administrative ability 
 was questionable, and he drew royalties from an important cannon 
 patent — which disqualified him as a maker of contracts. 
 
 Stanton kept searching for a replacement until mid-March, when 
 he offered Ripley's post to ailing Brigadier General Ethan Allen 
 Hitchcock. The old man declined, as soon as he had recovered from 
 the shock. Stanton and Lincoln, who held Hitchcock in high re- 
 gard, kept him on as a sort of military adviser. One of Hitchcock's 
 first pieces of advice was against a change in the Ordnance Depart- 
 ment, on the ground that if the Corps believed in its chief's com- 
 petence, it made no difference whether that belief was true or not. 
 "If this belief be shaken," urged Hitchcock, "the operation of the 
 whole system is endangered." The notion seems a little tenuous, 
 but it appears to have persuaded Stanton. "I concluded not to make 
 any change just at that time," recalled the Secretary, "and not un- 
 til I had become further acquainted with the business of the office." 
 
 Ripley survived, but his status had changed. Lincoln and Stanton 
 
WINTER OF DISCONTENT 169 
 
 took care to give him a prop in the person of Peter H. Watson, a 
 chunky, red-bearded Scot, who had been banished from British 
 soil for his part in the Canadian Rebellion of 1837. By January 
 1862, when Lincoln nominated him for Assistant Secretary of War, 
 Watson was being acclaimed as "probably the first patent lawyer 
 in the United States; a business man of great industry, clear head, 
 and sterling integrity." He was also one of Stanton's few close 
 friends. Since Watson had learned a good deal about weapons as a 
 patent attorney, Stanton put him in charge of the Ordnance Office 
 and made no move in that regard thereafter without Watson's ad- 
 vice and concurrence. Ripley, in turn, had "very little direct com- 
 munication with the Secretary of War." 
 
 Ripley did not pine for Stanton's company. With Adjutant Gen- 
 eral Lorenzo Thomas, he was a favorite butt of the Secretary's 
 bullyings. On one occasion Stanton peremptorily summoned Ripley 
 to his office, where Stanton was just then receiving the public. After 
 threading his way through the press of supplicants, Ripley found 
 his chief standing by the window with a contractor and looking 
 over a musket with a new type of lock. On Stanton's demand Rip- 
 ley reported the number of such locks he had ordered. "Now," 
 said Stanton fiercely, "if you dare to adopt another musket of this 
 kind, I'll dismiss you from the service." 
 
 "But Mr. Secretary," stammered Ripley. 
 
 "Not another word," snapped Stanton, "you can return to your 
 Bureau." Flushed and shaking as if struck with palsy, the white- 
 haired veteran passed silently through a gaping crowd. 
 
 Donn Piatt, who knew Stanton well, once wrote: "He was ap- 
 proached by all about him in fear and trembling. And the same 
 ugliness seemed to be contagious. The officer coming from his 
 presence, wounded to the quick, gave to others under him the same 
 treatment." 
 
 The mortar business had one other notable by-product. On Janu- 
 ary 26, 1862, Lincoln, "mad about mortars," told Fox that he be- 
 lieved he must "take these army matters into his own hands." One 
 
170 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 day later the generals were astonished and the public heartened to 
 read the President's "General War Order Number One," which 
 decreed a general movement on February 22 of all land and naval 
 forces of the United States against the insurgents. On January 31 
 came his "Special War Order Number One," ordering an advance 
 by the Army of the Potomac directly on Richmond by way of 
 Manassas, this advance to begin by February 22. 
 
 The orders were not carried out literally. McClellan submitted a 
 long letter explaining why they could not be, and Lincoln con- 
 sented to waive them. Washington's Birthday passed quietly by 
 without an advance, and it was not until late in March that Mc- 
 Clellan shifted his army to Fortress Monroe, whence it was to move 
 on Richmond via the York Peninsula. 
 
 Nevertheless, the orders had been worth making. They roused 
 the North from its cynical lethargy until the news of Henry and 
 Donelson could fire its spirit; and they gave McClellan a healthy 
 jolt. In December McClellan had hastily penciled his replies to 
 Lincoln's careful inquiries about the coming campaign. In his elab- 
 orate communication of February 3 the young Napoleon betrayed 
 a new awareness that Lincoln was, after all, his commander in 
 chief. "From that time," wrote John Hay, "[the President] in- 
 fluenced actively the operations of the campaign. He stopped going 
 to McClellan's and sent for the general to come to him. Everything 
 grew busy and animated after that order." And Stanton remarked 
 after the war that if Lincoln had not issued those orders, "the 
 Armies would have remained in front of Washington to this pres- 
 ent." 
 
 However that might be, Dahlgren was able to write in March: 
 
 The move for the Peninsula is now fairly afoot — the Potomac is 
 crowded with every description of vessel carrying troops, horses, 
 field guns — stores of all kinds — the President is constantly on the 
 move, looking with deepest interest at the proceedings. 
 
 The winter of the Union's discontent had given way to a hopeful 
 spring. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 13 
 
 An Encounter at Hampton Roads 
 
 Meanwhile, the confederates had not 
 been idle. At the Navy Yard near Norfolk, burned by Lieutenant 
 Wise nearly a year before, but now partially restored, they were 
 preparing what they hoped would be a shattering surprise for 
 their enemies : the hulk of the steam frigate Merrimac, raised from 
 the mud of Norfolk Harbor, patched up and transformed into an 
 ironclad warship. The secret did not keep long after Norfolk sight- 
 seers began paying calls at the construction site. Lincoln heard 
 vague reports about the project almost from the first, and he was 
 in a position to guess the details. 
 
 Ironclad warships were an old story to Abraham Lincoln. More 
 than a dozen years before, during his term in Congress, Lincoln 
 had taken up the cause of an inventor named Uriah Brown, who 
 had plans for a vessel much like the future Merrimac — an armored 
 steam warship with sloping sides to deflect shot. Since 1814 Brown 
 had been seeking support for his proposed ironclad and the steam- 
 powered flame thrower he planned to use with it. Encouraged by 
 the outbreak of war with Mexico, he persuaded Congressman Lin- 
 coln to sponsor his petition to Congress for an experimental grant. 
 
 Before Brown's petition had been acted on, the Mexican War 
 ended, and with it ended Uriah Brown's last chance at fame. Nev- 
 ertheless, the idea of armored warships remained very much alive. 
 William O. Stoddard encountered it in a White House anteroom 
 early in the summer of 1861 and wrote: 
 
 I7 1 
 
172 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 The broad-shouldered, plain-looking fellow sitting there seems 
 to have his lap full of joiner- work, painted black. It reminds one of 
 the Noah's arks he used to get at Christmas, only that it is very low 
 and wide, and has no procession of wooden animals. There are toy 
 cannon, too, looking out of the windows, instead of giraffes. That 
 man was in to see the President yesterday, and they sat down to- 
 gether and discussed Western steamboats and flatboats and gun- 
 boats, and they turned that thing inside out. It has been here a good 
 while, sitting on the mantel. It is the first model of a "tin-clad" 
 gunboat, for use upon the shallow waters of the West, and the 
 President has had more to do than most men are aware of with the 
 beginnings of the Mississippi flotilla. 
 
 Perhaps Stoddard exaggerated Lincoln's role in the building of 
 the Western ironclads. Yet the great engineer James B. Eads once 
 sent Lincoln a photograph of the St. Louis, later the De Kalb, "the 
 first iron-clad built in America . . . the first armored vessel against 
 which the fire of a hostile battery was directed on this continent; 
 and so far as I can ascertain . . . the first ironclad that ever engaged 
 a naval force in the world." In the course of his letter Eads referred 
 to Lincoln's "identification with the interesting incidents of her his- 
 tory"; and Eads should have known, for he built her. 
 
 Certainly Lincoln's enthusiasm for ironclads began early and 
 lasted through the war. When C. S. Bushnell of Hartford, "a mas- 
 sive, vigorous, fine-looking man," came to him in 1861 with John 
 Ericsson's plan for the Monitor, Lincoln at once promised his sup- 
 port. Next morning Lincoln joined a naval board which had met to 
 consider the plan. Opinions differed; but as the session closed, Lin- 
 coln remarked: "All I have to say is what the girl said when she 
 put her foot into the stocking, 'It strikes me there's something in 
 it' " 
 
 Whatever weight Lincoln's approval carried, the plan was even- 
 tually adopted; and Ericsson set to work, racing against the time 
 when the rebels would finish armoring the raised Merrimac. On 
 March 4, 1862, Assistant Secretary Fox was able to notify Lincoln 
 that the Monitor was "now on her way to Hampton Roads." 
 
 Before Ericsson's "cheesebox on a raft" reached her destination, 
 
AN ENCOUNTER AT HAMPTON ROADS 173 
 
 the Merrimac appeared at Hampton Roads and, impervious to 
 broadsides, disposed of five stately wooden frigates. The rebel iron- 
 clad was commanded by Dahlgren's former superior, Franklin 
 Buchanan. Dahlgren first heard the epoch-making news from Lin- 
 coln himself, who drove down to the Navy Yard about ten o'clock 
 Sunday morning and brought Dahlgren back with him to the 
 White House. There in the Cabinet room were gathered Secretaries 
 Seward, Welles and Stanton, with Generals McClellan and Meigs. 
 Later Dahlgren wrote: 
 
 We only knew of the disasters of Saturday and deliberated on 
 the best way of meeting the consequences, little dreaming that at 
 the very time the Monitor was settling the question by hard knocks. 
 The President was not in the least alarmed, but maintained his 
 usual pleasant & suggestive mood. Generals McClellan, Meigs, & 
 myself were assigned the planning of some measures, and when I 
 left it was with no despair of the Republic, though all of us were 
 thoughtful enough. It was a serious business, and i£ the Merrimac 
 were successful no one could anticipate the consequences to our 
 side. 
 
 Word came that evening that after the Monitor's "hard knocks" 
 — delivered by two Dahlgren n-inchers — her opponent had la- 
 bored back to Norfolk. This, while not a clear-cut victory, sufficed. 
 The Merrimac no longer menaced the Union fleet, and McClellan' s 
 shift to the Peninsula could proceed unhindered. 
 
 Although ironclads made Eads and Ericsson famous, they 
 brought only tragedy to one of Lincoln's old friends. 
 
 George C. Bestor, a native of Washington, D. C, moved to 
 Peoria, Illinois, at twenty-four and rose swiftly in the esteem of 
 his new neighbors, who chose him three times as their mayor. Like 
 Lincoln, Bestor had been an earnest Whig, and more than that, a 
 personal friend of Lincoln's political hero, Henry Clay. Not only 
 was Bestor a "first-rate businessman" but he was also known as one 
 of the "best tacticians" in the Illinois state senate. Widely popular, 
 he possessed what the Springfield journal called "a fund of anec- 
 
174 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 dotes which he relates with inimitable grace." "He is fond of his 
 home and its surroundings," remarked the journal, "and his hand 
 and heart are open to his friends." Altogether, Bestor was a man 
 after Lincoln's own heart. 
 
 In April 1861, the day after his fiftieth birthday, Bestor offered 
 Lincoln a volunteer company of middle-aged men for the protec- 
 tion of Washington. For some reason, the company never marched. 
 Instead, Bestor came to Washington that fall with "an ingenious 
 model of an ironclad steam gun boat" and a letter of introduction 
 from Captain Foote to Captain Dahlgren. 
 
 During December, Lincoln wrote a note in which he referred to 
 Bestor as "my intimate personal friend." It was not until March 15, 
 1862, however, a few days after the epochal events at Hampton 
 Roads, that Lincoln sent Bestor to General Meigs with a note ask- 
 ing the general to "look at his model of Boat, before letting boat- 
 contracts." Even this was not enough. Before he could get a con- 
 tract, Bestor had to invoke Senator Orville Browning's influence 
 with Lincoln. It was common talk at Washington that Bestor "had 
 a host of friends who would insist on his having a contract for gun 
 boats." At last, in May, the Navy yielded. 
 
 Bestor' s triumph turned out to be a snare. Having sunk almost 
 all his fortune into building the gunboats, Bestor found that some 
 technicality stood in the way of his getting paid for them. He took 
 his claim to Congress and became a pathetic frequenter of the Capi- 
 tol. Years passed. The war ended; Lincoln died; and Congress after 
 Congress assembled and adjourned while the heartsick petitioner 
 waited in vain for his claim to be settled. Bestor' s health gave way. 
 In May 1872, ten years to the day from the signing of his gunboat 
 contract, the man who was so "fond of his home and its surround- 
 ings" died at the National Hotel in Washington. 
 
 The Monitor- Merrimac fight opened a new field to weapons in- 
 ventors. "Since the naval fight in Hampton Roads," the Washing- 
 ton Star observed early in April, "some 1,500 different schemes for 
 sinking or otherwise disposing of the Merrimac, have been offered 
 
AN ENCOUNTER AT HAMPTON ROADS 175 
 
 to the Navy Department by Yankee inventors." Lincoln and his 
 young secretary, John Hay, laughed together over a New Yorker's 
 suggestion that the rebel ironclad be bombarded with red pepper. 
 Hay wrote: 
 
 Respectfully referred by the President to the earnest consider- 
 ation of Mr. Wise. This kind of "Peppercaster" is a novelty in 
 furniture. How do you think Comr. Buchanan would like this style 
 of condiments on the half shell? The music of the Muse's shell 
 would be nothing to the strains of this man's "Piper." A classical 
 joke — very chaste. Yours for Abraham, John Hay. 
 
 Lieutenant Wise was capable of returning pun for pun, but 
 mercifully forbore. 
 
 Other inventors turned their attention to armor, trying all kinds 
 of material from rubber to compressed hog bristles. In May Lincoln 
 went down to the Navy Yard and watched guns pound away at a 
 target sheathed in the armor adopted by the Navy. The trial re- 
 sulted in a verdict for the defense. 
 
 Early in the war Benjamin Severson, a self-made engineer and 
 architect specializing in iron frameworks and trusses, submitted a 
 projectile with a hard, sharp tip of chilled "Franklinite, the hardest 
 and best iron." Secretaries Chase and Welles were on his side, but 
 General Ripley had no officer to spare for "investigations and trials 
 of new discoveries and inventions." After the affair at Hampton 
 Roads Severson tried his luck with Lincoln, bragging that his pro- 
 jectile could sink the Monitor in fifteen minutes and the Merrimac 
 in ten. Lincoln consulted Totten, who told him that Severson's 
 claims were "so superlative, and at the same time, so unsupported, 
 that I can only avow myself unable to credit them." 
 
 Lincoln paid no more heed to Severson's projectile. But the in- 
 ventor had fallen on hard times; and, touched by his story, Lincoln 
 found him a job as a clerk in the War Department clothing depot. 
 Two years later, when Lincoln was up for re-election and his pros- 
 pects seemed dark, another clerk wrote the President that Severson 
 was "operating against you with all his power and influence, pro- 
 
176 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 nouncing you a man wholly unfit for the Office you hold, a traitor 
 on your own party, a man in whose hands the reigns of Govern- 
 ment were intirely misplaced." Lincoln submitted the letter to Stan- 
 ton, and the next Washington directory listed Severson as an in- 
 spector of the Washington aqueduct. 
 
 As soon as ships began to be clothed in armor down to the water 
 line and below, inventors resorted to the obvious countermove of 
 striking them from beneath. Thus it happened that Abraham Lin- 
 coln encountered the feeble progenitors of the lean gray sea wolves 
 that were to terrorize the North Atlantic half a century later. 
 
 In September 1861 Lincoln read a long letter from M. Brutus de 
 Villeroi, late of Nantes, France.* At the Philadelphia Navy Yard 
 the Frenchman had a veritable submarine, an iron cylinder about 
 thirty-three feet long and four feet wide at its greatest diameter, 
 propelled by means of a screw in its stern. De Villeroi provided 
 "an artificial atmosphere" by "a chemical process" which he kept 
 secret. His outlandish vessel could submerge, crew and all, for as 
 long as three hours without communicating with the surface, could 
 rise again at will, and would allow crew members to enter and leave 
 underwater by means of an air lock. 
 
 De Villeroi pointed out to Lincoln how easy it would be for the 
 submarine to "reconnaissance the enemy's coast, to land men, am- 
 munition, etc., at any given point, to enter harbors, to keep up in- 
 telligence, and to carry explosive bombs under the very keels of 
 vessels and that without being seen. With a few such boats, maneu- 
 vered each one by about a dozen men, the most formidable fleet can 
 be annihilated in a short time." 
 
 Impressed by these arguments, as well he might have been, Lin- 
 coln sent De Villeroi's letter to the Navy Department with an en- 
 dorsement in his own hand. After seeing the craft in operation, 
 
 * At Nantes in 1835, when De Villeroi and a companion submerged for two 
 hours in a ten-foot submarine, there lived a seven-year-old boy named Jules Verne. 
 For years after, De Villeroi's submarine experiments were carried on at young 
 Verne's home town. Thus, besides having met the probable inspiration for Mark 
 Twain's Connecticut Yankee, Lincoln encountered the prototype of Captain Nemo. 
 
AN ENCOUNTER AT HAMPTON ROADS 177 
 
 Navy officials ordered a larger one early in November. Had it not 
 been for a squabble between De Villeroi and the contractor over 
 installation of the breathing equipment, the Alligator, as it came to 
 be called, might have beaten the Monitor to Hampton Roads, and 
 the history of naval warfare might have been somewhat different. 
 That unfortunate quarrel delayed the launching of the Alligator 
 till the end of April, deprived it of its breathing apparatus and led 
 to the substitution of a bank of oars on the duck-foot principle for 
 the proposed screw propeller. De Villeroi thereupon washed his 
 hands of the affair and left for parts unknown. 
 
 The Alligator was towed down to Hampton Roads and crawled 
 about on the inhospitable bottom of the James River for a while in 
 June 1862. But without De Villeroi's secret breathing apparatus, 
 the Alligator was helpless. After a series of vicissitudes, it ran into 
 a heavy gale while being towed off Cape Hatteras in April 1863 
 and was cut loose to save the tow ship. 
 
 The Alligator was not the only submarine to interest Lincoln. He 
 also recommended that the proposed submarine of one Oliver B. 
 Pierce be considered by Navy experts. Early in May 1862 Secretary 
 Welles sent Lincoln the report of Rear Admiral Joseph Smith, who 
 vetoed Pierce's proposal. Smith's chief objections to the Pierce plan 
 were the lack of sufficient air for the crew and the probable speed 
 of the craft, which Smith doubted could exceed one knot. 
 
 A year later Lincoln asked Assistant Secretary Watson to "please 
 see the bearer, who is the man of whom I spoke in reference to a 
 diving invention." But that invention may not have been a sub- 
 marine. 
 
 Four days after the Monitor worsted the Merrimac, a Washing- 
 tonian named Pascal Plant was ushered into Lincoln's office bearing 
 a small wooden model of a submarine gunboat "to be propelled by 
 gun powder fired from revolving vertical cylinders at either end" 
 and having "similar cylinders for hostile purposes at the sides" — in 
 other words, a rocket-driven submarine. Lincoln was interested. 
 Sending Plant to the Navy Ordnance Bureau, he asked Lieutenant 
 
178 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Wise to have ordnance officers look the model over. Presently word 
 came to Lincoln from the Navy's Board of Examiners that Plant's 
 vessel was "altogether speculative, and his explanations are not 
 such as to induce the Board to recommend it for adoption or even 
 for trial." 
 
 Plant lowered his sights. When next he appeared, it was with a 
 more modest device: a rocket-driven submarine torpedo. In Octo- 
 ber 1862 Assistant Secretary Fox (probably at Lincoln's request) 
 had Dahlgren make up two or three specimens. That December, 
 Fox and Secretary Welles watched two of the torpedoes fired from 
 a scow, lying about forty feet offshore from the Navy Yard. The 
 first rocket plunged into the mud and exploded with "quite a 
 shock." The second veered off suddenly at a sixty-degree angle and 
 struck the Diana, an unoffending little schooner anchored near by, 
 blowing up her bow and sinking her — fortunately, with no cas- 
 ualties. "The destructive properties of the rocket were certainly 
 proven," the Washington Star commented. So they were. And they 
 came near to being proven still more spectacularly, for had not the 
 Diana intervened, Plant's rocket would have run into the "large 
 and splendid steamer State of Georgia." As it was, Plant's sub- 
 marine rocket had become (so far as is known) the first self-pro- 
 pelled torpedo to sink a ship. 
 
 A month later another Plant rocket torpedo was fired with re- 
 sults less disastrous but nearly as picturesque. The thing darted 
 from the water like a flying fish about five feet from the boat, 
 touched the surface briefly about twenty feet out, soared into the 
 air, and finally plunged into the Anacostia about a hundred yards 
 away, leaving some bubbles and "a slight smoke." The Navy's in- 
 terest in Pascal Plant vanished like that smoke, and so, presum- 
 ably, did Abraham Lincoln's. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 14 
 
 The President Perseveres 
 
 Through it all, through the January 
 fogs and the mortar business, the Merrimac scare and the trouble 
 over Ripley, through all the whirring, darting distractions so neatly 
 pinned down and ticketed by his biographers, Lincoln held to his 
 resolve that the inventors should have from him what Ripley de- 
 nied them : a fair hearing and a chance to prove their claims. 
 
 The nearest he came to wavering was early in January 1862, on 
 one of those days of deepest frustration, when a pair of New York 
 Congressmen ushered Levi Short of Buffalo into the White House 
 and introduced him to Lincoln as the inventor of an incendiary 
 mixture called "Greek Fire." For once, Lincoln lost his temper 
 with an inventor. Less than three weeks before, Obadiah Hopkins 
 had tried to hoodwink him by bribing General Totten. Just a day 
 or two ago, a Federal gunboat had bombarded a rebel battery at 
 Cockpit Point with shells containing "a peculiar combustible ma- 
 terial" — which must have been more peculiar than combustible, for 
 it had no visible effect. After letting Congressmen Fenton and 
 Spaulding unburden their minds, Lincoln turned to Levi Short and 
 remarked witheringly that all the charlatans came to him with their 
 worthless inventions because they knew he could be easily imposed 
 on. "J u d& e y ou >" Short wrote later, " whether I winced under the 
 lash." 
 
 That was all. Lincoln recovered himself immediately, and as if 
 
 179 
 
180 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 conscience-stricken at his outburst, gave Short a note to Dahlgren, 
 asking that the inventor be given a chance to demonstrate his shell. 
 
 Incendiary weapons, of course, were not new to the world, nor 
 to Lincoln. The very name of Short's material, "Greek Fire," came 
 from the stuff Byzantine warriors had hurled at enemy ships hun- 
 dreds of years before. The year after Tom Lincoln married Nancy 
 Hanks, the British burned much of Copenhagen with incendiary 
 rockets; and in the Crimean War of the mid-fifties, as Lincoln must 
 have read in Wells's Annual of Scientific Discovery, the Russians 
 used incendiary projectiles against the French. As early as 1814, 
 Uriah Brown of Baltimore had successfully demonstrated his flame 
 thrower, which projected a stream of burning liquid from a 
 nozzle, before a "vast concourse" of citizens; he gave another spec- 
 tacular demonstration in the Treasury Park in 1847; and as we 
 have noted, Lincoln himself introduced Brown's last petition into 
 the House of Representatives in 1848.* 
 
 In 1 861, to be sure, General McClellan remarked that "such 
 means of destruction are hardly within the category of those recog- 
 nized in civilized warfare," but no one else on either side seems to 
 have shared his scruples at that time. When Ripley turned down an 
 offer of incendiary shells in May 1861, he did so not out of hu- 
 manitarianism but because the arsenals were too crowded. 
 
 Even before he met Levi Short, Lincoln had helped another in- 
 cendiary inventor, an old New Yorker named Robert L. Fleming, 
 who styled himself "General" and had long acted as agent on the 
 Pennsylvania lands of a wealthy New York businessman, William 
 E. Dodge of Phelps, Dodge and Company. In the spring of 1861 
 Fleming had come to Washington with letters of recommendation 
 from his influential employer, as well as from sundry politicians. 
 Nothing availed until he met Lincoln, who, in Fleming's words, 
 "granted me all the facilities I asked for the accomplishment of my 
 
 * At about that time, or shortly after, Levi Short worked on incendiary rockets 
 with one "Professor Brown of Cincinnati," who may or may not have been Uriah 
 Brown. 
 
THE PRESIDENT PERSEVERES l8l 
 
 object, which was to perfect my incendiary shell." A note survives 
 from Lincoln to Ramsay in October 1861 : 
 
 The bearer of this, well recommended to me, wishes you to fur- 
 nish him a few shells, and give him some assistance in filling them 
 according to his direction. He thinks he can make a very destructive 
 missile, and, if not too much trouble to you, I shall be obliged, if 
 you can accommodate him. 
 
 As for Short, Dahlgren did not obey Lincoln's note in the spirit 
 intended: the only gun he could or would spare was too small. So 
 on January 14, 1862, Lincoln arranged for a public demonstration 
 of Short's Greek Fire in the Treasury Park, "understanding that it 
 is the wish of several military gentlemen to witness a formal test 
 . . . and further understanding that it will not incur either expense 
 or inconvenience to the War Department." 
 
 In the Washington papers Short announced his device as "the 
 most perfect and terrible invention for destructive warfare known 
 to man," and promised that the shell would blanket the ground 
 over a radius of a hundred and fifty feet with fire which would 
 burn intensely for ten or twenty minutes. This sounded to Wash- 
 ingtonians like a great show; and when the time arrived, thousands 
 of them waited on the snow-covered White House lawn. Lincoln 
 probably watched from a White House window. The air was cold 
 and still, and the night sky crystal clear. 
 
 Unfortunately, a shipment of Greek Fire had been delayed 
 somewhere along the road from Buffalo. Short went ahead with 
 what he had. But although his shell "scattered fire which burned 
 upon the snow and ice several minutes," the shivering crowd was 
 not impressed. 
 
 A few days later, after the delayed shipment had arrived, Short 
 gave a second exhibition. This time a thick curtain of clouds 
 blacked out the stars. Again Lincoln watched, while two thirteen- 
 inch shells were exploded, each tossing fire forty or fifty feet in the 
 air and carpeting the ground over a fifty-foot radius with a blaze 
 that lasted ten minutes. The crowd was delighted. Next day, sec- 
 
182 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 onded by the two Senators from Kansas, Short offered Ripley two 
 thousand shells at $12 each, for use in plains warfare. But to the 
 great loss of today's technicolor Western movies, Ripley turned the 
 offer down, and Lincoln did not choose to overrule his irascible 
 Chief of Ordnance. On Ben Butler's invitation, Short headed for 
 New England, where he spread the light of progress over Boston 
 Common and sold the general a hundred of his shells for the New 
 Orleans expedition. 
 
 Lincoln's other incendiary protege, "General" Fleming, had 
 meanwhile struck an alliance with a Washingtonian who called 
 himself Dr. J. Rutherford Worster. 
 
 "Dr." Worster had given "Electrical Baths" to rundown Con- 
 gressmen until his rooms in the Capitol basement were taken over in 
 1 86 1 for use as Army bakeries. Undaunted, he set up shop at his 
 home on Tenth Street nearly opposite Ford's new theater, and be- 
 gan treating all known diseases with his "Electro-Magnetic In- 
 sulators, Rejuvenating Elixir, Cough Syrups, Stomachic- Vegetable 
 Electric, and many other things, preventive and preservative." 
 Whatever the virtues of his elixirs, Worster himself was a likable 
 man, highly spoken of by Western Congressmen especially, who 
 may conceivably have profited from his nineteenth-century version 
 of the shock treatment. To his contemporaries the pious old fraud 
 was "a highly respectable citizen" and "the worthy Dr. J. R. Wor- 
 ster." 
 
 The "worthy Doctor" even claimed acquaintance with Abraham 
 Lincoln. If he did know Lincoln, it was probably not through 
 "Electrical Baths," but through Worster' s son James, who moved 
 to Bloomington, Illinois, a year or two before the war. In the fall 
 of i860 Worster wrote Lincoln a couple of letters on trends in 
 capital politics. "I have nothing to ask at your hands," Worster as- 
 sured the Republican candidate. "I am perfectly unharnessed & in- 
 dependent if not a 'railsplitter.' I am a very hardworking man, & 
 drink no whiskey." (He said nothing of Rejuvenating Elixir, or 
 other things preventive and preservative. ) 
 
THE PRESIDENT PERSEVERES 183 
 
 By the winter of 1 861-1862 Worster had become Robert 
 Fleming's manager, ghost writer and press agent. His ornate style 
 — he called falling leaves "autumnal defoliation" — flavored the 
 advertisements which announced a Treasury Park demonstration 
 on March 13 of "Gen. Fleming's wonderfully destructive Shell, 
 and its tremendous power, one of the most remarkable discoveries 
 of the age." Lincoln and his Cabinet, as well as Congressmen, Sen- 
 ators, the press and "a little million of good Union ladies," were 
 all expected to be on hand. 
 
 Curiously, in view of the advance publicity, not a word of the 
 exhibition appeared afterward. 
 
 While Dr. Worster bustled about his business, the war claimed 
 his son James. After enlisting as a private in the 3rd Illinois Cav- 
 alry, young Worster, praised by his colonel as "active, intelligent, 
 obedient and untiring," had risen rapidly to become regimental 
 sergeant major. At Pea Ridge, Arkansas, on March 7 Sergeant 
 Worster, then acting as a courier, saw a caisson about to be aban- 
 doned. He sprang from his horse, ran forward and was struggling 
 to get the caisson away when the rebels overran the position and 
 put a bullet through his head. He left a wife and son in Bloom- 
 ington. 
 
 Young Worster 's death brought about his father's meeting with 
 Lincoln. Only two weeks before young Worster died, Lincoln had 
 lost his own son Willie. It had been a fearful blow to his spirit. 
 When the sorrowing Dr. Worster asked for a pass through the 
 lines so that he might recover his son's body, Lincoln gave him a 
 note: "I shall be pleased for the Military authorities to give Dr. 
 Worster, any facilities they consistently can, in furtherence of his 
 object expressed within." And the authorities complied, of course, 
 with Lincoln's request, although the outcome of the doctor's search 
 is not recorded. 
 
 By then, another breech-loading cannon had captured Lincoln's 
 interest. 
 
 This one, invented by William F. Goodwin of Powhattan, Ohio, 
 
184 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 had its breech piece hitched to the gun by two arms, like the shafts 
 of a wagon. When swung up to close the breech, the concave inner 
 surface fitted snugly against the butt end of the gun. In the breech 
 piece was a firing pin which, when released by a trigger, detonated 
 a percussion cap on the end of the cartridge. 
 
 Coming to Washington in March 1862, Goodwin found that he 
 could not get his gun looked at, let alone tested. He hunted up 
 Senator "Bluff Ben" Wade of Ohio, and matters began to move. 
 Wade pressed Stanton, Stanton gave orders to Ripley, and the gun 
 was promptly inspected. According to the National Intelligencer, 
 moreover, it was examined and fired "by President Lincoln, officers 
 of the ordnance department and others, and very uniformly pro- 
 nounced a simple, efficient, and entirely successful breech-loader." 
 The specimen Lincoln fired was tricked out with a shield to protect 
 the gunners and "turn back minie bullets upon the infantry send- 
 ing them," as well as "a system of sword bayonets further to pro- 
 tect gunners against a charge of infantry." Goodwin claimed his 
 gun could fire twenty-five times a minute; but with such accessories, 
 this would seem superfluous. 
 
 Toward the end of April, Lincoln and Wade jointly requested 
 quick action on Goodwin's patent application; and the patent was 
 issued in May. It seems, however, that Goodwin owed his rapid 
 progress to Lincoln's influence, for when that pressure relaxed, 
 Goodwin's gun was forgotten. Late in the war, Goodwin was still 
 trying vainly to sell the government a battery of four 10-pounders. 
 
 Even before Goodwin's patent came out, the Cincinnati Breech- 
 loading Cannon was back in Washington. This time its sponsor was 
 not the eccentric lawyer Walter Sherwin, but a Cincinnati go-getter 
 named James C. C. Holenshade. 
 
 Born of Scotch- Irish parents, Holenshade had gone to work at 
 the age of seven, educated himself by a course of reading, made his 
 fortune in the hardware business and retired to his fruit farm in 
 i860, aged thirty-two. The war lured him away from the fruits of 
 his toil. When the first call for army wagons came, Holenshade bid 
 
THE PRESIDENT PERSEVERES 185 
 
 for and won the contract, quite undeterred by his total ignorance of 
 wagon making. Presently he had several hundred men turning out 
 wagons at the rate of two an hour, and his new business flourished 
 through the war. Although draft-exempt on physical grounds, 
 Holenshade furnished four substitutes. This seems a fair equiva- 
 lent, for besides his other interests he was active in the Odd Fel- 
 lows, the Masons, the Presbyterian church and the Cincinnati Fire 
 Department. He was also a prime mover in Cincinnati's great Sani- 
 tary Fair. And at some point in the winter of 1 861- 1862, he took 
 over the promotion of the Cincinnati Breech-loading Cannon. 
 
 When Holenshade arrived in Washington, he brought no mere 
 model, but a full-sized bronze 6-pounder; and Lincoln promptly 
 arranged for a trial at the Navy Yard on May 3. It turned out to be 
 a fine spring Saturday, mild and clear, which may explain why a 
 sizable crowd, including Senators and Representatives, showed up 
 at the yard. What with the crinoline hoop skirts, the parasols, the 
 Senatorial watch chains and string ties, the antics of the small boys 
 who were doubtless on hand and the tall figure of President Lincoln, 
 the event must have had a holiday air. 
 
 But the day brought little joy to Holenshade. To begin with, the 
 primers were too tight, and so Holenshade had to enlarge the vent. 
 Because of the tight primers, he had spent two minutes firing the 
 first ten shots, which were supposed to demonstrate the gun's 
 rapidity. Given another chance, he fired ten blank cartridges in one 
 minute — but two primers failed, and a premature turn of the cyl- 
 inder sliced one cartridge in half. Two rounds were then fired with 
 solid shot. On the next round, the cartridge was again cut in two, 
 and the upper half got stuck in the breech opening. The gun's 
 breech mechanism seemed to be acting more like a meat grinder 
 than a spigot. Red-faced, Holenshade shoved the half cartridge 
 down into the chamber, and loaded another cartridge. When that 
 heavy charge went off, the crowd was startled to see the trail leap 
 from its rest. 
 
 Now the gun had to be got back into place. One can imagine the 
 restless crowd, the quizzical President and the sweating proprietor 
 
186 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 struggling to make his gun behave. Despite Holenshade's efforts, 
 affairs grew worse and worse. Bits of the chewed-up cartridges be- 
 gan working round in back of the cylinder and jamming the mech- 
 anism. It took Holenshade a minute and a half to fire the next five 
 rounds, and the fifth cartridge was cut in half. Then the gun re- 
 fused to work at all. Feverishly, Holenshade took the gun apart and 
 put it together again, while the crowd murmured and the President 
 cooled his heels. 
 
 The rest of the trial was supposed to prove Holenshade's claim 
 that he had "the only gun in the world as yet revealed that can be 
 limbered up & fired upon retreat" — certainly an appropriate mo- 
 ment for the demonstration. Horses were hitched up to the balky 
 gun and started off at a funereal walk while five rounds of blanks 
 were fired. At the third round, two men were needed to move the 
 cylinder. 
 
 Perhaps Lincoln, who knew his Hamlet well, found the dismal 
 cortege wryly suggestive of that tragedy's closing: 
 
 Go, bid the soldiers shoot. [A dead march. Exeunt, bearing 
 off the bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.'] 
 
 If the trial of May 3, 1862, did little to sustain Lincoln's faith 
 in breech-loading cannon, at least he knew by then that he had been 
 right about rifled cannon. 
 
 Fort Pulaski, the chief defense of Savannah, Georgia, had been 
 a huge brick pentagon, casemated on all sides with walls seven and 
 a half feet thick, squatting grimly on the flat marsh of Cockspur 
 Island, surrounded by broad, deep channels, and at least a mile 
 from the nearest firm ground. Said General Totten: "the work 
 could not be reduced in a month's firing with any number of guns 
 of manageable calibers." 
 
 Union troops under the direction of Colonel Quincy Adams 
 Gillmore, a brash Buckeye with no respect for his elder's opinion, 
 set up some Parrott and James rifles on Tybee Island, and the im- 
 pregnable walls of Fort Pulaski were presently dissolving in puffs 
 
THE PRESIDENT PERSEVERES 187 
 
 of yellow dust. When the rebel colors fluttered down on the after- 
 noon of April n, 1862, the fort looked like a sand castle kicked by 
 a passing giant. 
 
 After that, no one doubted the power of rifled cannon, or their 
 superiority over smoothbores for long range bombardment. 
 
 Scores of inventors now busied themselves with variations on the 
 rifling of cannon. One of them was John B. Atwater, a theater 
 manager from Ripon, Wisconsin, who, in the month Fort Pulaski 
 fell, interested Lincoln in his system. In rifling, the ridges separat- 
 ing the grooves are called "lands." Atwater's idea was to cut some 
 of these lands short before they reached the muzzle, on the theory 
 that after a certain point they cost more by friction than they con- 
 tributed to spinning the shell. Lincoln ordered a trial of Atwater's 
 system at the Washington Arsenal in comparison with a conven- 
 tionally rifled gun. The comparison was not made, and there is no 
 written evidence that Lincoln did any more for Atwater. Yet the 
 inventor was treated with unusual consideration by both ordnance 
 bureaus for many months thereafter. In the end, his idea came to 
 nothing. 
 
 Their success at Fort Pulaski had insured the fame of Robert P. 
 Parrott's rifled cannon; and on June 24, 1862, after a conference 
 with General Winfield Scott at West Point, New York, Lincoln 
 paid a visit to Parrott's Cold Spring Foundry, three miles away. 
 Rain fell in torrents that summer afternoon, and West Point wal- 
 lowed in mud; but Lincoln was always ready to look at guns and the 
 making of guns. He saw plenty at Cold Spring. A few days later, 
 a visitor wrote: 
 
 The Foundry is in full blast with everything in the ordnance 
 line. One can hardly worm his way through the piles of shot and 
 shell for rifles; and the machine shop, foundry, and boring mill 
 contain nothing but rifled Parrotts of all sizes. Wonderful place. 
 
 At the proving grounds, Lincoln watched 100-pounder and 200- 
 pounder Parrott rifles hurl their heavy shells thousands of yards 
 through a gap in the highlands to the precipitous banks of "Crows 
 
188 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Nest," while the deep clamor of gunfire echoed back from the hills 
 like the roar of a great battle. Afterward, he tramped delightedly 
 about the plant, regardless of mud and rain. Raised a few inches 
 from the ground on sleepers were bars of iron four inches square 
 and sixty feet long, ready to be heated red-hot and coiled around 
 mandrels by machinery. Near by, Lincoln saw these coiled bars 
 welded by a great trip hammer, turned down, reheated and shrunk 
 onto guns — forming the bands which were the trademark of the 
 Parrotts. His face felt the heat and dazzle of the foundry where the 
 guns were cast. He looked on as they were bored, rifled, turned and 
 polished. And in still another building he watched workmen turn 
 out Parrott shells, distinguished by the brass expanding ring for 
 taking the rifle grooves. Before Lincoln left Cold Spring, he had 
 seen about all there was to see in the making of rifled cannon. 
 
 That night he took the train for Washington, and three days 
 later Parrott shipped the proved guns to McClellan's army as it 
 fought bloodily near Richmond. 
 
 In his twenty-five years as a small-town lawyer, not to mention 
 his fourteen months thus far as President, Abraham Lincoln had 
 encountered some unsavory individuals (we have already men- 
 tioned Obadiah Hopkins, the would-be briber; Benjamin Severson, 
 the ingrate; and Edward Wilder, the suspected traitor). Few, how- 
 ever, could have surpassed the inventor who showed Lincoln a 
 breech-loading carbine on May 5, 1862, two days after the Holen- 
 shade trial. 
 
 His name was Strong, and so was his personality. The latter, in 
 fact, once inspired a government blacksmith to a flight of genuine 
 eloquence. "I have looked for a similar character among living 
 men," declaimed the smith, "but have found none — in the history 
 of the dead, but found none. I believe there was but one such made, 
 and that he is entirely original. . . . Sixteen months acquaintance 
 with Samuel Strong has failed to present to my mind anything 
 lovely, anything reverential, anything worthy of imitation, save his 
 perseverance." General Montgomery Meigs later put the case more 
 
THE PRESIDENT PERSEVERES 189 
 
 delicately when he remarked: "It has happened to me never to hear 
 him well spoken of." 
 
 Samuel Strong had been a contractor and petty Whig politician 
 who for thirty years had developed and refined his rascality in pub- 
 lic construction for New York State. When the death of Zachary 
 Taylor made Millard Fillmore President in 185 1, Fillmore ap- 
 pointed his fellow New Yorker superintendent of work on the new 
 Capitol extension. Here was a happy hunting ground. Several 
 months later, a special committee of the Senate, braving the thugs 
 Strong hired to assault its members, reported that Strong, literally 
 under the eyes of Congress, had pocketed between a third and a 
 half of the million dollars spent on the building. Yet Strong some- 
 how escaped punishment. Not only that, but by hastily resigning, he 
 even robbed Congress of the power to dismiss him. 
 
 Perseverance is a mighty virtue, and Samuel Strong prospered. 
 By 1 86 1, after a stay in California, where he mined the state treas- 
 ury in preference to the Sierras, he was back in Washington and 
 getting chatty letters from Horace Greeley. In the capital he was 
 still "a well-known citizen," but not universally beloved — or so we 
 may presume from the fact that "two Irishmen," one with a knife, 
 attacked him on Capitol Hill in January 1862. We may also deduce 
 something about Strong's temperament from the fact that he beat 
 them off, despite his age.* Still more suggestive is an item in the 
 Star some months later. As Strong walked home after dark, "he 
 was suddenly attacked by two stout young men, who seized him by 
 the throat and tried to rob him. Mr. Strong was armed with a light 
 walking stick, and with it he defended himself as he best could, 
 and finally managed to rid himself of his villainous enemies; not, 
 however, until he was badly bruised about his body and head. The 
 robbers tried to jerk his watch from his pocket; but the breaking of 
 the chain disappointed them, and they failed to get in his pockets, 
 although they several times made the attempt." 
 
 This was the doughty rapscallion who presented his breech- 
 loading carbine to Lincoln's attention that May. Whatever might 
 
 * He must have been well past sixty. 
 
190 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 be said about the man, his gun was not bad. Lincoln looked it over 
 carefully. A lever at the side pulled back the movable chamber, 
 which ended in a thin steel cylinder, intended as a gas check. A cam 
 action brought the chamber into position to receive a .54-caliber 
 paper cartridge. The lever then restored the chamber to firing posi- 
 tion. 
 
 "This," Lincoln wrote to Ripley, "will introduce to you Mr. 
 Strong who has what appears to me an ingenious and useful car- 
 bine. Will you be good enough to examine it and give an opinion 
 as to its serviceability." 
 
 Ripley replied that two of his officers had already looked at the 
 gun and, while admitting it to be "novel and ingenious," had con- 
 cluded that it was no better than other breechloaders. "I avail my- 
 self of this opportunity," the Chief of Ordnance added waspishly, 
 "to inform your Excellency that there are several kinds of breech- 
 loading arms, at present, used in the service; and in consequence of 
 the confusion and inconvenience arising therefrom, particularly in 
 supplying ammunition, I do not deem it advisable to increase their 
 number." 
 
 Disregarding this latest homily, Lincoln had Captain Crispin try 
 Strong's carbine at New York. Early in June, Crispin reported that 
 on the ninth round of rapid firing, a cartridge had exploded pre- 
 maturely. Furthermore, escape of gas from the breech was visible 
 immediately. Crispin admitted that the gun's mechanism was sim- 
 ple and had not fouled during the eighty rounds fired. But he 
 feared that rust, especially, would be apt to disable the gun in the 
 field. 
 
 Strong, persevering as ever, buckled down to work and a year 
 later came up with a new breechloader, using .58-caliber copper 
 cartridges and specially designed to meet Crispin's objections. Ram- 
 say tried it out at the arsenal and gave it lukewarm approval. But it 
 was not adopted. 
 
 The Commissioner of Public Buildings, a stout, bustling, side- 
 whiskered Washingtonian named Benjamin B. French, had many 
 
THE PRESIDENT PERSEVERES 191 
 
 friends in the capital, including "honest old Abe, who calls me 
 Trench' and always tells me a story when I go to talk with him." 
 He also knew a New Yorker named Samuel Gardiner, Jr., whose 
 current pursuit, by our lights, was not so amiable. Gardiner had in- 
 vented a time-fused explosive bullet. 
 
 "Rifle shells," as they were sometimes called, were nothing new. 
 The British used them to explode ammunition wagons during the 
 Indian Mutiny of 1857, and a textbook used at West Point during 
 the Civil War gave directions for making "percussion bullets" in- 
 tended to "blow up caissons, and boxes containing ammunition, at 
 very long distances." Private letters and postwar reminiscences, 
 which could not have been meant for propaganda, describe en- 
 counters with rebel explosive bullets in most of the major battles 
 during and after 1862. Jefferson Davis and his Chief of Ordnance 
 furiously denied in later years that their government had ever 
 made, bought, or issued explosive bullets; but they were careful not 
 to speak for the state governments of the Confederacy, all of which 
 provided arms for their troops at one time or another. 
 
 Davis's vehemence is understandable. It was all very well to talk 
 of blowing up ammunition wagons, but such bullets were bound to 
 lodge in human flesh now and then, by accident or intent; and 
 when they did, the results were horrible. "To my dying day," wrote 
 a New York Tribune correspondent on the last day of May 1862, 
 "I shall have in my ears the wailing shrieks of a private of the 1st 
 Long Island, shot dead beside my horse with a percussion musket- 
 ball, whose explosion within its wound I distinctly heard." 
 
 Three days after that incident, French and his friend Gardiner 
 called on Lincoln with a sample bullet and fragments of exploded 
 ones. Lincoln scrutinized the Gardiner "musket shell" with care. 
 Inside, there was a copper chamber filled with fulminate. From the 
 chamber a time fuse ran out through a tube in the base of the shell. 
 Externally, except for the short projecting tube, the bullet looked 
 much like the Minie ball. The time fuse could be fixed to run from 
 one to three seconds after firing. Gardiner's purpose in using that, 
 rather than a percussion fuse, was to make transport safer and to 
 
192 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 permit the bullet to penetrate deep within a caisson or ammunition 
 chest before exploding. 
 
 According to French, Lincoln seemed to think the bullets "were 
 an improvement on solid shot." He gave the two men a note: 
 "Will Gen. Ripley please consider whether this Musket-shell, 
 would be a valuable missile in battle?" 
 
 Through French's influence with Assistant Secretary Watson, the 
 bullet had already been tested by Captain Benet at West Point. 
 Benet had made no generalizations, but his report showed that the 
 bullets tended to burst open in one piece, rather than shatter into 
 fragments. After getting Lincoln's note, Ripley now asked Benet 
 to give his over-all judgment of the bullet. Pointing out that a fixed 
 time fuse was impracticable with varying ranges, and that a Minie 
 bullet would put a man out of action just as surely and less brutally, 
 the captain declared emphatically that the shell had "no merit as a 
 service projectile." 
 
 That report ended Lincoln's part in the affair, but, as we shall 
 see, not the story of the Gardiner shell. 
 
 Looking back over the first six months of 1862, we become 
 aware that the pattern of 1861 had changed. In Lincoln's dealings 
 with inventors we still see the same lively interest in new weapons 
 — Severson's, Plant's, Pierce's, Gardiner's — and the same "cham- 
 pagne experiments," such as those for Short, Fleming, Goodwin, 
 Holenshade, Atwater, Strong. But we encounter no such cases as 
 those of the Marsh and the Spencer breechloaders, the Woodruff 
 and Ellsworth cannon, or the coffee-mill machine guns, in which 
 Lincoln, on his own responsibility, ordered the actual purchase of 
 new weapons. 
 
 Why was this? So far as we know, Lincoln never set forth his 
 reasons for the change. We may therefore only speculate. It was not 
 that he saw no weapon worth ordering; the Goodwin cannon 
 seemed to please everyone but Ripley. Nor had he suddenly grown 
 apprehensive of charlatans, despite his remark to Levi Short in 
 January, for he listened willingly enough to J. Rutherford Worster 
 
THE PRESIDENT PERSEVERES 193 
 
 and Samuel Strong. If he already thought the war too far advanced 
 for conversion to new weapons, he would have abandoned his 
 "champagne experiments"; but he did not do so. We are left with 
 the theory that before ordering any more new weapons, Lincoln 
 wanted to see what would come of those he had already bought. 
 If this was so, he had not long to wait. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 15 
 
 Trial by Combat 
 
 When 1862 began, a grim-faced, indomi- 
 table Pennsylvanian named John W. Geary had already been the 
 first American commander of the City of Mexico under General 
 Scott, the first mayor of San Francisco, and the governor of Kansas 
 Territory. Before he died, he would become military governor of 
 Savannah, Georgia, and the twice-elected governor of Pennsylvania. 
 To this unparalleled catalogue of distinctions, he was now about to 
 add that of commanding the first regiment ever to fire machine guns 
 in action. For it was on January 2, 1862, that Colonel Geary received 
 two "Union Repeating Guns" from Paymaster Stebbins of the 
 Washington Arsenal. 
 
 There is no mystery about the choice of Colonel Geary and his 
 28th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment for the job of trying out 
 Lincoln's coffee-mill guns. Geary and his men were guarding a 
 twenty-four mile stretch of the Potomac River; and although the re- 
 frain "All quiet along the Potomac" was becoming a byword and a 
 mockery in the impatient North, frequent skirmishes occurred to 
 enliven the Pennsylvanians' tour of duty. In one of these brushes, 
 presumably, some rebel soldier shortly became the first machine-gun 
 casualty of all time. Since the coffee-mill guns fired regulation Minie 
 balls, the Confederate thus honored was unaware of his distinction; 
 and so his name is lost to history. Perhaps the place was Harper's 
 
 194 
 
TRIAL BY COMBAT 195 
 
 Ferry; for when McClellan's Army of the Potomac crossed into Vir- 
 ginia at that point in February, Geary's 28th took the lead, holding 
 the town and the bridgehead. 
 
 As spring gentled the Virginia landscape, Geary and his men 
 pushed cautiously westward with their machine guns toward the 
 Shenandoah Valley, beautiful as its name. On March 29 they 
 reached the outskirts of Middleburg, a quiet town containing three 
 churches, seven stores, an academy, a tobacco factory and a few score 
 houses. On that spring day Middleburg also harbored Confederate 
 cavalry and infantry. An uproar of musketry broke in on the town's 
 somnolence; the rebel pickets fell back; and there was fighting in 
 the streets. Covered by their cavalry, the Confederate forces began 
 pulling out of the town. "The enemy made a halt in a hollow beyond 
 the town," reported a Washington Star correspondent. "Companies 
 of the 28th now opened on them from behind stone fences with 
 their rifles, when the cavalry dashed off precipitately." So much for 
 the Battle of Middleburg. 
 
 And what did the Star man say of machine guns in this, their first 
 pitched battle? Not a word, for the same reason that no press reports 
 went out from Hodgenville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. It 
 was a historic event which no one present recognized. All we have 
 by which to identify the modern machine gun's baptism of fire with 
 fair certainty is a chance remark dropped by one Captain Bartlett 
 during a discussion at Cooper Institute in New York about four 
 weeks later. "One of these guns," he said, referring to the coffee 
 mills, "was brought to bear on a squadron of cavalry at 800 yards, 
 and it cut them to pieces terribly, quickly forcing them to fly." Only 
 the action at Middleburg fits this picture; and it was the only pitched 
 battle fought by Geary's men while they had the guns. 
 
 Now the anticlimax. On April 23 Colonel Geary shipped his two 
 machine guns back to Washington, tersely reporting that after "re- 
 peated trials" they had been found "inefficient, and unsafe to the 
 operators." Geary's guns were from the first lot of ten bought by 
 Lincoln; and since these had been made by Woodward and Cox, we 
 may guess at shoddy workmanship. General Ripley did not choose 
 
196 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 to ask for more particulars, not being the man to look a gift horse in 
 the mouth. 
 
 Ripley presently found a use for Colonel Geary's report. 
 
 Abolitionist pressure had forced Lincoln to give General Fre- 
 mont a new command : the Mountain Department, embracing west- 
 ern Virginia. Three days after Geary's report, an exchange of tele- 
 grams occurred between Fremont and Ripley that must have un- 
 settled Ripley's disposition for the rest of the day. 
 
 Fremont to Ripley: 
 
 Our experiments here with the Union repeating gun are satisfac- 
 tory. Can you spare and will you send immediately sixteen (16) 
 with equipments & full supply of ammunition for this Dep't by 
 way of Pittsburg . . . Will send copy of report. 
 
 Ripley to Fremont: 
 
 Telegram received — Have no Union repeating guns on hand, 
 and am not aware that any have been ordered. 
 
 Fremont to Ripley: 
 
 Upon the nineteenth of December on recommendation of Genl 
 McClellan the President ordered fifty of the Coffee Mill or Union 
 guns. Was there not some error of name in my dispatch. 
 
 There was, of course, no error in the dispatch received at the 
 Ordnance Office; Ripley had simply lied and been caught at it. 
 Neither was an answer possible to Fremont's second wire; and 
 Ripley made none. After a few days, realizing that he would get 
 nowhere with the Chief of Ordnance, Fremont took the matter up 
 with Lincoln himself. On May 15 Lincoln sent to Ripley for "Gen. 
 Fremont's original requisition for 'Coffee Mill Guns.' ' 
 
 This put Ripley in a corner, but the old man worked out of it 
 neatly if not altogether honorably. 
 
 At the moment, Stonewall Jackson was giving Fremont all the 
 
TRIAL BY COMBAT 197 
 
 trouble he could handle and a good deal more besides. This gave 
 Ripley a free hand. Apparently he took his cue from Lincoln's fail- 
 ure to ask for Fremont's report along with Fremont's requisition. 
 Ripley therefore withheld Fremont's report and substituted Geary's. 
 More than that, the fact that an unrelated document of that period 
 was given the file number originally assigned to Fremont's report, 
 and the fact that the latter is no longer to be found in Ordnance 
 Office files, inspire the ugly suspicion that Ripley removed the 
 Fremont report permanently from the files. 
 
 After Jackson finished with Fremont in June, the beaten Path- 
 finder on his own responsibility ordered two coffee-mill guns from 
 Woodward and Cox at the steep price of $1 500 each. He never had 
 a chance to use them; for a few days later, he was placed under the 
 upstart John Pope, and, piqued by the slight, he quit the Army. 
 
 So far as the records show, Fremont never got the sixteen ma- 
 chine guns he had requisitioned in April. Yet, we may wonder. For 
 at Harper's Ferry in September, from troops which had been part 
 of Fremont's command, Stonewall Jackson captured what the Rich- 
 mond Enquirer described as "17 revolving guns." 
 
 The same Harper's Ferry surrender that gave Stonewall Jackson 
 his "17 revolving guns" gives us a clue to the fate of the Ellsworth 
 guns, those "little breech-loading cannons" Lincoln had "got of 
 Hon. Eli Thayer." 
 
 To the surprise of Colonel Ramsay, General Fremont asked for 
 the Ellsworth guns in the spring of 1862; and all twenty of them, 
 gleaming with oil and varnish, were accordingly sent off to the 
 Shenandoah Valley. As already noted, they failed to stop Stonewall 
 Jackson. During Jackson's siege of the Harper's Ferry garrison, 
 Captain Acorn of the 12th New York militia took "a detachment 
 of Fremont's, more familiarly known as 'jackass' guns," to Mary- 
 land Heights, where they rendered "valuable assistance." From 
 "Ellsworth" to "jackass" is quite a comedown; but the New York 
 Times listed the guns as twelve two-inch rifles, close enough to sug- 
 gest their identity. Whatever they were,, the rebels had them now. 
 
198 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Somewhere in the service were two other Ellsworth guns, bought 
 by General Butler in January. But they made no name for them- 
 selves. By 1863 all the Ellsworth guns had vanished into limbo or 
 Dixie. 
 
 Fremont must have got his first lone coffee-mill gun from J. D. 
 Mills, that merchant of death with the impenetrable initials — else 
 how could the general have known so much about Lincoln's ord- 
 nance transactions? At any rate, Mills remained active in promot- 
 ing the coffee-mill guns. 
 
 After the mainspring broke in General Butler's coffee-mill gun, 
 Mills dropped Woodward and Cox as manufacturers. Instead, he 
 and his associates organized the American Arms Company of New 
 York City, a joint-stock association of which Lewis Carr was presi- 
 dent, Mills secretary and Frederick Avery treasurer. By April 1862 
 the company was well along on Lincoln's second order, the one for 
 fifty guns. 
 
 McClellan had at last transferred the Army of the Potomac by 
 water to Fortress Monroe, whence he was to make a lumbering 
 drive up the Peninsula toward Richmond. Colonel Charles H. Van 
 Wyck's 56th New York Volunteers were on the point of sailing 
 for the Peninsula; and when Van Wyck heard about the marvelous 
 new weapons being turned out at 498 Broadway, he applied di- 
 rect to Avery for one. The transaction was an irregular one. If Gen- 
 eral Ripley should happen to have the final say, the company would 
 be left to whistle for its money. But Van Wyck was a Congressman 
 and a frequent visitor to the White House, and if the gun pleased 
 Van Wyck, the President would very likely hear about it. Avery 
 decided to take the chance and give Van Wyck his gun. 
 
 Meanwhile, McClellan had unhappily discovered that the War- 
 wick River ran squarely athwart his line of march, instead of down 
 the Peninsula as shown on the maps. Being McClellan, he halted 
 his splendid army and settled down to a leisurely siege. The the- 
 atrics of "Prince John" Magruder and a handful of defenders in 
 Yorktown kept the Army of the Potomac fussily immobile for a 
 
TRIAL BY COMBAT 199 
 
 month. Van Wyck's regiment arrived with its coffee-mill gun in 
 plenty of time to take its place on the left flank of the siege line, in 
 the vicinity of Warwick Court House, which consisted of a one- 
 story courthouse, a one-room jail and three houses. 
 
 The regiment was still there four days later on April 21, fretting 
 in the marshes, when a correspondent of the New York Evening 
 Post toured its lines and came away to write the earliest known 
 eyewitness account of a machine gun in action. "At this time," the 
 Post man reported, "a novel kind of weapon was brought into 
 service. It consists of a large-sized rifle with a hopper and machin- 
 ery at the breach, which loads and fires by turning a crank one hun- 
 dred and seventy times in a few seconds. In fact, it is one continu- 
 ous discharge. The balls flew thick and fast, and the Yankee inven- 
 tion must have astonished the other side. There are some half- 
 dozen of these guns in the division on trial, and if we may believe 
 our eyes while watching the effect, they are entitled to consider- 
 ation." 
 
 The air grew heavy with the smell of spring in a wet country, 
 and one day early in May the army realized that the rebels had 
 abandoned Yorktown. Up and after them it rumbled, and Van 
 Wyck's regiment with it. But not the coffee-mill gun. For some un- 
 known reason, that stayed behind, to be incorporated into the Fed- 
 eral defenses of Yorktown. 
 
 Others came to take its place in the field, twenty of them alto- 
 gether by late May. Not all were from Lincoln's two orders. Gov- 
 ernor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania, whose zeal for new weapons 
 approached Lincoln's, had already begun to supply the guns to the 
 troops from his state. "I understand that every Pennsylvania regi- 
 ment in the service is to have them," a private of the 83rd wrote 
 to his sister on June 10. "All the Pennsylvania regiments near here 
 have them." Of all the artillery on either side, he thought his regi- 
 ment's coffee-mill gun "the greatest one yet. ... It is a curious 
 Yankee contrivance. It makes a noise like the dogs of war let loose. 
 Don't you think one of those coffee mills would "weed out' a secesh 
 regiment about as quickly as any tools they have?" 
 
200 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 In a brisk action at Golding's Farm on the morning of June 28, 
 "our coffee mill guns did good work," wrote the historian of the 
 49th Pennsylvania. "George Wills, of Company D, was hurt in the 
 thigh with one of these guns, but the old mule brought the gun and 
 Wills out." His thigh wound made George Wills the first identi- 
 fiable machine gunner. 
 
 Thus far the coffee-mill guns had pleased the press, the politi- 
 cians and the privates (if we attribute George Wills's wound to 
 enemy action and not to an accident with his gun ) . Unfortunately, 
 there was dissent from the upper ranks. Colonel C. E. Pratt of the 
 31st New York had a coffee-mill gun in his regiment and found 
 the weapon "very defective in several particulars." Colonel Kings- 
 bury, the chief ordnance officer of the army, thought the guns' 
 performance "not equal to the results obtained at the Washington 
 Arsenal." Both shared Colonel Geary's tantalizing stinginess with 
 particulars. A test of the gun at the Washington Navy Yard some 
 months later, however, showed excessive escape of gas from the 
 breech and an occasional failure to feed cartridges. There also seem 
 to have been some fears, happily never realized, that a backfire 
 from the breech would set off the cartridges in the hopper. 
 
 As for the causes of the trouble, Colonel Kingsbury blamed "in- 
 ferior workmanship," and Frederick Avery charged "improper 
 usage & neglect." General Ripley did not trouble to speculate — 
 enough for him that the guns had gone wrong. 
 
 When McClellan's Richmond campaign reached its bitter end 
 early in July, the American Arms Company had delivered the last 
 of Lincoln's fifty-gun order; and despite Ripley's opposition, Lin- 
 coln ordered their bill to be paid. 
 
 Lincoln did not forget the fiery trials of January. Early in April 
 he wired McClellan: "If you wish anything from Mr. Short in the 
 way of fire shells or the like, telegraph to the Department or to me 
 designating what it is." McClellan put aside his earlier qualms 
 about the morality of fire shells; and by the end of the month at 
 least thirty-three 100-pounder shells had arrived at the depot near 
 
TRIAL BY COMBAT 201 
 
 Yorktown. But for unspecified reasons most were turned back un- 
 used to the arsenal at Fortress Monroe. 
 
 That same month, Lincoln had Captain Benet try Fleming's in- 
 cendiary compound at West Point. Benet reported vividly and at 
 length, recommending that Fleming's shells be tried in the field. 
 On the strength of this, Lincoln authorized Fleming and Worster 
 to test their wares on Lee's army and saw to it, in spite of Ripley, 
 that the War Department paid for the materials. 
 
 When Fleming and his crony debarked at Fortress Monroe with 
 ten barrels of incendiary fluid, it was late June, and McClellan's 
 Richmond campaign was entering its bloody climax in the Battles 
 of the Seven Days. Sped by the blows of Lee and Jackson, McClel- 
 lan had resolved on a massive change of base from the Pamunkey 
 to the James. Fleming and Worster arrived at the doomed base to 
 find it "in a state of unprecedented excitement — everything in con- 
 fusion. . . . Immense quantities of goods were prepared in ponder- 
 ous piles for the flames on the first approach of the enemy, mo- 
 mentarily expected." The two elderly eccentrics wandered through 
 scenes of gargantuan destruction, dazedly trying to sell incendiary 
 fluid while fire raged on every hand. At last, after being shunted 
 from one harassed officer to another, Fleming retreated sick and 
 disconsolate to New York, while his partner resumed the peddling 
 of panaceas in Washington. 
 
 Fleming's ten barrels of incendiary fluid remained at the Fortress 
 Monroe Arsenal until the officer in charge, conscious of the hazard, 
 complained to General Ripley, who then had them decently buried. 
 
 Meanwhile, with characteristic resilience, James Holenshade re- 
 turned to the attack. After tinkering with his Cincinnati Breech- 
 loading Cannon until its flaws had been corrected, he saw Lincoln 
 again, and through him was given another trial in June at the Navy 
 Yard. This time, things went more smoothly, and Lincoln had still 
 another trial made at the arsenal. Now it was only the weight of the 
 gun to which the Army and Navy objected. 
 
 At this point Lincoln decided on a move he had not made since 
 
202 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 1 86 1. Ripley flatly refused to take the responsibility for ordering 
 breech-loading cannon into the Army, but Lincoln stood ready to 
 assume it himself. More than that, he set no limit on the size of the 
 order. All he required was a formal request from Major General 
 John Pope, the bombastic Westerner to whom he had given com- 
 mand of the Army of Virginia, and who had already spoken in 
 favor of the Cincinnati Breech-loading Cannon. The Union Army 
 came this near to the general adoption of breech-loading cannon. 
 
 Pope promised to give the matter attention, but he never got 
 around to it. Robert E. Lee kept him too busy. Late in August the 
 disaster at Second Bull Run swept John Pope into the discard and 
 Holenshade's chances with him. For Lincoln did not repeat his 
 offer, and Holenshade was left to the mercy of General Ripley. 
 
 And what of the breech-loading rifles — the Marsh guns, the 
 Spencers, the Sharps? 
 
 Marsh and Gallaher began their enterprises with no plant, no 
 capital, nothing but Marsh's worn old prototype of a breech-load- 
 ing rifle and President Lincoln's order for twenty-five thousand 
 new rifles on that model. They nearly succeeded. Waving Lincoln's 
 order as bait for investors, they organized the "Union Firearms 
 Company" and managed to get some favorable newspaper pub- 
 licity. 
 
 Then Stanton took over the War Department, full of righteous 
 anger at his predecessor's laxity. Two hours after the close of busi- 
 ness one day in late January, a Treasury official found Stanton 
 "buried in accumulated heaps of requisitions ... He would not 
 approve the formal requisitions, which were unquestionably just, 
 out of their regular order. He would do nothing but take up each 
 account in its order, and either approve it or reject it, as the facts 
 seemed to warrant." All this showed the right spirit, but it meant 
 delay; and delay was fatal to the delicate operations of Marsh and 
 Gallaher. Financial backing fell away from their Union Firearms 
 Company, and its operations came to a standstill, while delivery 
 after delivery fell due and was accordingly canceled. 
 
TRIAL BY COMBAT 203 
 
 The coup de grace was a notice of patent infringement served on 
 Marsh and Gallaher by the Joslyn Arms Company, which hired 
 the fearsome Thaddeus Stevens as its counsel in the matter. Gal- 
 laher kept up a game pretense of activity. In August he wired Rip- 
 ley: "Your dispatch just received. We have no guns yet. Working 
 night and day to deliver as soon as possible." But 1862 ended with- 
 out a single Marsh breechloader delivered. 
 
 Christopher Spencer and his backers avoided the reef which 
 wrecked the Union Firearms Company. Up in Boston, with the fat 
 purses of Beacon and State Streets to draw on, they organized the 
 Spencer Repeating Rifle Company and rented part of the Chicker- 
 ing Piano Company building on Tremont Street for their factory. 
 Spencer himself became superintendent of the works; and Warren 
 Fisher, Jr., a Boston financier, was made treasurer.* 
 
 After Stanton took office Fisher, like most arms contractors, grew 
 nervous. Assistant Secretary Watson reassured him: the gun was a 
 good one and was needed for Berdan's men (the Sharpshooter 
 mutiny had just come to a head) . More good news came that same 
 day: the Scientific American had given up two-thirds of its front 
 page to "Spencer's famous breech-loading rifle, about which so 
 much has been said." Spencer and Fisher had no trouble raising 
 capital; and by the end of May they had sunk more than $130,000 
 into what Fisher called "the most extensive and completely fitted 
 armory in the country" next to the Colt Works and the Springfield 
 Armory. 
 
 The Spencer Company's troubles were of a different sort from 
 those of Marsh and Gallaher. Like all arms firms at that time, it 
 had difficulty getting machine tools and skilled labor. And Fisher 
 soon began to see his mistake in making the inventor of the gun 
 responsible for its manufacture. Spencer counted time, money and 
 delivery deadlines as nothing compared to the further refinement 
 of his rifle. While he patented an improved .50-caliber model and 
 
 * In later years Fisher became the addressee of the famous "Mulligan letters' 
 which cost James G. Blaine the Presidency. 
 
204 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 labored on the design of machine tools, deliveries began to fall due 
 and be canceled. In June, after three deliveries had been forfeited, 
 a commission set up by Stanton to re-examine arms contracts re- 
 duced the Spencer order from ten thousand to seventy-five hundred 
 rifles, deliveries of a thousand a month to begin falling due in July. 
 Even these could not be met, and it was not until the last day of 
 1862 that the Spencer Company began to deliver rifles. 
 
 The Sharps alone, of all Lincoln's breech-loading rifles, took the 
 field in 1862; and there were less than two thousand of them. That 
 was still enough to transform warfare on land as the Monitor had 
 done on the sea. 
 
 In the June sunlight of Mechanicsville the gray mass of A. P. 
 Hill's division blundered on a small force of Berdan's men and 
 shuddered with the sudden knowledge that this fly had a new kind 
 of sting. Bullets flew at them as if three invisible helpers were serv- 
 ing up loaded muskets to every tangible green-clad Yank. The 
 sight was to become discouragingly familiar during the succeeding 
 Seven Days' Battles. 
 
 In the lush woods at Gaines Mill on June 27 the Sharpshooters 
 discovered the marvelous comfort of loading while prone without 
 the contortions which made wounds of the right hand and arm so 
 common among less favored troops. Two days later, at Bottom's 
 Bridge over the sluggish Chickahominy, two companies of Sharp- 
 shooters peppered the attacking rebels with lead until McClellan's 
 army, on its way to the James, could cross without a stand. "So 
 rapidly did our boys fire into them," a Sharpshooter wrote, "they 
 were completely discomfited and forced to retire from the work." 
 
 Deploying through the woods at Glendale on June 30, a squad 
 of Sharpshooters fired off their guns fast and often enough to make 
 some near-by infantry officers stare in wonder. The next afternoon, 
 Company F, 1st Sharpshooter Regiment, waiting in a ravine at 
 Malvern Hill, peered through waving wheat and saw a heavy line 
 of rebel skirmishers burst out of the forest at a run. F Company's 
 
TRIAL BY COMBAT 205 
 
 bugler blared "commence firing," and a horizontal rain of lead 
 whipped through the grain and sent the rebels racing for the woods 
 "in great confusion and with serious loss." A heavier line of rebels 
 pushed out, and a force of enemy skirmishers flanked the ravine 
 from a hedge-covered roadway. Company F cheerfully yielded the 
 ravine, re-formed in the open, and still kept the rebels down under 
 cover "with the advantage of greater rapidity given by breech-load- 
 ers over muzzle-loaders." 
 
 Colonel Kingsbury wrote to General Ripley after the campaign: 
 
 Berdan's Sharp Shooters have demonstrated the value of breech- 
 loading arms in the hands of skillful troops. If the organization of 
 new regiments is to be continued, it is suggested that one of the 
 three battalions in each regiment be composed of picked men, that 
 this battalion be exercised almost exclusively as skirmishers [with 
 breech-loading rifles]. 
 
 Ripley already detested Kingsbury, who had been a supporter of 
 Colonel Craig back in April 1861. This suggestion did nothing to 
 endear Kingsbury to the Chief of Ordnance. Presently Kingsbury 
 was relieved for reasons of "health," demoted to major and exiled 
 to the Indian country. 
 
 Now came McClellan's eclipse, the rise of the gasconading Pope 
 and the midsummer madness of Second Bull Run, when Washing- 
 ton shook with fear and not-so-distant gunfire, and the editor of 
 the Star smelled black powder on the south wind. Pope went west 
 by himself, like Kingsbury, and with him went the dream of James 
 C. C. Holenshade. Lee went north with his army, and with Mc- 
 Clellan back in the ring against him. McClellan won the decision 
 at Antietam in mid-September, where Berdan's men, lying prone 
 in open ground, did more damage to the enemy than any brigade in 
 the neighborhood. (The opposing regiment lost more than half its 
 strength, by its own admission.) After "skirmishes, battles, and 
 other hard service," Berdan's Sharpshooters were "universally ap- 
 preciated," Lincoln wrote the next day. A few days later Lincoln 
 visited the Sharpshooters in the field, "which event, while it afford- 
 
206 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ed them much pleasure, would have been more gratifying had they 
 not been roasted for three hours by the hot sun." 
 
 Not long after, Colonel Berdan returned the call at the White 
 House: he wanted his Sharpshooters to be made a separate corps, 
 not a pool of skirmishers to be dribbled here and there throughout 
 the Army, and he wanted them armed with Spencer rifles. "I will 
 send for the Secretary and have the matter settled today, that you 
 may get off at once," Lincoln said. "You don't look well." 
 
 Stanton came bristling in under the impression that Berdan 
 wanted to make trouble, and a stormy scene ensued. While Lincoln 
 listened uneasily, Stanton berated the colonel about the near mutiny 
 of January, insinuating that Berdan was cooking up another serv- 
 ing of the same. Berdan left with nothing accomplished. He wrote 
 Lincoln in November, again pleading for Spencers and again with- 
 out avail. 
 
 There were mysteries in the battle record of Lincoln's new weap- 
 ons during 1862. Why were Short's incendiary shells not used? 
 Why did Van Wyck's regiment leave its coffee-mill gun at York- 
 town? Just what was wrong with Colonel Pratt's coffee-mill gun? 
 Were the Ellsworth guns captured at Harper's Ferry, and if not, 
 what became of them? 
 
 But there was no longer any mystery about the value of breech- 
 loaders. Even old Army officers who remembered the breechloader 
 mishaps of twenty years before were wavering in their allegiance to 
 General Ripley's views. "The opinion is becoming very general 
 among army officers," a speaker at Cooper Institute that December 
 said, "that the power to load very quickly is of the very highest 
 value." History is often made when the world accepts the obvious. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 16 
 
 Admiral Dahlgren 
 
 By the summer of 1862 Washington 
 had ceased to be "the center of great operations," and Captain 
 Dahlgren knew it. Baffled ambition fixed his thin mouth in grim- 
 mer lines. Only in Lincoln's feeling toward him did the captain 
 see a straw of hope. Early in June the President had written Stan- 
 ton: "I need not tell you how much I would like to oblige Capt. 
 Dahlgren"; and through Lincoln's intercession, Dahlgren's bril- 
 liant young son Ulric had been made a captain of volunteers. Now, 
 in July, Dahlgren wrote Lincoln recalling his own past services 
 and pressing for the tour of sea duty in which he saw his only 
 chance at glory and promotion to admiral. 
 
 Secretary Gideon Welles had other plans. For Dahlgren to for- 
 sake ordnance work, Welles thought, would be "wrong to the 
 service, and a great wrong to the country. . . . He is not conscious 
 of it, but he has Dahlgren more than the service in view." 
 
 Back in January, when Lincoln was stirring up the Army Ord- 
 nance Department, Lincoln had asked Dahlgren's views on the or- 
 ganization of the Navy Bureau of Ordnance. Dahlgren had told 
 Lincoln that instead of being a "purely administrative" officer, the 
 chief "should himself participate in the various operations," and 
 should have an assistant to handle office affairs. These were tacitly 
 understood as Dahlgren's conditions for accepting the post of 
 chief, with Harry Wise as his assistant. And now the President had 
 just signed into law a bill embodying them. Dahlgren's reluctance 
 
 207 
 
208 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 to leave his command of the Navy Yard could therefore come only 
 from personal ambition — not a motive that Gideon Welles could 
 respect. A week after Dahlgren's letter to Lincoln, the Secretary 
 peremptorily made Dahlgren Chief of the Navy Ordnance Bureau. 
 
 It was "a change by no means acceptable to me," wrote the re- 
 cipient of the honor, "but I had no choice." To his credit, Dahlgren 
 pitched into his new job with vigor, aided by his assistant chief, 
 Lieutenant Wise. Not only that, but he also kept on with his old 
 job, staying at his Ordnance Bureau desk till noon every day and 
 then going down to his old headquarters at the yard to conduct the 
 "practical matters" so dear to his heart. "Uncle Sam," he wrote 
 proudly, "could not complain of not getting the worth of what he 
 paid me." 
 
 Since his new office was but a short stroll from the White House, 
 Dahlgren became even more readily available to Lincoln than be- 
 fore. "He is a favorite with the President and knows it," wrote Sec- 
 retary Welles somewhat testily that fall. 
 
 Early in June Lincoln met a French inventor named Rafael; his 
 first name is uncertain, but he may have been the "George Raphael" 
 of New York City who had been selling revolvers and swords to 
 the Ordnance Department. In any case, Rafael brought with him 
 a warm letter of introduction from Governor Morgan of New 
 York. The Governor wrote: 
 
 Mr. Raphael has introduced a machine which is as remarkable 
 for its effective simplicity, as it is for its novel mechanical adjust- 
 ments; and while under trial before me exhibited none of the or- 
 dinary objections to similar inventions. 
 
 After talking with the man, Lincoln dashed off a note: "Captain 
 Dahlgren, will be interested to accompany the bearer of this to see 
 a new patern of gun." 
 
 The "new patern of gun" was a machine gun, mounted on a 
 light artillery carriage and firing regulation rifle bullets. Its paper 
 
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 Oneida Historical Society 
 
 George H. Ferriss James C. C. Holenshade 
 
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 Illinois State Historical Library 
 
 Isaac R. Diller James Woodruff 
 
 FOUR INVENTORS WHOM LINCOLN HELPED 
 
 Historical Society of Qttincy and 
 Adams County (Illinois) 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 209 
 
 cartridges, however, carried a charge about two-thirds greater than 
 the normal; and unlike the coffee-mill gun, it needed neither a hop- 
 per nor separate cartridge chambers. Unfortunately, the rest of its 
 "novel mechanical adjustments" are obscure, except for what may 
 be deduced from a letter by John Ericsson: 
 
 By a simple application of transverse reciprocating movements, 
 exact and definite, the cartridge chamber is brought in line with the 
 barrel, a perfectly tight joint being formed without any sliding 
 movement across the joint of junction. Abrasion and wear are 
 thereby prevented. The mode of filling and applying the sliding 
 cartridge chamber is certain and free from all danger. 
 
 Dahlgren ran the Rafael gun through a series of tests at the Navy 
 Yard, and the results were splendid. Even taking the heavy charge 
 into account, the gun's range and accuracy were remarkable. At 
 eighteen hundred yards — more than a mile — the lateral deviation 
 was 'Very slight." Of sixteen shots fired at a wooden target six 
 hundred yards away, "nearly all" were direct hits. Tested for 
 rapidity, the gun fired forty shots in twenty seconds. "During the 
 entire firing," said one of the reports, "the gun was easily worked. 
 No part of the machinery became deranged or in any way out of 
 order." Here indeed was a marvelous weapon; and one can under- 
 stand John Ericsson's conviction that it formed "one of the many 
 strides which mechanical science is now making to render war too 
 destructive, long to continue the disgrace of civilization." 
 
 "One regiment of intelligent men provided with one hundred of 
 these effective weapons can most assuredly defeat and destroy a 
 four- fold number of enemies," Ericsson wrote to Lincoln early in 
 August. Perhaps his letter was conveyed by a committee of citizens 
 who called on Lincoln a few days later and invited him to see the 
 Rafael Repeater demonstrated at the Navy Yard. 
 
 On that sweltering August afternoon not much persuasion was 
 needed. Lured by the thought of Navy Yard breezes, Secretary 
 Seward joined the party, and even the incorruptible Stanton tagged 
 along. Dahlgren met them at the yard and had the Rafael Repeater 
 
210 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 hauled into position. For two hours Lincoln watched the new ma- 
 chine gun hammer away at targets in the river. According to a 
 correspondent of the New York Tribune, the experiments were "in 
 every way successful"; and if they approached the results of the 
 previous trials, Lincoln must have been profoundly impressed. 
 
 Afterward, at Dahlgren's suggestion, the visitors trooped aboard 
 a steamer at the wharf, to rest and enjoy the breeze. Talk ranged 
 freely. Much was said about the new machine gun, especially about 
 its freedom from escape of gas at the breech. "Well," said Lincoln, 
 perhaps with a mischievous glance at the Tribune man, "I believe 
 this really does what it is represented to do. Now have any of you 
 heard of any machine, or invention, for preventing the escape of 
 'gas' from newspaper establishments?" 
 
 As a sort of grand finale to the afternoon's diversion, Dahlgren 
 had one of his big eleven-inch guns fired. The concussions died 
 away, and the party rose to leave. Spying an ax hanging outside the 
 cabin, Lincoln took it down and remarked: "Gentlemen, you may 
 talk about your 'Raphael Repeaters' and 'eleven-inch Dahlgrens'; 
 but here is an institution which I guess I understand better than 
 either." And he held the ax out at arm's length by the end of its 
 handle. Most of the party tried, but none could duplicate the feat. 
 With that they dispersed, and Lincoln drove Dahlgren home in his 
 carriage. 
 
 Two days later, Lincoln wrote Stanton a letter: 
 
 I have examined, and seen tried, the "Raphael Repeater" and 
 consider it a decided improvement upon what was called the "Cof- 
 fee Mill gun" in these particulars, that it dispenses with the great 
 cost, and liability to loss, of the steel cartridges, and that it is better 
 arranged to prevent the escape of gas — Other advantages are 
 claimed for it upon which I can not so well speak. While I do not 
 order it into the service, I think it well worthy the attention of the 
 Ordnance Bureaus, and should be rather pleased, if it should be 
 decided to put it into the service. 
 
 In the face of so strong a letter from the President, General 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 211 
 
 Ripley could scarcely avoid having the gun tested; but when he 
 read Major Laidley's glowing report from Frankford Arsenal, 
 Ripley must have regretted his concession. 
 
 The gun's penetration, reported Laidley, was twice as great as 
 that of the rifled musket. Sixteen shots were fired in five seconds, 
 forty shots in eighteen seconds. After more than five hundred 
 rounds were fired, the gun worked as well as when it started. The 
 board which tested the gun thought it would be "most valuable" 
 for defending river passages, bridges and similar key points; and 
 recommended that a number of the guns be issued to each infantry 
 regiment. 
 
 But when the proprietors of the gun offered five hundred of 
 them at $850 each, the proposition was ignored. A few weeks later, 
 through the good offices of Thurlow Weed, Rafael's partner and 
 co-inventor (a New Yorker named James Haskell) secured an in- 
 terview with Lincoln. Whatever may have been said, neither Ripley 
 nor the War Department expressed the slightest interest in buying 
 Rafael Repeaters. 
 
 To certain influential members of the British government the 
 Union defeats of that summer suggested the advisability of recog- 
 nizing the Confederacy. Lincoln knew, if the British did not, that 
 such a step would mean war between Great Britain and the United 
 States; and with the experience of the Trent crisis behind them, he 
 and Dahlgren took thought of the niter supply. No sooner had 
 Dahlgren become Chief of Navy Ordnance than he fired a buck- 
 shot blast at the problem: sent a naval vessel to Yokohama to look 
 into the Japanese supply, advertised for domestic niter contracts 
 and arranged with the Du Ponts for the unobtrusive purchase of 
 British stocks. 
 
 Joseph Henry's suggestion of the late fifties, that a substitute 
 for niter be developed, did not interest Dahlgren, probably because 
 of the protracted research implied. But a few days after the Rafael 
 Repeater trial, that avenue seemed to open wide before Lincoln 
 when a solemn-eyed friend from Springfield paid him a call. 
 
212 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Captain Isaac Roland Diller, a bushy-haired, black-bearded son 
 of Pennsylvania, had won his military title with Scott's army in 
 Mexico. After that war he moved to Springfield, Illinois, where 
 his brother kept a drugstore. There he prospered as a real estate 
 agent, building an elegant home on what Springfield people called 
 "Aristocracy Hill" and dabbling with fair success in Democratic 
 politics. In 1857 Buchanan made him United States consul at 
 Bremen; but the election of his old friend Abraham Lincoln to the 
 Presidency cut short Diller's career as a diplomat and gave his 
 place to a proper Republican. 
 
 In Germany Diller had met Samuel Ricker, the American consul 
 at Frankfurt am Main, who described himself as "a Southern 
 Democrat, sound on the slavery question, but as true a Union man 
 as can be found in either of the great parties." Ricker, too, was 
 turned out of office; but unlike Diller, he stayed on in Germany as 
 the agent of a chemist named Hochstatter, who had developed a 
 gunpowder using a chlorate in place of niter. In return for a third 
 interest in the powder Diller agreed to plead its cause in the United 
 States; and it was this that brought him to the White House in 
 August 1862. 
 
 Chlorates were plentiful in the United States. In Diller's new 
 powder Lincoln saw a chance to break the British niter monopoly, 
 and he wasted no time in exploring it. Not wanting to commit 
 himself and the government by accepting Hochstatter' s secret, Lin- 
 coln arranged for Diller to confide it only to the government 
 chemist who would be needed to make up a sample. Lincoln had no 
 difficulty choosing the chemist on whose skill so great an issue 
 might depend; for the first man ever to hold such a job had just 
 started work at the new Department of Agriculture. He was Dr. 
 Charles M. Wetherill, a big, gentle, pensive man in his late thirties, 
 a Philadelphian turned Hoosier, who had studied in Germany un- 
 der the great Liebig. 
 
 Poring over the crabbed script of Samuel Ricker, whom he nick- 
 named "Old Chinese," Wetherill deciphered enough to make up a 
 small batch of powder. This proved to be stronger than Du Pont 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 213 
 
 powder, less noisy, less smoky and not so quick to foul the test rifle. 
 Dahlgren, who was keeping an interested watch over the project, 
 agreed with Diller to have a large batch made at Philadelphia, a 
 safer place for secrets than Washington. So Diller asked the Presi- 
 dent for more money and the continued services of Dr. Wetherill. 
 
 Since 1861 Lincoln had grown more cautious about sinking gov- 
 ernment money into new weapons; and the launching of a secret 
 project, independent of both Army and Navy Ordnance Bureaus, 
 was no light matter. The project hung fire for several weeks. 
 
 "I saw the President yesterday," a White House visitor wrote on 
 December n, 1862. "He is haggard & care-worn. The loss of the 
 [Congressional] elections and the fact that his friends attribute it 
 to his [emancipation] proclamation troubles him. He expressed 
 great impatience with Rosecrans." Dark days had come to Lincoln, 
 and darker ones were in store. Yet he had not forgotten Isaac 
 Diller and the new powder. Four days later, after much discussion, 
 long deliberation and a conference with Dahlgren, Diller, Weth- 
 erill and Assistant Secretary Watson, Lincoln struck a shrewd bar- 
 gain with his Springfield friend. 
 
 Lincoln agreed to buy at least a thousand pounds of experimental 
 powder at the cost of manufacture or $2 a pound or $5,000 — 
 whichever was least. In other words, Diller could lose money on the 
 deal, but could not possibly make any. If the claims for the powder 
 were met (and Lincoln specified them in writing), the government 
 was to pay Diller $150,000 for exclusive rights in the United 
 States — provided no important fault appeared in the powder. And 
 Lincoln was careful to state further: "I can only promise to advise 
 the payment, because I have not the money at my control which I 
 could, by law, absolutely promise to pay." 
 
 If Simon Cameron's contracts had all been so canny, there would 
 have been no arms scandals in 1861. 
 
 A week later Lincoln sent for Dahlgren, who found him discuss- 
 ing the recent terrible defeat at Fredericksburg with a visitor. Re- 
 laxing into his usual humor, Lincoln sat down and said: "Well, 
 Captain, here's a letter about a new powder." He had burned a 
 
214 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 sample and thought it left too much residuum. "Now, 111 show 
 you," he said. Shaking some powder onto a sheet of paper, Lincoln 
 strode over to the open fire and picked up a live coal with the tongs. 
 He peered down through his spectacles, pursed his mobile lips and 
 blew the coal bright. (Watching him, Dahlgren marveled at his 
 seeming ability to put aside thoughts of the war. The captain failed 
 to see that trying out a pinch of powder was as much a part of the 
 war for Lincoln as trying out a new general.) When Lincoln 
 clapped the glowing coal to the powder, it flashed into a puff of 
 smoke. "There is too much left there," he remarked triumphantly 
 and handed Dahlgren a packet to try. Then his talk turned back to 
 politics and battles. 
 
 Dahlgren, unlike Ripley, was an inventor in his own right and 
 had some fellow feeling for others of the tribe. He had been fair 
 with them, more than fair, he thought. In August he wrote: 
 
 Sixty-two inventions have been examined in the last six months, 
 with much cost to the United States, and labor in the office. Of. 
 course, it is impossible that every invention could be successful — 
 but I believe that no one person in the United States or abroad has 
 been instrumental in introducing to public use so many inventions 
 of others as myself. 
 
 But like the inventors themselves, Dahlgren was touchy and 
 quick to take offense; and when certain unsuccessful inventors 
 blamed their troubles on him, he brooded over it. Late in June, for 
 example, a clerk had told Dahlgren that a disgruntled inventor had 
 been grubbing for "means to assail" the captain, and that there 
 was "a secret organization which would raise a fund to the end of 
 removing" him. "This" raged Dahlgren in his diary, "is a sample 
 of the unscrupulous scoundrels that infest the government, whose 
 sole aim is to rob the United States." 
 
 Scarcely a month after he had become Chief of Ordnance, Dahl- 
 gren was asking Secretary Welles to give someone else "the duty of 
 examining Inventions in Ordnance." The captain concluded: "I 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 215 
 
 shall part with pleasure from a duty which has been onerous in the 
 highest degree, and in spite of all efforts so illy requited." Al- 
 though nothing came of this outburst, Dahlgren's discontent made 
 him work all the harder for a command afloat; and by October Lin- 
 coln was freely informing Dahlgren and Welles that the former 
 would have the highest grade if Welles would only write the 
 President a letter requesting the promotion. "I am compelled," 
 Welles wrote, "to stand between the President and Dahlgren's pro- 
 motion, in order to maintain the service in proper condition." 
 
 Lincoln's feeling that he would sooner or later lose Dahlgren as 
 his adviser on weapons may have inspired the curious episode of 
 Herman Haupt's questionnaire later that month. 
 
 Herman Haupt, a turbulent and somewhat saturnine West Point 
 graduate, class of 1835, na< ^ P ut ms f fee education to immediate 
 use as a civil engineer on the Pennsylvania state railroad. After that 
 job of pioneering he became a professor of mathematics and en- 
 gineering at a small college in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a peace- 
 ful little town then and later (except for three days in July 1863) . 
 There he wrote his General Theory of Bridge Construction, a. land- 
 mark in structural theory. He was drilling the famous Hoosac Tun- 
 nel in Massachusetts when the Civil War called him to service as 
 the Union Army's chief of military railroads. 
 
 Lincoln first took the measure of Herman Haupt in May 1862. 
 "I have seen the most remarkable structure that human eyes ever 
 rested upon," exclaimed the President. "That man, Haupt, has 
 built a bridge across Potomac Creek, about four hundred feet long 
 and nearly a hundred feet high, over which loaded trains are run- 
 ning every hour, and upon my word . . . there is nothing in it but 
 beanpoles and cornstalks." Haupt, who relished a quarrel, en- 
 gaged in one with General Pope and quit in June, only to return 
 after the War Department wired: "Come back immediately; can- 
 not get along without you; not a wheel moving on any of the 
 roads." ("Be as patient as possible with the generals," Assistant 
 Secretary Watson counseled him somewhat later, "some of them 
 
2l6 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 will trouble you more than they do the enemy.") During the 
 debacle of Second Bull Run, which blasted so many shiny reputa- 
 tions, Haupt won Lincoln completely. Lincoln, noted John Hay, 
 was "struck with the business-like character of his despatch, telling 
 in the fewest words the information most sought for, which con- 
 trasted so strongly with the weak, whiney, vague, and incorrect 
 despatches of the whilom General-in-Chief." In everything Haupt 
 undertook he seemed "thoroughly to reflect and satisfy" Lincoln. 
 
 There is no mystery, therefore, about why Lincoln chose Herman 
 Haupt as his new adviser on the mobilization of technology. 
 
 The episode began when someone ( identity uncertain ) proposed 
 that President Lincoln call together a council of engineers and 
 naval constructors so that he might learn and collate "the practical 
 results of experience and observation" — a sort of National Defense 
 Research Council with the President in the chair. The suggestion, 
 according to Haupt, was founded on "the belief that it was only 
 necessary to convince President Lincoln that any course was right, 
 to insure its immediate adoption." It was finally decided, however, 
 that a written questionnaire would be more useful for future refer- 
 ence and more convenient for those questioned. 
 
 Whoever may have originated the project, it was Haupt who 
 took charge of it. On October 28, 1862, he sent out a searching 
 questionnaire, mostly on naval technology, which got into the 
 newspapers as well as the mails. Its preamble was scarcely calcu- 
 lated to mollify the department under scrutiny. "SIR," it blared. 
 "Many experienced naval constructors, engineers, and practical 
 men appear to think that our American Navy does not keep pace 
 with the improvements of the age in any of the essential requisites 
 of modern vessels of war, and that our chief cities and harbors are 
 without suitable protection against maritime attacks." 
 
 Then followed more than fifty questions, many calling for long 
 and detailed answers. They fell into three groups: those intended 
 to sound out the addressee's experience; those aimed at comparing 
 the cost, efficiency and effectiveness of private as against govern- 
 ment construction methods; and those seeking information on the 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 217 
 
 best and most recent developments in military and naval tech- 
 nology generally. 
 
 The rest is silence. 
 
 There survives no evidence that anything came of the experi- 
 ment, not even a nlled-in questionnaire. What happened to the 
 project is a mystery; unless one theorizes that the questionnaire's 
 tone toward the Navy Department frightened off those who looked 
 to the Department for contracts. Haupt' s detailed reminiscences of 
 his Civil War career say not a word about the affair. Did he or his 
 associates have some ulterior motive? Why did this questionnaire, 
 drawn up by an Army man, focus on naval technology? Why did 
 not Dahlgren figure in the affair at some point, and why does his 
 journal say nothing of it? 
 
 The only hint we have of what lay behind the Haupt question- 
 naire is in a diary entry by Secretary Welles on January 18, 1864: 
 
 A batch of letters has been sent us from the provost marshal, dis- 
 closing a mass of fraud and intrigue on the part of a set of assum- 
 ing men that is as amusing as reckless. General Haupt, Naval Con- 
 structor Griffiths, Gwyn [?] of the Treasury, Hamilton Norris, and 
 others figure in the affair. About a year since General H. published 
 a series of questions for the improvement and progress of the Navy 
 Department, which he and his associates appeared inclined to take 
 into their keeping. This correspondence brings to light the secret 
 intrigues of these scoundrels. 
 
 Even this is not much help. The files of the Navy Department 
 for the period disclose no such "batch of letters." 
 
 Dahlgren kept his place as Lincoln's technical adviser. A few 
 days after the Haupt questionnaire went into the mails, a new war 
 rocket gave the captain further cause to wish himself rid of the job. 
 
 As far back as the Napoleonic Wars, Sir William Congreve, who 
 had seen rockets used by native troops in India, had equipped the 
 rockets with explosive war heads, cast-iron tubes, and wooden tails 
 (for truer flight) and used them effectively against the French. 
 
2l8 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 They offered tempting advantages over field pieces. Rockets had no 
 recoil. Their launching tubes or gutters were vastly lighter and 
 easier to handle than equivalent artillery pieces. Even their fiery 
 trails unnerved the enemy (although at Fort McHenry in 1814, 
 they rather inspired than discouraged an observer named Francis 
 Scott Key). 
 
 A few years later, William Hale of England dispensed with the 
 wooden tail of Congreve's rockets and substituted tangential vents 
 near the head, which gave the rocket the steadying spin of a rifled 
 projectile. During the Mexican War, Hale's agent, a Connecticut 
 man named Joshua B. Hyde, sold the rights to Hale's rockets for 
 $20,000 to the United States government. It was to supervise the 
 manufacture of the rockets that Dahlgren first came to the Navy 
 Yard. The rockets were used by Winfield Scott's army all the way 
 from Vera Cruz to Chapultepec. 
 
 When the Civil War broke out, Hale's offer to come over and 
 make rockets for the Union was refused; but his rockets were used. 
 Two "Rocket Troops" were organized in the fall, and next spring 
 they were issued thirteen hundred rockets near Yorktown. Falling 
 into rebel hands in the Peninsula, the Union rocket battery turned 
 up to annoy Union troops that December in southeastern Virginia. 
 "Its shells would come fizzing through the air without having giv- 
 en any warning report," wrote a Pennsylvanian soldier, "and our 
 boys christened it the 'Slider battery.' " Annoyed beyond endur- 
 ance, the nth Pennsylvania Cavalry charged and captured the 
 "slider battery." Thereafter, the rocket battery's trail is lost, save 
 for a report nearly a year later that six hundred rockets were on 
 hand at Fortress Monroe. 
 
 The great fault of the rockets was their wild inaccuracy. If some- 
 thing deflected them in flight — a tree branch, a gust of wind — they 
 would shoot straight along in the new direction. They might even 
 come back on the men who had fired them. In April 1862 a new 
 rocket was tried on Capitol Hill, but performed with "the greatest 
 inaccuracy." "Cannot the ingenuity of the country overcome the 
 difficulty?" asked the Washington Star wistfully. If only rockets 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 2ig 
 
 could be given the accuracy of rifled guns, it predicted, "a revolu- 
 tion in land service would follow their introduction, like that 
 which has followed the introduction of iron rams and batteries in 
 the sea service." 
 
 The same thought may well have occurred to Lincoln when 
 Joshua Hyde, Hale's former agent, came to him with an improved 
 version of the Hale rocket. Hyde's rocket carried a war head with 
 an adjustable time fuse, instead of the fixed and inaccessible fuse 
 of the Hale rocket; and its tangential vents were at the center of 
 gravity, rather than the head. 
 
 On November 15, 1862, Lincoln drove down to the Navy Yard 
 with Secretary of State Seward and Secretary of the Treasury Chase, 
 picking up Dahlgren at his orifice in the yard. Their destination was 
 a trial of the Hyde rocket. Down by the river, the eminent visitors 
 gathered around the perforated iron-cylinder launching tube at 
 which Lieutenant Commander Mitchell was setting up the test. 
 When the rocket was ready, the onlookers stepped back a few 
 paces, out of the way of the rocket trail, prepared to see the new 
 weapon zoom up over the river and burst, pocking the water's 
 surface with the fragments of its case. 
 
 Instead came a blast and a puff of fire — the rocket had exploded 
 in its stand! 
 
 When the smoke drifted away, Dahlgren, who must have been 
 white with horror, saw that a miracle had spared President Lincoln 
 and the two ranking members of his Cabinet. Through the cap- 
 tain's mind may have flashed the terrifying recollection that back 
 in 1844 the explosion of an experimental cannon had killed two 
 members of President Tyler's Cabinet not many miles from that 
 spot. Some historians believe the Civil War might have been avoid- 
 ed, save for the effects of that disaster. Who can say what the 
 world would now be like if such a catastrophe had killed Abraham 
 Lincoln, William Seward and Salmon Chase, between the rout of 
 Second Bull Run and the futile slaughter of Fredericksburg? 
 
 But the unthinkable had not happened, and the shaken Captain 
 Dahlgren returned thankfully with the party. 
 
220 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Two days later another trial was given Hyde's rocket, this time 
 without such eminent observers. Just after the rocket left the stand, 
 it "ascended into the air, whirling at the same time, took a direction 
 nearly at right angles to the line of fire, and fell upon the roof of 
 the Blacksmith Shop, and thence to the ground." Hyde himself 
 admitted that to continue the experiment would be too dangerous, 
 and so it was suspended. The next time Hyde's name appeared in 
 Ordnance Office records, it was as the inventor of a musket. 
 
 By the end of 1862 Lincoln was growing impatient with ord- 
 nance experts as a class, and the case of Peter Peckham gave him a 
 chance to say so. 
 
 One evening back in March, Senator Orville Browning had es- 
 corted Peter Peckham of Bloomington, Illinois, and Thomas Taylor 
 of Roxbury, Massachusetts, into the White House and introduced 
 them to Lincoln. Peckham, an uncommonly bumptious and assert- 
 ive individual, proceeded to initiate the President into the fine 
 points of Taylor's new fuse; and he was still at it when Browning 
 left. For more than three months thereafter, Dahlgren, with un- 
 precedented generosity, let Taylor use Navy Yard facilities to per- 
 fect his fuse and even paid him wages, terminating the arrange- 
 ment finally on the ground that Taylor had not been able "to make 
 a single fuse explode at all, except in the gun." 
 
 If he could win so much favor for a client, Peckham may have 
 reasoned, what could he not do for himself? He was presently 
 back to urge an invention of his own on the President, a rifle cart- 
 ridge intended to make ramrods unnecessary in loading by the 
 muzzle. 
 
 Basically, Peckham explained, his cartridge simply fitted the 
 standard rifle so loosely that it dropped right to the bottom with- 
 out assistance. What held it in place, then? Why, the cartridge 
 was arranged so as to release a few grains of powder in loading, 
 the grains then wedging the cartridge case firmly against the bot- 
 tom of the bore. Being made of perforated metal or wire gauze, 
 the cartridge case permitted ignition of the powder without hav- 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 221 
 
 ing to be broken open. The bullet itself was much like the Minie 
 ball, except that it had a deeper hollow in its base, since it had to 
 expand more in firing. 
 
 Captain Benet tried the Peckham cartridge at West Point in 
 May, somewhat disgruntled at having been given only four speci- 
 mens by the inventor. The first two, as advertised, dropped clear 
 to the bottom of the bore, the only catch being that they failed to 
 take the grooves and therefore completely missed a four-foot tar- 
 get forty-three yards away. The bore now being slightly fouled, the 
 next two got stuck part way down and had to be sent home with a 
 ramrod. One missed the target, the other hit it with no more pene- 
 tration than a regular bullet would have had at six hundred yards. 
 
 Peckham tinkered with his design and in November secured a 
 trial at the Navy Yard — perhaps through Lincoln's influence, for 
 the President was there that day. All the experiment showed was 
 the weakness of the cartridge, even with an excessive powder 
 charge. Worse still, Peckham was caught in some clumsy sleight of 
 hand. The specimens he showed around had been altered to make 
 them safer to transport; the ones he presented for firing were 
 different, and more dangerous. 
 
 Unabashed, Peckham brought up more artillery. His biggest gun 
 was Lincoln's old and close friend Supreme Court Justice David 
 Davis, a fellow townsman of Peckham. He knew Peckham "very 
 well," Davis wrote Lincoln, and at his home in Bloomington had 
 seen five Peckham cartridges do well in competition with regula- 
 tion cartridges. "It does seem to me," the Judge wrote, "that there 
 is something in his invention." 
 
 So Lincoln asked Assistant Secretary Watson to take up the case; 
 and after two weeks of badgering by Peckham, Watson ordered 
 ten thousand cartridges. But he refused to pay for the machinery 
 in addition, as demanded by Peckham. 
 
 The resourceful inventor got the ear of Major General Silas 
 Casey, who had the cartridge tried by Captain Moses Gist of the 
 4th Delaware Infantry. Captain Gist fired eight Peckham cartridges 
 and twenty-three of the regular type at a target made of twelve 
 
222 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 layers of one- inch boards, and his report meticulously listed the 
 penetration and accuracy of each of the thirty-one shots. This time, 
 Peckham's cartridges behaved themselves. "The result of the ex- 
 periment," endorsed one Colonel Grimshaw, "has impressed us 
 favorably with the ideas of the inventor." 
 
 Captain Gist's report, bearing the usual marks of its journey 
 through channels, reached President Lincoln on December 12, 
 1862. 
 
 The Army of the Potomac, bereaved of its idolized McClellan 
 and commanded by moon-faced Ambrose Burnside (who was the 
 first to admit his own incapacity), waited numbly at Fredericks- 
 burg for the order which was to send it next day into foredoomed 
 defeat. Marye's Heights, rising beyond an open plain, made as fine 
 a defensive position as any soldier could wish; and on it, Lee's men 
 longed for a Yankee attack. Lincoln feared the worst; but Burn- 
 side was a military expert, and perhaps the experts knew better 
 than the President. 
 
 While Lincoln brooded in the shadow of that tremendous un- 
 certainty, someone handed him Captain Gist's table of thirty-one 
 rifle shots. Lincoln scanned it for some evidence of an Ordnance 
 Office or War Department decision or even recommendation. All 
 he saw was Colonel Grimshaw' s tepid commentary. His patience 
 suddenly ended. He wrote across the back of the report : 
 
 In this, as in other cases, I am disgusted with the character of 
 this report made by a supposed expert. An opinion whether the 
 cartridge should be introduced into the service, and not how many 
 pine boards it penetrated at the 1st & 2nd & 3rd shot, is what is 
 wanted. Does Gen. Casey say the cartridge should be introduced? 
 That is the question. Will he please answer? 
 
 Not even this could extract a plain answer from General Casey. 
 The general merely pointed out that if a soldier was never certain 
 that the Peckham cartridge was all the way down — and evidently 
 he could not be — he would use his ramrod every time anyway. 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 223 
 
 Casey also ventured the opinion that rapidity of fire was "not al- 
 ways a desideratum," against which Major General David Hunter 
 set his conviction that it was "often very desirable." 
 
 This was not enough to silence Peckham. Backed by Judge Davis 
 and Senators Lane and Pomeroy, he got another Navy test, with no 
 better results than before. And still Peckham persisted. In May he 
 sent Lincoln a seventeen page essay on his cartridge, on which 
 Lincoln wrote desperately: "Will Mr. Watson please act upon this 
 case as soon as possible." 
 
 Watson left it up to General Ripley, and that did it. No more 
 was heard from Peter Peckham. 
 
 Others echoed Lincoln's opinion of the "experts." The Scien- 
 tific American observed, "The only successes which we have yet 
 achieved have been due to our superiority in the mechanic arts. 
 With sadness, however, which we cannot express, we fear that the 
 skill of our mechanics, the self-sacrifice of our people, and the de- 
 voted heroism of our troops in their efforts to save the country, will 
 all be rendered futile by the utter incompetency which controls the 
 war and navy departments of the Government." 
 
 What was wrong? A New Yorker named Benjamin Bates saw 
 two difficulties, and so informed Secretary Welles: first, the ex- 
 perts were overwhelmed by "a great number of impracticable in- 
 ventions," more than they had time to sift through; and second, 
 they regarded outside suggestions as "intrusive and impertinent" 
 anyway. 
 
 Bates may have been right, but there was more to it. The basic 
 trouble lay in combining responsibility for production with re- 
 sponsibility for research. The two functions were incompatible — as 
 the experience of the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company showed. 
 The proving ground's peach was the assembly line's poison; and 
 General Ripley, for one, believed with all his soul that production 
 came first. 
 
 The only solution was to divorce the incompatible functions : to 
 make the ordnance bureaus responsible for procurement, and to 
 
224 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 make some independent agency responsible for research. The idea 
 was put forward by the Scientific American as early as May 4, 1861, 
 and at intervals thereafter. Ordnance officers, including the emi- 
 nent Major Rodman, were all for it; and even General Ripley 
 thought such a board "very desirable." "But," Ripley added, miss- 
 ing the point, "it cannot be done now for the want of officers to 
 form the Board." 
 
 The Navy came closest to trying the idea. Early in 1862 Secre- 
 tary Welles appointed a three-man board to consider inventions, 
 and in September he set up another. In February 1863, the so-called 
 "Permanent Commission" was organized, on the suggestion of 
 Rear Admiral Charles H. Davis, Chief of the Bureau of Naviga- 
 tion, seconded heartily by Joseph Henry. The three members, 
 Davis, Henry and Alexander D. Bache of the Coast Survey, were 
 to deal with "questions of science and art upon which the Depart- 
 ment may require information." The Commission, although un- 
 paid, "was constantly in session," wrote Davis's son; and fat vol- 
 umes of minutes and reports survive to bear out his statement. 
 
 Inspired by the Permanent Commission, Congress soon after set 
 up the National Academy of Sciences to advise the government in 
 scientific and technical matters. Unfortunately, the Academy failed 
 to capture popular favor. "Suddenly and unheralded," commented 
 the New York Times, "it sprang up before the world full-grown 
 and full-panoplied, with the authority of the nation on its brow, 
 but enveloped in almost impenetrable clouds." Secretary Welles 
 shared these doubts and refused to transfer either duties or funds 
 from his Department to the Academy. 
 
 The role of the Permanent Commission and its counterparts dur- 
 ing the Civil War was mainly negative. They saved bureau officials 
 the trouble of saying no to inventors; among others, the Permanent 
 Commission turned down Peter Yates, Benjamin Severson and 
 Peter Peckham. But they had no funds to institute a research and 
 development program of their own. That idea had to wait for its 
 fulfillment until the Second World War — when it developed the 
 atomic bomb. 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 225 
 
 During the Civil War, the nearest thing to a research and develop- 
 ment agency was the President himself. 
 
 In January 1863 President Lincoln came down in person to prod 
 the Navy Ordnance Bureau into preparing for the coming trials of 
 Captain Diller's powder. He seemed to be the project's only advo- 
 cate in high office. Secretary Welles had no sympathy with it, con- 
 demning it as 'well-intentioned but irregular." "Something was 
 said to me some days since in regard to the great secret of this man 
 Dillon [sic]," he wrote querulously, "but I gave it no attention, 
 did not like the manner, etc. So it was, I apprehend, with the War 
 Department." To get Diller an advance from the Navy for ma- 
 chinery and materials, Lincoln had to write out a personal order to 
 the grumpy Secretary. 
 
 The Navy decided that the project was too dangerous to be 
 carried on at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and so the captain had 
 to buttonhole reluctant property owners until he managed to rent 
 a big, ramshackle frame building — "a mere shell" — on Timber 
 Creek in New Jersey, about six miles from Philadelphia. While 
 Diller gathered machinery together, Lincoln sent down Dr. Weth- 
 erill and an Agriculture Department clerk named Francis Murray. 
 These three, with a Negro helper named George, constituted the 
 entire force of the Lincolnian equivalent of Oak Ridge. 
 
 The solemn quartet took an oath of secrecy and set to the Presi- 
 dent's work. The work went hard. Sickness caused delays — Timber 
 Creek was "a most unhealthy location" — and the machinery broke 
 down more or less regularly. At last, in April, the Timber Creek 
 project began turning out powder, and by June twenty-five hun- 
 dred pounds were ready. Sharing Diller's zeal, Dr. Wetherill had 
 done his best to perfect the powder; and both men were hopeful 
 of success. 
 
 Three days of testing in mid-June of 1863 gave marvelous re- 
 sults. Lieutenant Commander Jeffers wrote to Commander Wise: 
 
 So, the Bureau ignores Mr. Diller and his powder according 
 
226 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 to the letter I received this morning. You had better get that 
 $150,000 ready as soon as possible for it has proved a decided 
 success, and everything now looks as if we shall have to make a 
 report that will astonish everybody. . . . The powder as now made 
 is two thirds dust as they had no machinery for graining ... If it 
 preserves its properties after graining it is everything that is to be 
 desired, and will probably supersede common nitre powder. 
 
 In that happy hour, Lincoln's secret project seemed about to 
 make ordnance history — and diplomatic history as well. 
 
 Going into the climactic year of 1863, Abraham Lincoln still, 
 somehow, found time to think about new weapons. There was a 
 clear cold day in early February, for example, when the White 
 House grounds lay white with new snow and veined by the blue 
 twisted shadows of tree branches. About noon Lincoln sent for 
 Dahlgren. Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania had seen "some won- 
 der in gunnery." The wiry, gaunt-faced Chief of Navy Ordnance 
 stepped briskly up the White House stairs, sat with the Presi- 
 dent half an hour, and went back to work. 
 
 A few days later — the day after Lincoln's fifty-fourth birthday — 
 Brigadier General Barnard invited the President to a demonstra- 
 tion of George W. Beardslee's electric detonating system, about 
 which Dahlgren was enthusiastic. Lincoln and Stanton drove over 
 to Fort DeKalb across the Potomac and joined the crowd of spec- 
 tators. "There was a great explosion immediately in our front," 
 wrote a Washington reporter. "The earth opened and vomited 
 forth stones, shot and shell, vertically, horizontally, and, in fact, in 
 all directions." Once more the winter earth heaved, "and the air 
 was again filled with earth and smoke, stones and exploding shells; 
 some of the latter falling in uncomfortable proximity to our per- 
 son." After a third mine went up, soldiers pushed back the crowd. 
 "Taking up our position close to the President," reported the 
 Chronicle man, "we heard a heavy explosion, as if some of the 
 internal fires of the globe were escaping, and the earth belched 
 forth a volcano of smoke, stones and exploding shells even more 
 
ADMIRAL DAHLGREN 227 
 
 fearful than before. It rained stones for acres around and in front 
 of us." 
 
 Lincoln emerged unscathed. As for Beardslee's blasting appara- 
 tus, it had certainly proved its efficacy. Presumably it had its chance 
 in combat: a complete set was sent to Admiral David Porter's Mis- 
 sissippi squadron early that summer. 
 
 All this annoyed Secretary Welles. When the Diller affair came 
 to his notice, he cautioned Dahlgren, as he had often done before, 
 "against encouraging the President in these well-intentioned but 
 irregular proceedings." Welles noted in his diary: 
 
 He assures me that he does restrain the President as far as re- 
 spect will permit, but his "restraints" are impotent, valueless. He 
 is no check on the President, who has a propensity to engage in 
 matters of this kind, and is liable to be constantly imposed upon by 
 sharpers and adventurers. Finding the heads of Departments op- 
 posed to these schemes, the President goes often behind them, as 
 in this instance; and subordinates, flattered by his notice, encourage 
 him. 
 
 Whether Dahlgren' s complaisance was calculated or not, it paid 
 dividends. Four days after the Beardslee mine demonstration, Lin- 
 coln asked Secretary Welles to promote both Dahlgren and Captain 
 Davis (he of the Permanent Commission) to the rank of rear 
 admirals. The ambitious Dahlgren had realized at least half of his 
 dream; and if rank came, could glory be far behind? 
 
 Washington's Birthday buried the capital in snow, and the 
 Secretary of the Navy "did not venture abroad." Admiral Dahl- 
 gren, only five years younger, floundered through the drifts never- 
 theless to see Welles on some ordnance matter — as if to prove his 
 physical fitness for sea duty. When the new admiral expressed 
 gratitude for his promotion, Welles tartly suggested that he "thank 
 the President, who had made it a specialty; ... I did not 
 advise it." 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 17 
 
 Gunning for Charleston 
 
 If a city is measured by the feeling 
 
 it inspires, Charleston, South Carolina, was great indeed in 1863. 
 Pride in their town, in its manners and wealth and aristocratic 
 charm, had been the mark of Charlestonians for a century. Now 
 their pride was loftier than ever; for Charleston was to the War 
 for Southern Independence as Boston and Lexington together had 
 been to the Revolution. 
 
 Therefore, those who loved the Union, or most of them, hated 
 Charleston just as intensely. They hated its arrogant, elegant rulers, 
 hated its fine town houses built on two centuries of brutal slavery, 
 hated the very stones of its battery and the Spanish moss that con- 
 descended from its languid oaks. From the day that crowds on 
 Charleston's roof tops exulted at the shelling of Fort Sumter, the 
 North longed for vengeance; and every dead or wounded Union 
 soldier sharpened the point of that determination. Halleck wrote 
 to Sherman: 
 
 Should you capture Charleston, I hope that by some accident the 
 place may be destroyed; and if a little salt should be sown upon its 
 site, it may prevent the growth of future crops of nullification and 
 secession. 
 
 Charleston delenda est! 
 
 Here was a clash between cold military strategy and hot feeling. 
 Charleston had no great war industry, no natural resources, no im- 
 
 228 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 229 
 
 portant railroad junctions. The Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which, 
 as Charlestonians saw it, joined there to form the Atlantic Ocean, 
 tempted no gunboats. In short, except as the destination of an oc- 
 casional blockade runner, Charleston had no practical strategic 
 value. Yet the humbling of that proud little metropolis remained 
 a prime Union military objective, for not even the prosiest of text- 
 book generals could overlook the psychological impact such a 
 stroke would have on both North and South. 
 
 The man who had saved the border slave states for the Union 
 knew the value of the psychological factor in warfare and could 
 calculate it as a master. Abraham Lincoln was anything but a vin- 
 dictive man, but he craved to see Charleston laid low. And in 
 tracing Lincoln's weapons policy, one sees the depth of his craving 
 as never before. 
 
 An attack on Charleston from the sea would run up against Fort 
 Sumter, now in rebel hands, heavily armed and rising sheerly from 
 the water at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. A Federal attack 
 by the "back door" was stalled eight miles south of the city in 
 June 1862. But in the first year of the war, the carelessness of some 
 Negroes cooking their supper on a Cooper River wharf had been 
 memorialized by a sweep of desolation from the Cooper to the 
 Ashley through the heart of the town, a "desert space" which more 
 than a year later reminded a British traveler of "the Pompeiian 
 ruins," and which suggested that the city might be vulnerable to at 
 least one weapon: fire. 
 
 "President sent for me," Dahlgren noted in his diary on Feb- 
 ruary 16, 1863. "Some inflammable humbug had been poked at 
 him; from it he went off easily to Charleston matters." The "in- 
 flammable humbug" was the incendiary fluid of one Alfred Berney 
 of Jersey City, New Jersey; and the poking had been done by 
 Oliver Spencer Halsted, Jr., of Newark, who may be recalled as the 
 "Pet" Halsted of the Dingee affair. 
 
 Whether Berney should be called an inventor or not is a moot 
 point. A reputable New York dealer in lamp oil claimed convinc- 
 
230 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ingly that the incendiary formula was his, and that Berney had 
 stolen it from him. The Berney (or Callender) fluid had been fired 
 from a gunboat against the defenses of Yorktown in the spring of 
 1862, at which time Lincoln's friend Lieutenant Wise had jauntily 
 predicted that it would "puzzle the Devil himself even in his own 
 Dominions to put out, should one crack over or into Hell." A year 
 and a half later, Wise was referring to "that man Berney" as "a 
 cheat, humbug — as is his liquid fire — and a most arrant coward and 
 liar." So perhaps Mills Callender, the lamp-oil dealer, was telling 
 the truth. 
 
 The character of Berney' s advocate was not much more savory; 
 but in view of his apparent influence with Lincoln, it deserves a 
 closer inspection. 
 
 Halsted, Sr., was a Princeton graduate, former mayor of Newark 
 and chancellor of New Jersey, author of legal and theological works 
 and a close student of philology and the Bible. One wonders what 
 he thought of his erratic offspring. Born in 18 19, the boy had the 
 vivacity and charm which later distinguished the man. His aunts, 
 with whom he was a favorite, gave him his nickname "Pet"; 
 around the White House in Lincoln's time, he was scarcely known 
 by any other name. Like his father, "Pet" Halsted graduated from 
 Princeton and entered the law. In 1849 he took passage for the 
 gold fields of California; but when the crew of the bark ran off at 
 San Francisco, "Pet" bought her and ran her along the coast for a 
 while instead. Two years later he was back in Newark and dab- 
 bling unsuccessfully in politics. Curiously enough, he supported 
 Bell for President in i860, which explains why he was not one of 
 the Newark delegation which met Lincoln on his way to Wash- 
 ington in 1 86 1. 
 
 Pet's hair was thin and somewhat curly, and his beard and mus- 
 tache were so long as to draw notice even in those shaggy days. 
 Though small, he was sinewy and agile. He made a hobby of box- 
 ing and could take on two untrained men heavier than himself 
 with a good chance of whipping them. This hobby led him into 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 231 
 
 rather disreputable company, as was inevitable in those times. 
 
 The wild whiskers did not conceal a likable quality. The gallant 
 one-armed warrior Phil Kearney owed (or thought he owed) his 
 first Civil War command to Halsted's lobbying talents, and so took 
 Halsted into his confidence. Kearney regarded his friend as "a 
 brilliant, kind-hearted, dashing adventurer," just the sort Kearney 
 liked. Kearney soon found Halsted to be "not so straightforward 
 as you suppose. He plays many hands at the same time, at a full 
 consideration of his own best chances." Presently Kearney had 
 "learned to pity, & not admire" him. "As an assistance," wrote 
 Kearney, "I believe him dangerous, for he has so many interests 
 ever in charge that he kneads them up to suit himself." 
 
 "Gifted with matchless assurance," the New York Tribune said 
 of Pet Halsted, "he succeeded in making himself a familiar in the 
 councils of men of note." Mrs. Lincoln may have given him his 
 entree to the White House. She and the Lincoln children vaca- 
 tioned in New Jersey in the summer of 1861, at which time Hal- 
 sted wrote Lincoln on terms of easy familiarity to give him advice 
 on Navy steamer purchases. He would, he promised Lincoln, make 
 it a point to call about the matter. "Mrs. Lincoln, children, & 
 suite," he concluded, "are well, & leave this afternoon. Tad has 
 entirely recovered & is as light as a lark." 
 
 This was Halsted's cue to shut up shop in Newark and join the 
 new gold rush to Washington. "No public character was so well 
 known in Washington as he," recalled the New York Tribune. 
 "Nor was he a mere unconscionable braggart; his was a swagger 
 which was more than magnificent. He went everywhere, knew 
 everybody, and cut a large figure in social as well as political life. 
 There was nothing he did not know — nothing he could not do. 
 There were no bounds to his ambition and no limit to his glowing 
 imagination. He was lavish in his expenditure and as generous as 
 a prince, when he had money; and when money failed him, his 
 credit was liberally bestowed." 
 
 Halsted had not been idle since the Dingee affair. His friend 
 General Kearney had written him letters bitterly criticizing Mc- 
 
232 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Clellan, adding that they must not "get in any shape into print." A 
 few weeks after Kearney died of his wounds on the rain-swept field 
 of Chantilly, Halsted injected himself into the limelight by pub- 
 lishing the letters. "Brave Phil will be out of his grave with a 
 horsewhip yet, for the ghouls who have maligned his memory,' ' 
 growled the Boston Post. Kearney's widow was said to have cut 
 Halsted dead after the betrayal. 
 
 To all appearances, Lincoln was not repelled by Pet's antics. In 
 October 1862 Halsted and Governor Sprague of Rhode Island had 
 an interview with Lincoln, at which (said Halsted) "letters were 
 read, criticisms and opinions on the Generals, and conduct of the 
 war freely made and interchanged." When McClellan fell perma- 
 nently from grace soon after, Halsted's stock rose among the know- 
 ing. Lincoln was presently asking Secretary Welles to see Halsted 
 about some steamer purchases. 
 
 This was the man who came to Lincoln in the following Febru- 
 ary to "poke" Alfred Berney's "inflammable humbug" at the 
 President. "Humbug" or not, incendiary warfare fitted in with 
 Lincoln's thinking about Charleston; and the President was ready 
 to give it a chance. He gave orders, therefore, for Captain Benet to 
 test the Berney liquid fire at West Point. 
 
 Levi Short, the "Greek Fire" man, meanwhile kept his memory 
 green in Lincoln's mind. Armed with a letter from three prominent 
 Philadelphians urging a field trial of Greek Fire in the name of 
 "humanity and duty alike," Short appeared in a White House ante- 
 room late in March. He failed to see Lincoln, but he left his letter 
 of recommendation; and when Lincoln came across it some days 
 later, he called Short back to Washington for a conference and an- 
 other Greek Fire demonstration. 
 
 Whatever the subject of his conversation with Short, Lincoln 
 talked freely and at length with Pet Halsted about ways to take 
 Charleston and Vicksburg (the stronghold which blocked full 
 Federal control of the Mississippi), and Halsted finally convinced 
 Lincoln that incendiary bombardment was the answer in both cases. 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 233 
 
 But Assistant Secretary Fox had great faith in the power of con- 
 ventionally armed ironclads to defy land forts, and so Lincoln 
 waived his own views in favor of Fox's. On April 7 a squadron of 
 monitors was sent into Charleston Harbor. 
 
 Lincoln had not been as hopeful as Fox; with his "intuitive 
 sagacity," Secretary Welles wrote, the President had "spoken dis- 
 couragingly of operations at Charleston during the whole season." 
 And Lincoln turned out to be right. The monitors steamed appre- 
 hensively toward the city, only to slink away a few minutes later, 
 mauled and battered by the guns of Sumter and the other forts. 
 "We have met with a sad repulse," confessed Admiral Du Pont. 
 
 The experts had been given their chance. Now Lincoln felt in- 
 clined to try his own plan. After Du Pont's failure, however, it 
 seemed that a purely naval attack might not do the job. And since a 
 land approach was apt to be slow and difficult, Lincoln began think- 
 ing in terms of incendiary bombardment by guns of great range 
 and power. This was why he now took notice of Horatio Ames and 
 his wrought-iron cannon. 
 
 Horatio Ames was not the sort of man who is easily ignored. 
 Despite a pleasant roundness about his face, Ames's features dis- 
 pelled any illusion of softness or pliancy. The broad, tight-lipped 
 mouth, the deep creases that rose from its corners to a bold nose, 
 the brows that angled belligerently over narrowed eyes, all com- 
 bined to give Horatio Ames the look of a man about to charge a 
 stone wall headfirst, with odds no better than even on the wall. 
 And he was built to match, standing six-feet-six in his stocking feet 
 and weighing over three hundred pounds. He was nearing sixty, to 
 be sure, but an observer might still have guessed, and guessed 
 rightly, that Ames had spent many years as a blacksmith. 
 
 Born in Massachusetts, Ames quit school at the age of eleven 
 and took up blacksmithing. A few years later he moved to Falls 
 Village, in the famous Salisbury iron district of Connecticut, and 
 built up a good business in wrought-iron products, mostly shafts 
 and cranks for large steam engines. Ames's brother Oakes outdid 
 
234 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 him back in the Bay State, making a fortune from his shovel works 
 while Horatio lost ground to more progressive foundries. Galled 
 by this, Horatio looked about for some new product to revive his 
 fortunes and came across a wrought-iron rifled cannon invented by 
 Patrick Danvers of New York City. 
 
 Ames got a manufacturing license from Danvers and set to work 
 on a small 12 -pounder. The Danvers gun was built up from annu- 
 lar wrought-iron cross sections, like flat rings, imposed one against 
 the other and welded together. In his Falls Village foundry Ames 
 set up two huge hammers or steam rams, one horizontal for weld- 
 ing the rings together, the other upright "to make the iron close 
 and sound." With characteristic grim humor Ames nicknamed 
 them "Thor" and "Odin." 
 
 When the war broke out, Ames hastened to Washington and 
 put his claims before General Ripley. But the irresistible force had 
 met an immovable object and had to change direction. Thencefor- 
 ward, Ames's chief target was the Navy Ordnance Bureau. 
 
 In the summer of 1861 Commander Harwood ordered five 50- 
 pounders from Ames at the exalted price of seventy-five cents a 
 pound; and when the guns were tested in the following spring, 
 they proved remarkably strong. Unfortunately for the Yankee iron- 
 master, Dahlgren took over Harwood's post soon after, and he felt 
 that Ames's price was out of the question. This conflict led to one of 
 the liveliest correspondences in the files of the Bureau. Both men 
 were spirited controversialists, proud, stubborn and quick-tem- 
 pered. Meager schooling and years of hard labor at plough and 
 forge had left Horatio Ames with a churlish disposition and a rich 
 command of invective. Moreover, he had acquired his knowledge 
 of guns, in his words, "pretty much by myself"; and he had noth- 
 ing but contempt for books and the men who wrote them. "We 
 have devils to fight," he wrote a fellow inventor, "of the meanest 
 of the scientific, educated class, whose god is meanness, deception, 
 and fraud." 
 
 When the two opponents each hinted at chicanery and bad faith 
 on the part of the other, they were merely skirmishing. By the start 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 235 
 
 of 1863 Ames had accused Dahlgren of subjecting the nation's 
 welfare to his own ends. "Must the Honor & Glory of this country 
 be shaped to promote one mans vanity?" Ames asked Secretary 
 Welles. Dahlgren' s objections to the Ames gun were "the merest 
 common place Twaddle," he insisted. 
 
 Late in January 1863 Ames interested Lincoln briefly in his case. 
 The President asked Dahlgren for information on it, and Dahlgren 
 shrewdly dispatched copies of all the correspondence, which by 
 now occupied a volume. Lincoln had no time for anything so in- 
 volved, and after two weeks he returned the papers without com- 
 ment. Baffled, Ames subsided until spring came and the armies 
 stirred. Early in April his towering bulk loomed again at the door 
 of the Navy Ordnance Bureau, to the dismay of badgered clerks. 
 Still he got nowhere, nor did a brisk encounter with General Rip- 
 ley gain him anything. Ames grew more violent in his denuncia- 
 tions of Dahlgren. "To make a mockery of War is criminal," he 
 wrote Welles, "to sacrifice the Nations Life for Dollars is Trea- 
 son." Dahlgren replied in kind. "The coarse, reckless and insolent 
 invective which is addressed to me," he wrote Ames, "can find no 
 excuse or pretext in anything I have previously written or said to 
 you." An impasse had been reached. 
 
 Ames broke it by exploiting Du Pont's failure at Charleston. 
 Connecticut's representatives in Washington were mustered in a 
 body for the assault: Senators Dixon and Foster, Congressman 
 Hubbard and Congressman-elect Augustus Brandegee. By now, 
 Brother Oakes, an energetic, ambitious and shrewdly calculating 
 man, was a Congressman and growing rapidly in influence. Finally 
 — for Horatio Ames knew his way around Washington by this 
 time — Pet Halsted was enlisted. 
 
 On April 25 Pet Halsted demonstrated his ability to "play many 
 hands at the same time," as the late Phil Kearney had put it. He 
 wrote a long letter to Lincoln, reminding the President of their 
 talks about Charleston and Vicksburg and urging him to "insist & 
 demand that your own plans & views be carried out." 
 
236 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 By a marvelous coincidence three of Halsted's clients between 
 them offered the ingredients of success: Robert Parrott had three 
 300-pounder rifled cannon he wanted to sell; Horatio Ames had 
 sold the Navy six 50-pounder wrought-iron guns* which he want- 
 ed brought to public notice; and Alfred Berney had his liquid fire. 
 Halsted wrote grandly: 
 
 We now offer to take two Monitors, and being allowed to fit 
 them up, under the direction & supervision of Berney & myself, 
 with the guns, fire, & shell as referred to & otherwise acting on the 
 President's plan of attack, will guarantee to take or destroy Sumpter 
 & Charleston in from one to three days after operations are opened. 
 
 Lincoln knew perfectly well that Pet Halsted was in this for 
 something more than just the glow of duty done; but the argument 
 seemed plausible, and Lincoln made up his mind to look into it. 
 
 On the rainy afternoon of April 28, 1863, Lincoln strode into 
 the Navy Ordnance Office, determined to find out what was what 
 in the case of Horatio Ames. Dahlgren and Wise were both there, 
 and Lincoln put Ames's story to them as he had heard it from 
 Horatio himself : that Harwood had promised Ames unlimited or- 
 ders at seventy-five cents a pound if the first six guns succeeded, 
 and that Ames had consequently spent a huge sum in enlarging his 
 plant and machinery. Dahlgren could scarcely control his temper. 
 No such promise had ever been made, he explained; and even if it 
 had been, the Navy lacked the funds with which to honor it. The 
 admiral had more in his mind, but he saved it for his diary: 
 
 It is unfortunate that the President will meddle in such matters. 
 No adventure on the Treasury now stands on its merits. Projects 
 for new cannon, new powder, and devices of all kinds are backed 
 by the highest influences. 
 
 That amiable raconteur Harry Wise carried the day for the Bu- 
 reau. Having been present at all of Harwood's talks with Ames, 
 Wise could testify that, so far as he could recall, no such promise 
 of future orders had been made. Then Wise gently led the conver- 
 
 * He had sold one more after the original order for five. 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 237 
 
 sation round to other topics, and before long Lincoln was in his 
 usual easy good humor. In a rare moment of reminiscence he spoke 
 of the hard struggle he had had to finance the education of his son 
 Bob. He himself had had only one year of education, he added, but 
 he guessed that Bob would not do better than he had. Presently, 
 satisfied with what he had heard, Lincoln strolled back to the 
 White House through the drizzle. 
 
 In the Ordnance Bureau Dahlgren and Wise breathed easier, as 
 did Captain Harwood when he heard the story. "I thank you for 
 doing that little bit of fighting for me 'in re Ames,' " wrote Har- 
 wood to Wise later in the day. 
 
 That was not all Lincoln did that day. Captain Benet had re- 
 ported on the Berney trial more than two weeks before, but the 
 Ordnance Office had held his report instead of sending it to the 
 President. Having learned of its existence from Halsted's letter, 
 Lincoln now called for the report and read it over. "Every shell that 
 struck the target & exploded," reported the captain, "did ignite the 
 incendiary fluid, & set the target in a blaze." He had not only bom- 
 barded a large target of heavy oak timbers, but had also burst shells 
 of various calibers under piles of logs, all with spectacular effect. 
 More than that, he had seen Berney set a stream of fluid blazing 
 simply by holding a torch to the hose nozzle. There was no back- 
 fire, and the flame could be cut off by removing the torch. Benet 
 thought the shells would "prove very destructive to all wooden & 
 other combustible structures"; and as for the flame thrower, "even 
 when the object attacked is not combustible, the burning fluid itself 
 with its volumes of flame & clouds of black smoke would make its 
 use of great effectiveness." He recommended the preparation with- 
 out hesitation. 
 
 This sounded like quite a spectacle, and Lincoln wanted to see it 
 for himself. Halsted hastily arranged for a demonstration in the 
 Treasury Park, not, as in Short's case, for the vulgar multitude, 
 which let no contracts anyway, but for Lincoln, Stanton and a select 
 half dozen of Pet's clients — including the redoubtable Horatio, to 
 whom Halsted referred as "Admiral Ames." 
 
 Lincoln and Stanton walked down together from the White 
 
238 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 House in the cool, clear twilight of May 9. They found Berney 
 waiting with his props and paraphernalia: a pile of water-soaked 
 wood, barrels of fluid, some eleven-inch shells and a hand pump. 
 Cheered on by Halsted's little claque, he made the Treasury Park 
 shake and burn as if it had itself caught the ague from its pestilen- 
 tial environs. While Lincoln and Stanton looked on, the inventor 
 sent the woodpile flying into the air in a burst of smoke and flame, 
 detonated two shells in the middle of the lot to suggest their effect 
 on an enemy position and squirted fire from his hand pump. Lastly, 
 he played a stream of fire on three hundred gallons of the fluid, 
 representing the amount thrown in a minute from the nozzle of a 
 steam pump. The black pool blazed up, and fire billowed into the 
 spring twilight, playing its glare over the lanky President and his 
 stocky war minister. At last the flames dwindled down, and night 
 closed in around them. 
 
 So pleased was Lincoln with the weird show that he personally 
 arranged to have General Hooker try a 100-pounder shell or two 
 on the enemy, and had actually left for Hooker's camp to witness 
 the experiment when Lee's invasion of the North disrupted the 
 plan. Even so, Lincoln forced the reluctant General Ripley to or- 
 der a thousand Berney shells for trial in actual service. 
 
 The battle between Dahlgren and Ames, however, continued 
 unabated. Congressman-elect Brandegee tried to mediate between 
 the two; but Dahlgren' s concessions were minor, and Ames was un- 
 receptive. Presently Dahlgren was huffily protesting that Ames had 
 "publicly applied certain abusive terms to me, such as scoundrel." 
 Late in June the Navy refused Ames's offer to make fifty 200- 
 pounders at a dollar a pound. "What is the matter with Pet Halsted 
 and Horatio?" someone asked Wise the next day. And the Scien- 
 tific American, getting wind of Ames's proposal some weeks later, 
 commented pointedly: "We presume there are a great many forges 
 willing to make such guns on similar terms." 
 
 Three weeks after Berney' s Treasury Park exhibition, Lincoln 
 and Stanton attended the trial of a breech-loading rifled cannon de- 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 239 
 
 signed for just the sort of long-distance work called for at Charles- 
 ton. 
 
 The inventor, George Ferriss of Utica, New York, was a large- 
 eyed, gaunt-faced man, from whose square jaw descended a fringe 
 of grizzled beard. As a maker of fine sporting arms, Ferriss had 
 few equals; as a writer and a talker, his skill was negligible. That 
 deficiency, however, was supplied by his partner. David O. Ma- 
 comber, son of a sea captain, had started out as a sign painter in 
 Utica and then had succumbed to his father's wanderlust. He and 
 Ferriss complemented each other neatly. Ferriss was quiet and un- 
 assuming; Macomber was brash, expansive and glib, the writer of 
 letters and deliverer of sales talks. The pair seemed inseparable. 
 
 A year before, Macomber had been introduced to Lincoln by 
 Horatio King, Buchanan's last Postmaster General, and had shown 
 the President a model of Ferriss' s cannon. It was a massively built- 
 up gun, with a coiled wrought-iron bore enclosed in steel rings and 
 a screw-type breech piece worked by a crank. Ferriss' s idea was to 
 get great range and penetration by means of an unusually heavy 
 charge of powder. At that time Lincoln had agreed to have a full- 
 size gun built by the government on one condition : that a working 
 model of the Ferriss gun, with ai/ 2 -inch bore, demonstrate double 
 the penetration of a conventional model with the same size bore. 
 
 Now Ferriss and Macomber were back with the stipulated mod- 
 els; and on May 29 Lincoln and Stanton accordingly went down to 
 the Navy Yard to see them fired. If all Macomber claimed for the 
 gun's range should be borne out, here might be the means of 
 humbling Charleston. 
 
 A surprise awaited them. Ferriss and Macomber had taken ad- 
 vantage of Lincoln's failure to require something like equality in 
 the weights of the two guns, as well as in their bores. With a bore 
 of only an inch and three quarters, the Ferriss gun's external di- 
 ameter ran from 14.78 inches at the breech to 7.78 inches at the 
 muzzle; and the gun weighed fifteen hundred pounds! Moreover, 
 the Ferriss gun's performance was mediocre. Considering the 
 charge used — a pound and a half of powder for a two-and-a-half- 
 
240 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 pound shell — the range was not great. And when two shells were 
 fired at an iron target from two hundred yards, one missed, and 
 the other made a dent about an inch deep. To be sure, the Ferriss 
 gun performed somewhat better than its conventional rival, but 
 then it had a powder charge six times as great as the latter. 
 
 Stanton's comments were caustic, and Lincoln good-humoredly 
 pointed out that the gun had not yet sent its shells nine miles as 
 Macomber had promised it would. 
 
 During August and early September, Ferriss and Macomber 
 fired their small gun for range on Fire Island beach, off Long 
 Island; and when one of the shells went nine and a quarter miles, 
 Macomber whooped up the gun in the New York papers. "Verily," 
 marveled the Herald, "we live in a wonderful age!" Lincoln's con- 
 ditions had been met, and the President accordingly had the War 
 Department formally invite a proposal. Here Macomber stretched 
 his luck too far: his asking price for a 100-pounder Ferriss gun was 
 enough to buy no less than forty-five 100-pounder Parrotts. The 
 proposition was declined, and Lincoln looked elsewhere for weap- 
 ons against Charleston. 
 
 Late in May Lincoln, Stanton and Welles agreed that the next 
 attack on Charleston would have to be the joint work of army and 
 navy. Fort Sumter had been too much for monitors alone; it must 
 be destroyed by land batteries. Remembering how effectively Fort 
 Pulaski had been pulverized a year before, Lincoln sent for the 
 author of that work, General Quincy Adams Gillmore. Gillmore 
 confidently undertook to render an encore against Sumter from 
 near-by Morris Island. That left the problem of who was to com- 
 mand the naval squadron which was to steam into the harbor and 
 chastise Charleston after Sumter had been knocked out. 
 
 In the days following, Secretary Welles mulled over possibilities. 
 Du Pont, able as he was, had caught the McClellan "slows," and, 
 worse still, had convinced himself that Charleston Harbor was no 
 place for the Navy under any circumstances. Porter was too young; 
 Gregory was too old. Lincoln wanted Dahlgren to have the job, but 
 
Fran\ Leslie's Illustrated History 
 of the Civil War 
 
 A LINCOLN WEAPONS PROJECT PAYS OFF 
 Mortar boats firing on Island No. 10, in the Mississippi, on the night of March 18, 1862. 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 241 
 
 Welles felt that the cry of favoritism would be raised to the injury 
 of the service and Dahlgren himself. At last, Welles settled on 
 Andrew Foote. Since Dahlgren had his heart set on sea duty, 
 Welles offered him the post of second in command. Dahlgren de- 
 clined to go at all unless he could be first in command, not only of 
 naval but of land operations too. "This," wrote Welles, "precludes 
 farther thought of him. I regret it for his own sake. ... It is 
 doubtful if he ever will have another so good an opportunity." 
 Welles was wrong. 
 
 The summer of 1863 began on a Sunday, and Rear Admiral 
 Dahlgren attended church in a mood of mingled sadness and specu- 
 lation. Rear Admiral Foote, so lately engrossed in preparations for 
 his new mission, had suddenly taken sick and now lay dying in 
 New York. As the church service began, Dahlgren' s thoughts 
 dwelt on the possibilities opened by the impending tragedy. Pres- 
 ently a messenger summoned him from his devotions to the home 
 of Secretary Welles, where he learned that his great ambition had 
 at last been realized: he was to command the coming attack on 
 Charleston. With a show of resignation the disgruntled Secretary 
 remarked that "it seemed destined that no one else should do so." 
 Still, not even destiny could bring Welles to accept defeat with per- 
 fect grace. "Full and unreserved" was his own description of his 
 talk with Dahlgren. He told Dahlgren bluntly that this new ap- 
 pointment was Lincoln's doing, and that it would aggravate the dis- 
 content already caused by Dahlgren's promotion to rear admiral. 
 
 The plain speech of Gideon Welles did not disturb Dahlgren, 
 who had heard it often enough before. He turned his thoughts 
 rather to the glory he saw ahead. 
 
 Levi Short won the race to hurl fire shells into Southern towns, 
 and he did it through a stroke of policy worthy of Pet Halsted. 
 
 Rear Admiral David D. Porter commanded the Mississippi 
 squadron, which could throw shells into beleaguered Vicksburg. 
 His mother, Mrs. Evalina D. Porter, took it into her head to rent 
 part of the old Porter family mansion "Green Bank" on the Dela- 
 
242 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ware to a cartridge firm. Hearing of this somehow, Levi Short rent- 
 ed the rest of the place as a workshop in which to make up his new 
 "Solidified Greek Fire." (This now came in tin cylinders three 
 inches long and five-eighths of an inch in diameter. ) And not long 
 after, the Navy, at Admiral Porter's request, ordered ten gross of 
 Short's canisters for the Mississippi flotilla. 
 
 One night, Porter's gunboats sent a few Short shells into the air 
 over Vicksburg. Great flakes of fire drifted down, "setting the town 
 on fire in three places . . . burning up a considerable quantity of 
 stores, and the houses burned to the ground." Vicksburg fell before 
 much of Short's Greek Fire reached the squadron; but Porter gave 
 Short a glowing testimonial, which the inventor featured in his ad- 
 vertising circulars. 
 
 The force of Porter's testimonial is somewhat weakened by what 
 the admiral said in private correspondence. Some time later he 
 wrote his mother: 
 
 I would be very glad to oblige you in the case of Short, but my 
 conscience will not permit me to recommend his greek fire, which 
 I know to be good for nothing. If he wants me to do anything for 
 him, let him first pay you what he owes you, and when I see the 
 receipt I may perhaps change my mind. 
 
 And in another letter: 
 
 I expect to hear of Green Bank going up in the air some of these 
 days with the powder arrangements, and if that old humbug with 
 his greek fire could be on top of it when it does go it would serve 
 him right. 
 
 Eventually, reverberations from the banks of the Delaware gave 
 notice to the neighbors that the Porter place had indeed ascended. 
 Levi Short, however, had preceded it by some months. 
 
 Meanwhile, by a remarkable feat of rough-and-ready engineer- 
 ing, General Gillmore's troops built a gun emplacement in a Mor- 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 243 
 
 ris Island quagmire within range of Charleston, and there in a sort 
 of sandbag pulpit they planted a 200-pounder Parrott gun which 
 gained the nickname of "the Swamp Angel." Berney and Pet Hal- 
 sted came down with five hundred of their incendiary shells, and 
 Levi Short sent down forty gross of his little tin canisters from the 
 Porter mansion. Under orders from Lincoln himself, the Swamp 
 Angel at last opened fire on Charleston with both Berney and 
 Short incendiary shells, beginning at one-thirty in the morning of 
 August 22, 1863. 
 
 In the heat of the August night, as Confederate guns on James 
 Island boomed dully away at Union positions, a wakeful British 
 visitor lay reading by candlelight in the Charleston Hotel. He had 
 just reached the Battle of Waterloo in Les Miser able s when a noise 
 like "the whirr of a phantom brigade of cavalry" sounded over- 
 head, followed by a crash and a deafening explosion down the 
 street. From his window the startled Briton saw flames and smoke 
 billowing from a near-by warehouse, while in the street below, an 
 excited watchman pounded his stick against the curb in the Charles- 
 ton manner of sounding an alarm. Speculators, in town to buy up 
 blockade-runner cargoes, rushed about the hotel corridors in wild 
 alarm and little else. Another shell whirred overhead, "and down 
 on their faces went every man of them, into tobacco- juice and cigar 
 ends, and clattering among the spittoons." Outside, as a Negro 
 fire company put out the warehouse blaze, frantic citizens jammed 
 the sidewalks in their flight. 
 
 After the work of that sweltering night General Pierre G. T. 
 Beauregard, the Confederate commander, denounced Gillmore for 
 throwing "a number of the most destructive missiles ever used in 
 war into the midst of a city, taken unawares and filled with sleep- 
 ing women and children." He also set about acquiring phosphorus 
 shells to fire back. Some Northerners, including Commodore John 
 Rodgers, joined in Beauregard's denunciation of the weapon; most 
 exulted at the news. The Washington Star reminded its readers that 
 the people of Sodom must likewise have thought their brimstone 
 shower bath a villainous device, "but the hand of retribution was 
 
244 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 not stayed on that account." And the Nashville Union lampooned 
 Beauregard's protest, with special reference to certain side effects of 
 the Greek Fire: 
 
 Tis sweet to draw one's dying breath 
 For one's dear land, as Horace saith, 
 But dreadful to be stunk to death. 
 
 After the shouting had died down, the fiery missiles turned out 
 to have been more destructive to Union gun crews than to rebel 
 property. Twelve Berney and four Short shells were fired the first 
 night, and twenty more Short shells on the day after. Six of the last 
 exploded in the Swamp Angel. On the thirty-sixth round the 
 breech blew out, and the rest of the gun landed on the parapet. 
 When other guns came within range of Charleston, thirteen more 
 Short shells were fired with similarly poor results. Of thirty-seven 
 Short shells tried in the Swamp Angel and other guns, twenty burst 
 in or near the gun or did not burst at all. 
 
 Hurrying down to Morris Island from Philadelphia, Short fever- 
 ishly juggled powder charges, Greek Fire charges and layers of 
 cartridge paper, but without restoring confidence in his shells 
 among those who had to stand the consequences of a premature 
 burst. Sick and despondent, the old man went back to Philadelphia. 
 In October he came up with a new scheme. Having seen the rebels 
 dig in at Fort Sumter, Short proposed "stinking them out" by add- 
 ing noxious ingredients to his Greek Fire. The Chief of Ordnance 
 made no reply; and early on the day before Thanksgiving, 1863, 
 death silenced Levi Short's importunities. 
 
 Berney' s reputation fared little better than Short's in the Charles- 
 ton experiment. Pet Halsted maintained that all the bad incendiary 
 projectiles had been "worthless shells known as the Short shell 
 which I predicted a failure in advance"; and someone, probably 
 Halsted, published an enthusiastic but spurious endorsement of the 
 Berney shell over the signature of General Gillrnore. After Fleet 
 Commander Ammen had ordered five hundred Berney shells on 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 245 
 
 the strength of the false endorsement, Gillmore told him that the 
 shells "were entirely useless, exploding within a mile of the gun," 
 and so Ammen canceled his order. 
 
 After the affair at Charleston the Navy agreed with a writer in 
 the United States Service Magazine that "investigations of this kind 
 are in pursuit of an ( ignis fatuus.' " The Army's Chief of Ordnance 
 commented wryly that "Charleston is in existence still." And Abra- 
 ham Lincoln gave no further thought to incendiary warfare. 
 
 Some weeks later, success rewarded the fanatical persistence of 
 Horatio Ames. 
 
 Augustus Brandegee paid a flying visit to Willard's Hotel to 
 arrange quarters for himself during the approaching session of 
 Congress. As he passed through the crowded lobby, the Congress- 
 man-elect from Connecticut was disturbed to see his burly constitu- 
 ent from Falls Village bearing down upon him. Before Brandegee 
 could escape, the "admiral" had buttonholed him and exacted a 
 promise of help in reopening the Ames case with President Lin- 
 coln. 
 
 Pet Halsted arranged for the interview, and the two men pre- 
 sented themselves at the White House. Hulking Horatio Ames 
 dwarfed his political escort, as they mounted the stairs. At Lincoln's 
 office Brandegee's card gained them immediate admittance. What 
 followed is best told by Brandegee himself: 
 
 As he rose — and seemed to keep on rising — before me, his hair 
 was black, coarse and of an unkempt appearance, his nose promi- 
 nent, his cheek bones high, his cheeks very hollow, his complexion 
 swarthy, his manner gracious but subdued, while his eyes had an 
 expression that I find myself incapable of describing, as though 
 they lay in ambush in their deep caverns, ready to spring forth or 
 retreat further within, as occasion required. He was awkward, but 
 it was the awkwardness of nature, which is akin to grace. The ex- 
 pression of his face was earnest, with a shade of sadness, and his 
 voice was soft, and at times as tender as a woman's. 
 
 I had prepared what I thought a neat little speech of intro- 
 duction, but he at once put my rhetoric and embarrassment to flight 
 
246 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 by taking me by the hand and saying, "Well, what does little Con- 
 necticut want?" 
 
 The tone, the familiar address, the friendly manner, the gracious 
 smile at once put me at my ease, and I stated my case as to a friend, 
 and almost an equal. As I proceeded with gathering warmth, com- 
 menting upon the unfairness of submitting the Connecticut inven- 
 tion to a rival gun-maker, the unfriendly tests adopted and the 
 supreme importance of a gun which would do more execution at 
 the muzzle than at the breech, Mr. Lincoln listened with evident in- 
 terest. Ames had stated that a record existed of the various charges, 
 the number of firings, and the respective results to each gun, and 
 that it would vindicate all he claimed, but he had been denied ac- 
 cess to it. Mr. Lincoln closed the interview by requesting me to 
 procure it, and bring it to him at 8 o'clock that evening. And to my 
 suggestion that I was unknown at the department, he took an 
 Executive envelope from a bundle which lay always on his table 
 
 and wrote the following: "Let Mr. , of Connecticut, have a 
 
 copy of such record as he indicates. A. Lincoln." 
 
 At the Navy Ordnance Bureau Lincoln's note acted as an open 
 sesame. Brandegee and Ames were back in Lincoln's office at eight 
 o'clock sharp with the records they wanted. As they talked, Brande- 
 gee noticed Lincoln's long legs, sticking out from under his desk. 
 At first the President had on a pair of carpet slippers; but as the 
 talk progressed, he worked his feet out of them, disclosing "what 
 seemed to be a pair of dark yarn stockings." His big toe protruded 
 from a hole in one of the socks, and this he kept "in almost per- 
 petual motion." The record seemed to bear out Ames's contentions; 
 and after much discussion and some searching questions, Lincoln 
 wrote a few words on the back of an executive envelope: "If Hora- 
 tio Ames will make ten wrought iron guns after his method, which 
 will answer satisfactorily such tests as I shall order, I will see that 
 he gets paid $1 per pound for each gun." So ended the interview. 
 
 Toward the end of September, Lincoln modified the terms some- 
 what and then made his offer formally, agreeing to pay eighty-five 
 cents a pound for fifteen Ames guns, 100-pounders or larger, pro- 
 vided that a board appointed by the President judged them su- 
 perior to any of equal caliber then in use. "Pet Halsted walked up 
 
GUNNING FOR CHARLESTON 247 
 
 with me [to the White House]," recorded John Hay in his diary 
 about a month later. "He says the President won over Ames and 
 Brandegee by his friendly candid manner and the fair way in which 
 he met their complaints and requests." 
 
 A few days before the Swamp Angel opened on Charleston 
 Gillmore's guns on Morris Island began to batter Fort Sumter 
 Seven days later the Fort was, in the words of its engineer in chief 
 "a desolate ruin, a shapeless pile of shattered walls and casemates 
 showing here and there the guns disabled and half-buried in splin 
 tered wrecks of carriages, its mounds of rubbish fairly reeking with 
 the smoke and smell of powder." But its garrison dug in and lived 
 and when Dahlgren sent a landing party against it, the assault 
 failed. As the weeks passed, Sumter became more and more power 
 ful as an earth work. With its defenders active and the harbor re 
 putedly sown thickly with mines and obstructions, Dahlgren would 
 not take his squadron in. 
 
 Late in October, Lincoln had a long talk with two high-ranking 
 officers just up from Gillmore's army. Still hopeful of retribution 
 for Charleston, he asked them pointedly why that spawning-ground 
 of rebellion was not shelled. The callers replied that they "pre- 
 ferred to save their fire for service against [Forts] Johnson & 
 Moultrie when the Navy moves, rather than burst their guns now 
 by throwing a few shell into the city." To John Hay, who was 
 listening, this sounded like "a very sensible conclusion"; and if 
 Lincoln thought otherwise, he seems not to have pressed his views. 
 At any rate, the two officers came away "much pleased with the 
 Tycoon." 
 
 One wonders what might have happened if Lincoln had read 
 and remembered a letter written to him in May 1862 by a New 
 York schoolteacher named John W. Doughty. Perhaps Doughty 
 taught chemistry; he certainly knew the properties of chlorine. His 
 proposal was to use heavy shells filled with liquid chlorine. This, 
 he explained to the President, would immediately expand into a 
 choking gas of many times its original volume, which, being denser 
 
248 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 than air, would sink irresistibly into trenches and bombproofs. 
 But there is no evidence that Lincoln actually read Doughty' s letter. 
 Someone, probably a White House secretary, referred it to the War 
 Department; and thence it went to General Ripley, who ignored it. 
 Doughty wrote Ripley and was told that the Ordnance Department 
 was too busy to test the idea. Two years later Doughty wrote again, 
 repeating his suggestion and enlarging on it. Nothing was done to 
 develop it — until 191 5, when the Germans, using a cruder version, 
 produced an astonishing collapse in the Allied lines at Ypres. 
 
 The defenders of Sumter wintered cosily in uncontaminated air. 
 And waiting helplessly outside Charleston Harbor as the old year 
 died in violent wind and rain, Admiral John Dahlgren, sick and 
 discouraged, wrote: 
 
 Thus endeth the old year 1863 — one that has witnessed my 
 highest advancement, but not my happiness, for I have been loaded 
 with responsibilities that no one could hope to lead to a favorable 
 issue; the best possible result of which would ruin the reputation 
 of any man. And now what is there to look forward to? 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 18 
 
 Ripley's Last Stand 
 
 The restless ambition which beset cap- 
 tain Dahlgren in January 1863 had no counterpart in General Rip- 
 ley. For more than a year Ripley had been established with his wife 
 and daughters in a house of his own at Jackson Place, just off La- 
 fayette Square; and there he seemed content to stay. Through all 
 the ebb and flow of carnage, the general regularly, if perhaps not 
 altogether serenely, woke in his own bedroom, breakfasted at his 
 own table, followed a familiar morning route across Pennsylvania 
 Avenue past the White House and down Seventeenth Street, and 
 took up his daily vigil as preserver of the Union Army from new- 
 fangled gimcracks. Perhaps, as he walked austerely through winter 
 rains on his way to the Winder Building, Ripley felt an occasional 
 twinge at the sight of Andrew Jackson's effigy astride an ever- 
 rearing charger in the sodden park. But by then, the old hero who 
 once threatened to hang young Ripley for his excessive devotion to 
 red tape had been almost twenty years in the grave; and for all 
 Stanton's bluster, no such retribution menaced the Union Army's 
 Chief of Ordnance. 
 
 The climactic new year of 1863 brought little rest to the watch- 
 dog of weapons. New follies arose and old ones persisted. Ripley's 
 representations and misrepresentations of 1862 had not, for ex- 
 ample, completely scotched the coffee-mill guns. Undismayed by 
 setbacks in the Peninsula, the American Arms Company brought 
 out an improved model of its machine gun and looked about for 
 
 249 
 
250 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 other markets. Its secretary, the resourceful J. D. Mills, took some 
 prominent Kentuckians out to Staten Island one day for a demon- 
 stration of the new model; and on the ferryboat he met a soldier of 
 fortune just about to leave for Venezuela, which, like the United 
 States, was then racked by civil war. Mills's sales talk on that oc- 
 casion led to a Venezuelan trial order for one gun, although what 
 came of the trial is not recorded. 
 
 Toward the end of 1862 a company agent persuaded Captain 
 David Porter to try his luck with a coffee-mill gun. At a hundred 
 and forty yards the delighted captain hit the head of a small barrel 
 six times out of ten, and he saw the agent hit it eighteen out of 
 twenty-four times in rapid firing. Some few trifling mechanical de- 
 fects could be easily fixed, thought Porter; and he ordered four of 
 the guns through the Navy Ordnance Bureau. After they reached 
 his Mississippi Squadron, however, Porter decided that light how- 
 itzers throwing shrapnel would do just as well for most river work. 
 Perhaps the captain had heard about an incident on the Yazoo 
 River, when a shaving of lead flew sidewise from one of the new 
 machine guns and embedded itself in the leg of General William 
 T. Sherman. The errant fragment, which had to be extracted with 
 pincers, may have given Sherman added grounds for his famous 
 definition of war, but it did not raise his esteem for machine guns. 
 
 In the East that spring the Scientific American reported sadly 
 that the coffee-mill guns had "proved to be of no practical value to 
 the army of the Potomac, and are now laid up in a store-house in 
 Washington." Nevertheless, the commander of a Negro regiment 
 about to leave New York for Louisiana asked for eight of the guns 
 and got them, over the protests of General Ripley, who refused to 
 furnish proper ammunition until Assistant Secretary Watson flatly 
 ordered him to do so. Ripley might have spared himself this skir- 
 mish, for the regiment in question found no occasion to use the 
 guns. 
 
 A new threat to Ripley's equanimity arose in June, when Gen- 
 eral Rosecrans saw a coffee-mill gun fired successfully and requested 
 more such guns for his Army of the Cumberland. After a surly 
 
RIPLEY'S LAST STAND 251 
 
 account of the gun's shortcomings, Ripley admitted there were some 
 on hand, "if you still desire to have any sent to you." Rosecrans did 
 so desire, and ten guns were sent. Ordnance officers along the way 
 seemed to forward them with extraordinary deliberation, however, 
 and at last they went astray in Nashville, thus missing out on the 
 Battle of Chickamauga. 
 
 Lincoln knew nothing about this sabotage of the coffee-mill 
 guns, and in any case he had shifted his support to the Rafael Re- 
 peater. After three weeks of testing at 6th Corps Headquarters in 
 Virginia during April, the Rafael machine gun won hearty praise 
 from a board of two brigadier generals and a colonel, all able men. 
 In its "simplicity of construction, accuracy, range, and frequency 
 of fire," the board found the gun to be "all that is claimed for it," 
 and they recommended an initial use of from eight to twelve guns 
 per brigade. Brigadier General (formerly Colonel) Pratt, whose 
 battle experience with the coffee-mill gun had been unhappy, glow- 
 ingly endorsed the Rafael Repeater and asked that at least twenty- 
 four of them be attached'to his division. After studying the report, 
 Lincoln wrote: 
 
 The within are additional testimonials in favor of what is called 
 the "Rafael Gun" of which I thought favorably some time ago. 
 Will the Sec. of War please refer it to the Ordnance Bureau, with 
 reference to the propriety of introducing the "Rafael Gun" into 
 the Service? 
 
 In spite of all this, Ripley never bought a single Rafael Repeater. 
 
 One who did not appreciate Ripley's ingrained abhorrence of all 
 new weapons might well agree with several Navy officers, who told 
 the Rafael Repeater's owners "that they should regard the an- 
 swer of the government officials to our proposals as a test of their 
 patriotism. If they refused these guns, they should believe they 
 were traitors & did not want or desire the termination of the war." 
 
 Ripley could no longer cite the small arms shortage as an argu- 
 
252 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 ment against converting to new weapons. As early as June 1862, 
 the Ordnance Department had a third of a million arms in storage, 
 besides having issued nearly a million to the troops. To be sure, an 
 acute and unexpected shortage developed in September and Octo- 
 ber after the great battles of late summer; but by 1863 the Spring- 
 field Armory was turning out twenty thousand first-class rifles a 
 month and had thirty thousand on hand waiting to be called for. 
 
 Late in 1862 opportunity once more hammered at the door of 
 the Ordnance Office. The Union Firearms Company had failed, for 
 lack of investors, to fill Lincoln's order for twenty-five thousand 
 Marsh breechloaders. Now Samuel Marsh had severed connections 
 with his old partner, Robert Gallaher, and had made a fresh start 
 with an entirely new company, the Marsh Patent Fire Arms Com- 
 pany, which enjoyed the support of such solid citizens as Moses 
 Grinnell, Mayor George Opdyke of New York City and General 
 Dan Sickles. 
 
 But when the new company offered to make up to a hundred 
 thousand Marsh breechloaders, Ripley made no reply; and when 
 Marsh wrote again in January 1863, Ripley confused, or pretended 
 to confuse, the new company with the old one. Pointing out 
 haughtily that nearly seven thousand breechloaders remained de- 
 liverable on the President's old order to the Union Firearms Com- 
 pany, Ripley refused to consider any further orders. Marsh wrote 
 again in February to explain that he had no present connection 
 with that moribund firm and obviously could deliver no rifles in its 
 name. General Ripley seemed unable to understand. "There are, 
 now, 5800 of these arms deliverable to the Government," he in- 
 sisted inexorably. "In my opinion it is not adviseable to purchase 
 any of them at any price." 
 
 And not a single Marsh breechloader was ever purchased. 
 
 Ripley fought off the Spencer repeating rifle with equal de- 
 termination. To demands from the field, which mounted in volume 
 and feeling as 1863 progressed, Ripley replied that repeating and 
 breech-loading arms could be furnished only to mounted men, and 
 
ripley's last stand 253 
 
 there were not enough even for that purpose. Besides, added Rip- 
 ley, the original order for Spencer rifles had been largely forfeited 
 "owing to the non-delivery of the arms within the times specified 
 in the contract." In short, Ripley's acquiescence in the purchase of 
 breech-loading carbines from the Spencer Company gave him an 
 excuse for blocking the production of breech-loading rifles. 
 
 Even while the Chief of Ordnance was thus pulling a long face, 
 for the benefit of field commanders, over the scarcity of Spencer 
 rifles, he was recommending to the War Department that existing 
 orders be canceled. In February, for example, he told Assistant 
 Secretary Watson that it was not "expedient to continue the manu- 
 facture under the contract." In March, after a delivery of two 
 hundred Spencers, Ripley complained about their cost and insisted 
 that their "practical value and utility for the military service have 
 yet to be ascertained." And in May Ripley told Fisher and Cheney 
 of the Spencer Company that he could give them no further orders 
 for rifles without special authority from Secretary Stanton. Not 
 unnaturally, the two men thereupon applied to Stanton, who flew 
 into a rage and demanded to know why Ripley burdened him with 
 business belonging to the Ordnance Department. To this, Ripley 
 replied lamely: "I did not send them to you, at all, for any pur- 
 pose." 
 
 The Spencer Company did its best to counter Ripley's opposi- 
 tion to its rifles. Early in 1863 & sent Christopher Spencer west to 
 explain the proper use of his gun to troops which already carried it 
 and to the commanders of troops not yet so fortunate. In April the 
 young inventor dined with General Grant and Flag Officer Foote 
 not far from Vicksburg. 
 
 The Spencer rifle's most effective promoter in the West, how- 
 ever, was a black-bearded Confederate cavalry leader named John 
 H. Morgan, who in the late summer and early fall of 1862 hovered 
 over Tennessee and Kentucky "like an eagle on the wing, ready to 
 pounce upon any weak point." Strategically, Morgan's raiders were 
 of slight account, but their nuisance value was high. "In no other 
 way," commented Lincoln, "does the enemy give us so much 
 
254 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 trouble, at so little expence to himself." During the fall of 1862 
 General Rosecrans, whose Army of the Cumberland was the prin- 
 cipal sufferer from Morgan's depredations, noted that Morgan 
 moved his men swiftly on horseback to the point of attack, where 
 they dismounted and fought as infantry. Two could play at that 
 game, thought Rosecrans, and he wrote the War Department for 
 Colt revolving rifles to arm some mounted infantry of his own. 
 Governor Morton of Indiana, whose state felt the threat of Mor- 
 gan's raids with particular keenness, took up the idea and demand- 
 ed no less than fifty such regiments. 
 
 General Ripley and his ally, General in Chief Halleck, did not 
 share Morton's enthusiasm. Halleck wrote Rosecrans in February 
 1863: 
 
 You are not the only general who is urgently calling for more 
 cavalry and more cavalry arms. The supply is limited, and the de- 
 mands of all cannot be satisfied. ... In regard to "revolving rifles," 
 "superior arms," &c, every one is issued the moment it is received. 
 
 Nevertheless, the mounted infantry idea had powerful support. 
 On Lincoln's fifty-fourth birthday Stanton authorized the forma- 
 tion of such a regiment, to be armed as prescribed by the President. 
 And just then, Major General Lovell H. Rousseau arrived in Wash- 
 ington from Rosecrans' s army, all afire with zeal for mounted in- 
 fantry. 
 
 Rousseau, a tall Kentuckian of elegant manners and great 
 strength, had been, in Lincoln's own words, "our first active prac- 
 tical Military friend in Kentucky," and he had stood well with the 
 President ever since. Now he was back at the White House to tell 
 Lincoln that only mounted infantry could deal with men like Mor- 
 gan's. "I propose to organize and use such a force ... to be fur- 
 nished with Sharps rifles," he declared. "If I do not make this pay 
 at the end of three months from today, I will cheerfully relinquish 
 the command." Lincoln was convinced, and immediately wrote 
 Rosecrans a letter in support of the idea. 
 
 Rousseau did not depart at once. On March 2 he appeared at the 
 
RIPLEY'S LAST STAND 255 
 
 last White House levee of the season, a highly successful affair at 
 which "hats, coats, dresses, crinoline, and corns suffered terribly." 
 Evidently he endured the hardships of Washington society long 
 enough to win his point, for in mid-April General Ripley notified 
 Rosecrans that two thousand Spencer rifles would be on their way 
 in a month or so, this being "as soon as they can be made." 
 
 Rosecrans waited not upon the Spencers before following Lin- 
 coln's suggestion: in March he authorized Colonel John T. Wilder 
 to impress mounts for his infantry brigade. 
 
 Born in New York's Catskills in 1830, John Thomas Wilder 
 rose from poverty until his Indiana foundry and millwrighting 
 firm was doing business in six states. By June 1861, when he be- 
 came lieutenant colonel of the 17th Indiana Infantry, Wilder was 
 a recognized expert in hydraulics, the holder of three turbine pat- 
 ents and the employer of a hundred men. In the service he invented 
 a device for twisting iron rails, a useful gadget for hit-and-run 
 raids. 
 
 Unwilling to wait for the Spencers promised by Ripley, Wilder 
 bought some directly with money borrowed from bankers in his 
 home town; his men paid him for their rifles in installments, and 
 the Federal Government later reimbursed them. Wilder' s impa- 
 tience paid off at Hoover's Gap on June 24, 1863. After months of 
 querulous inaction, Rosecrans had begun the brilliant Tullahoma 
 campaign which was to maneuver Bragg out of Tennessee. Rose- 
 crans ordered Wilder' s "First Mounted Rifles," leading the ad- 
 vance, to "trot through" Hoover's Gap, pushing Confederate pick- 
 ets before them. Wilder obeyed orders literally, paying no heed to 
 rebel rear-guard opposition. At last the Confederate general sent 
 Bushrod Johnson's brigade against Wilder's men. Although Rose- 
 crans' s army was six miles to the rear, the Yankees already pos- 
 sessed the confidence bred by breechloaders. Holding firm until the 
 main body of Rosecrans' s forces came up, Wilder's men fired their 
 Spencer rifles into the rebel brigade until Johnson felt sure he was 
 outnumbered five to one. Wilder lost fifty-one men killed and 
 wounded to Johnson's one hundred and forty-six. From then on, 
 
256 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 the 1 st Mounted Rifles were universally known as "Wilder's Light- 
 ning Brigade." 
 
 On that June day in 1863 the eyes of the nation were not turned 
 toward Hoover's Gap; nor did they rest on Admiral Dahlgren, who 
 left Washington that morning for his South Atlantic squadron. 
 
 At Chancellorsville in May Berdan's men had given part of the 
 Stonewall Brigade its first taste of disordered retreat; but the battle 
 as a whole had been a bloody defeat for the Army of the Potomac 
 and its sanguine, ruddy-cheeked commander, General Joseph 
 Hooker. Now Lee's army was once more swarming northward, and 
 all Washington cocked its ears for the rumble of guns. Pennsyl- 
 vania already shrank before the impending blow; and Lieutenant 
 Commander Jeffers, testing Diller's powder at Philadelphia, wrote 
 Harry Wise that the city was "full of sound and fury signifying 
 nothing. Very few join the various companies notwithstanding the 
 clamorous appeals to their patriotism and state pride." While the 
 opposing armies sidled watchfully northward through Maryland, 
 Hooker yielded his command to austere, quick-tempered George 
 Meade; and on the first day of July, the Battle of Gettysburg began. 
 
 As the men of Meade's army fell back through the little Pennsyl- 
 vania town, General Ripley, in the Winder Building at Washing- 
 ton, was writing the Spencer Company that no more of its rifles 
 were wanted. 
 
 On the second day of the battle Longstreet's men, pushing to- 
 ward Little Round Top, ran into a hundred Berdan men, supported 
 by two hundred Maine troops with muzzle-loaders. In the twenty- 
 minute action that ensued, the Sharpshooters fired an average of 
 ninety-five rounds each from their single-shot breechloaders. The 
 Confederates mistook them for "two Federal regiments." One 
 Sharpshooter was captured and taken back through the enemy 
 lines. "It is impossible for me to describe the slaughter we had 
 made in their ranks," he said after the war. "In all my past service, 
 it beat all I had ever seen for the number engaged and for so short 
 
ripley's last stand 257 
 
 a time. They were piled in heaps and across each other. . . . The 
 doctor would hardly believe that there were so few of us fighting 
 them, thought we had a corps, as he said he never saw lead so thick 
 in his life as it was in those woods." 
 
 The stand of the Sharpshooters had the effect of delaying Long- 
 street's corps forty minutes. Had the delay been only thirty-five 
 minutes, Longstreet might have taken the Peach Orchard and the 
 ridge and thus changed the outcome of the battle. 
 
 In the Peach Orchard, Gardiner explosive bullets popped on 
 both sides. Major French had persuaded Assistant Secretary Wat- 
 son to order more than a hundred thousand, of which twenty-four 
 thousand were issued to the 2nd New Hampshire in June. Ten 
 thousand of these were abandoned to the rebels in Virginia and 
 thus reached Gettysburg in enemy hands. While Corporal Thomas 
 Bignall of the 2nd New Hampshire fought in the Peach Orchard, 
 a shell struck his cartridge box of Gardiner bullets. "The cart- 
 ridges," recalled a horrified witness, "were driven into his body 
 and fired, and for nearly half a minute the devilish 'musket shells' 
 issued at Washington were exploding in his quivering form. But 
 death was mercifully quick." 
 
 Lee's men struck hard at both flanks of the Union Army that 
 day, without decisive effect. On July third, as Meade had shrewdly 
 anticipated, Lee hit the Federal center with the splendid although 
 vain effort known as Pickett's charge. With it the rebel bolt was 
 shot. Throughout the nation's birthday, the rebels remained sul- 
 lenly defiant on Seminary Ridge. Early on the morning of the fifth, 
 they were found to be in full retreat through the mountain passes. 
 And meanwhile, unknown to either army, the Fourth of July had 
 been gloriously observed in the West by the capture of Vicksburg. 
 
 Back in Washington on Independence Day, Abraham Lincoln 
 analyzed dispatches and wondered if General Meade would now 
 go on to destroy the rebel army and end the war. As he sat on the 
 White House stairs pondering the future, a friend from his Spring- 
 
258 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 field past appeared before him. Lincoln hailed Archimedes C. Dick- 
 son cordially as "Dick" and talked with him for some time, learn- 
 ing among other things that his one-time crony was now in the 
 lumber business at St. Louis. At last the President remarked that he 
 was "busy just then" but wanted to see Dickson again, and he 
 asked Dickson how long he would be in town. This gave Dickson 
 his cue to introduce Lincoln to the Absterdam shell, which was to 
 become Lincoln's last notable project in the field of weapons. 
 
 Arriving from France nearly twenty years before, one John Ab- 
 sterdam had set himself up as a mechanical engineer, and in May 
 1862 had patented a mixture of sulphur and plumbago as a lubri- 
 cant for journal boxes. Presently it occurred to him that his mixture 
 would do to lubricate projectiles also. Thumbing through the Army 
 Ordnance Manual, Absterdam came across a description of Major 
 Alexander Dyer's rifle shell, distinguished chiefly by a cup or sabot 
 of soft metal at the base, which was supposed to expand and take 
 the grooves like a Minie bullet. In August 1862, at about the time 
 of Second Bull Run, the Frenchman patented a shell based on the 
 Dyer model but girdled with two or three raised bands of the 
 Absterdam lubricant, intended both to lubricate the gun and to keep 
 the shell in line with the bore. 
 
 In the spring of 1863 Absterdam went to St. Louis and per- 
 suaded Colonel Callender, the chief ordnance officer of that 
 military department, to try a few of his patent shells. The colonel 
 did not like them. The grooves which held the lubricating bands 
 weakened the shell, he insisted; the shells were hard to load after 
 a few rounds; and worst of all, fragments of the bands new off one 
 shell in flight — not an effect which Union troops underneath would 
 be apt to applaud. 
 
 So Absterdam changed his approach and began trading shares 
 in his shell for influence in selling it. James Eads, the gunboat de- 
 signer, for example, was to get a share in profits from Navy orders. 
 Orloff A. Zane, a quartermaster clerk at St. Louis who claimed 
 acquaintance with General Rosecrans and other officials, received 
 a half interest in future sales to the Western armies. When Arch- 
 
RIPLEY'S LAST STAND 259 
 
 imedes Dickson got a half interest in Eastern orders on the grounds 
 of his influence with Lincoln, Dickson and Zane consolidated their 
 allotments into a half share of all Army orders for the shell. This 
 was the business which had brought "Dick" Dickson to the White 
 House on the momentous Fourth of July, 1863. 
 
 After Dickson had explained the alleged excellences of the Ab- 
 sterdam shell to the President, Lincoln assured him that "if there 
 was any virtue in it he would do all he could." Confirmation of the 
 President's good will came a day or two later. William Butler of 
 Springfield, another old friend of Lincoln's who had been offered a 
 cut of Absterdam profits, scrupulously withdrew from the venture 
 on being told by Lincoln that he would do as much for Dickson "as 
 for any other man that lived." And the President left orders for 
 Dickson to be admitted at any time, although he advised his friend 
 to come early in the morning if possible. 
 
 Dickson was quick to capitalize on Lincoln's attitude. When he 
 asked the President for "a little order to test my shell," Lincoln 
 told him he would have it. On July 10, as Lincoln grew increasing- 
 ly despondent over Meade's failure to follow up the recent victory, 
 Dickson, Zane and Absterdam all talked with the President at the 
 Soldiers' Home; and next day Lincoln called at the Navy Ordnance 
 Bureau and ordered a trial of the Absterdam shell "as soon as pos- 
 sible." 
 
 Shocking news came to Lincoln on the morning of July 14: Lee 
 and his army had escaped unmolested across the Potomac. "There 
 is bad faith somewhere," he burst out to the Secretary of the Navy. 
 "What does it mean, Mr. Welles? Great God! what does it mean?" 
 Two hours later, Welles found him lying on a sofa at the War De- 
 partment, "completely absorbed, overwhelmed with the news . . . 
 dejected and discouraged." Yet, on that very day, he went down to 
 the Navy Yard and watched the firing of twenty Absterdam shells 
 out over the river from a 6-pounder Army field gun. The officer in 
 charge considered the results "admirable" and thought that Abster- 
 dam' s patent bands would lubricate the gun just as well as grease. 
 Lincoln threw his influence behind the shell; and after beating 
 
260 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 down the price by a third, General Ripley ordered a thousand Ab- 
 sterdam shells for extensive trials at West Point. 
 
 Now that the Conf ederacy had been sundered at Vicksburg and 
 brought to a shuddering stop at Gettysburg, the final triumph of 
 the Union was no longer in doubt, only the time of its coming. A 
 month after Gettysburg, John Hay went with Lincoln to the photo- 
 graphic studio of Alexander Gardner. Lincoln, noted Hay was "in 
 very good spirits"; and he told Hay "that the rebel power is at last 
 beginning to disintegrate, that they will break into pieces if we only 
 stand firm now." The new aspect of affairs had its bearing on ord- 
 nance policy. At last there was some validity to Ripley's long-stand- 
 ing contention that large orders for "fancy arms" would have to be 
 received and paid for after the need for them had passed. And 
 while Lincoln never voiced that idea in so many words, it must 
 have been in his mind after Gettysburg and Vicksburg. 
 
 Ironically, it was just then, as Ripley's weapons policy began to 
 come into its own, that Ripley himself began to slip. Captain 
 George T. Balch, an ambitious officer more than thirty years Rip- 
 ley's junior, had been attached to the Ordnance Office early in 1862 
 and had earned a reputation for hard efficiency. Ripley later heard 
 rumors, "apparently well-founded," that Balch had begun plotting 
 his chief's removal as early as August 1862. And Balch's machina- 
 tions were not to be scorned, for something about the energetic 
 captain took the fancy of both Stanton and Watson. By the summer 
 of 1863 Watson was sending for Balch daily for information on 
 Ordnance Office business and was making no secret of the fact that 
 he had "no confidence whatever in General Ripley." Despite 
 Balch's half-hearted protests against this undercutting of his su- 
 perior, the practice continued while Ripley remained. 
 
 There were other straws in the wind. Reports began to come in 
 during the summer, especially from Vicksburg, of defective artil- 
 lery ammunition. The Parrott shells were said to be pitted with 
 sand holes, some of which were filled with putty, others left un- 
 disguised. Small arms ammunition sent from Indianapolis was 
 
RIPLEY'S LAST STAND 261 
 
 "rascally," the powder "worthless." Stanton was angry; and later 
 in the summer, when Ripley reported against enlarging a contract 
 for Gibbs carbines, the Secretary significantly referred the subject 
 to Watson "for more careful examination." 
 
 Not even the multiplying signs of his own official doom could 
 shake Ripley in his opposition to breech-loading rifles. Soon after 
 Gettysburg, Colonel Berdan made a final effort to get Spencer rifles 
 for his Sharpshooters. But his pushing ways had made too many 
 enemies; and charges of cowardice, although dismissed by a court- 
 martial, had cast a shadow on his reputation. Ripley found it easy 
 to snarl the friendless colonel in red tape till he ceased to struggle. 
 And while the Spencer rifles of Wilder' s Lightning Brigade were 
 spreading the breechloader gospel through the Army of the Cum- 
 berland, General Halleck suddenly began to insist that mounted 
 infantry be armed only with such guns "as the Ordnance Depart- 
 ment can furnish." 
 
 A week after this War Department backsliding, General Rous- 
 seau checked in again at Willard's; and a few days later, Christo- 
 pher Spencer came on to Washington bearing a request from his 
 company that Lincoln witness another demonstration of the Spen- 
 cer rifle by its inventor. "We would suggest," added the company, 
 "that as the Hon. Secretary of War, Gen. Halleck and others were 
 knowing to the mishaps of our gun at its former trials before you 
 . . . they should be present if possible."* 
 
 When he arrived at the White House with the aforementioned 
 letter and a new Spencer rifle for the President, the inventor was 
 ushered into the reception room, where he found Lincoln alone. 
 Spencer took the gleaming repeater from its cloth case and handed 
 it to Lincoln. After a thorough and knowing inspection, Lincoln 
 asked Spencer to take it apart and show him "the inwardness of the 
 thing." This done to Lincoln's satisfaction, he invited Spencer to 
 
 * This suggests that Lincoln had witnessed Berdan's accident with a Spencer 
 rifle on Christmas Day, 1861. Christopher Spencer was in Washington and seeing 
 Lincoln at that time. 
 
262 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 come over at two the next afternoon, when "we will go out and 
 see the thing shoot." 
 
 That same day General Rousseau called on Lincoln with the 
 draft of an order giving Rousseau authority, with Rosecrans's con- 
 sent, to mount his division and arm it with Sharps or Spencer rifles. 
 Without formally signing the order, Lincoln sent it to Stanton with 
 the endorsement "Sec. of War please see Gen. Rousseau at once"; 
 and Stanton immediately ordered Ripley to find out how soon five 
 thousand Sharps or Spencers could be procured for Rousseau, con- 
 sistent with existing carbine contracts. Ripley wrote the two com- 
 panies next day. 
 
 Tuesday, August 18, 1863, was a quiet day in the war. Meade 
 and Lee watched each other warily in Virginia. Dahlgren's naval 
 squadron lay outside Charleston Harbor in simmering futility. 
 Rosecrans had finished the Tullahoma campaign and, after the 
 usual interlude of bickering with the War Department, had set off 
 along the road which would bring him to disaster at Chickamauga. 
 In Washington the sun was bright and the sky blue, but the tem- 
 perature stayed in the seventies most of the day; and when it did 
 edge higher in midafternoon, a light breeze from the north picked 
 up enough force to rustle trees and start the stars and stripes danc- 
 ing over the Winder Building. 
 
 At two that afternoon Lincoln set out with his son Robert, his 
 private secretary John Hay and Christopher Spencer along the 
 shade-dappled walk that led from the White House to the War 
 Department. While Robert went in to invite Stanton along, Lincoln 
 entertained the others with some of his stories. Noticing a torn 
 pocket in his black alpaca coat, he mended it with a pin taken from 
 his waistcoat. "It seems to me," he said smiling, "that this does not 
 look quite right for the Chief Magistrate of this mighty Republic." 
 Robert emerged from the War Department and reported that Stan- 
 ton was too busy to join them. "Well," commented Lincoln philo- 
 sophically, "they do pretty much as they have a mind to over there." 
 And off went the party to the Treasury Park. 
 
 The target was a board about six inches wide and three feet long 
 
RIPLEY'S LAST STAND 263 
 
 with a black spot painted at each end. Lincoln placed his first shot 
 to the left of the bull's eye and five inches low. His next hit the 
 bull's eye, and working the lever rapidly, he put five more close to 
 it. "Now," said he, "we will see the inventor try it." The board 
 was reversed, and Spencer did what Hay called "some splendid 
 shooting." "Well," said Lincoln, "you are younger than I am and 
 have a better eye and steadier nerve." Young Hay's marksmanship 
 was "lamentably bad," as he himself admitted, blaming it on his 
 eyes. Hay noted in his diary: 
 
 An irrepressible patriot came up and talked about his son John 
 who, when lying on his belly on a hilltop at Gettysburg, feeling 
 the shot fly over him, like to lost his breath — felt himself puffing 
 up like a toad — thought he would bust. Another, seeing the gun 
 recoil slightly, said it wouldn't do; too much powder; a good piece 
 of audience should not rekyle; if it did at all, it should rekyle a 
 little forrid [forward]. 
 
 General Rousseau left for the West that day, "the object of his 
 mission . . . having been accomplished." But halcyon weather con- 
 tinued through the following day, and in the evening Lincoln was 
 down in the Treasury Park again with his new rifle. Spencer never 
 tired of describing in later years the "almost boyish eagerness with 
 which the President . . . examined and tested 'the machine' in the 
 White House grounds." 
 
 Rousseau presently had reason to believe that he had left a little 
 too soon. The Sharps Company reported that it could supply no 
 arms before January; and the Spencer Company wrote that 
 while two thousand rifles would soon be available, they had been 
 promised to the state of Massachusetts. The Bay State was willing 
 to settle for the use of four thousand late model Springfields till 
 January, when twenty-five hundred more Spencers would be ready; 
 but although government warehouses were jammed with Spring- 
 fields, Ripley ignored the offer and advised Stanton against buying 
 any Spencer rifles at any time. A few days later, the dogged old 
 
264 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Chief of Ordnance coolly informed Rousseau that his Spencers 
 could not be delivered before January and ought not to be ordered 
 even for that date because of the need for carbines. "The author- 
 ities here," he added blandly, "will keep your request in mind." 
 
 Fortunately for Rousseau's plans, Lincoln, Stanton and Halleck 
 had finally decided to remove Ripley, a step made easier by an act 
 of Congress giving the President authority to retire officers of more 
 than forty-five years service without recourse to a retiring board. 
 Only the matter of Ripley's successor remained to be settled. Hal- 
 leck suggested Major Rodman, but once again, as in 1862, the 
 major's cannon patents were held to disqualify him. Stanton and 
 Watson wanted to appoint the hard-driving Captain Balch. Lincoln 
 favored his genial friend at the Washington Arsenal, Colonel 
 George D. Ramsay. 
 
 The final choice was put off for more than two weeks, during 
 which time Ripley's fate ceased to be a secret. A New York Times 
 dispatch of September 2, 1863, reported the exile of "the old fogy 
 Ripley . . . who combatted all new ideas in the fabrication of fire- 
 arms, artillery and projectiles." Charles F. Raymond of Norwalk, 
 Connecticut, whose ideas about bifurcated cannon had been coldly 
 received by the outgoing chief, wrote Stanton to thank him "and 
 congratulate the Country on the removal of that old Fossell Fogy." 
 At last, on September 15, 1863, at the age of sixty-nine, Brigadier 
 General James W. Ripley was formally retired from active duty 
 and assigned the nominal task of periodically inspecting the 
 coastal defenses of New England. 
 
 With all that has been said of Ripley's shortcomings, perhaps 
 there is room for a kinder verdict, that of Ripley's chief assistant, 
 the gentle Captain James G. Benton. General Ripley (said Benton) 
 had done his job "with integrity and with great zeal ... He may 
 have erred sometimes; and he may have created a great many en- 
 emies by refusing to adopt inventions which he thought were unfit 
 or not suited to the service, or were too expensive. But I am very 
 confident, in fact I know, that he was actuated solely by the inter- 
 
RIPLEY'S LAST STAND 265 
 
 ests of the service, because I have been in a position to know the 
 fact." 
 
 As for the disagreement between Lincoln and Stanton over 
 Ripley's successor, it had ended in a curious and, as it proved, an 
 unworkable compromise. 
 
 Colonel Ramsay had long been persona non grata to Stanton. 
 Back in May 1862, the irascible Secretary of War had ordered the 
 removal of one of Ramsay's assistants after a misunderstanding 
 about a shipment of ammunition. Boldly and at once, Ramsay took 
 the young officer's part, got the Secretary to reconsider and had the 
 satisfaction of seeing the officer prove his ability in later service. 
 More serious and more daring was Ramsay's action just after Sec- 
 ond Bull Run, when Stanton in a panic ordered all arsenal stores 
 to be shipped to New York forthwith. Conscious of the disastrous 
 effect such an order would have on Union morale, Ramsay deliber- 
 ately disobeyed it, at the risk of his career and perhaps his life. All 
 remained quiet at the arsenal. When General McClellan heard of 
 Stanton's order, he had it countermanded at once; and next day 
 Lincoln himself thanked Ramsay warmly for running his fearful 
 risk. The weapons thus kept available to McClellan helped stave 
 off defeat at Antietam two weeks later; and on the strength of that 
 narrowly won victory, Lincoln issued his preliminary emancipation 
 proclamation. 
 
 Now that Lincoln favored Ramsay as Chief of Ordnance, Stan- 
 ton professed to have no confidence in the colonel's fitness for the 
 post. When Lincoln brought up the question of seniority in opposi- 
 tion to Captain Balch, Stanton at last consented to Ramsay's ap- 
 pointment. But the Secretary insisted that Balch be made Ramsay's 
 principal assistant and the real Chief of Ordnance in all but name. 
 This suggestion seems to have been more of a gambit than a retreat. 
 To be sure, Stanton had been successful with such an arrangement 
 in the Adjutant General's office, but in that case the titular chief 
 had been assigned to duties away from Washington. With Ramsay 
 and Balch working side by side, a clash was inevitable; and Stanton 
 
266 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 doubtless hoped to have Ramsay at his mercy when the test came. 
 The Stantonian proposition was so unfair to Ramsay that even Cap- 
 tain Balch, who had long been a close friend of the Ramsay family, 
 had qualms of conscience when he heard of it. But Watson called 
 on him to make the sacrifice for the nation's sake, and Balch patri- 
 otically consented. 
 
 Thus, to his astonishment, Colonel Ramsay was ordered to "take 
 charge" of the Ordnance Office. No one told him that he was to be 
 only a figurehead. He knew nothing of Stanton's plans for Balch. 
 Ramsay entered upon his duties, he said later, "with all the zeal 
 and honesty of disposition that a man could have, feeling the ex- 
 traordinary responsibility which had been so unexpectedly devolved 
 upon me, and which I should have declined if an opportunity had 
 presented itself." But Captain Balch, having assumed the role of 
 puppeteer, gathered the strings in hand immediately by assigning 
 Captain Benton to command the Washington Arsenal and Colonel 
 Maynadier to duty outside the capital. When Ramsay first took his 
 seat at General Ripley's old desk, therefore, he faced a stack of un- 
 signed papers on which only Balch could now advise him. 
 
 Ramsay had not been made Chief of Ordnance, as Stanton ex- 
 plicitly pointed out to him; he had only been ordered to relieve 
 General Ripley; and so, for official business, he adopted the style of 
 "Acting Chief of Ordnance." At dusk a week or so later Stanton 
 summoned him on routine business. In the Secretary's murky office 
 Ramsay managed to identify Governor Andrew of Massachusetts. 
 Indulging his taste for theatrics, Stanton turned to Andrew and 
 said, "Let me introduce you to our new Chief of Ordnance." This 
 was how Ramsay first learned that he was to be more than a tem- 
 porary stopgap. 
 
 Afterward the colonel went home to the arsenal and broke the 
 news to his wife. The couple sat alone in the gathering night. "I re- 
 member," said Ramsay later, "how sad the fact made us: that we 
 were about to lose our place to go into this other position." Theirs 
 was a prophetic sadness. 
 
 General Rousseau, at least, was a decided gainer by the recent 
 
RIPLEY'S LAST STAND 267 
 
 change. Two weeks after Ripley's removal, Watson ordered Ram- 
 say to accept the offer of Massachusetts and send Rousseau half of 
 the two thousand Spencers thus acquired. Since the War Depart- 
 ment, as late as the following December, was opposed to arming 
 mounted infantry with such guns, it is not hard to see the hand of 
 Abraham Lincoln in that order. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 19 
 
 Farewell to Arms 
 
 ON JUNE 25, 1863, THE DAY AFTER DAHL- 
 
 gren left for his new command, Harry Wise took over as Chief of 
 the Navy Ordnance Bureau. Like Dahlgren, the merry little globe- 
 trotter dreamed of maritime glory, but he had suffered an injury in 
 the service which would have made sea duty difficult. Besides, in 
 appointing him, Lincoln felt that he had 'got the right peg in the 
 right hole." Despite his incorrigible levity, Wise made an excellent 
 administrator — much better than Dahlgren, in the opinion of near- 
 ly all Navy officers. Moreover, he worked well in that sphere of 
 policy now called "public relations." Most inventors, according to 
 the Scientific American, liked Wise and found in him a "willing- 
 ness and favorable disposition toward new inventions which it 
 would be well for others [meaning Ripley] to adopt." 
 
 Still, Dahlgren's departure cost Lincoln his right-hand man in 
 ordnance matters. Only once more was there a revival of the old 
 relationship, early in 1864, when Lincoln sent a New York sea 
 captain named Lavender down to Charleston with a device for re- 
 moving underwater obstructions. * Harry Wise was a pleasant com- 
 panion and a good administrator, yet he had no reputation for pro- 
 fessional brillance. This may have been one reason why Lincoln 
 
 * Dahlgren liked the device and was "much pleased" to get Lincoln's note, but 
 nothing came of it. 
 
 268 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 269 
 
 seldom consulted him on new weapons. Another may have been 
 that Lincoln took little interest in new weapons after the summer 
 of 1863, what with Ripley out of the way and the war in its latter 
 stages. 
 
 One inventor to feel the change was Joseph Francis, who had 
 done much to save lives with his corrugated iron lifeboat. Francis 
 had also devised an amphibious pontoon wagon with iron sides 
 thick enough to deflect bullets. In April 1863, after being knighted 
 by Czar Alexander II and the Emperor Napoleon III for his inven- 
 tions and services, he offered his pontoons to the American Eman- 
 cipator. Nearly a year later, when Francis came back to report that 
 the War Department would do nothing for him, Lincoln tried to 
 open a way for the inventor. But when Stanton proved obstinate, 
 Lincoln promptly let the matter drop. 
 
 Professor Henry Wurtz, a well-known chemist and geologist 
 who had been one of Joseph Henry's star pupils at Princeton, had 
 developed a chemical compound which, he claimed, would cause 
 gunpowder to generate increasingly greater pressure as the projec- 
 tile moved along the bore of the cannon — an effect much to be de- 
 sired. After what seemed like encouraging experiments in the sum- 
 mer of 1863, Wurtz ran into opposition from the Ordnance De- 
 partment. Perhaps because of Joseph Henry's intercession, Lincoln 
 ordered still another trial, which was made near Philadelphia in 
 December. On the fourth firing with about fifty spectators gath- 
 ered around it the test gun, an eight-inch columbiad, burst into 
 small fragments. Miraculously, no one was injured. After the re- 
 port went to Lincoln, he bothered no more with "accelerating cart- 
 ridges," and the professor turned his undoubted talents to more 
 peaceable uses. 
 
 The trial of Professor Wurtz's cartridge was the last such new 
 project undertaken by Lincoln. One sweltering June night in 1864, 
 however, he did drive out to the Navy Yard with ex-Senator 
 Browning, Assistant Secretary Fox and others, to see the firing of 
 signal rockets from field artillery. Several went up with good re- 
 sults, trailing fire across the night sky, but the last one exploded 
 
270 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 halfway in its course and fell to the water. "Well," said Lincoln, 
 "small potatoes and few in a hill." 
 
 That phrase would also have fitted the affair of Captain Isaac 
 Diller's powder, which after high promise had fizzled out as dis- 
 mally as the Navy Yard rocket. 
 
 To his cheerful predictions for the Diller powder, Lieutenant 
 Commander Jeffers had attached the condition "if it preserves its 
 properties after graining." That "if" turned out to be a big one. 
 The powder had to be packed into hard grains in order to be trans- 
 ported and stored safely. Dr. Wetherill labored to grain it, but the 
 process was prohibitively expensive. He modified the formula to 
 make graining easier, but experiments in October 1863 with forty 
 pounds of the new formula showed it to be too unstable for safe 
 storage. Jeffers and Laidley, the Army and Navy representatives, 
 suggested that experiments with larger amounts might change their 
 findings. Captain Diller had spent all the money allotted him by 
 Lincoln and had gone into debt on his own account. So, for the 
 eighth time since April, he called at the White House for instruc- 
 tions. 
 
 This time, Lincoln showed scant enthusiasm. Prodded by Dahl- 
 gren, American firms were now making gunpowder out of Chilean 
 sodium nitrate instead of saltpeter from British India. The Army's 
 niter stock pile had reached a comfortable eight million pounds. A 
 month before, the last real threat of war with England had ended. 
 In short, Diller's chlorate-based powder was no longer needed. Al- 
 though not rejecting Diller's request for funds in so many words, 
 Lincoln shifted the conversation to Springfield politics. "So that 
 party is settled," commented Lieutenant Commander Jeffers. 
 
 In contrast, the "Absterdam party" (as it came to be called) was 
 far from settled. 
 
 Unable to interest field commanders in his shell during the sum- 
 mer of 1863, Absterdam had enlarged his following in the usual 
 way: by promising contingent fees to persons of influence. Ex- 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 271 
 
 Senator Browning, Senator Lane of Kansas and even young Lieu- 
 tenant George Ramsay, nephew and namesake of the new Chief of 
 Ordnance, were mustered into the Absterdam service. Congressman 
 John A. Bingham of Ohio, having some influence with Stanton, 
 undertook to get a large order if Lincoln would sign a certain pre- 
 scribed note. Early one morning Archimedes Dickson found Lin- 
 coln in his office; and after the President had drunk a cup of coffee, 
 he obligingly copied off Bingham's note on a card and signed it. 
 Stanton, to Bingham's surprise, blocked the deal — as Lincoln had 
 doubtless anticipated he would. 
 
 There were others in the "Absterdam party." Ben Butler heard 
 of twelve, and remarked in mock awe that it was "the same num- 
 ber as the apostles." Next to Dickson, Absterdam's most diligent 
 henchman was Thomas H. Ford, a Mexican War veteran and for- 
 mer lieutenant governor of Ohio. Ford had long been intimate with 
 party leaders — Thurlow Weed, among others — but his luck and his 
 health had both failed him by 1861, and he had appealed piteously 
 to Lincoln for an office. Unfortunately for both Ford and the 
 Union, Lincoln did not find him a place. As a clerk, Ford could 
 have done little worse than misfile correspondence. Denied a Fed- 
 eral clerkship, he pulled strings to get an Ohio volunteer commis- 
 sion; and as the sickly commander of two thousand troops on Mary- 
 land Heights near Harper's Ferry in 1862, he yielded the Heights 
 to Stonewall Jackson. Ford was censured and dismissed from the 
 service, and spent the few years left to him as a second-rate Wash- 
 ington attorney. His usefulness to the Absterdam party came from 
 his employment as political errand boy for Ben Butler, a function 
 which gave him access to Lincoln. 
 
 The Absterdam party discovered, long before Ramsay did, that 
 "Mr. Balch was the man we had to deal with." They also found 
 the testy captain hard to get at. Indirect influence failed. So did the 
 direct approach by Zane, Ford and Browning, who made the win- 
 ter of 1 863- 1 864 exceedingly unpleasant for Balch. After some of 
 the Absterdam shells ordered by Ripley had been tested, the Presi- 
 dent himself sent along the report to be examined "for my friend 
 
272 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 A. C. Dickson." But because four of the shells had lost their sul- 
 phur-plumbago bands in flight, Balch would not give an order for 
 more. 
 
 Dickson and Zane next made a flank attack by way of Major 
 Theodore T. S. Laidley, commandant of the Frankford Arsenal, 
 who wanted his own fuse igniter adopted and thought he saw the 
 way to this when Dickson flaunted a Lincoln letter before him. 
 Balch fought against the partners' demand for trials at Frankford, 
 until Lincoln walked over to the Winder Building with Dickson 
 and personally ordered the trials made. "It made Balch mad and 
 General Ramsay mad," recalled Dickson gleefully. The maneuver 
 backfired, however. Laidley praised the fundamental design of the 
 shell — Major Dyer's design — and took pains to state that "the fuze 
 is lighted (with certainty) by means of the device recently pro- 
 posed by me." But like Colonel Callender months before, Laidley 
 deprecated the weakening effect of Absterdam's grooves and the 
 fragmentation of the Absterdam lubricating bands. 
 
 After the Laidley report came through, ex-Senator Browning 
 paid a call on Lincoln and a few days later went with him to the 
 Ordnance Office. Lincoln wanted "to have some understanding 
 about this thing," recalled Balch in later years. "We put it on tech- 
 nical grounds, and he wanted to understand, if possible, what those 
 grounds were. . . . He had had a full understanding of the other 
 side, and he proposed to get our view." After swapping pleasant- 
 ries with Ramsay, Lincoln asked the general to "take up those 
 papers now, and go on and explain this whole matter." When 
 Ramsay explained that Balch knew more about it, Lincoln sat down 
 purposefully at Balch's desk, spread "those papers" out before him, 
 and spent fully an hour going over the affair with the captain. 
 Lincoln was not content to discuss it from the angle of public busi- 
 ness alone. He wanted enlightenment on various technical expres- 
 sions in the Laidley report — the "drift of the projectile," for in- 
 stance — and he listened attentively to Balch's elaborate explana- 
 tions of them. At last Lincoln rose to leave, expressing himself, 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 273 
 
 according to Balch, as "perfectly satisfied with the course which 
 General Ramsay and myself, representing the bureau, had taken 
 in the matter. . . . He said that he was very anxious to have these 
 gentlemen get an order, but he did not wish to interfere in the 
 regular course of business; that we were the judges of its value, 
 and he would leave the matter there." 
 
 Meanwhile, unknown to Dickson and Zane, their friend and 
 client Absterdam was busily hoodwinking them. The Frenchman 
 added antimony to his sulphur-plumbago mixture so that the un- 
 trustworthy bands would expand in cooling and thus grip the shells 
 more tightly. Enjoining Balch to secrecy, he persuaded the captain 
 to order fifty of the new type for trial. Then he took steps to secure 
 a separate patent on the improved shell. Absterdam' s scheme was 
 to let Dickson and Zane pressure Lincoln into ordering still an- 
 other trial, which the wily Frenchman would see was made with 
 the improved shell. Then, when an order had been given, Abster- 
 dam would inform his partners that the shell tested was his ex- 
 clusively, and that they had no rights or interest in it. 
 
 Events fell out just as the crafty inventor had planned. Early in 
 February 1864, having digested Balch's lesson in ballistics, Lincoln 
 ordered new trials of the Absterdam shell at the Washington Ar- 
 senal, where he could see them for himself. 
 
 The first day of the trials dawned gray and chill. Gale winds 
 whistled through Washington in midmorning, and Major Benton 
 wired from the arsenal to ask if the President would indeed be 
 down that afternoon. By three o'clock the winds, although still 
 strong, had slackened; and pallid sunlight broke through now and 
 then. Lincoln and Ramsay drove down on schedule, to be joined 
 presently by Dickson, Zane, Browning, Ford and others of the 
 faithful. Absterdam had not yet arrived from Philadelphia, but his 
 fifty improved shells were on hand. After a dozen had been fired 
 out over the river, further testing was postponed for a calmer day. 
 On February 8 Benton fired ten more rounds. On the following 
 day, Lincoln came down again. Only a few ragged cirrus clouds 
 
274 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 drifted across the winter sky, and the breeze was scarcely percep- 
 tible. Ten more of the new shells were fired with results that 'Very 
 much gratified" Lincoln and even impressed Ramsay. 
 
 A few days later Absterdam enlightened Dickson and Zane as to 
 their status, only to find the partners more resourceful than he had 
 supposed. They got Lincoln to have Major Benton "finish the trial 
 of the Absterdam projectile"; and on March 2 Benton fired ten 
 shells of the old type, furnished by Dickson and Zane. Unaware of 
 the difference, Benton unwittingly played the partners' game by 
 referring to all the shells in all three trials as "the Absterdam pro- 
 jectile," ranking them with "the best rifle projectiles now used in 
 our service," and recommending a trial of them in the field. Before 
 the day ended, Dickson and Zane proposed to furnish 720,000 of 
 the "Absterdam projectile," slyly omitting to specify which type. 
 Lincoln, still unaware of the plot and counterplot, was, fortunately, 
 not prepared to be so extravagant. He merely wrote a note to Ram- 
 say: "Will a number of the Absterdam shells, or projectiles, be 
 placed in the hands of the troops for trial, as recommended by Cap- 
 tain Benton in his report of March 3d?" 
 
 By now, Ramsay knew about the schism in the Absterdam party, 
 and he gave this as one reason for not ordering any "Absterdam 
 projectiles" just then. His other was the price asked — fifteen per 
 cent above the price of Hotchkiss shells. Lincoln was no respecter 
 of red tape. On Ramsay's letter he wrote: 
 
 I think the Absterdam projectile is too good a thing to be lost to 
 the services, and if offered at the Hotchkiss prices, and not in ex- 
 cessive quantities, nor unreasonable terms in other respects, by 
 either or both parties to the patent controversy, take it, so that the 
 test be fully made — I am for the government having the best ar- 
 ticles, in spite of patent controversies. 
 
 This memorandum never reached Ramsay. What the Chief of 
 Ordnance actually received two days later was a note, written by 
 Lincoln in Dickson's presence, in almost the same words — except 
 for one significant change. Instead of writing "if offered ... by 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 275 
 
 either or both parties to the patent controversy," Lincoln now 
 wrote "if offered by Dickson and Zane." Ramsay took this as a 
 command; and so, over the strenuous objections of both Absterdam 
 and Balch, he gave Dickson and Zane an order for four thousand 
 shells at Hotchkiss prices. 
 
 Balch declared open war on Dickson. "He would not ask me to 
 take a seat when I went into his office," complained the latter. More 
 damagingly, Balch put a clause in the Dickson-Zane contract re- 
 quiring the shells to be "similar in every respect" to those fired in 
 Lincoln's presence — in other words, those covered by Absterdam' s 
 second patent. Absterdam followed through with an injunction re- 
 straining Dickson and Zane from making that type of shell. Never- 
 theless, the partners went ahead, counting on Lincoln to sustain 
 them. "President Lincoln . . . told me," said Dickson, "if I got into 
 trouble to come to him, and if there was anything wrong he would 
 see that I was righted; he had seen the shell tested here and liked 
 it, and said he was willing to see me have a fair show with it." 
 
 While Absterdam grappled with Dickson and Zane, General 
 Ramsay was coming to grips with Captain Balch. 
 
 The Ordnance Corps had speedily recognized the work of Cap- 
 tain Balch in a series of arrogant and officious decrees innocently 
 signed by General Ramsay. The good-hearted general was slower 
 in awakening. It took him all of four months to discover that Balch 
 was something more than his old friend and chief administrative 
 prop. He found this out in February 1864, when he disagreed with 
 his "assistant" on an endorsement and Balch tendered his resigna- 
 tion. Secretary Stanton taught Ramsay his place, first by vetoing 
 every name that Ramsay suggested as a replacement for Balch, then 
 by giving Ramsay just one week in which to make up with Balch 
 or be relieved from command. After being apprized of all this by 
 Stanton, Balch "had a friendly conversation" with Ramsay, and 
 "the matter was adjusted." 
 
 It was a fragile adjustment, and Ramsay's position grew in- 
 creasingly precarious. Assistant Secretary Watson's fluctuating 
 
276 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 health at last seemed permanently broken. By January 1864 he was 
 declining to walk across Seventeenth Street because of his "very 
 sore lungs," and at the end of June he took final leave of the War 
 Department. Stanton had depended on Watson in ordnance mat- 
 ters. "While Mr. Watson was there," said Stanton, "I considered 
 him to be an expert. I was not an expert myself." Now Stanton had 
 to leave more to the discretion of the head of the Ordnance De- 
 partment. Yet who was head of the Ordnance Department? Ram- 
 say and his fellow officers of the Ordnance Corps regarded Captain 
 Balch as an enemy and shunned him as far as they could. Ramsay, 
 in turn, was bombarded with searching inquiries about powder, 
 niter, cartridges, ammunition and arsenal operations, all implying 
 negligence on Ramsay's part, all signed by Stanton and all in 
 Balch's handwriting. "I think," said Ramsay later, "that no man 
 could have sustained himself under the pressure which was brought 
 to bear upon me." 
 
 "There is a row between General Ramsay and Balch," wrote 
 Major Laidley to his friend Archimedes Dickson early in August. 
 "Cannot you do something to render certain the result? Do for 
 mercy's sake." Since Laidley and Balch were bitter enemies, Dick- 
 son knew what the major meant. And since Dickson likewise de- 
 tested Balch, he was quick to take Laidley's hint. "I would go and 
 tell Mr. Lincoln I thought something was wrong," related Dickson 
 afterward. "I just talked to him like I used to at Springfield. Says I, 
 'I think there is stealing going on. I think you had better turn some 
 of them out.' Says he, 'Dick, I would do it, but I am afraid I might 
 get a worse set in.' " 
 
 Presently Captain Balch again offered his resignation. Again it 
 was not accepted. Instead, on September 12, 1864, Ramsay was 
 relieved of his command and assigned, as Ripley had been, to the 
 sinecure of inspecting coastal armaments. 
 
 Balch sped Ramsay on his way with what the latter called "an 
 array of statistics" to prove that the Ordnance Department had 
 been badly managed since the start of the war. This stung Ramsay 
 to a spirited valedictory. "No department of the government," he 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 277 
 
 informed Stanton, "has since and during the rebellion furnished 
 its supplies more fully, more promptly, or more satisfactorily to the 
 troops in the field. Not a cent . . . has been misapplied or wasted, 
 so far as the Ordnance Bureau has had the power to control its ap- 
 plication." And in later years, the old general insisted that "if I 
 had been allowed my own assistants, the aid I required and the 
 sympathy I required, I should have conducted that office in the most 
 perfect manner; and I will say that when I left it I left it in perfect 
 condition." 
 
 Archimedes Dickson's advice to Lincoln on how to deal with the 
 Ordnance Department had included a suggestion as to the proper 
 chief: Major Alexander B. Dyer, commandant of the Springfield 
 Armory, the same man who had been offered the post two years 
 before and had declined it. Laidley assured Dickson that Major 
 Dyer would deal fairly with the Absterdam shell; and this seemed 
 logical, for after all, the shell was based on Dyer's own design. "I 
 went and told Mr. Lincoln what I thought," testified Dickson. 
 "Says he, 'I think I will make that move.' " Next day Dyer was ap- 
 pointed, and this time he accepted — "in obedience," as he put it, 
 "to the orders of my superior and from a sense of duty." Dickson 
 recalled, "When we got General Dyer in there we thought we had 
 the thing pretty square." 
 
 But Dickson had read too much into Lincoln's remark. For 
 Dyer had actually been chosen as Ramsay's eventual successor as 
 far back as March, when Watson began his gradual withdrawal 
 from the Department; and the choice had been made by Stanton 
 and Watson, not Lincoln. Stanton, in fact, had rather brusquely 
 notified Lincoln that the appointment was based on merit, not per- 
 sonalities or politics, and that he wanted no interference with it on 
 political grounds. Lincoln had no quarrel with that proposition. He 
 took care, however, to interview Watson on the subject. "He 
 wished to know," recalled Watson, "if I had fully examined the 
 question . . . and if I was very clear in my opinion that . . . Dyer 
 was the proper officer; because he was aware, as well as the Secre- 
 
278 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 tary of War and myself, that a very efficient and active man was 
 required in the Ordnance Office. . . . He said he had some reluc- 
 tance, upon one ground only, viz., that he did not believe there 
 was another officer in the ordnance corps who was capable of man- 
 aging the Springfield armory as efficiently as General Dyer had, 
 and he did not like to take him away from there." Watson as- 
 sured Lincoln that the rifle supply was now ample, that the armory 
 was "fully organized and in efficient operation" and that Dyer was 
 needed in Washington. This satisfied Lincoln. 
 
 Events conspired to make Dickson and Zane believe that Dyer 
 was their man. The new chief assigned Balch to special duty at 
 West Point, away from the Ordnance Office; and Laidley was given 
 Dyer's coveted post as commandant at Springfield. Still more to 
 the point was an order from Dyer for twenty thousand "Absterdam 
 shells" at a price of more than forty thousand dollars. Interpreting 
 this as Dyer's payment to them for his promotion, the two part- 
 ners set about swindling the government — and as fast as possible, 
 for Absterdam's injunction was hanging over them. Although the 
 sample given them to follow was of Absterdam's second type, the 
 partners' shells were all of the first type. The lubricating bands 
 were of "a most brittle and miserable alloy . . . more of the char- 
 acter of sand than of any metal." At least four-fifths of the fuse 
 plugs were so loose that the flame communicated directly with the 
 bursting charge, and some could be pulled out by the fingers with- 
 out unscrewing. Most of the shells were underweight by as much 
 as a third; and since the contract did not specify that the case shot 
 had to be filled with bullets (which were what made it "case 
 shot"), Dickson and Zane delivered them empty and charged full 
 price. Because of these and similar economies, Dickson and Zane 
 made the shells for less than half what they charged the govern- 
 ment. Unfortunately for the government, a sub-inspector, through 
 what Dyer called "gross carelessness or fraudulent complicity," 
 passed more than twelve thousand of the shells; and so the govern- 
 ment eventually had to pay for them. 
 
 While the partners were thus occupied, unfavorable reports be- 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 279 
 
 gan coming in on the four thousand shells ordered from them by 
 Ramsay in March : reports from Captain Balch at West Point, from 
 Captain Benet at Frankf ord, and most damaging of all, from the 
 Petersburg front, where the firing was stopped because "it was 
 feared that the bad practice might encourage the rebels." Dickson 
 found General Dyer "rather out of humor," and scornful of Dick- 
 son's offer of political influence toward his Senate confirmation. "I 
 did not make much headway with him afterwards," said Dickson, 
 "none, in fact. ... I told General Dyer on one or two occasions I 
 supposed I would have to call on the President." 
 
 But Dickson's influence with Lincoln was about played out. Late 
 in December shells made by the partners under Dyer's order began 
 arriving at the Washington Arsenal and proved to be incredibly 
 bad. Early in January 1865 Dyer suspended further receipt of the 
 Dickson-Zane shells. Since Absterdam's new shells had just done 
 well in testing, Dyer ordered twenty thousand from the inventor 
 instead, and in March about thirty thousand more. * It turned out, in 
 other words, that Lincoln had picked the right shell but the wrong 
 men. 
 
 One more Lincoln-sponsored weapon remained to be judged: 
 the built-up, rifled, wrought-iron cannon of Horatio Ames. 
 
 Lincoln had given Ames and Brandegee his word, and so when 
 the first seven-inch Ames gun was ready at the end of August 1864, 
 Lincoln accordingly set up a three-man Army-Navy board to test 
 it at Bridgeport, Connecticut. The bureaucrats took a petulant view 
 of the case. "What does Lincoln know about a gun?" asked one, 
 not pausing for an answer. And Captain Wise wrote privately to 
 the Navy's representative: "We wish to keep clear of this Ames 
 matter. We have had quite enough of it and as a million of dollars 
 is of some importance we would rather the Army paid the bill." 
 
 Whatever the bureaucrats thought, Lincoln was no easy mark. 
 While Ames prepared to bombard Long Island Sound, General 
 
 * Actually forty-eight thousand, but more than a third of the order was can- 
 celed in postwar retrenchment. 
 
280 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Ben Butler asked Lincoln for one or two of the guns to use imme- 
 diately against an enemy ironclad on the James River. Lincoln 
 replied firmly: "The Ames guns I am under promise to pay, or 
 rather to advise paying, a very high price for, provided they bear 
 the test, and they are not yet tested, though I believe in process of 
 being tested. I could not be justified to pay the extraordinary price 
 without the testing. I shall be happy to let you have some of them 
 so soon as I can." Butler kept pressing for Ames guns, spurred on 
 by Pet Halsted, but before any were ready he had vanished forever 
 from the military scene. 
 
 Late in October Major General Quincy A. Gillmore, president 
 of the board, transmitted the report, a formidable sheaf which in- 
 cluded minute data on every one of the seven hundred rounds fired. 
 Glancing at the bulky documents, Lincoln exclaimed, "I should 
 want a new lease of life to read this through!" He threw the report 
 down on the table. "Why can't a committee of this kind occasion- 
 ally exhibit a grain of common sense? If I send a man to buy a 
 horse for me, I expect him to tell me his 'points' — not how many 
 hairs there are in his tail. "And he had Gillmore summoned to 
 Washington "without delay." When Gillmore arrived, he told the 
 President that Ames's cannon were stronger and tougher than any 
 of their size, in or out of the service. They would be exceedingly 
 useful as long range guns; and they would not burst — as some of 
 the heavy Parrotts had started to do, killing some men and de- 
 moralizing all their gun crews. After that Lincoln must have felt 
 that he had bought the right horse. So did Assistant Secretary Fox 
 and even Captain Wise, who in the face of the Parrott-gun disas- 
 ters finally turned to the Ames guns as the Navy's only hope. 
 
 Lincoln's conditions had been met; and by the end of May 1865 
 thirteen Ames guns had been accepted, the other two having burst 
 in proof because of imperfect welds at the breech. Eventually 
 Ames was paid a little more than $215,000. But the war had al- 
 ready ended before any of the big guns could fire a shot against 
 the Confederates. Late in 1865 the Chief of Ordnance condemned 
 the guns as unreliable. And presently the Bessemer and open 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 28l 
 
 hearth processes outmoded wrought-iron guns by making steel 
 cheap, dependable and easy to handle. 
 
 Did Horatio Ames make a good thing out of the money paid 
 him on Lincoln's order? His own testimony is sufficient answer. 
 "If you," he wrote a fellow contractor in 1868, "had worked seven 
 years with these puppies, and had lost $300,000 and the use of 
 your works that could have made $300,000 more, you would have 
 felt weak in the knees, too." By the time he died in 1871, Horatio 
 Ames had lost his ironworks and was living on the largess of his 
 nephew Oliver. 
 
 Although Lincoln himself turned away from them, certain new 
 weapons for which he stood as godfather went on in their military 
 careers — some obscurely, some bizarrely, some triumphantly. 
 
 The war record of the Woodruff guns, bought by Lincoln for 
 the 6th Illinois Cavalry, fell short of the heroic. If any of the little 
 cannon went along with the 6th Illinois on Grierson's famous raid 
 in April 1863, their performance was evidently not worth report- 
 ing. The 4th Iowa Cavalry somehow acquired three Woodruff 
 guns, and Private "Cy" Washburn took charge of them with great 
 pride. But Private Washburn's little battery was "never known to 
 hit anything, and never served any useful purpose, except in pro- 
 moting cheerfulness in the regiment." In Arkansas one day a de- 
 tachment of the 4th Iowa in search of provisions spied a party of 
 rebels on the other side of an impassable creek and sent over a few 
 shots from a Woodruff gun. The only Iowa casualty was Private 
 Benoni Kellogg, who was killed. His body, lashed to the gun, was 
 brought into camp and buried with honors. Confederate casualties 
 in the encounter were unknown; and when the 4th Iowa moved on 
 shortly afterward, Private Washburn was deprived of his guns. 
 The only word of them thereafter is an ordnance return from the 
 Department of the Missouri, showing two on hand late in 1864. 
 
 The Ellsworth guns were gone, but not forgotten. Major Kings- 
 bury, exiled to the Great Plains by Ripley, told his commanding 
 general, Alfred Sully, about the little cannon; and General Sully 
 
282 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 asked the Ordnance Department for some early in 1864. He wrote: 
 
 From their description, I should judge [that] ... I could make 
 good use of them in arming the block houses erected & about to 
 be erected in the Upper Missouri river, and as an armament to the 
 boats expected to be sent up the Missouri river from St. Louis next 
 spring. 
 
 But the Plains Indians were safe from the Honorable Eli 
 Thayer's "little breech-loading cannons," none of which could be 
 found at the Washington Arsenal. 
 
 The Ellsworth guns have their place in history, nevertheless. Ex- 
 cept for a single 70 -pounder Whitworth, bought in England by 
 Minister Adams in May 1862, Lincoln's little cannon were the only 
 breech-loading artillery purchased by the Federal Government dur- 
 ing the Civil War. 
 
 As for explosive bullets or "musket shells," General Grant de- 
 nounced their alleged use by the rebels at Vicksburg as "barbarous, 
 because they produce increased suffering without any correspond- 
 ing advantage to those using them," and the Scientific American 
 was of like mind. Both were still unaware, it seems, of Watson's 
 Yuletide order of 1862 for the Gardiner bullets, which were used 
 later both in Sherman's march through Georgia and in Grant's 
 Richmond campaign. Watson's order was the last by Union au- 
 thorities. After the Civil War, European nations outlawed such 
 bullets; and in 1868 General Dyer, as Chief of Ordnance, con- 
 demned them as "inexcusable among any people above the grade 
 of ignorant savages." 
 
 The coffee-mill guns died hard. In October 1863 John H. 
 Schenck, an associate of Edward Nugent, announced himself as 
 their new proprietor and complained that those ordered by Rose- 
 crans had not yet reached that officer's successor, General George H. 
 Thomas, "who highly approves of them." Although sixteen of the 
 machine guns remained on hand at the Washington Arsenal, the 
 Ordnance Office ignored Schenck' s complaints, as well as his sug- 
 gestion that the guns be carried on horseback by cavalry and mount- 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 283 
 
 ed infantry, ready for swift dismounting and use. Ten, however, 
 were sent to General Butler in February 1864 when he requested 
 them for use on boat service up and down the James River. 
 
 Lincoln's last recorded comment on the coffee-mill guns had to 
 do with the specimen given Colonel Van Wyck at the start of the 
 Peninsula Campaign. As Frederick Avery had feared, that gun 
 was not paid for while Ripley headed the Ordnance Office. In 
 October 1864 the dispute came before Lincoln who said, according 
 to Avery's representative, "that if it can be shown that the gun has 
 been used in the service, it ought to be paid for; to the end that 
 innocent parties may not surfer for doing what was really for the 
 good of the service." Avery furnished the required proof, and on 
 August 3, 1865, the American Arms Company at last received pay- 
 ment of $788.58. That, oddly enough, was the very day on which 
 thirteen coffee-mill guns fetched from $5 to $8 apiece in a sale of 
 old ordnance at Fortress Monroe. 
 
 Despite the Swamp Angel fiasco, incendiary warfare was not 
 quite dead. In January 1864, by way of a last fling, twenty incen- 
 diary shells were thrown into Charleston, "causing a considerable 
 conflagration" according to one report. A month or so later, some 
 rebel guerrillas fired incendiary shells into the steamer Emma, 
 fifteen miles south of Helena, Arkansas, but the ensuing blaze was 
 doused in good time. And in July Ben Butler, that insatiable patron 
 of military novelties, enlivened the siege of Petersburg by having 
 incendiary mortar shells fired from a railroad flatcar. 
 
 It was Butler to whom Pet Halsted turned when Lincoln lost in- 
 terest in incendiary shells. In October 1864 Halsted introduced 
 Alfred Berney to Butler and suggested that "a small sprinkling of 
 Hell-fire will do the Imps on the other side a power of good just 
 about this time." Butler was receptive; and in November Halsted 
 arranged a formidable concentration of generals — Grant, Meade, 
 Butler, Crawford, and Warren, among others — to see a demonstra- 
 tion of Berney's liquid near Dutch Gap in Butler's command. 
 (Butler invited Admiral Porter also, but Mrs. Porter's burnt child 
 
284 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 now shunned the Greek fire.) When darkness came, a shell was 
 exploded among some bushes, setting them all ablaze. "They've 
 got the fuses to work well now," remarked Grant in his placid way. 
 "They tried the shells on three houses, the other side of the river, 
 and burnt them all without difficulty." ("Good thing for the own- 
 ers!" thought an ironic colonel.) Then Berney turned his flame 
 thrower on a little stream and transformed it into a rivulet of fire. 
 "It was a beautiful sight," recalled the meditative colonel, "and 
 like the hell of the poets, with an unquenchable fire and columns 
 of black smoke rolling up." Butler insisted that he could hold a 
 redoubt with only five men and a small garden engine, to which 
 Meade objected that the flame thrower had a rather limited range 
 as compared to infantry rifles. 
 
 Notwithstanding the gibes of Meade, Butler ordered about fif- 
 teen hundred gallons of Berney's fluid and eight rotary pumps com- 
 plete with couplings, hoses, nozzles and other appurtenances. 
 These reached Bermuda Hundred early in February 1865 and may 
 therefore have seen action. But the unkind fate that hovered over 
 incendiary inventors had swooped down a month before and car- 
 ried Ben Butler off to civil life. The day of the Berney shell was 
 over, and its inventor passes from the stage of history as publisher 
 of a short-lived magazine devoted to household hints. 
 
 One momentous development wiped out the score of all these 
 disappointments. Lincoln lived to see himself proved tremendously 
 right about breech-loading rifles. 
 
 Three years of hard campaigning demonstrated to Berdan's men 
 that they had been wise to insist on the Sharps, even to the point of 
 mutiny. After their bumptious founder resigned early in 1864, the 
 Sharpshooters and their breechloaders continued to refute the ar- 
 guments of the muzzle-loader faction. 
 
 To begin with, the gun was safe for its users. "I never knew of 
 an accident occurring by premature discharge of a Sharps rifle," 
 wrote the regimental historian after the war. 
 
 It consistently outdid the Springfield rifle in range. Although the 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 285 
 
 Sharps was sighted only up to a thousand yards, some of Berdan's 
 men experimented with whittled sights at Todd's Tavern, Virginia, 
 in 1864 and managed to fire with fair accuracy at fifteen hundred 
 yards. The tighter-fitting breechloader bullets came out of the 
 muzzle with greater speed than those of muzzle-loaders. Rebels op- 
 posite the Sharpshooters in the Petersburg trenches could tell the 
 "forced balls" by their sound and the fact that they hit before the 
 report of the gun came along; and, said one Confederate, "you can 
 just bet your boots we were mighty careful how we got in their 
 way." 
 
 The Sharps were accurate. At Kelly's Ford on the Rappahannock 
 in November 1863 two Sharpshooters in different companies 
 aimed at and hit the same retreating rebel at seven hundred yards. 
 An Alabama rifleman, captured in the following year, told the 
 Sharpshooters ruefully that in his lines a man could get a furlough 
 just by holding up his hand, and was lucky if he got to the rear 
 without an extension. 
 
 Although other companies and regiments were later armed with 
 Sharps by their state governments or at their own expense, it was 
 Berdan's corps that caught the public's fancy, stirred the envy of 
 fellow soldiers and aroused an irresistible demand for breechload- 
 ers among Union troops. By his support of Berdan in the fight for 
 breechloaders, Abraham Lincoln had thus helped to open the way 
 for a revolution in the tools of war. 
 
 In Northern Georgia, near a dark stream which the Indians had 
 named "Chickamauga," the River of Death, there was a small field 
 bordered by woods and traversed by a drainage ditch. One fine day 
 in September 1863, as the veterans of Longstreet's corps pushed 
 warily across the open field, a blast of rifle fire tore out of the 
 woods and through the September sunlight. While they lived, the 
 startled Confederates heard a new and terrible sound, not the 
 familiar volleying of muzzle-loaders, rattling and rolling and dying 
 away like the intermittent crash of brick walls in a fire, but a steady 
 roar, a torrent of fire and lead. They had run up against the Spen- 
 
286 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 cer repeating rifles of Wilder' s Lightning Brigade. And as Wilder' s 
 men worked their Spencers in the woods, they saw a strange sight: 
 "the head of the column, as it was pushed on by those behind, ap- 
 peared to melt away or sink into the earth, for, though continually 
 moving, it got no nearer." The rebels broke and fell back, were 
 rallied and pushed forward, and at last found shelter in the drain- 
 age ditch — until a pair of Federal io-pounders scoured its length 
 with double-shotted canister. "They fell in heaps," said Colonel 
 Wilder, "and I had it in my heart to order the firing to cease to end 
 the awful sight." But he gave no order, and when silence fell at 
 last, broken only by the moans of the wounded, "one could have 
 walked for two hundred yards down that ditch on dead rebels 
 without touching the ground." 
 
 Lovell Rousseau's men, after getting their Spencers, likewise be- 
 came famous for their exploits. In July 1864 eight companies from 
 Sherman's army went out on a raid in Alabama, supported by two 
 companies of Rousseau's brigade. At Chehaw Station they ran into 
 a strong force of rebels, who ensconced themselves in a ravine and 
 turned a heavy fire on their attackers. Rousseau's men flanked the 
 rebels, "pouring in a murderous fire with their Spencer rifles," 
 while the 5 th Iowa made a frontal assault. The rebels fled, leaving 
 over forty dead and many wounded; the 5th Iowa lost one killed 
 and four wounded. 
 
 A feeling spread through the Union Army that Spencer rifles 
 could end the war in a hurry, and some who carried them seemed 
 of a mind to do the job alone. In July 1864, during the Battle of 
 the Crater, First Sergeant Barnard A. Strasbaugh of the 3rd Mary- 
 land Infantry took a firm grip on his Spencer rifle and singlehand- 
 edly captured eleven prisoners, wounding two of them. So good 
 were the Spencers that one might even be carried away by them 
 and get into trouble, as Captain Benjamin Skinner of the 7th Con- 
 necticut discovered at Olustee, Florida, in February 1864. Captain 
 Skinner led four unsupported companies, armed with Spencers, 
 against five Confederate regiments. By the time their ammunition 
 began to run low, Skinner's men were so deep in the enemy lines 
 
FAREWELL TO ARMS 287 
 
 that they were receiving enemy fire from three sides and had to pull 
 out in a hurry. 
 
 The possession of Spencers brought other hazards. The 63rd 
 Pennsylvania were happy to turn in Austrian muzzle-loaders for 
 Spencers in 1864. Their joy was tempered when they began hear- 
 ing the order "Spencers to the front" and found that "their place 
 was on the skirmish line much more often than was agreeable." 
 
 Even so, Spencer rifles were universally coveted. Ben Butler 
 asked for three thousand and promised to give them only to "tried 
 and deserving regiments" as "the prize of gallantry and good be- 
 havior." During Jubal Early's raid on Washington, General Ram- 
 say asked an officer of the 6th Corps, which had come to help re- 
 lieve the capital, if there was anything he could do for him and his 
 men. "Yes," answered Colonel Edwards, "you can arm Colonel 
 Montague's regiment [37th Massachusetts] with the Spencer 
 rifle." Ramsay replied, "Make out your requisition for them, and 
 I will"; and a few days later the Bay State boys had their repeaters. 
 
 The Spencer carbine, like the Spencer rifle, was the favorite cf 
 the Army from privates to generals. In April 1864 General George 
 Thomas called it "the most effective weapon in use." A few days 
 later General Ramsay wrote: "The demand for them is constant 
 and for large quantities. It seems as if no soldier who had seen 
 them used could be satisfied with any other." General James H. 
 Wilson, the brilliant young chief of the new Cavalry Bureau, per- 
 suaded Ramsay to order all the Spencer carbines that could be 
 turned out. So at Spencer's Tremont Street factory, rifles yielded 
 still further to carbines. 
 
 The drays that rumbled over Boston cobblestones from Chicker- 
 ing's Building to the docks were fraught with victory. On July 4, 
 1864, forty Spencer carbines were issued to each company of the 
 4th Iowa Cavalry. From then on, the Iowans "expected to win, and 
 even acquired a sort of habit of looking upon every approaching 
 fight as 'a sure thing.' " The 2nd Iowa Cavalry got Spencer car- 
 bines too, and a rebel prisoner told them: "It is no use for us to 
 fight you'ens with that kind of gun." 
 
288 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Men like General Ripley might persuade themselves that breech- 
 loading carbines were good and breech-loading rifles bad, but the 
 distinction was rather too fine for most to see. Through 1864 the 
 Scientific American belabored the War Department for its failure 
 to adopt breech-loading rifles as infantry weapons, and the New 
 York Times took up the cry in June. That summer the British War 
 Office set up a special committee to consider the subject; and on the 
 basis of American experience — the experience of Berdan and Wild- 
 er and Captain Skinner — the committee recommended arming 
 British infantry entirely with breech-loading arms. At last the 
 United States War Department fell into line. In October 1864 
 General Ramsay's first annual report* announced that a breech- 
 loading rifle would be adopted as the standard arm of the infantry, 
 "so soon as the best model . . . can be established by full and 
 thorough tests and trials, and the requisite modifications of the 
 present machinery for fabricating that model can be made." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had won his point — or rather the battle record 
 of breechloaders had won it for him. 
 
 * Issued after Ramsay was relieved of command. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 20 
 
 A Peal of Ordnance 
 
 Winter, the fourth and last winter 
 of the war, brought mud to Washington as usual; but it brought 
 hope too, and a dispatch from General Sherman to President Lin- 
 coln: "I beg to present you as a Christmas-gift the city of Savan- 
 nah ..." Guns boomed triumphantly in Franklin Square, and 
 bunting mocked the rain. Behind Sherman's army lay a track of 
 devastation from Atlanta to the sea. The Confederacy was in frag- 
 ments, and the fragments grew smaller; while at Petersburg, 
 Grant's well-fed divisions pinioned Lee's wasting army in a grim 
 bear hug. The long misery was almost over. 
 
 At the New Year's Day reception in the White House, held on 
 Monday, January 2, 1865, a correspondent of the Scientific Ameri- 
 can pushed through the cheerful crowd for a brief talk with the 
 President, whom he found maintaining "a constant flow of genial 
 mirth." Appropriately, their talk was of the future. The corre- 
 spondent was "much pleased to learn that in the midst of the many 
 cares that press upon the President he is not indifferent to the 
 claims of our inventors. Himself an inventor and patentee, he read- 
 ily discerns the intrinsic value of all good inventions, not only to 
 the public service, but also in their application to the industrial 
 arts generally, and he will do all in his power to encourage and to 
 promote the progress of these arts, by sanctioning all wise legisla- 
 tion in behalf of inventors." Although Abraham Lincoln had 
 suffered defeats in his struggle for better weapons, he could still 
 
 289 
 
290 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 foresee the contributions technology would make in future years to 
 the realization of his long-cherished dream: "the progressive im- 
 provement in the condition of all men everywhere." 
 
 And although he had suffered setbacks, proof kept piling up 
 that Lincoln's fight for new weapons had not been in vain. On the 
 very day that Lincoln chatted with the Scientific American reporter, 
 Major General James H. Wilson wrote to Brigadier General Dyer 
 from his cavalry corps headquarters in Alabama : 
 
 There is no doubt that the Spencer carbine is the best fire-arm 
 yet put into the hands of the soldier, both for economy of ammu- 
 nition and maximum effect physical and moral. Our best officers 
 estimate one man armed with it equivalent to three with any other 
 arm. I have never seen anything else like the confidence inspired by 
 it in the regiments or brigades which have it. A common belief 
 among them is if their flanks are covered they can go anywhere. 
 
 It was on that day also that the Scientific American carried a 
 further sign of the times: "breech-loaders to be adopted. — 
 The Government has appointed a commission of seven military offi- 
 cers, to meet at Springfield Armory on the 4th of January, for the 
 purpose of testing breech-loading carbines and muskets, in order to 
 select the best for army use." 
 
 Signs even began to appear that Lincoln's support of the coffee- 
 mill guns might some day be vindicated. During Ripley's last year 
 in office, the dogged old bureaucrat succeeded nobly in blocking 
 consideration of Dr. Richard Gatling's multibarreled, crank- 
 operated machine gun. The Indianapolis inventor did not think to 
 write Lincoln until early 1864, by which time Lincoln had lost his 
 zeal for new weapons. Nor did Gatling's Copperhead reputation 
 help him. Still, the Gatling gun was a good weapon, and it began 
 to make headway. Near the end of the war, Admiral Porter ac- 
 quired one for his Mississippi Squadron, and General Butler used 
 eight on gunboats and two in the Petersburg lines. At the Wash- 
 ington Arsenal in February 1865 Gatling demonstrated an im- 
 proved model of his gun before Dyer, Wise and Major General 
 
A PEAL OF ORDNANCE 291 
 
 Winfield Scott Hancock to such good effect that Hancock ordered 
 a dozen for his corps. 
 
 "I assure you my invention is no 'Coffee Mill Gun,' " Gatling 
 had written Lincoln in 1864. But while Lincoln lived, the public 
 persisted in calling the Gatling a coffee-mill gun, and the public 
 was not far wrong. Gatling' s 1862 model was built funda- 
 mentally on the coffee-mill principle, even to its separate steel 
 chambers and hopper feed. And whatever Dr. Gatling may have 
 thought, he profited from the similarity. Coffee-mill guns had al- 
 ready seen action. To the bureaucratic mind, this meant that the 
 Gatling guns were "improved" weapons, not "new" weapons; and 
 that made a difference. Thanks to Lincoln, in other words, machine 
 guns were no longer "new-fangled gimcracks." So in August 1866, 
 after Captain Benet had subjected the improved Gatling guns to 
 extensive trials at the Frankf ord Arsenal, the United States Army 
 officially adopted the weapon and ordered a hundred as a starter. 
 In purchasing his sixty coffee-mill guns, Abraham Lincoln had 
 helped to blaze another broad new trail in ordnance. 
 
 A new day had dawned in the Winder Building. Secretary Stan- 
 ton found his new Chief of Ordnance "diligent and accom- 
 plished," and the two men got along famously. Intramural bicker- 
 ing had largely vanished, and such as cropped up was decidedly 
 more innocuous than in the time of Ripley and Ramsay. A new 
 efficiency was evident, too. In August 1864 Ramsay had com- 
 plained that he was short of clerks; in January 1865 Colonel May- 
 nadier, back from exile, was preparing to dismiss a number be- 
 cause of "reforms in the system of office operations." Those to be 
 kept included several disabled veterans, like young James Tanner, 
 who at eighteen had lost both legs in the Second Battle of Bull 
 Run. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had ceased to be a familiar figure in the Ord- 
 nance Office. There were no more "champagne experiments," and 
 Pet Halsted's letters to Lincoln now concerned themselves with 
 such objects as "a practical way to get out Cotton" and "the placing 
 
292 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 & keeping of gold at par." Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball was 
 held in the new north wing of the Patent Office; but the careworn 
 President was too much occupied with the duties of a host to stroll 
 reminiscently among glassed-in models of Chaplain Jones's gun 
 carriage, S. Wilmer Marsh's breechloader, John Absterdam's im- 
 proved shell or the ship model left years before by a one-term Con- 
 gressman from Illinois. And the only ironclad models to receive 
 much attention that evening were those among the sugar decora- 
 tions on one of the confectioner's monumental cakes. 
 
 Gideon Welles was worried about his chief. A few days after the 
 Second Inaugural and its shining promise of malice toward none 
 and charity for all, Lincoln's health forced him for the first time to 
 receive the Cabinet in his bedroom. "There is no doubt he is much 
 worn down," thought the Secretary; and Welles was pleased when 
 at the end of March Lincoln departed for Grant's headquarters at 
 City Point, leaving behind him a horde of favor seekers who had 
 been draining his strength by degrees. Once more Lincoln drove 
 down to the arsenal, jolting across the extension grounds and past 
 the grim penitentiary, now long used as a storehouse for the tools 
 of war. This time he paused for no gun trials. Instead he boarded 
 the steamer River Queen at the new wharf built during his friend 
 Ramsay's command of the arsenal. 
 
 By one day, Lincoln missed seeing a final champagne experi- 
 ment. "General" Robert Fleming had been pressing the claims of 
 his incendiary fluid ever since his adventure on the Peninsula in 
 1862. He made no impression on Ripley; but Captain Benet tested 
 and praised the stuff at West Point in September 1863; and in the 
 fall of 1864 Stanton had twenty of Fleming's shells fired from the 
 Petersburg lines. At City Point, the day before Lincoln arrived 
 there, a board set up by General Grant tried the Fleming shells 
 once more. As his adviser, Fleming had dropped the eccentric Dr. 
 Worster in favor of a New York lawyer named Chester Alan Ar- 
 thur, who tried a few days later to get a copy of the City Point re- 
 port. He failed to get it, but the frustration of a future President 
 made little difference to Fleming's fortunes. Presently the long, 
 
A PEAL OF ORDNANCE 293 
 
 hard war was over, and with it the need for anyone's liquid fire. 
 
 From City Point on April 2, Lincoln wired news to Stanton of 
 Grant's final crushing assault on the Petersburg lines. Next day the 
 President sent word that Petersburg was in Federal hands; and a 
 little later, a shout from the windows of the War Department told 
 Seventeenth Street that "Richmond has fallen!" Exultant clerks 
 poured out of the Ordnance Office or hobbled, smiling, to the 
 windows. All that day, guns roared in salute, church bells danced, 
 and crowds swarmed cheering through the city. Next evening, as 
 dusk fell, men with matches stood at the darkened windows of the 
 War Department and the Winder Building; and at the sound of 
 trumpets and the blare of a band, Seventeenth Street was swept by 
 a wave of candlelight. 
 
 On Palm Sunday, April 9, Lincoln returned to the White House. 
 Before he went to bed, he learned that Lee had surrendered at Ap- 
 pomattox. An earsplitting tumult of artillery salutes shook the city 
 awake next morning, and no one had to ask what it meant. Flags 
 were dampened by an April rain, but spirits were not; and a crowd 
 of Navy Yard workmen, roaming the muddy streets with bands 
 and firing salutes from Dahlgren howitzers, drew the smiling 
 President briefly to a White House window. By Thursday, while 
 the capital of the restored nation made ready for an illumination to 
 outshine all before, General Grant was in town to see about cut- 
 ting down Army expenditures, and General Dyer was notifying all 
 contractors that no more deadlines would be overlooked, that any 
 delay would mean forfeiture. Retrenchment was in the air. 
 
 At this sad hour for contract hunters, there was at least one who 
 nursed a feeble hope. Archimedes Dickson, still hanging on in 
 Washington, had finally wangled an appointment with the Presi- 
 dent. The appointment was for April 15, 1865. 
 
 Good Friday, April 14, was the fourth anniversary of Fort Sum- 
 ter's surrender; and the flag that had been lowered in 1861 was to 
 be raised at the fort that day with speeches and ceremony. In 
 Washington the management of Grover's Theater seized upon the 
 
294 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 occasion to hold a patriotic gala. Competition was slight: a torch- 
 light procession of the arsenal employees; and at Ford's Theater on 
 Tenth Street, a shopworn comedy called Our American Cousin. 
 Abraham Lincoln chose Ford's; but young James Tanner, the leg- 
 less Ordnance Office clerk, preferred Grover's, with its Grand 
 Oriental Spectacle of Aladdin; or, The Wonderful Lamp, supple- 
 mented by fireworks and a reading of "The Flag of Sumter," an 
 original poem by Commissioner of Public Buildings Benjamin 
 French. 
 
 A little after ten that night, the news that President Lincoln had 
 been shot at Ford's Theater burst like a Parrott shell over the light- 
 hearted audience at Grover's. The play broke off; and the stunned 
 crowd streamed, half incredulous, out of the theater. James Tanner 
 limped after them and through the jammed streets to his lodgings 
 on Tenth Street, next door to the house where President Lincoln 
 lay dying. The crippled clerk painfully mounted the stairs to his 
 second floor rooms and clumped out onto his balcony. From it he 
 could look down at the great men of the nation passing, stony-faced 
 and pale, up the front steps of the Peterson house. One of Tanner's 
 friends, a government clerk, happened to hear a call for someone 
 to take testimony; he mentioned that Tanner knew shorthand; and 
 General Halleck sent for the young veteran. Thus, as Abraham 
 Lincoln drifted toward death, chance brought a representative of 
 the Ordnance Office to stand with the others by his side. 
 
 The story of the long night has been told often, and told much 
 as James Tanner told it to his co-workers in the Ordnance Office 
 during that April of unforgettable joy and sorrow. The sobbing of 
 Mary Lincoln, the labored breathing of the dying man, the faint 
 creak of careful footsteps, the scratch of Stanton's pen, the sound 
 of a door opening on a hushed crowd and a sodden sky — all these 
 James Tanner heard, and all linger in the American mind. But in 
 the Peterson house, silence came at last. 
 
 On the afternoon of April 18 the clerks of the Ordnance Office 
 assembled on Seventeenth Street with those of other bureaus and 
 walked in procession to the East Room of the White House, where 
 
A PEAL OF ORDNANCE 295 
 
 they filed soberly past the silk-draped catafalque on which Lin- 
 coln's body rested in state. Like all government establishments, the 
 Ordnance Office closed next day for the funeral procession down 
 Pennsylvania Avenue. At noon church bells tolled beneath a cloud- 
 less sky, and minute guns began to boom in the forts around the 
 city. The guns were still sounding at two, when old Major Gen- 
 eral Ethan Allen Hitchcock, to whom Stanton had once in despera- 
 tion offered Ripley's command, wrote in his journal: "Now I hear 
 the solemn music as the procession moves from the President's 
 mansion with all that remains of Mr. Lincoln." 
 
 The guns fell silent, the music passed away, and the crowds dis- 
 persed. Next day, work was resumed in the Ordnance Office. Be- 
 fore April was over, the War Department had ended all arms pur- 
 chases and directed that expenditures be cut to a minimum. Wash- 
 ingtonians, wondering what was different in the air, realized sud- 
 denly that the rumble of army wagons had come to a stop at last. 
 
 In Garrett's barn, John Wilkes Booth fell with a Spencer carbine 
 by his side, thus paying an unintended tribute to the good judg- 
 ment of his victim; and a memo came to the Chief of Ordnance: 
 "Sergeant Boston Corbett, Co I, 16th New York Cavalry having 
 satisfactorily accounted for the loss of one Colt's revolver, he is 
 relieved from all responsibility therefor, and the Ordnance De- 
 partment will issue another in place of the one lost." Booth's body, 
 sewn in a gray army blanket, came to the Navy Yard on the moni- 
 tor Montauk; and crowds gathered at the great stone gate to clamor 
 for a sight of infamy requited. Enraged when curiosity seekers got 
 aboard the vessel, Stanton had Booth's body hustled away to the 
 old penitentiary in the arsenal grounds; and at midnight in a 
 ground-floor room, as lantern light flickered over gun boxes and 
 packing crates, the assassin's corpse was secretly buried beneath the 
 earthen floor. Above, on the third floor, the murderer's accomplices, 
 actual or alleged, were presently incarcerated; and there a vindic- 
 tive trial was held. In a cramped, whitewashed room near their 
 cells, the eight manacled prisoners sat listening hopelessly to the 
 
296 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 proceedings and looking out through grated windows at the sunny 
 sky and the green treetops under which Lincoln had once driven 
 on his way to witness gun trials. 
 
 While Stanton's work of vengeance proceeded, so did his De- 
 partment's transition to peace. In the Ordnance Office the clerical 
 force was cut by a fourth. The criterion for those remaining was the 
 value of their services, Dyer informed Stanton, except for wounded 
 veterans and "four young men whose fathers are understood to 
 hold office." Young Tanner was promoted from temporary to 
 permanent clerk. 
 
 Toward the end of 1864, Isaac Diller had tried to revive his 
 powder project; and according to Samuel Ricker, Lincoln had been 
 about to order a new board for further experiments when Booth's 
 bullet intervened. Now, with Lincoln dead and the Ordnance 
 Office on a peacetime basis, Diller saw no point in going on; and 
 so he went back to his real estate business. Months later he was 
 mildly astonished to receive a visit from Ricker, who felt "sore" 
 about the powder fiasco. The captain was not very sympathetic. 
 "He has spent much money in this powder matter," Diller wrote 
 Dr. Wetherill, "but he will not allow that others have spent 
 money, time, and risked much." 
 
 Archimedes Dickson likewise resigned himself to the inevitable. 
 "As soon as Mr. Lincoln died," he said, "I quit and went home, 
 and went to work at something else. I did not intend to give it up 
 if he had lived, because he told me he would investigate it." Per- 
 haps Dickson should have been thankful that Lincoln's investiga- 
 tion never came. 
 
 In Texas, as May ended and the summer of 1865 came on, Kirby 
 Smith surrendered the last rebel army. Calls for cannon now were 
 mostly from towns wanting to borrow them for Independence Day, 
 but the Department's rules did not permit the loaning of ordnance 
 even for so patriotic a purpose. One lazy day in June a request came 
 in from the Methodist Episcopal church in Mattoon, Illinois: a 
 church bell had cracked while being tolled for the funeral of 
 
A PEAL OF ORDNANCE 297 
 
 President Lincoln, and the congregation wondered if General Dyer 
 could give them a worn-out rebel cannon to cast into a new bell. 
 Dyer's decision is not on record, so it is possible to hope that he re- 
 laxed the rules for so neatly symbolic an end. But, as Major Laidley 
 had once pointed out to Archimedes Dickson, the general was "a 
 business man." 
 
 The world forgot about Lincoln's work with the tools of war. 
 Dahlgren kept a diary, but in that respect he was alone among 
 those who knew the story. All others concerned left memoir writing 
 to the warriors and the politicians. 
 
 Hiram Berdan's creative imagination turned to other fields than 
 literature. In 1874 a disturbed official of the American Legation 
 in Berlin wrote the Secretary of State: 
 
 Do you know anything about a gentleman who styles himself 
 "General' Berdan?" I have no doubt that the man is a charlatan. 
 Berdan and his wife and a very pretty daughter represented to 
 [George] Bancroft [the American Minister] that they had been 
 presented in Russia, upon which he was induced to present them 
 here. It afterwards turned out that they had not been presented in 
 Russia at all. But the mischief had been done, and the Berdans had 
 got their position. 
 
 Pet Halsted thought of setting down the story. "The inside and 
 true history of this war is yet to be written," he once asserted; "I 
 propose to have a small share in making up the 'Chronicles.' " But 
 in the summer of 1871, before any Halsted "Chronicles" had ap- 
 peared, Pet Halsted was shot by a rival for the affections of his 
 mistress; and instead of carrying an inside account of the Civil War, 
 the Newark Daily Advertiser was apprizing its eager readers of the 
 "Shocking Results of Guilty Love, Jealousy, Rum and Passion." 
 
 Harry Wise could have told much and told it well, but he died 
 at Naples in 1869, worn-out at the age of forty-nine. For some 
 years after the war, General Ripley had now and then been seen 
 walking slowly, but still erectly, about the streets of Hartford, 
 
298 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Connecticut, his last home. He died in March 1870; and in the 
 same year Dahlgren succumbed to a heart attack. Soon after the 
 war ended, Captain Balch resigned from the Army, an embittered 
 man; his success in private life was limited, but he never returned 
 to the service. Stanton presently gave Ramsay the brevet rank of 
 major general, and when Ramsay was "little expecting it," re- 
 stored him to command of the Washington Arsenal. "All of this," 
 said Ramsay, "I believe was done as the amende honorable." Major 
 General Ramsay remained at his beloved arsenal until his retire- 
 ment in 1870. When he retired, Ramsay was "straight as a rush" 
 and "active as anybody," and he lived until 1882, still treasuring 
 the "familiar notes" he had received from his commander in chief. 
 But the old soldier was not the sort of man who considers his per- 
 sonal reminiscences as indispensable to the happiness of posterity. 
 
 General Dyer died in harness, and while he lived he had more 
 to do than cultivate memories of the past. A new age of ordnance 
 had arrived and was to be reckoned with; and besides, guns were 
 needed on the western plains. Dyer's successor, Brigadier General 
 Stephen Vincent Benet, had literary experience. But he knew the 
 story of Lincoln and the tools of war chiefly as hearsay, except per- 
 haps for one rainy June day in 1862 when Lincoln toured the Cold 
 Spring Foundry. 
 
 Of all those who figured in the story, the Scientific American 
 delivered the only memorable epilogue in the weeks after Lincoln's 
 death. Lincoln's own invention had not revolutionized navigation 
 on the Western Waters, the magazine remarked. Nevertheless, the 
 dead inventor's "skill in buoying the great vessel of state over dan- 
 gerous breakers has made his name honored throughout the whole 
 civilized world." 
 
 The development of weapons and of power went on, indifferent 
 to the philosophical Greek chorus which alternately rejoiced and 
 foreboded. General Phil Sheridan, who had made good use of 
 breechloaders in the last months of the war, expressed the opinion 
 some years later "that the improvement in the material of war was 
 
A PEAL OF ORDNANCE 299 
 
 so great that nations could not make war, such would be the de- 
 struction of human life." As the twentieth century dawned, Henry 
 Adams returned home from the great Paris exposition of 1900, 
 where the discoveries of the Curies about a certain new source of 
 energy had not relieved him from his fears of 1862. "Power 
 leaped from every atom," he mused, "and enough of it to supply 
 the stellar universe showed itself running to waste at every pore of 
 matter. Man could no longer hold it off." He saw disastrous possi- 
 bilities in store for the next generation or two. "But," he added, 
 "bombs educate vigorously." 
 
 The scientists themselves, unchaining their thunderbolts and 
 worse than thunderbolts, could no more agree on the ultimate con- 
 sequences than could the laymen. Perhaps the ultimate consequences 
 will never be certain till the sun — or the earth — is a cinder. Yet if, 
 as seems presently possible, the very power of weapons enforces a 
 lasting peace among nations, then Abraham Lincoln will have 
 helped, in more ways than he knew, to keep alive the last best hope 
 of earth. 
 
Notes 
 
 Text to which the notes refer is indicated below by page and para- 
 graph, the number of the page followed in parentheses by the final word 
 of the paragraph. When a paragraph carries over from one page to an- 
 other, the number of the second page is given here. 
 
 Notes referring to passages longer than a single paragraph are located 
 by the numbers of all pages involved and by the final words of all para- 
 graphs covered. 
 
 CHAPTER ONE (pages 3-21) 
 
 3 (air) : Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington (New York, 1941), 
 
 P-3i- 
 
 3 (avenue) : Ibid., p. 43; Washington Sunday Morning Chronicle, 
 Jan. 19, 1862; New York Times, Sept. 22, 1861; William H. Rus- 
 sell, My Diary North and South (New York, 1863), p. 20. 
 
 4 (inscrutable) : Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 43; Benjamin P. 
 Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1952), p. 245. 
 
 4 (served) : Manuscript memoir by John A. Dahlgren, belonging to 
 Joseph Dahlgren of Charlottesville, Virginia, p. 63; Madeleine V. 
 Dahlgren, Memoir of John A. Dahlgren (Boston, 1882), pp. 328, 
 352. 
 
 4 (last) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 328; Leech, Reveille in Wash- 
 ington, pp. 44-45; James G. Randall, Lincoln the President: Spring- 
 field to Gettysburg (2 vols.; New York, 1945), I, 294. 
 
 5 (Yard) : Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 45. 
 
 5-6 (transformation, Factory, imitation, dignity) : Taylor Peck, 
 Round-Shot to Rockets (Annapolis, 1949), pp. 105-107, no; M. 
 V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 314; Russell, My Diary, p. 27; Scientific 
 American, April 6, 1861. 
 
 6 (Merrimac) : Dahlgren ms. memoir, p. 57; "J ourna ^ °f Occur- 
 rences," I, 56-57, David D. Porter Mss., Library of Congress (here- 
 after referred to as "L. C"). 
 
 7 (siege) : Dahlgren ms. memoir, pp. 74-75, 59-60; Peck, Round- 
 Shot to Rockets, p. 115. 
 
 301 
 
302 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 7-8 (everywhere, category) : Russell, My Diary, p. 27. 
 
 8 (quietness) : Idem.; M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 328; W. H. Rus- 
 sell to H. A. Wise, Jan. 5, 1862, Henry Augustus Wise Mss., New 
 York Historical Society. 
 
 8 (that) : Dahlgren ms. memoir, p. 65. 
 
 8-9 (establishment, establishment) : U. S. Naval Observatory Mete- 
 orological Journal (hereafter cited as "Observatory Journal"), Na- 
 tional Archives (hereafter referred to as "N. A."), April 2, 1861; 
 Washington Evening Star, April 3, 1861; M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, 
 p. 329; Casimir Bohn (publisher), Bohn's Hand-Book of Wash- 
 ington (Washington, D. C, 1858), pp. 51-53. 
 
 9 (alighted, countenance) : Observatory Journal, N. A., April 3, 
 1861; Dahlgren ms. memoir, p. 65. 
 
 10 (President) : Ibid., pp. 65-66; H. A. Wise to J. A. Dahlgren, Sept. 
 1, 1863, John A. Dahlgren Mss., L. C. 
 
 10 (war) : Dahlgren ms. memoir, pp. 65-66; M. V. Dahlgren, Mem- 
 oir, pp. 352-353- 
 
 11 (west): Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (2 
 vols.; New York, 1926), I, 472. 
 
 11 (young) : Paul M. Angle, "Here I Have Lived" (New Brunswick, 
 N. J., 1950), p. 178; Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln 
 (4 vols.; New York, 1924), II, 57. 
 
 11 (involved): Charles S. Zane, "Lincoln As I Knew Him," Sunset 
 Magazine, October 191 2. 
 
 12 (phenomena) : David H. Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office 
 (New York, 1907), pp. 4-5. 
 
 12 (expense) : Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 (2 
 vols.; Boston, 1928), I, 520 n; Scientific American, March 30, 
 1 861; Fred B. Joyner, David Ames Wells, Champion of Free Trade 
 (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1939), p. 20. 
 
 13 (war) : George B. McClellan, McClellan's Own Story (New York, 
 1887), p. 162. 
 
 13-14 (talk, door, before) : Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works 
 of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols.; New Brunswick, N. J., 1953), II, 
 437-442, III, 356-363; Harry E. Pratt (ed.), Concerning Mr. Lin- 
 coln (Springfield, 111., 1944), pp. 21-22. 
 
 14 (me) : Lincoln, Works, III, 374; William H. Herndon and Jesse 
 W. Weik, Herndon' s Lincoln (3 vols.; Chicago, 1890), III, 449 n. 
 
 14 (somewhere) : Noah Brooks, Washington in Lincoln's Time (New 
 
 York, 1895), p. 306. 
 14 (things): Tarbell, Lincoln, II, 97; David C. Mearns (ed.), The 
 
 Lincoln Papers (2 vols.; New York, 1948), I, 159. 
 
NOTES 303 
 
 15 (self-possessed) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 329. 
 
 16 (later): Robert U. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (eds.), Battles 
 and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols.; New York, 1888), I, 5, 
 36 n; George A. Magruder to Montgomery Blair, June 20, 1865, 
 Blair Family Mss., L. C; "Letters to Secretary & Bureaux," II, 83, 
 Records of the Navy Bureau of Ordnance (hereafter cited as "Nav. 
 Bur. Ord."), N. A.; Henry A. Wise to Edward Everett, May 3, 
 1 86 1, Edward Everett Mss., Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 
 16 (Dahlgren) : Letterbook of Captain Henry A. Wise, 1862-1864, 
 p. 35, Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and 
 Library (hereafter cited as "Nav. Rec. Coll."), N. A. 
 
 16 (defense) : "Washington Navy Yard Orders Issued, Nov. 1, 1860- 
 Dec. 16, 1861," p. 115, Nav. Rec. Coll., N. A.; Peck, Round-Shot 
 to Rockets, pp. 1 1 7- 1 18. 
 
 17 (power) : Dahlgren ms. memoir, pp. 76, 86; Tyler Dennett (ed.), 
 Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay 
 (New York, 1939), p. 11. 
 
 17 (received) : John A. Dahlgren to Abraham Lincoln, July 16, 1862, 
 Robert Todd Lincoln Collection (hereafter cited as "Lincoln 
 Mss."), L. C; M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 341. 
 
 17-18 (accepted, occasion, delighted, flagstaff) : Observatory Journal, 
 May 9, 1 861; Washington Star, May 10, June 4, 1861; Washing- 
 ton Sunday Morning Chronicle, May 12, 1861; John G. Nicolay 
 to Therena Bates, May 9, 1861, Nicolay Mss., L. C; Dahlgren ms. 
 memoir, p. 88; "Memorandum Book: Navy Yard, Washington," 
 May 9, 1861, Dahlgren Mss., L. C; clipping dated "May 12th, 
 Washington," ibid.; Hay, Diary, pp. 21-22. 
 
 19 (fanfare): Boston Transcript, May 25, 1861; Commandant's 
 Memorandum Book, Dahlgren Mss., L. C. 
 
 19 (howitzers): Russell, My Diary, p. 141; Scientific American, 
 June 22, 1861; Washington Star, June 25, 1861. 
 
 19 (Yard) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, pp. 336, 338-339. 
 
 20 (foundry) : Dahlgren ms. memoir, pp. 102-103; Peck, Round- 
 Shot to Rockets, p. 127; Edward Everett to Francis P. Blair, Sr., 
 April 2, 1864, Everett Mss., Mass. Hist. Soc. 
 
 20 (Abe): Dahlgren ms. memoir, pp. 88, no; M. V. Dahlgren, 
 Memoir, p. 333; National Intelligencer (Washington, D. C), 
 March 26, 1862. 
 
 20 (himself) : Russell, My Diary, pp. 186-187. 
 
 21 (responsibility) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, pp. 288-289; John T. 
 Morse (ed.), The Diary of Gideon Welles (3 vols.; Boston, 
 1911), I, 62, 341. 
 
304 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 21 (politicians): M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 351; Dahlgren ms. 
 memoir, p. in. 
 
 CHAPTER TWO (pages 22-36) 
 
 22 (world) : Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 8-9; Russell, My 
 Diary, p. 20. 
 
 22 (fifty): Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 63; Thomas, Lincoln, 
 p. 263. 
 
 23 (present): Washington Star, April 20, 1861; my description of 
 Ripley is based on portraits, photographs and contemporary al- 
 lusions. 
 
 23 (1818): Sarah D. Ripley (ed.), James Wolfe Ripley (Hartford, 
 1881), p. 3. 
 
 23 (with) : Claud E. Fuller, Springfield Muzzle -Loading Shoulder 
 Arms (New York, 1930), p. 100. 
 
 24 (Army) : Ripley, James Wolfe Ripley, pp. 25-26; James Gadsden 
 to James W. Ripley, Feb. 25, 1826, April 16, 1830, James W. 
 Ripley Mss., belonging to Robert B. Bartholomew, Hoboken, N. J. 
 
 24 (indulgence): Ripley, James Wolfe Ripley, p. 25; conversation 
 with Miss Zelina Bartholomew, granddaughter of General Ripley, 
 in New York City, Nov. 20, 1952; letters from Dorothea Dix to 
 James W. Ripley, 1832-1833, James W. Ripley Mss. 
 
 25 (Charleston): Hartford Courant, March 17, 1870. 
 
 25 (flagpole): Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Republican, Dec. 22, 
 1878; Derwent S. Whittlesey, "The Springfield Armory: A Study 
 in Institutional Development" (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, 
 University of Chicago, 1920), pp. 179, 181-183, 204 (citations 
 are based on a carbon copy in the library of the Springfield 
 Armory, the pagination of which may not coincide with that of 
 the final draft); Springfield Gazette, April 22, 1846 (the hostile 
 paper was the Independent Democrat). 
 
 26 (arm) : Whittlesey, "Armory," pp. 189, 199. 
 
 26 (works) : Jacob Abbott, "The Armory at Springfield," Harper's 
 Monthly, July 1852. 
 
 27 (Boston) : Springfeld Republican, Oct. 18, 1854; Whittlesey, 
 "Armory," pp. 208, 210, 215, 219. 
 
 27 (me) : Hartford Courant, March 17, 1870. 
 
 27 (too) : Alfred Mordecai to Samuel Mordecai, June 2, 1861, Mor- 
 decai Mss., L. C. 
 
NOTES 305 
 
 27 (inevitable) : A. Howard Meneely, The War Department, 1861 
 (New York, 1928), p. 109; BB Book 10, p. 337, Office of the 
 Secretary of War (hereafter cited as "Off. Sec. War"), N. A. 
 
 28 (Department) : Meneely, War Department, pp. 76, 78, 81-84; 
 Russell, My Diary, p. 23. 
 
 28 (nation) : Meneely, War Department, pp. 105, 83 n, 107. 
 
 28 (war): "Letters Received, 1861," WD319, Office of the Chief 
 of Ordnance (hereafter cited as "Ord. Off."), N. A. 
 
 29 (others): Ord. Off., Letters Reed 1863, WD513. 
 
 29 (did) : New York Herald, May 8, 1862; Ripley was appointed to 
 the superintendency at Springfield by a Whig administration, he 
 promptly dismissed the Jacksonian paymaster, he feuded with the 
 Independent Democrat, and he was removed under a Democratic 
 administration and replaced by a Democratic politician. 
 
 29 (chief) : Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies 
 (130 vols.; Washington, D. C, 1880-1901) (hereafter cited as 
 "O. K."), series 3, I, 102. 
 
 29 (himself): Ord Off., Letters Rec'd 1863, WD513; Meneely, War 
 Department, p. 113 n; Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book I, 095; Simon 
 Cameron to Henry K. Craig, May 4, 1861, Letters Sent: Military 
 Affairs, Off. Sec. War. 
 
 30 (also) : Lincoln, Works, IV, 394-395, 398. 
 
 30 (triumph) : Meneely, War Department, p. 113; Cameron to Craig, 
 May 4, 1 86 1, Letters Sent: Military Affairs, Off. Sec. War. 
 
 31 (street): Ms. paper on the Winder Building by Mrs. Ruth B. 
 Shipley, Washington, D.C. 
 
 31 (Ordnance): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1864, WD305; and num- 
 erous allusions in Ordnance Office files. 
 
 32 (clerks) : Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry Convened at Wash- 
 ington, D.C, November 9, 1868 . . . to Examine into the Accusa- 
 tions against Brig, and Bvt. Major General A. B. Dyer, Chief of 
 Ordnance (2 vols.; Washington, D. C, 1869) (hereafter cited as 
 "Dyer Inquiry"), II, 452; James W. Ripley to George T. Balch, 
 Sept. 19, 1864, Elihu B. Washburne Mss., L. C; Donald A. Mac- 
 Dougall, "The Federal Ordnance Bureau, 1861-1865" (unpub- 
 lished Ph. D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 
 1951), pp. 105, 175, 208, 213. 
 
 33 (Department) : O. R., series 3, V, 144, I, 22, 292, series 1, XII, 
 part iii, 95; Theodore F. Rodenbough and William L. Haskins 
 (eds.), The Army of the United States (New York, 1896), pp. 
 32, 132; Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the United States 
 (Washington, D.C, 1912), p. 262. 
 
306 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 33 (business man, expended) : MacDougall, "Federal Ordnance 
 Bureau," pp. 35-36, 99, 157, 157 n; O. R., series 3, II, 351; Daniel 
 M. Roche, "The Acquisition and Use of Foreign Shoulder-arms in 
 the Union Army, 1861-1865" (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, 
 University of Colorado, 1949), p. 60 n. 
 
 33 (swindled) : MacDougall, "Federal Ordnance Bureau," pp. 216, 
 49; O. R., series 3, I, 538-539. 
 
 34 (equivalent) : Quoted in Roche, "Foreign Shoulder-arms," p. 
 120 n. 
 
 34 (it): Frank Moore (ed.), The Rebellion Record (n vols.; New 
 York, 1861-1868), V, 406 (Doc). 
 
 34 (production) : Felicia J. Deyrup, Arms Makers of the Connecti- 
 cut Valley (Northampton, Mass., 1948), pp. 179- 181. 
 
 35 (President) : Ord. Off., Special File: Inventions (hereafter cited 
 as "Inventions"), classes 4 and 5, No. 391. 
 
 35 (endorsed) : Lincoln, Works, IV, 505-506. 
 35-36 (him, be) : Ibid., IV, 540, V, 458. 
 
 36 (Lincoln): Washington Star, Oct. 25, 1862; National Republican 
 (Washington, D.C.), Oct. 22, 1862. 
 
 CHAPTER THREE (pages 37-58) 
 
 37 (hands) : Thomas, Lincoln, p. 258; O. R., series 3, I, 162, 164; 
 Lincoln, Works, V, 20. 
 
 37 (come) : O. R., series 1, II, 42-43, series 3, I, 260; MacDougall, 
 "Federal Ordnance Bureau," pp. 30-31. 
 
 38 (States): Wells, Annual of Scientific Discovery for 1855, pp. 23- 
 
 24- 
 
 39 (locks) : O. R., series 3, I, 244. 
 
 39 (demand) : Tarbell, Lincoln, I, 6; Lincoln, Works, IV, 62, I, 9. 
 
 39 {Lincoln) : Ord. Off., Letters to Ordnance Officers, James W. Rip- 
 ley to George D. Ramsay, June 18, 1861; Scientific American, Oct. 
 11, 1862; Alfred R. Waud Collection, Division of Prints and 
 Photographs, L. C. 
 
 39 (matters) : Ord Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 307. 
 
 40 (buckshot, further): William O. Stoddard, Inside the White 
 House in War Times (New York, 1890), p. 42. 
 
 40-41 (Office, boys, wanted, Regiment, changed, President, boyhood, 
 property, incident) : Lucius E. Chittenden, Recollections of Pres- 
 ident Lincoln and His Administration (New York, 1891), pp. 
 151-154. 
 
NOTES 307 
 
 42 (it) : Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LIII, 93. 
 42 (rifles) : O. R., series 1, II, 42-43. 
 
 42 (month) : O. R., series 3, I, 260, series 1, II, 604; table of monthly 
 output during 1861 in Springfield Armory Library scrapbook. 
 
 42 (rifles): O. R., series 3, I, 544, 525, II, 191, 855; Deyrup, Arms 
 Makers, pp. 1 79-181; Boston Transcript, May 13, 1861; Scienti- 
 fic American, Dec. 21, 1861, Jan. 4, 1862. 
 
 43 (home) : O.R., series 3, I, 245, 322; Meneely, War Department, 
 p. 148. 
 
 43 (deal) : O. R., series 3, 1, 245, 263; Meneely, War Department, p. 
 280. 
 
 43 (powder) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 333. 
 
 44 (earnest) : Lincoln, Works, IV, 362, 419, 536; Ord. Off., Register 
 of Letters Rec'd 1861, WD1802. 
 
 44 (Kentuckian) : Thomas, Lincoln, pp. 3-4, 8. 
 
 45 (me) : Lincoln, Works, IV, 69-70. 
 
 45 (Tennessee) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book I, R40, Mi 58. 
 45 (nation): Lincoln, Works, IV, 532. 
 
 45 (Nelson) : Ibid., IV, 368-369. 
 
 46 (country) : Battles and Leaders, I, 375-376; Daniel Ammen, The 
 Old Navy and the New (Philadelphia, 1891), p. 340; Russell, 
 My Diary, p. 26. 
 
 46 (mission) : Daniel Stevenson, "General Nelson, Kentucky, and 
 Lincoln Guns," Magazine of American History, Aug., 1883, p. 
 118. 
 
 46 (howitzer): Ibid., pp. 118-119, 123; Ord. Off., Register of Let- 
 ters Rec'd 1861, WD640; Lincoln, Works, IV, 395; Nav. Bur. 
 Ord., Navy Dept. Letters, III, 126-127. 
 
 47 (proportion): Mearns, Lincoln Papers, II, 625; Stevenson, "Lin- 
 coln Guns," pp. 126, 132. 
 
 47 (Yankee) : Ibid., 132; Mearns, Lincoln Papers, II, 619-620. 
 
 48 (mob) : Dahlgren ms. memoir, p. 98; Thomas, Lincoln, pp. 271- 
 272. 
 
 48 (need) : Diary of Mrs. Gustavus V. Fox, Feb. 28, 1863, Blair 
 Family Mss., L. C; Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White 
 House with Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1866), p. 255. 
 
 48 (immediately) : O. R., series 3, I, 355. 
 
 49 (campaigns): Whittlesey, "Armory," pp. 223-224; James W. 
 Ripley to George Dwight, May 15, 1861, transcript in Springfield 
 Collection, Springfield (Mass.) City Library; Springfield Armory 
 Library scrapbook. 
 
308 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 49 (arms) : 0. R., series 3, I, 702. 
 
 49 (arms) : Ord. Off., "Purchases of Ordnance," p. 216; 0. R., series 
 
 3, II, 855. 
 49 (guns) : Draft of an unaddressed letter, March 8, 1862, Simon 
 
 Cameron Mss., L. C; 37th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Executive 
 
 Document 72, pp. 40-41, 47. 
 
 49 (price): Dyer Inquiry, II, 453, 467. 
 
 50 (complied) : O. R., series 3, II, 193; Henry Wikoff to Simon Cam- 
 eron, Sept. 7, 1 86 1, Cameron Mss., L. C; draft of an unaddressed 
 letter, March 8, 1862, Cameron Mss., L. C. 
 
 50 (uproar): 37th Cong., 2nd sess., House, Report 2, p. 192; Roche, 
 "Foreign Shoulder Arms," p. 60 n; Boston Transcript, Dec. 24, 
 1861; 37th Cong., 2nd sess., House, Executive Document 67, p. 
 
 35- 
 
 50 (discharged): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1862, WD1781. 
 
 51 (trouble): Roche, "Foreign Shoulder Arms," Appendix A, p. 
 157; William W. H. Davis, History of the 104th Pennsylvania 
 Regiment (Philadelphia, 1866), p. 36; History of the Twenty- 
 Third Pennsylvania Volunteers (Philadelphia, 1904), pp. 126- 
 127. 
 
 51 (them): William E. Doster, Lincoln and Episodes of the Civil 
 War (New York, 1915), p. 24; Stoddard, Inside the White House, 
 pp. 40-41. 
 
 51 (sharpers): Lincoln, Works, IV, 509; MacDougall, "Federal Ord- 
 nance Bureau," p. 130. 
 
 51 (particularity): Lincoln, Works, IV, 512-513. 
 
 52 (done): Ibid., V, 163, 165; George Ashmun to Lincoln, March 
 19, 1862, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 52 (do) : Noah Brooks, "Personal Recollections of Abraham Lin- 
 coln," Harper's Monthly, July 1865, p. 228; New York Times, 
 Oct. 25, 1861. 
 
 53 (heart, Department) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 158. 
 
 54 (record, Chace) : Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd 1861, 
 WD1711. 
 
 54-56 (deeply, serviceable, President, category, construction, accepted, 
 contract) : 37th Cong., 2nd sess., House, Executive Document 67, 
 pp. 120-121, 123-125, 130; 37th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Execu- 
 tive Document 72, pp. 105-110, 113-118; Oliver S. Halsted, Jr., 
 to Lincoln, Dec. 20, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Ord. Off., "Pur- 
 chases of Ordnance"; the quoted characterizations of Hagner and 
 Crispin are from the ms. autobiography of James W. Benet, pp. 22, 
 39 n, at Yale University. 
 
NOTES 309 
 
 57 (each) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book I, R88, IV, V39; Ord. Off., 
 Register of Letters Rec'd 1861, WD 102 3; Lincoln, Works, IV, 
 481. 
 
 57 (Missouri): Ibid., IV, 529-530. 
 
 57 (distance) : Ibid., IV, 485, 537, 541; O. R., series 3, I, 539; Wil- 
 liam B. Wilson, Acts and Actors in the Civil War (Philadelphia, 
 1892), pp. IIO-III. 
 
 58 (Union) : O. R., series 1, LII, part i, 188; Joshua F. Speed to 
 Joseph Holt, Dec. 8, 1861, Joseph Holt Mss., L. C; Lincoln, 
 Works, V, 50. 
 
 CHAPTER FOUR (pages 59-74) 
 
 59 (themselves) : New York Times, Dec. 10, 1863. 
 
 60 (world) : Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, The Life of 
 fames Clerk Maxwell (London, 1884), PP- 250-252; Worthington 
 C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861-1865 (2 vols.; Bos- 
 ton, 1920), I, 135. 
 
 60 (city) : Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Modern 
 Library edition, New York, 1931), p. 44. 
 
 61 (majority) : W. P. A. Guide Series, Washington, City and Capital 
 (Washington, D.C., 1937), pp. 950, 976, 977; Charles Dickens, 
 American Notes, chap, viii (I cite no page reference because my 
 source, like most available copies, is an undated edition of Dick- 
 ens's collected works); 30th Cong., 1st sess., House, Executive 
 Document 54, p. 9. 
 
 62 (invented) : Ibid., pp. 7, 16; Patent Office reports, 1837-1847, 
 passim; Mearns, Lincoln Papers, I, 4-5. 
 
 62 (1850s): Tarbell, Lincoln, II, 42-43, and photograph of model, 
 opposite p. 42. 
 
 62 (inventor) : Scientific American, Dec. 1, i860. 
 
 63 (Office) : Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 66-69. 
 
 63 (themselves) : Scientific American, May 18, June 15, 1861. 
 
 64 (July) : Augustus Woodbury, A Narrative of the Campaign of the 
 First Rhode Island Regiment (Providence, 1862), pp. 26-27, 158- 
 159, 164-165. 
 
 64 (city) : Ben: Perley Poore, The Life and Public Services of Am- 
 brose E. Burnside (Providence, 1882), pp. 97-98. 
 
 64 (dawned) : J. L. B. Blizard, "The Future of Discovery and Inven- 
 tion," Technology Review, June 1954, LVI, 395-397. 
 
 65 (Cumberland): Boston Transcript, Sept. 1, 1862; Scientific Amer- 
 ican, Jan. 11, 1862. 
 
310 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 65 (him): Ibid., May 25, 1861; The American Annual Cyclopedia 
 and Register of Important Events of the Year 1862 (New York, 
 1868), p. 699; Edward W. Jones to Joseph Holt, Aug. 26, 1861, 
 Joseph Holt Mss., L. C; Alfred Holmead to Chambre, Oct. 21, 
 1861, Titian R. Peale to J. E. Holmead, Sept. 6, 1861, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 66 (war): Lincoln, Works, V, 45; Scientific American, March 22, 
 Nov. 22, 1862. 
 
 66 (Washington): Moore, Rebellion Record, I, 55 (Incidents); 
 Scientific American, May n, 1861; Benjamin F. Butler, Butler's 
 Book (Boston, 1892), pp. 201-202. 
 
 66 (days) : Battles and Leaders, II, 7 n. 
 
 67 (therefrom) : Scientific American, Nov. 1, 1862. 
 67 (1861) : Ibid., June 2, 1849. 
 
 67 (industry) : E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of Amer- 
 ica, 1861-1865 (Louisiana State University, 1950), pp. 210, 274, 
 276-277; Emerson D. Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the 
 North During the Civil War (New York, 1910), pp. 91, 93 n. 
 
 67 (wartime) : Coulter, Confederate States, p. 274; Battles and Lead- 
 ers, I, 115. 
 
 68 (Union) : Ibid., pp. 217-218. 
 
 68 (apple) : Quoted in Scientific American, Aug. 3, 1861. 
 
 68 (man) : John Ericsson to Lincoln, Aug. 2, 1862, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 69 (kinds) : MacDougall, "Federal Ordnance Bureau," pp. 6-7; 
 Scientific American, March 2, July 6, 1861; American Annual 
 Cyclopedia for 1861, p. 562. 
 
 69 (infantry) : O. R., series 3, I, 264. 
 
 70 (Lincoln) : A copy of the form is in Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 
 8, No. 183. 
 
 70 (persons): Dyer Inquiry, I, 513; 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, 
 Rep. Comm. 121, p. 108. 
 
 71 (witness) : Dyer Inquiry, II, 466-467. 
 
 71 (suffers): Scientific American, Sept. 19, 1863; see also issues of 
 May 24, July 19, 1862, and Jan. 17, Feb. 28, 1863. 
 
 71 (doing) : Dahlgren to O. B. Pierce, Aug. 2, 1862, Nav. Bur. Ord., 
 Letters Sent Misc.; Dahlgren to Gideon Welles, June 27, 1863, 
 Dahlgren Mss., L. C; 37th Cong., 2nd sess., House, Executive 
 Document 126, p. 1. 
 
 72 (active) : MacDougall, "Federal Ordnance Bureau," pp. 48-49, 
 216; O. R., series 3, I, 538-539; Ripley to George B. McClellan, 
 July 7, 1862, Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent. 
 
NOTES 
 
 3 II 
 
 72 (power) : Russell, My Diary, pp. 151-152, 153. 
 
 73 (Army) : F. Stansbury Haydon, Aeronautics in the Union and 
 Confederate Armies (Baltimore, 1941), I, 109; Scientific Amer- 
 ican, July 30, Aug. 6, 1864; Butler's Book, p. 258; Edward W., 
 Serrell to Benjamin F. Butler, July 8, 21, Dec. 28, 1864, Jan. 2, 
 1865, Benjamin F. Butler Mss., L. C; Off. Sec. War, Irregular 
 Book III, p. 615. 
 
 73 (Congressmen) : Scientific American, Feb. 7, 1863; Ord. Off., Let- 
 ters Rec'd 1864, WD387. 
 
 74 (taken): Ord. Off.: Register of Letters Rec'd 1862, WD907, 
 H516, WD205, B174; "Inventions," class 8, No. 260; Letters 
 Rec'd 1 861, B636; Letters Rec'd 1864, C622; Alexander B. Dyer to 
 Schuyler Colfax, Dec. 12, 1864, Misc. Letters Sent. 
 
 CHAPTER FIVE (pages 75-88) 
 
 75 (this): Mearns, Lincoln Papers, I, 35; Sandburg, Prairie Years, 
 II, 401. 
 
 76 (secretaries, office) : Mearns, Lincoln Papers, I, 38-41; Washington 
 Star, April 3, 1861. 
 
 76 (war) : More than two hundred letters from inventors escaped 
 Stoddard's wastebaskets and are preserved in the National Ar- 
 chives; of these, one in every six or seven bears some notation in 
 Lincoln's hand. Many of the surviving letters suggest that Stod- 
 dard's winnowing was extremely lenient. Yet even if we assume 
 that as many as half of the incoming letters were discarded with- 
 out referral, we must conclude that at least one in fourteen of the 
 inventors' letters was put into Lincoln's hands, as against only one 
 in fifty of those on other subjects. Ord. Off. and Nav. Bur. Ord. 
 files, passim; David P. Holloway to John G. Nicolay, Nov. 1, 
 1862, Nicolay to William A. Grimshaw, Aug. 12, 1864, Nicolay 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 76 (plague) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 and 5, No. 785. 
 
 77 (promptly) : Ibid., class ic, No. 262, classes 4 and 5, Nos. 828, 
 830. 
 
 77 (gun): Ibid., class 8, No. 292, class ia, Nos. 161, 253, class ic, 
 No. 274; "Minutes of War Board, March, 1862," p. 10, Edwin M. 
 Stanton Mss., L. C. 
 
 78 (President) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," James E. Littlefield to Lin- 
 coln, Nov. 2, 1861; William Foster to Samuel Hooper, March 22, 
 1862, Hooper to Nicolay, May 15, 1862, Nicolay Mss., L. C. 
 
312 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 78 (shell) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 and 5, Nos. 671, 371, 
 484, class 1 a, No. 181. 
 
 79 (files) : Ibid., class ic, Nos. 283, 286. 
 79 (it) : Ibid., classes 4 and 5, No. 612. 
 
 79 (them): John Hay, Addresses of John Hay (New York, 1906), 
 pp. 323-324- 
 
 80 (day) : Thomas, Lincoln, p. 457; Anthony Trollope, North Amer- 
 ica (3 vols.; Leipzig, 1862), II, 141; Carl Sandburg, Abraham 
 Lincoln: The War Years (4 vols.; New York, 1939), II, 217. 
 
 80 (application, silent): Allen Thorndike Rice (ed.), Reminiscences 
 of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New 
 York, 1886), pp. 237-238. 
 
 81 (adopted) : E. D. Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War in the 
 United States (New York, 1884), pp. 89-90. 
 
 81 (tables) : Hay, Addresses, p. 327; William O. Stoddard, Abraham 
 Lincoln and Andrew Johnson (New York, 1888), pp. 213, 223. 
 
 82 (Herndon) : Scientific American, Sept. 19, 1863; William H. 
 Herndon to Edward McPherson, Feb. 22, 1866, Edward McPher- 
 son Mss., L. C. 
 
 82 (age): Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (eds.), Dictionary of 
 American Biography (20 vols.; New York, 1928), XVIII, 598- 
 
 599- 
 
 83 (experiment) : Joseph G. Totten to Lincoln, Jan. 2, 1862, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 83 (science): David Starr Jordan (ed.), Leading American Men of 
 Science (New York, 1910), pp. 119, 124-126; Joseph Henry to 
 Henry Wurtz, July 26, 1861, Wurtz Mss., New York Public 
 Library. 
 
 84 (smile) : Thomas Coulson, Joseph Henry: His Life and Work 
 (Princeton, N. J., 1950), pp. 241-242; Washington Star, Jan. 4, 
 1862; Sandburg, War Years, I, 401. 
 
 84 (matters) : Henry to Nicolay, May 5, 1862, May 10, 1864, George 
 Harrington to Nicolay, March 1, 1865, Nicolay Mss., L. C; Henry 
 to Lincoln, April 22, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Coulson, Henry, 
 p. 244; Chittenden, Recollections, p. 237. 
 
 84 (also) : John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A His- 
 tory (10 vols.; New York, 1890), VI, 358-359; Joseph Henry to 
 Frederick Seward, Sept. 5, 1862, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Warren A. 
 Beck, "Lincoln and Negro Colonization in Central America," 
 Abraham Lincoln Quarterly, Sept. 1950; Coulson, Henry, 308- 
 309; Sandburg, War Years, III, 345-346. 
 
NOTES 313 
 
 85 (Navy) : Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, pp. 264-265; Ob- 
 servatory Journal, Aug. 24, 1864. 
 85 (vigilance): Brooks, Washington in Lincoln's Time, pp. n-13. 
 
 85 (g as bags) : Jeremiah Milbank, Jr., The First Century of Flight in 
 America (Princeton, N. J., 1943), pp. 33, 98; e.g. E. D. Tipp- 
 ett to Lincoln, Jan. 27, 1862, Nicolay Mss., L. C, John Merlett 
 to Lincoln, May 28, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 86 (demonstrations) : Milbank, First Century of Flight, pp. 1 19-122; 
 F. Stansbury Haydon, Aeronautics in the Union and Confederate 
 Armies (Baltimore, 1941), pp. 170-172. 
 
 86 (Lowe) : T. S. C. Lowe to Lincoln, June 16 [sic — correct date is 
 June 18], 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 86 (mounted) : Haydon, Aeronautics, pp. 175-176; Boston Tran- 
 script, June 21, 1 861. 
 
 87 (corps, Lincoln, hat): Haydon, Aeronautics, pp. 194-195. 
 
 87 (Army) : Idem.; Milbank, First Century of Flight, pp. 123-127. 
 
 88 (nonetheless) : Scientific American, Jan. 16, 1864; Milbank, First 
 Century of Flight, pp. 124-126; T. S. C. Lowe to A. J. Myer, July 
 13, 1863, Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book IV. 
 
 CHAPTER SIX (pages 89-97) 
 
 89 (fussy) : Russell, My Diary, p. 204. 
 
 89 (experiments) : Dyer Inquiry, I, 525. 
 
 90 (Potomac, university): Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-W-42; 
 Washington Star, Jan. 16, 1863; William J. O'Brien, "The Wash- 
 ington Arsenal," Army Ordnance, July- August, 1935; see photo- 
 graphs in Francis T. Miller (ed.), Photographic History of the 
 Civil War (10 vols.; New York, 1911), V, 127, 131, 135, 175. 
 
 90 (points) : Dyer Inquiry, I, 437, II, 298; 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Sen- 
 ate, Rep. Comm. 121, p. 10. 
 
 91 (war): Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-W-42; Frederick W. 
 Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat 
 (New York, 1916), p. 228; Lincoln, Works, V, 429-430; Wash- 
 ington Star, Nov. 4, 1862. 
 
 91 (trees) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book V, G21; O. R., series 3, V, 
 141; National Intelligencer, Feb. n, 1862; Ord. Off., Letters 
 Rec'd 1865, W190. 
 
 91 (field) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book V, S85. 
 
 92 (mothers) : Idem.', Washington Sunday Morning Chronicle, June 
 30, 1861. 
 
314 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 92 (Washington) : Washington Star, Jan. 31, 1863. 
 
 92 (major) : Dictionary of American Biography, XV, 340. 
 
 93 (me): Photograph in N. A., Office of Chief Signal Officer, 
 B2447; James W. Benet, autobiography, p. 43; Dyer Inquiry, I, 
 
 5*3- 
 
 93 (high) : Joshua F. Speed to Joseph Holt, Oct. 18, 1861, Joseph 
 Holt Mss., L. C. 
 
 93 (co-operation) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, WD1400; Off. Sec. 
 War, Irregular Book V, G21; Moore, Rebellion Record, V, 406 
 (Doc). 
 
 94 (presidents) : Washington Sunday Morning Chronicle, June 30, 
 1861. 
 
 95 (trial): Dyer Inquiry, II, 522; Lincoln, Works, IV, 556; Ord. 
 Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 580. 
 
 95 (carriage) : Dyer Inquiry, II, 179. 
 
 95 (merits) : N. A., Patent Office Records, No. 33,891; Ord. Off., "In- 
 ventions," Misc., No. 250. 
 
 96 (Totten's) : Joseph G. Totten to Lincoln, Jan. 2, 1862, P. Frank- 
 lin Jones to Lincoln, Jan. 4, 1862, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Ord. Off., 
 "Experiments," classes 8 and 3, No. 2-63^. 
 
 96 (ordered) : Theodore C. Pease and James G. Randall (eds.), The 
 Diary of Orville Hickman Browning (2 vols.; Springfield, Illinois, 
 
 i9 2 5)> I> 548-549- 
 
 97 (imagery): Benet, autobiography, pp. 8, n-13, 23, 43; Stephen 
 
 V. Benet to Alfred Mordecai, May 13, 1861, Mordecai Mss., L. C. 
 97 (proving) : Benet, autobiography, p. 58; S. V. Benet to J. W. Rip- 
 ley, Sept. 17, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN (pages 99-116) 
 
 99 (g rass ) : Stoddard, Inside the White House, p. 42; Stoddard, Lin- 
 coln and Johnson, p. 223. 
 100 (clean) : W. J. Hardee, Rifle and Infantry Tactics (2 vols.; Mo- 
 bile, Alabama, 1863), I 36-41. 
 
 100 (order) : Theodore T. S. Laidley, "Breech Loading Musket," 
 United States Service Magazine, Jan., 1865, III, 69. 
 
 1 01 (it) : Charles B. Norton, American Breech-loading Small Arms 
 (New York, 1872), p. 10-11; Boston Gazette, Dec. 16, 1776; ex- 
 hibit in Arts and Industries Building, Smithsonian Institution, 
 Washington, D.C. 
 
 1 01 (breechloaders) : Claud E. Fuller, The Breech-loader in the Serv- 
 ice (Topeka, Kansas, 1933), pp. 65-66. 
 
NOTES 315 
 
 101 (Virginian) : Off. Sec. War, Letters Sent to President, VI, 15, 230- 
 231; Fuller, Breech-loader in the Service, p. 77. 
 
 102 (Hooker) : E. P. Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate 
 (New York, 1907), p. 53. 
 
 102 (weapon) : Roche, "Foreign Shoulder Arms," p. 8; Off. Sec. War, 
 Letters to the President, VI, 230-231. 
 
 102 (destination, track) : Robert W. McBride, Personal Recollections 
 of Abraham Lincoln (Indianapolis, 1926), pp. 27-28; Stoddard, 
 Inside the White House, pp. 41-42; photograph in N. A., Office 
 of Chief Signal Officer, B5147. 
 
 103 {Star) : Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 7, 83; Trollope, North 
 America, II, 154-155; Washington Star, Aug. 8, 1862. 
 
 103 (duration) : Ibid., June 18, 1862, Sept. 2, 1863; Thomas Cham- 
 berlin, History of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment Penn- 
 sylvania Volunteers (Philadelphia, 1895), p. 43. 
 
 104 (competition): Hay, Addresses, p. 327; Washington Star, Nov. 
 20, 1862; Charles O. Paullin, "President Lincoln and the Navy," 
 American Historical Review, Jan. 1908, XIV, 300; Ord. Off., Let- 
 ters to War Dept, XIV, 45, 127, 341; Tarbell, Lincoln, III, 96- 
 97. The account quoted by Miss Tarbell identifies Lincoln's usual 
 shooting companion only as "a certain messenger of the Ordnance 
 Department"; but Mullikin was the only such messenger, and his 
 military background implies familiarity with the use of guns. 
 
 104 (him, shooting) : Stoddard, Inside the White House, pp. 41-44; 
 Stoddard, Lincoln and Johnson, pp. 223-224; Washington Star, 
 May 9, 1861. 
 
 104 (equal) : "Rifled Guns," Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1859, IV, 453; 
 William Y. W. Ripley, Vermont Riflemen in the War for the 
 Union (Rutland, Vermont, 1883), p. 186. 
 
 105 (blackberries) : James L. Bowen, History of the Thirty-Seventh 
 Regiment Mass. Volunteers in the Civil War of 186 1- 1865 (Hol- 
 yoke, Massachusetts, 1884), p. 355; Charles A. Stevens, Berdan's 
 United States Sharpshooters in the Army of the Potomac, 186 1- 
 1865 (St. Paul, Minnesota, 1892), pp. 343, 348-349. 
 
 105 (firing) : Army and Navy Journal, Dec. 24, 1864. 
 
 106 (ammunition) : Ripley, Vermont Riflemen, p. 58; O. R., series 1, 
 XII, part iii, pp. 767-768; MacDougall, "Federal Ordnance Bu- 
 reau," pp. 51-52. 
 
 106 (muzzle-loaders) : O. R., series 3, I, 264. 
 
 107 (States) : Nav. Bur. Ord., Letters to Secretary and Bureaux, II, 33. 
 107 (breechloaders) : O. R., series 3, I, 869-870. 
 
 107 (check) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 526. 
 
316 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 107 (operation) : Idem.; Ord. Off., "Experiments," class 6, No. 302. 
 
 108 (Lincoln) : Idem. 
 
 108 (interests) : 37th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Executive Document 
 72, p. 256, House, Executive Document 67, p. 100; Ord. Off., Let- 
 ters Rec'd 1861, WD1177; Richard W. Thompson, Recollections 
 of Sixteen Presidents (2 vols.; Indianapolis, 1894), II, 389; Lin- 
 coln, Works, VI, 259; Simon Cameron to Richard W. Thompson, 
 Aug. 30, 1 86 1, Collections of the Lincoln National Life Founda- 
 tion, Fort Wayne, Indiana. 
 
 108 (men) : 37th Cong., 2nd sess., House, Executive Document 67, 
 p. 102. 
 
 108 (muzzle-loaders): Ibid., p. 103; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, 
 No. 549; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, WD1818, WD1827, 
 WD1838. 
 
 109 (war) : O. R., series 3, I, 270; Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book I, 
 R135; Dyer Inquiry, I, 431. 
 
 109 (suit) : Stevens, Sharpshooters, p. 526; New York City directory, 
 1860-1861; Washington Star, June 4, 1861; Ord. Off., "Inven- 
 tions," class 8, No. 130; O. R., series 3, I, 270; Hiram Berdan to 
 Lincoln, July 21, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 109 (in) : Ripley, Vermont Riflemen, pp. 9-10; Ord. Off., Letters 
 Rec'd 1861, B418. 
 
 109 (enemies) : O. R., series 3, I, 477; Boston Transcript, Sept. 5, 
 1861. 
 
 no (Mansfield, audience): Ibid., Sept. n, 1861; Stevens, Sharp- 
 shooters, pp. 9-10; Observatory Journal, Sept. 20, 1861; New York 
 Times, Sept. 21, 1861. 
 
 iio-in (yards, breechloaders): Stevens, Sharpshooters, pp. 10-n. 
 
 in (rifle): Ripley, Vermont Riflemen, p. 12. 
 
 in (muzzle-loader) : Winston O. Smith, The Sharps Rifle (New York, 
 *943), PP- 3> 6, 51, 102. 
 
 112 (efficient) : Ibid., pp. 8, 9, n, 16; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, 
 W136. 
 
 112 (more) : Ibid., M701; Ripley, Vermont Riflemen, pp. 12-13. 
 
 112 (Rifles) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book I, W236. 
 
 113 (men, wield): New York Evening Post, Dec. 20, 1861. 
 
 114 (Hartford): Scientific American, Dec. 192 1, p. 103; Dictionary 
 of American Biography, XVII, 446. 
 
 114 (lever): Idem.; Scientific American, Dec. 1921, p. 102. 
 
 114 (Navy) : Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examination of Inventions," III, 9-10; 
 
 Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Sent, III, 211. 
 114 (form) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 336. 
 
NOTES 317 
 
 115 (alone, paper) : Tarbell, Lincoln, III, 96-97. 
 
 1 1 5-1 16 (seen, successful) : Ord. Off., Special Files, "Decisions of the 
 Commission on Ordnance Contracts," Case 93. 
 
 116 (infantry): O. R., Series 3, I, 733-734. 
 
 116 (rifles): Scientific American, Dec. 1921, p. 102; Ord. Off., Misc. 
 
 Letters Sent, LIV, 278. 
 116 (it): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, WD2135; 37th Cong., 2nd 
 
 sess., Senate, Executive Document 72, p. 419. 
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT (pages 1 18-123) 
 
 118 (himself): Washington Star, June 6, 1861; Theodore Lyman, 
 Meade's Headquarters, 1863-1865 (Boston, 1922), p. 249; Leech, 
 Reveille in Washington, p. 301; Allan Nevins, The Emergence of 
 Lincoln (2 vols.; New York, 1950), II, 454; Ord. Off., Letters 
 Rec'd 1862, WD1505, Letters Rec'd 1861, B312; John J. Astor 
 to Hamilton Fish, Dec. 19, 1861, Hamilton Fish Mss., L. C. 
 
 119 (faction): Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 439; see volumi- 
 nous records filed in N. A., Patent Office Records, Nos. 32,887, 
 41,017, 41,857; also Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, WD864, Let- 
 ters Rec'd 1862, S720; and Nav. Bur. Ord., "Index to Inventions 
 Tested at the Washington Navy Yard." 
 
 119 (war) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 439; Nav. Bur. Ord., 
 "Examination of Inventions," IV, 255-257; Ord. Off., Letters 
 Rec'd 1862, WD834. 
 
 120 (one, Government) : Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LIII, 174; Ord. 
 Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, WD756; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, 
 No. 153; Lincoln, Works, IV, 399. 
 
 120 (trials): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, WD323, WD756; James 
 W. Ripley to J. D. Mills, June 28, 1861, Ord. Off., Misc. Letters 
 Sent. 
 
 120 (comment): Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 439. 
 
 121 (idea): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, D561; Ord. Off., Misc. 
 Letters Sent, LIV, 172. 
 
 121 (engineer): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1861, B375; Boston Tran- 
 script, Sept. 9, 1861; Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book I, W230. 
 121 (it): Ord. Off., "Inventions," Misc., No. 240. 
 
 121 (regiment): Ibid., class ic, No. 223. 
 
 122 (each): Lincoln, Works, V, 4-5; Ord. Off., Register of Letters 
 Rec'd 1861, W858. 
 
 122 (buoyantly) : Hay, Diary, p. 31. 
 
318 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 122 (November): Lincoln, Works, IV, 468-469. 
 
 123 (pieces, worth): N. A., Adjutant General's Office, Department of 
 the Gulf, Letters Sent, I, 25-26, 64; Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book 
 III, p. 137. 
 
 123 (order): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1862, WD241; George B. Mc- 
 Clellan to Simon Cameron, Nov. 30, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C; 
 Lt. Col. George M. Chinn, U. S. M. C, The Machine Gun (3 
 vols.; Washington, D. C, 1951), I, 39; Lincoln, Works, V, 75-76. 
 
 CHAPTER NINE (pages 124-130) 
 
 124 (mark): Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LVI, 64. 
 
 124 (hand): Off. Sec. War, Letters Rec'd 1864, B303. 
 
 125 (unmistakable) : George W. Nichols, The Story of the Great 
 March (New York, 1865), p. 44; Off. Sec. War, Letters Rec'd 
 1864, B303; Russell, My Diary, p. 203. 
 
 125 (balls) : Portrait and Biographical Record of Adams County, Illi- 
 nois (Chicago, 1892), pp. 152-153; Browning, Diary, I, 197, 264, 
 446; Henry Asbury, Reminiscences of Quincy, Illinois (Quincy, 
 Illinois, 1882), pp. 146-147; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ia, 
 No. 178. 
 
 125 (howitzers) : Idem.; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LIII, 618. 
 
 126 (each): Lincoln, Works, V, 18; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1863, 
 WD498; Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd 1861, WD1842. 
 
 126 (tactics) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ib, No. 67, 194; 38th 
 Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, p. 46; Russell, My 
 Diary, p. 211; "Rifled Guns," Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1859, p. 
 454; New York Tribune, June 9, 1861; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters 
 Rec'd, 1-W-240. 
 
 126 (along) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ib, Nos. 68, 89, 93. 
 126-127 (device, fire): Idem.; U. S. Patent No. 38,110; Nav. Bur. 
 
 Ord., "Examination of Inventions," III, 143-144, 187-192. 
 
 127 (Department) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ib, No. 78. 
 
 127 (bothered) : James W. Ripley to Walter G. Sherwin, Aug. 5, 
 1861, Ord. Off., MisC. Letters Sent. 
 
 127 (surprised) : Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd 1861, WD1084; 
 Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ib, No. 85. 
 
 128 (disposal) : Ibid., No. 93; James A. L. Fremantle, The Fremantle 
 Diary (Boston, 1954), p. 141. 
 
 128 (history) : O. R., series 3, I, 447. 
 
 128 (fifties): Samuel S. Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation 
 (Providence, Rhode Island, 1885), p. 91. 
 
NOTES 319 
 
 128 (Gun) : William Woodward, "Firearms — Their Evolution and 
 Worcester's Part Therein," Worcester Historical Society Publica- 
 tions, New Series, I, part iv, p. 272; New York Tribune, June 13, 
 1861. 
 
 129 (manpower) : Idem.; Sabin P. Pond to George B. McClellan, July 
 29, 1861, McClellan Mss., L. C; Eli Thayer to Lincoln, Sept. 21, 
 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C.; Scientific American, Dec. 21, 1861. 
 
 129 (for) : Eli Thayer to Lincoln, Sept. 21, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C.; 
 Lincoln, Works, IV, 534-535; certificate of Col. Charles P. Kings- 
 bury, Nov. 30, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L.C.; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters 
 Sent, LIV, 179. 
 
 129 (mistaken) : Lincoln, Works, V, 85; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd 1862, 
 R603. 
 
 130 (results) : Ezra S. Stearns, Genealogical and Family History of the 
 State of New Hampshire (New York, 1908), III, 1297- 1298; 
 Off. Sec. War, Letters Rec'd 1861, R107; Ord. Off., "Inventions," 
 class ib, Nos. 125, 135. 
 
 130 (gun): Ibid., No. 125. 
 
 130 (ordered) : Off. Sec. War, Letters Rec'd 1861, R107; Ord. Off., 
 "Inventions," class ib, No. 135; Ord. Off., Register of Letters 
 Rec'd 1862, R418. 
 
 CHAPTER TEN (pages 131-144) 
 
 131 (business): John G. Nicolay to Therena Bates, April 29, 1863, 
 Nicolay Mss., L. C. 
 
 132 (Crazy-man): E. D. Tippett to Lincoln, Jan. 27, 1862, Nicolay 
 Mss., L. C; E. D. Tippett to Lincoln, Feb. 9, 1863, Lincoln Mss., 
 L. C. 
 
 132 (bite): Wisconsin State Historical Society Collections, IX, 433; 
 Peter Yates to Lincoln, Oct. 4, 1864, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 133 (End) : Yates to Lincoln, Feb. 18, 1861, ibid. 
 
 133 (fame): Nav. Rec. Coll., "Inventions Referred to Permanent 
 Commission, 1862-1864," No. n; Peter Yates to Lincoln, Feb. 18, 
 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 133 (for) : Herndon and Weik, Hemdon's Lincoln, III, 524-525. 
 
 134 (life): Dictionary of American Biography, XVII, 123. 
 
 134 (balance): Howard K. Beale (ed.), The Diary of Edward Bates 
 (Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1930. 
 IV), p. 212; Observatory Journal, Dec. 21, 1861. 
 
 135 (armies): Scientific American, Nov. 9, 1861, April n, Aug. 22. 
 1863. 
 
320 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 135 (thrusts): Ibid., Oct. 26, 1861. 
 
 135 (yards) : Ibid., March 8, 1862; New York Herald, Jan. 3, 1862. 
 
 135 (been): Washington Star, May 16, 1862; Moore, Rebellion Rec- 
 ord, V, 232 (Doc). 
 
 136 (ended): Stoddard, Inside the White House, p. 39; Sandburg, 
 War Years, II, 295; Scientific American, Feb. 8, 1862, March 4, 
 1865. 
 
 136 (cottage) : John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee (Boston, 1887), 
 p. 275; Francis H. Buffum, A Memorial of the Great Rebellion 
 (Boston, 1882), pp. 65-67. 
 
 137 (grave): Ord. Off., "Inventions," Misc., No. 440; Chittenden, 
 Recollections, pp. 419-420. 
 
 137 (door): Ord. Off., "Inventions," Misc., Nos. 234, 379, 430, 439, 
 
 332. 
 
 137 (tread): Ibid., Nos. 336, 355, 370; Scientific American, June 1, 
 1 86 1, Oct. n, 1862, Oct. 24, 1863, J u ty 9> 1864; Battles and 
 Leaders, II, 374, IV, 577, 487. 
 
 138 (been): Scientific American, June 15, 1861. 
 
 138 (credence) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 219; James W. 
 Ripley to Pliny Miles, Sept. 23, 1861, Ord. Off., Misc. Letters 
 Sent. 
 
 138 (ended): Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 219; Benjamin F. 
 Isherwood to Lincoln, Dec. 4, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 139 (Dickinson, fire): Boston Transcript, May 20, 1861; Scientific 
 American, May 25, 1861; Moore, Rebellion Record, I, 98 (Inci- 
 dents); Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 276. 
 
 139 (accepted): Scientific American, May 25, 1861; Ord. Off., "In- 
 ventions," class ic, No. 276. 
 
 140 (offshore): Scientific American, May 25, 1861; New York Trib- 
 une, June 20, 1861. 
 
 140 (uncomfortable) : Charles Latimer to Ethan A. Hitchcock, May 
 11, 1863, Ethan A. Hitchcock Mss., L. C. 
 
 141 (Washington) : Idem.; Hay, Addresses, p. 327. 
 
 141 (it): Nav. Bur. Ord., Letters to Navy Dept, II, 17-18, IV, 73; 
 
 George Green to John A. Dix, Oct. 4, 1864, Ethan A. Hitchcock 
 
 Mss., L. C. 
 141 (mule) : N. A., Adjutant General's Office, Letters Rec'd 1864, 
 
 A195; undated memorandum by Ethan A. Hitchcock, Hitchcock 
 
 Mss., L. C. 
 141 (nation) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 315, classes 4 and 
 
 5, No. 606; Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd 1864, WD1231. 
 
NOTES 321 
 
 141 (declared) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 and 5, Nos. 238, 
 421; Scientific American, Aug. 9, 1862. 
 
 142 (subject): Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, Nos. 133, 214, 306, 
 328, 354, 356, 366, 371; James W. Ripley to Charles F. Raymond, 
 Aug. 8, 1864, Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent. 
 
 142 (enemy): MacDougall, "Federal Ordnance Bureau," p. 76; Ord. 
 Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 206, classes 4 and 5, No. 606; 
 George D. Ramsay to Edwin M. Stanton, Jan. 6, 1864, Ord. Off., 
 Letters to War Dept. 
 
 142 (alone) : Scientific American, Dec. 1921, p. 102. 
 
 143 (to) : Wells, Annual of Scientific Discovery for 1856, p. 38; 
 Nav. Rec. Coll., "Letters on Inventions Referred to the Board of 
 Examiners, 1861-1862," No. 164; Sandburg, War Years, II, 294. 
 
 143 (unlikely) : Off. Sec. War, Letters Rec'd 1862, E. B., Prst 158. 
 
 143 (miles) : Scientific American, March 14, 1863. 
 
 144 (meanwhile) : Orpheus C. Kerr (Robert H. Newell), The Orpheus 
 C. Kerr Papers, First Series (New York, 1862), pp. 84-87. 
 
 CHAPTER ELEVEN (pages 145-150) 
 
 145 (Union) : Thomas, Lincoln, pp. 281-282. 
 
 146 (Shogunate) : Off. Sec. War, Letters to the President, VI, 193; John 
 A. Dahlgren to William Seward, Dec. 26, 1861, Lincoln Mss.; New 
 York Times, June 23, 1869. 
 
 146 (worrying) : O. R., series 3, III, 429; Ord. Off., Letters to the War 
 Department, XIII, 297; Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., "Dupont, Dahl- 
 gren, and the Civil War Nitre Shortage," Military Affairs, Fall, 
 1949, p. 144; M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 333. 
 
 147 (exports) : Chandler, "Civil War Nitre Shortage," p. 145. 
 
 147 (cheerful) : Thurlow Weed to Simon Cameron, Dec. 16, 1861, 
 Cameron Mss., L. C; New York Evening Post, Dec. 19, 1861. 
 
 147 (obsolete) : Thomas, Lincoln, p. 282; 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Sen- 
 ate, Rep. Comm. 121, p. 44. 
 
 148 (year) : Frederick V. Longstaff and A. Hilliard Atteridge, The 
 Book of the Machine Gun (London, 191 7), p. 2; Dyer Inquiry, I, 
 442; 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, pp. 66-68, 
 106, 177. 
 
 148 (better) : Clipping in James W. Ripley Mss., Hoboken, New Jer- 
 sey; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LIII, in; Ord. Off., Letters to 
 the War Department, XIII, 443. 
 
322 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 148 (support): Lincoln, Works, IV, 343; Boston Transcript, Nov. 16, 
 1861; James W. Ripley to Lincoln, June 24, 1861, Lincoln Mss., 
 L. C; Washington Star, June 25, 1861. 
 
 148 (Parrotts) : Off. Sec. War, Letters to the President, VI, 383; Scien- 
 tific American, July 6, 1861; 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. 
 Comm. 121, p. 67. 
 
 148-149 (fortifications, calibers, firing, device) : Ord. Off., Special 
 Files, "Ordnance Board Reports, 1860-1870," 109E; Scientific 
 American, March 8, 1862. 
 
 150 (Lincoln): Joseph G. Totten to Lincoln, Dec. 13, 1861, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 150 (released) : Chandler, "Civil War Nitre Shortage," p. 145. 
 
 150 (piles): 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, p. 179; 
 Chandler, "Civil War Nitre Shortage," p. 145. 
 
 CHAPTER TWELVE (pages 151-170) 
 
 151 (with) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 354; Dictionary of American 
 Biography, VI, 569; Brooks, Washington in Lincoln's Time, pp. 
 32-33; Lincoln, Works, IV, 363. 
 
 151 (Department) : Washington Star, Jan. 3, 1862. 
 
 152 (feeling): Dahlgren ms. memoir, p. 112. 
 
 152 (living) : Observatory Journal, Jan. 2, 3, 1862; Benjamin B. French 
 to H. F. French, Feb. 7, 1862, Benjamin B. French Mss., L. C; 
 Henry L. Dawes to Mrs. Henry L. Dawes, Jan. 6, 1862, Henry L. 
 Dawes Mss., L. C. 
 
 153 (man) : Lincoln, Works, V, 90, 92; Washington Star, Jan. 8, 1862. 
 153 (do): Observatory Journal, Jan. 10, 1862; Lincoln, Works, V, 95; 
 
 Montgomery C. Meigs, "General M. C. Meigs on the Conduct of 
 the Civil War," American Historical Review, XXVI, 292. 
 
 153 (resignation) : Bates, Diary, p. 223; Lincoln, Works, V, 96-97. 
 
 154 (newspaperman) : Frank A. Flower, Edwin McMasters Stanton 
 (Akron, Ohio, 1905), p. 125. 
 
 154 (heretofore) : Joshua Speed to Joseph Holt, Feb. 4, 1862, Joseph 
 Holt Mss., L. C. 
 
 154 (direction) : Thomas A. Scott to James W. Ripley, Jan. 20, 1862, 
 Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862; Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book V, 
 B103. 
 
 155 (compromise, itself mutiny) : Idem. 
 
 155 {possible): Idem.; Edwin M. Stanton to William P. Fessenden, 
 Feb. 2, 1862, Civil War Collection, New York Historical Society; 
 Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LIV, 392. 
 
NOTES 323 
 
 156 (affair) : Tribune dispatch quoted in Boston Transcript, Feb. 8, 
 
 1862; Ripley, Vermont Riflemen, p. 13. 
 156 (breechloaders): Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book V, B103; Ripley, 
 
 Vermont Riflemen, pp. 15, 29; Stevens, Sharpshooters, p. 163. 
 
 156 (quarters) : Entry for Feb. 18, 1862, diary of Mrs. Gustavus Fox, 
 Blair Family Mss., L. C. 
 
 157 (boats) : Battles and Leaders, I, 283-284; Ord. Off., Letters to the 
 War Department, XIII, 208. 
 
 157 (purpose) : Enclosure dated Dec. 31, 186 1, in Henry W. Halleck to 
 Lorenzo Thomas, Jan. 9, 1862, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 157 (schooner) : Ord. Off., Letters to War Dept, XIII, 208; Richard S. 
 West, Jr., The Second Admiral: A Life of David Dixon Porter 
 (New York, 1937), pp. 113-114. 
 
 158 (of) : Ibid., 114-116; George W. Brown, "The Mortar Flotilla," in 
 New York Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion, Per- 
 sonal Recollections of the War of the Rebellion (New York, 1891 ) , 
 I, 173; David D. Porter to George B. McClellan, Nov. 24, 1861, 
 McClellan Mss., L. C. 
 
 158 (York) : West, Porter, p. 118. 
 
 158 (Bureau) : Allan Nevins, Abram S. Hewitt; with Some Account of 
 Peter Cooper (New York, 1935), pp. 199-200. 
 
 158 (Ripley) : Henry Augustus Wise to Henry Alexander Wise, July 
 13, 1856, Henry Alexander Wise Mss., L. C.; Dictionary of Ameri- 
 can Biography, XX, 425; Henry A. Wise to Hamilton Fish, Nov. 
 24, 1859, Hamilton Fish Mss., L. C.; Allan B. Cole (ed.), "Private 
 Journal of Henry A. Wise, U. S. N., on Board Frigate Niagara 
 i860," Pacific Historical Review, September 1942. 
 
 159 (tipplers) : Dictionary of American Biography, XX, 425; "Journal 
 of Occurrences," I, 195, David D. Porter Mss., L. C.; Henry Augus- 
 tus Wise to Henry Alexander Wise, March 3, 1857, Wise Mss., 
 L. C; Russell, My Diary, p. 187 and passim. 
 
 159 (it) : Henry A. Wise to Hamilton Fish, May 2, 1861, Fish Mss., 
 L.C. 
 
 159 (where): "Journal of Occurrences," I, 194-196, David D. Porter 
 Mss., L. C; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies 
 in the War of the Rebellion (hereafter cited as te O. R., Navies") 
 (30 vols.; Washington, D. C., 1894-1927), series 1, XXII, 469; 
 Nevins, Hewitt, pp. 199-200; National Intelligencer, Feb. 10, 1862. 
 
 160 (Louis) : Bates, Diary, p. 223. 
 
 160 (follies, them) : James M. Hoppin, Life of Andrew Hull Foote 
 (New York, 1874), p. 182; Andrew H. Foote to Henry A. Wise, 
 Dec. 15, 1861, Wise Mss., N. Y. Historical Society. 
 
324 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 161 (them) : Bates, Diary, p. 223. 
 
 161 (made) : O. R., Navies, series 1, XXII, 491, 497. 
 
 161 (way) : Ripley to Lincoln, with enclosures, Jan. n, 1862, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 161-162 (there, bombs, orders) : O. R., Navies, series 1, XXII, 497, 516, 
 518; Hoppin, Foote, p. 193; Andrew H. Foote to Henry A. Wise, 
 Jan. 22, 23, 1862, Wise Mss., N. Y. Historical Society; Lincoln, 
 Works, V, 108. 
 
 162 (him) : O. R., Navies, series 1, XXII, 650. 
 
 162 (DEATH): Ibid., 522; Lincoln, Works, V, no; John Symington 
 to Lincoln, Feb. 3, 1862, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Nevins, Hewitt, pp. 
 201-204; Charles Knap to Lincoln, Jan. 29, 1862, Nicolay Mss., 
 L. C. 
 
 162 {time) : E. M. Shield to Salmon P. Chase, Feb. 1, 8, 1862, Chase 
 Mss., L. C; Robert B. Warden, An Account of the Private Life and 
 Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (Cincinnati, 1874), p. 
 414; E. M. Shield to Salmon P. Chase, Feb. 15, 1862, Lincoln Mss., 
 L. C. 
 
 163 (work) : John Symington to Lincoln, Jan. 25, 1862, ibid.; Off. Sec. 
 War, Irregular Book V, S85; Washington Star, Jan. 30, 1862; T. A. 
 Scott to E. M. Stanton, Feb. 2, 1862, Edwin M. Stanton Mss., L. C. 
 
 163 (brimstone, him) : O. R., Navies, series 1, XXII, 526-527. 
 
 164 (beheld) : Trollope, North America, II, 293-295. 
 
 164 (boats) : O. R., Navies, series 1, XXII, 549. 
 
 164-165 (inches, mortars): Moore, Rebellion Record, IV, 118-119 
 (Doc.) ; T. A. Scott to E. M. Stanton, Feb. n, 1862, Stanton Mss., 
 L. C. 
 
 165 (men) : Battles and Leaders, I, 433-435, 437. 
 
 165 (metre) : O. R., Navies, series 1, XXII, 650; see index to Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C, under "Henry A. Wise," for dozens of such telegrams, 
 January-March, 1862; A. H. Foote to H. A. Wise, March 3, 5, 1862, 
 Lincoln Mss., L. C; Nav. Rec. Coll., Letter-book of Henry A. Wise, 
 1862-1864, p. 56. 
 
 166 (explosion) : Quoted in Washington Star, March 27, 1862. 
 
 166 (burst) : Frank Leslie's Illustrated History of the Civil War (New 
 
 York, 1895), p. 177. 
 166 (Orleans) : Brown, "Mortar Flotilla," p. 173; Battles and Leaders, 
 
 II, 38. 
 
 166 (neglected) : Bates, Diary, p. 223. 
 
 167 (did) : O. R., Navies, series 1, XXII, 523. 
 
 167 (had) : Ibid., 522; A. H. Foote to H. A. Wise, Jan. 24, 1862, Wise 
 Mss., N. Y. Historical Society. 
 
NOTES 325 
 
 167 (boats) : Entry for Jan. 26, 1862, diary of Mrs. Gustavus Fox, Blair 
 Family Mss., L. C; O. R., Navies, series 1, XXII, 522. 
 
 168 (Ordnance) : Lincoln, Works, V, no; Dyer Inquiry, II, 443; Na- 
 tional Archives Record Group 94, "Register of Officers Arriving in 
 Washington, 1861-1867," entry under Jan. 25, 1862; Boston Tran- 
 script, Jan. 29, Feb. 1, 1862. 
 
 168 (compulsion, contracts) : Dyer Inquiry, I, 193. 
 
 168 (office) : Ethan A. Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field (Wil- 
 liam A. Croffut, ed., New York, 1909), pp. 438-439; "Mem. 19 
 March. 1862," in Ethan A. Hitchcock Mss., L. C; Dyer Inquiry, 
 II, 399. 
 
 169 (War): Flower, Stanton, pp. 116, 293; Doster, Episodes, p. 125; 
 Washington Star, Jan. 24, 1862; Dyer Inquiry, II, 400, 523. 
 
 169 (service, Ripley, crowd): Hitchcock, Fifty Years, pp. 441; "Min- 
 utes of the War Board, March, 1862," Stanton Mss., L. C. (espe- 
 cially pp. n, 14) ; Doster, Episodes, p. 119. 
 
 169 (treatment) : Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the 
 Union (New York, 1887), p. 63. 
 
 170 (22): Lincoln, Works, V, 111-112, 115. 
 
 170 (Peninsula) : McClellan, McClellari 's Own Story, pp. 229-237. 
 170 (present) : Hay, Diary, p. 36; memorandum by John C. Ropes of a 
 
 conversation with Edwin M. Stanton, dated Feb. 8, 1870, Horatio 
 
 Woodman Mss., Mass. Hist. Soc. 
 
 170 (proceedings): Dahlgren ms. memoir, March 1862. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN (pages 171-178) 
 
 171 (details) : Battles and Leaders, I, 730. 
 
 171 (grant) : 29th Cong., 2nd sess., House Report 36, pp. 1-3, 5-6, 12; 
 20th Cong., 1st sess., House Report 252, p. 1; 30th Cong., 1st sess., 
 House Executive Document 8, pp. 1306-1309; N. A., Legislative 
 Records Section, Records of U. S. House of Representatives, 30th 
 Cong., Committee on Naval Affairs; 30th Cong., 1st sess., House 
 Report 294. 
 
 172 (flotilla) : Stoddard, Inside the White House, pp. 38-39. 
 
 172 (her): James B. Eads to Lincoln, Sept. 19, 1863, Lincoln Mss., 
 
 L. C. 
 172 (it) : Battles and Leaders, I, 748. 
 
 172 (Roads): Gustavus V. Fox to Lincoln, March 4, 1862, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 173 (side): John A. Dahlgren to Ulric Dahlgren, March n, 1862, 
 Dahlgren Mss., L. C. 
 
326 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 173 (unhindered) : Leech, Reveille, p. 132; Battles and Leaders, I, 737. 
 
 174 (heart) : Jeriah Bonham, Fifty Years' Recollections (Peoria, 111., 
 1883), PP- 339-342. 
 
 174 (Dahlgren) : George C. Bestor to Lincoln, April 17, 1861, Nicolay 
 
 Mss., L. C; Andrew H. Foote to John A. Dahlgren, Nov. 14, 1861, 
 
 Dahlgren Mss., L. C. 
 174 (yielded): Lincoln, Works, V, 82, 162; Browning, Diary, I, 540; 
 
 E. M. Shield to Salmon P. Chase, April 12, 1862, Chase Mss., L. C; 
 
 37th Cong., 2nd sess., House Executive Document 150, p. 6. 
 
 174 (Washington) : John I. Weed to John G. Nicolay, March 19, 1863, 
 Nicolay Mss., L. C; Bonham, Fifty Years' Recollections, pp. 342- 
 
 343- 
 
 175 (Hay) : Washington Star, April 4, 1862; J. B. Brigham to Lincoln, 
 March n, 1862, "Misc. Ordnance Papers," Nav. Bur. Ord. 
 
 175 (defense) : Washington Star, May 21, 1862. 
 
 175 (them): 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 128, pp. 26, 
 46-47; Benjamin Severson to Lincoln, March 31, 1862, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C; Joseph G. Totten to Lincoln, April 12, 1862, ibid.; 
 Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 and 5, No. 289; James W. Ripley 
 to Benjamin Severson, May 15, 1861, Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent. 
 
 176 (aqueduct) : Hutchinson's Washington and Georgetown Directory 
 (Washington, D. C, 1863); Off. Sec. War, Letters Rec'd, 1864, 
 Prst485. 
 
 176-177 (lock, time, unknown): Louis H. Bolander, "The Alligator, 
 First Federal Submarine of the Civil War," U. S. Naval Institute 
 Proceedings, June 1938, pp. 847-850; Nav. Rec. Coll., Office of the 
 Secretary of the Navy, "Misc. Letters Rec'd," XIII, 121. 
 
 177 (ship) : Bolander, "The Alligator," pp. 851-854. 
 
 177 (knot) : W. B. Shubrick to Gideon Welles, April 21, 1862, Nav. 
 Rec. Coll., "Reports from Board of Examiners, 1862," p. 81; Jo- 
 seph Smith and Samuel Pook to Gideon Welles, May 5, 1862, Lin- 
 coln Mss., L. C. 
 
 177 (submarine) : Lincoln, Works, VI, 209. 
 
 178 (trial) : Ibid., V, 156; Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Rec'd, XXXI, 
 53; Nav. Rec. Coll., "Reports from Board of Examiners, 1862," p. 
 
 64. 
 
 178 (ship) : Henry A. Wise to John A. Dahlgren, Oct. 20, 1862, Nav. 
 Bur. Ord., "Letters, Washington"; Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations 
 of Inventions," IV, 265-266; Washington Star, Dec. n, 1862. 
 
 178 (Lincoln's) : Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of Inventions," V, 51- 
 52. 
 
NOTES 327 
 
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN (pages 179-192) 
 
 179-180 (lash, shell) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 176; New 
 
 York Herald, Jan. 3, 1862. 
 180 (1848): Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 and 5, No. 792; for 
 
 sources of information on Uriah Brown, see citations for 171 
 
 (grant) in Chapter XIII, above. 
 
 180 (crowded) : O. R., series 3, I, 606; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, 
 LIII, 10. 
 
 181 (him) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 and 5, Nos. 569, 790; 
 original of Lincoln's note to Ramsay is in Illinois State Historical 
 Library. 
 
 181 (Department) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 176; Lincoln, 
 Works, V, 99. 
 
 181 (clear, impressed) : Washington Star, Jan. 16, 17, 1862; Washing- 
 ton Sunday Morning Chronicle, Jan. 19, 1862; Observatory Jour- 
 nal, Jan. 16, 1862. 
 
 182 (expedition) : Ibid., Jan. 22, 1862; Washington Star, Jan. 24, 1862; 
 National Intelligencer, Jan. 23, 1862; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd., 
 1862. WD236; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 176. 
 
 182 (Worster) : National Intelligencer, Sept. 25, 1861, Mar. 19, 25, 
 1862; C. L. Leary to "Dear Sir," c. March 1862, in Civil War Col- 
 lection, N. Y. Historical Society; Elisha Whittlesey to Lincoln, 
 April 2, 1862, in ibid. 
 
 182 (preservative) : J. Rutherford Worster to Lincoln, Oct. 20, i860, 
 Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 183 (hand) : National Intelligencer, March 12, 1862; Washington Star, 
 March 12, 1862. 
 
 183 (Bloomington) : E. A. Carr to J. R. Worster, April 7, 1862, Civil 
 War Collection, N. Y. Historical Society. 
 
 183 (recorded) : Copy of endorsement dated April 4, 1862, on J. Mc- 
 Dougall to Henry W. Halleck of same date, in ibid. 
 
 184 (cartridge) : U. S. Patent 35,311. 
 
 184 (superfluous) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ib, No. 139; Nation- 
 al Intelligencer, May 7, 1862. 
 
 184 (10-pounders) : Lincoln, Works, V, 198; G. D. Ramsay to E. M. 
 Stanton, Dec. 30, 1863, Ord. Off., Letters to War Department; Ord. 
 Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 1864, WD413. 
 
 185 (Cannon) : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio of the Nine- 
 teenth Century (Cincinnati, 1876), pp. 419-420. 
 
328 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 185-186 (air, rest, heels, cylinder, off) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 
 
 ib, No. 135; Observatory Journal, May 3, 1862; Nav. Bur. Ord., 
 
 "Examinations of Inventions," III, 143-144. 
 186-187 (calibers, giant) : Battles and Leaders, II, 1-2, 9. 
 187 (nothing) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ia, No. 237; Nav. Bur. 
 
 Ord., "Examinations of Inventions," III, V, and VI, passim; Ord. 
 
 Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LIX, 227. 
 
 187 (place): New York Herald, June 26, 1862; John D. Brandt to 
 Henry A. Wise, July 9, 1862, Wise Mss., N. Y. Historical Society. 
 
 188 (cannon) : Description of firing range from National Intelligencer, 
 June 27, 1865; New York Herald, June 26, 1862; account of Lin- 
 coln's tour of the works taken from story of a similar tour in ibid., 
 March 8, 1862. 
 
 188 (Richmond) : New York Tribune, June 26, 1862; John D. Brandt 
 to Henry A. Wise, June 27, 1862, Wise Mss., N. Y. Historical So- 
 ciety. 
 
 189 (of): 33rd Cong., Special Session, Senate, Report 1, p. 121; Nav. 
 Rec. Coll., Executive Letters, July- August 1864, No. 156. 
 
 189 (him) : 33rd Cong., Special Session, Senate, Report 1, pp. 14-18, 
 129, 159. 
 
 189 (attempt) : Horace Greeley to Samuel Strong, Feb. 20, 1861, Hor- 
 ace Greeley Mss., L. C; Washington Star, Jan. 18, Dec. n, 1862. 
 
 190 (position) : Ord. Off., "Experiments," class 6, No. 316. 
 190 (serviceability) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 492. 
 
 190 (number) : James W. Ripley to Lincoln, May 5, 1862, Lincoln 
 
 Mss., L. C. 
 190 (field) : Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 1862, WD1052; Ord. 
 
 Off., "Experiments," class 6, No. 316. 
 
 190 (adopted): Ibid., No. 353; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 
 
 545- 
 
 191 (bullet) : Benjamin B. French to his sister Pamela, Oct. 9, 1861, 
 and to H. F. French, Oct. 13, 1861, Benjamin B. French Mss., L. C; 
 Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 182. 
 
 191 (another) : Scientific American, Feb. 2, 1861; James G. Benton, A 
 Course of Instruction in Ordnance and Gunnery (New York, 
 1861), pp. 83-84; Rev. Horace E. Hayden, "Explosive or Poisoned 
 Musket or Rifle Balls . . . during the Civil War," Southern His- 
 torical Society Papers, VIII, pp. 20-21 (Jan. 1880); Lyman, 
 Meade's Headquarters, p. 112; Thomas H. Parker, History of the 
 51st Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers (Philadelphia, 1869), 
 pp. 227-228; History of the Corn Exchange Regiment (Philadel- 
 phia, 1888), p. 199. 
 
NOTES 329 
 
 191 (heard) : Washington Star, June 6, 1862. 
 
 192 (exploding) : Harold L. Peterson, "Explosive Bullets," The Amer- 
 ican Rifleman, Feb. 1948, p. 30; U. S. Patent 40,468. 
 
 192 (battle) : Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-F-108; Lincoln, Works, 
 
 V, 257. 
 192 (projectile) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 194; Ord. Off., 
 Letters Rec'd, 1862, B778. 
 
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN (pages 194-206) 
 
 194 (Arsenal) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, G198. 
 
 195 (bridgehead) : Re-union of the 28th & 147th Regiments, Pennsyl- 
 vania Volunteers (Philadelphia, 1872), p. 4. 
 
 195 (Middleburg) : Washington Star, April 5, 1862. 
 
 195 (guns) : Scientific American, May 10, 1862. 
 
 196 (mouth) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, G198. 
 
 196 (day, report, ordered, dispatch): Ibid., F138, F140; Ord. Off., 
 Misc. Letters Sent, LV, 140. 
 
 196 (Guns) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, N47. 
 
 197 (files) : Ibid., F144, and corresponding item in Register; James W. 
 Ripley to John G. Nicolay, May 16, 1862, Nicolay Mss., L. C. 
 
 197 (Army) : Ord. Off., "Open Purchases, 1861-1867," P- 2 - 
 197 (guns) : Washington Star, Sept. 24, 1862. 
 
 197 (now) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, R527; Moore, Rebellion 
 Record, V, 446 (Doc); Washington Star, Sept. 19, 1862. 
 
 198 (Dixie) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, P240. 
 
 198 (fifty guns) : Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Rec'd, XX (new se- 
 ries), 67. 
 
 198 (gun) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, A437; New York Herald, 
 April 21, 1862; Hay, Diary, p. 15. 
 
 199 (houses) : Luther S. Dickey, History of the Eighty-fifth Regiment 
 Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry 1 861- 1865 (New York, 1915), 
 P- 33- 
 
 199 (consideration) : New York Evening Post, April 25, 1862. 
 199 (Yorktown) : Ord. Off., Letters to War Dept, XV, 327. 
 
 199 (have) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, K174; Oliver W. Norton, 
 Army Letters, 1861-1865 (Chicago, 1903), p. 87. 
 
 200 (gunner) : Robert S. Westbrook, History of the 49th Pennsylvania 
 Volunteers (Altoona, Pa., 1898), p. 115. 
 
 200 (hopper): Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 277; Ord. Off., 
 Letters Rec'd, 1862, K174; Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of In- 
 ventions," IV, 255-257. 
 
330 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 200 (wrong) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, A401. 
 
 200 (paid) : Chinn, The Machine Gun, I, 40. 
 
 201 (Monroe) : Lincoln, Works, V, 181; O. R., series 1, XI, part iii, p. 
 98; W. F. Barry to S. Williams, April 24, 1862, George B. Mc- 
 Clellan Mss., L. C; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, B1030. 
 
 201 (materials) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 and 5, No. 569; 
 
 Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-WD-194. 
 201 (Washington): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, WD1275, WD- 
 
 1440. 
 201 (buried): Ibid., B1030; ibid., 1863, F521. 
 
 201 (objected) : Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of Inventions," III, 
 187-192; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LV, 437; Ord. Off., Letters 
 Rec'd, 1862, R865. 
 
 202 (cannon, Ripley) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, WD676; Ord. 
 Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LVIII, 398. 
 
 202 (publicity) : 37th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Executive Document 72, 
 pp. 256-257, 273; New York Herald, Jan. 4, 1862. 
 
 202 (canceled) : Chittenden, Recollections, pp. 186-187; 37th Cong., 
 2nd sess., Senate, Executive Document 72, p. 262. 
 
 203 (delivered) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, WD683, 1862, U18. 
 
 203 (treasurer, Armory) : 37th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Executive Doc- 
 ument 72, p. 419; Scientific American, Jan. 25, 1862. 
 
 204 (July) : 37th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Executive Document 72, pp. 
 420, 425, 427, 429-430; Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Sent, XXXI, 
 
 69. 
 
 204 (rifles) : Ord. Off., "Purchases of Ordnance," p. 201. 
 204 (Battles) : Stevens, Sharpshooters, p. 103. 
 
 204 (work) : Ibid., pp. 119, 125-126; O. R., series 1, XI, part ii, p. 278. 
 
 205 (muzzle-loaders) : Stevens, Sharpshooters, p. 134; Ripley, Vermont 
 Riflemen, pp. 53-54. 
 
 205 (rifles,): Roche, "Foreign Shoulder Arms," p. 120 n. 
 
 205 (country) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, WD1097; 38th Cong., 
 2nd sess., House, Executive Document 15, p. 29. 
 
 206 (sun): Stevens, Sharpshooters, pp. 202-203, 211; Lincoln, Works, 
 V, 431. 
 
 206 (well, avail) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book V, B103; Hiram Ber- 
 dan to Lincoln, Nov. 27, 1862, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 206 (obvious) : Scientific American, Jan. 3, 1863. 
 
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN (pages 207-227) 
 
 207 (admiral) : Lincoln, Works, V, 262; John A. Dahlgren to Lincoln, 
 July 10, 1862, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
NOTES 331 
 
 207 (view) : Welles, Diary, I, 164. 
 
 208 (Bureau) : Lincoln, Works, V, 112-113. 
 
 208 (me) : Dahlgren ms. memoir, pp. 121-122, 135-136. 
 208 (fall) : Welles, Diary, I, 164. 
 
 208 (inventions) : Ord. Off., "Purchases of Ordnance, 1861-1867," 
 p. 169; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 278. 
 
 208 (gun) : Lincoln, Works, V, 263. 
 
 209 (danger) : James R. Haskell, Reports on the Rafael Repeater 
 (Washington, D. C, 1862), pp. 4-6; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 
 ic, No. 277. 
 
 209 (civilization) : Idem.; Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of Inven- 
 tions," IV, 17-19. 
 
 209 (Yard) : John Ericsson to Lincoln, Aug. 2, 1862, Lincoln Mss., 
 L. C. 
 
 210 (impressed, establishments, carriage) : Carpenter, Six Months in 
 the White House, pp. n 3-1 14, 155, 165; M. V. Dahlgren, Mem- 
 oir, p. 378; Washington Star, Aug. 8, 1862; New York Tribune, 
 Aug. 8, 1862. 
 
 210 (service) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 277. (A copy with 
 minor variations is printed in Lincoln, Works, V, 365.) 
 
 211 (concession, regiment) : Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 1862, 
 F235; James R. Haskell to Thurlow Weed, Oct. 8, 1862, Weed 
 Mss., University of Rochester Library. 
 
 211 (Repeaters) : Thurlow Weed to John G. Nicolay, Nov. 14, 1862, 
 Nicolay Mss., L. C. 
 
 211 (stocks) : Chandler, "Civil War Nitre Shortage," pp. 144-145. 
 
 212 (Republican) : Photo of Diller in Illinois State Historical Library; 
 Isaac Diller to Col. Francis Pickens, Oct. 7, i860, in ibid.; J. F. 
 Ringwalt, The Diller Family (New Holland, Pa., 1942), pp. 62-63; 
 Angle, "Here I Have Lived," p. 176. 
 
 212 (1862) : Samuel Ricker to Jeremiah S. Black, Sept. 23, i860, Feb. 
 15, 1861, Jeremiah Black Mss., L. C; Edgar F. Smith, Charles 
 Mayer Wet her ill (reprinted from the ]ournal of Chemical Educa- 
 tion, 1929), p. 46. 
 
 212 (Liebig) : Isaac Diller to Lincoln, Oct. 31, 1861, Lincoln Mss., 
 L. C; Smith, Wet her ill, pp. 2, 8, 35, 45, 59. 
 
 213 (Wetherill) : Ibid., p. 47; Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examination of Inven- 
 tions," IV, 128-130; Isaac Diller to Lincoln, Sept. 10, 1862, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 213 (friend) : Thomas Ewing, Sr., to Mrs. William T. Sherman, Dec. 
 12, 1862, Ewing Family Mss., L. C; Isaac Diller to Lincoln, Oct. 
 31, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
332 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 213 (pay) : Lincoln, Works, VI, 3. 
 
 214 (battles) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, pp. 383-384. 
 
 214-215 (myself, States, condition): Nav. Bur. Ord., Letters to Navy 
 Department, III, 11-12; M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 372; Welles, 
 Diary, I, 163-164. 
 
 215 (railroads) : Herman Haupt and Frank A. Flower, Reminiscences 
 of General Herman Haupt (Milwaukee, 1901), pp. xiii-xvi. 
 
 216 (Lincoln) : Miller, Photographic History, V, 277, 280; Hay, Diary, 
 p. 46. 
 
 216-217 (questioned, attacks, generally): Boston Transcript, Nov. 17, 
 1862. 
 
 217 (scoundrels) : Welles, Diary, I, 511. 
 
 218 (Key, Chapultepec) : Paul D. Olejar, "Rockets in Early American 
 Wars," Military Affairs, Winter, 1946, pp. 22-23, 28-31; Reuben 
 H. Walworth, Hyde Genealogy (2 vols.; Albany, 1864), II, 711. 
 
 218 (Monroe): Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 1861, WD570; 
 Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1861, B778, 1863, F537; J. W. Ripley to 
 C. P. Kingsbury, April 15, 1862, Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent; 
 John Donaghy, Army Experience of Capt. John Donaghy (Deland, 
 Fla., 1926), p. 84; Luther S. Dickey, History of the 103d Regiment 
 Pennsylvania . . . Infantry (Chicago, 1910), p. 34. 
 
 219 (service) : Washington Star, April 23, 1862. 
 219 (head) : U. S. Patent 40,041. 
 
 219 (case, stand, Fredericksburg, party): Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examina- 
 tions of Inventions," IV, 215; Nav. Bur. Ord., "Index to Inven- 
 tions Tested by Capt. Dahlgren 1848- 1863 at the Washington Navy 
 Yard," memorandum at p. 6; M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 382. 
 
 220 (musket) : Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of Inventions," IV, 215, 
 217; Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 1864, WDi. 
 
 220 (gun) : Browning, Diary, I, 535-536; Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters 
 Sent, V, 389-391; Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Rec'd, XIX (new 
 series), part ii, No. 36; Nav. Bur. Ord., Reports on Inventions, II, 
 
 17- 
 
 220-221 (muzzle, firing) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 238. 
 
 221 (yards) : Ord. Off., "Experiments," class 8, No. 194^ 
 
 221 (dangerous) : Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of Inventions," IV, 
 225-227. 
 
 221 (invention, Peckham) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, WD2031, 
 WD2034-5, WD2037. 
 
 222-223 (inventor, 1862, President, answer, desirable) : Ord. Off., "In- 
 ventions," class 8, No. 238. 
 
notes 333 
 
 223 (possible) : Idem.; Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Rec'd, XIX (new 
 series), 10; Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of Inventions," IV, 
 291-294. 
 
 223 (Government) : Scientific American, July 19, 1862. 
 
 223 (anyway) : Nav. Rec. Coll., "Letters Referred to Permanent Com- 
 mission: Unfinished Business, 1864-1865," p. 69. 
 
 224 (Board): Ord. Off., Letters to War Dept., XIII, 139-140; Scien- 
 tific American, Aug. 3, 1861, Jan. 4, 25, Feb. 16, May 17, 1862; 
 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, p. 108. 
 
 224 (statement): Boston Transcript, Jan. 3, 1862; Gideon Welles to 
 R. C. Bristol, Aug. 28, 1862, Nav. Bur. Ord., Letters Rec'd, "In- 
 ventions, Rifle & Smoothbore, i862-'4"; Charles H. Davis, Life of 
 Charles Henry Davis, Rear Admiral (Boston, 1899), pp. 286, 289- 
 290; Frederick W. True (ed.), A History of the First Half-Century 
 of the National Academy of Sciences (Washington, D. C, 191 3), 
 pp. 1-2; the records of the Permanent Commission are in Nav. Rec. 
 Coll. 
 
 224 (Academy): New York Times, May 21, 1863; Nav. Rec. Coll., 
 "Minutes of the Permanent Commission, Feb. n, 1863-Feb. 24, 
 1864," p. 115. 
 
 225 (Secretary) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 386; Lincoln, Works, VI, 
 59; Welles, Diary, I, 240; Nav. Rec. Coll., Navy Department, Ex- 
 ecutive Letters, Feb., 1863, p. 117. 
 
 225 (Ridge) : Isaac Diller to Lincoln, April 25, Oct. 31, 1863, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C; Charles Wetherill to Isaac Diller, Oct. 31, 1863, 
 ibid. 
 
 226 (powder) : William N. Jeffers to Henry A. Wise, June 18, 1863, 
 Wise Mss., New York Historical Society. 
 
 226 (work) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 387; Observatory Journal, 
 Feb. 4, 1863. 
 
 227 (us): Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Rec'd, XXXIV, 136, Letters 
 Sent, XXIX, 236; John G. Barnard to Lincoln, Feb. 13, 1863, Lin- 
 coln Mss., L. C; Chronicle account quoted in Scientific American, 
 March 14, 1863. 
 
 227 (summer) : Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Rec'd, XXIV (new se- 
 ries), part ii, No. 45. 
 
 227 (him, behind, it) : Welles, Diary, I, 238-240. 
 
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (pages 228-248) 
 
 228 (secession) : William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. 
 Sherman (2 vols.; New York, 1875), H 22 3- 
 
334 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 229 (before) : Welles, Diary, I, 247. 
 229 (fire) : Fremantle, Diary, p. 143. 
 
 229 (affair) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 388. 
 
 230 (truth) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 and 5, No. 751; New- 
 York City directories, 1861-1863; Nav. Rec. Coll., Letterbook of 
 Capt. H. A. Wise, 1862-1864, pp. 79, 236-237. 
 
 230 (1861) : National Cyclopedia of American Biography, XIII, 91-92; 
 Newark (N. J.) Daily Advertiser, July 3, 1871. 
 
 231 (times) : Idem. 
 
 231 (himself): Philip Kearney to Cortlandt Parker, Aug. 14, Oct. 1, 
 1 86 1, Philip Kearney Mss., L. C. 
 
 231 (lark, bestowed): Newark Daily Advertiser, July 3, 1871; Oliver 
 S. Halsted, Jr., to Abraham Lincoln, Aug. 27, 1861, Nicolay Mss., 
 L. C. 
 
 232 (betrayal) : Philip Kearney to Cortlandt Parker, May 27, 1862, 
 Philip Kearney Mss., L. C; Washington Star, Oct. 16, 22, 1862; 
 Oliver S. Halsted, Jr., to John G. Nicolay, Nov. 7, 1862, Nicolay 
 Mss., L. C; Washington Star, Nov. 25, 1862. 
 
 232 (purchases) : Halsted to Nicolay, Nov. 7, 1862, Nicolay Mss., L. C; 
 
 Lincoln, Works, V, 498. 
 232 (Point) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 225. 
 
 232 (demonstration) : Lorin Blodgett and others to Lincoln, March 23, 
 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Lincoln, Works, VI, 145. 
 
 233 (Harbor) : O. S. Halsted, Jr., to Lincoln, April 25, 1863, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 233 (Du Pont) : Welles, Diary, I, 265; Battles and Leaders, IV, 40. 
 
 233 (blacksmith) : New York Tribune, Jan. 23, 1887. 
 
 234 (City) : Dyer Inquiry, II, 65, 190; petition of Oliver Ames in re 
 Horatio Ames's estate, Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, 
 January Term, 1872; Nav. Rec. Coll., Executive Letters, Sept. 1863, 
 No. 37. 
 
 234 (Odin): Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ia, No. 162; 38th Cong., 
 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, pp. 70, 133; New York Trib- 
 une, Jan. 23, 1887. 
 
 234 (Bureau) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ia, No. 162. 
 
 234 (fraud) : Nav. Bur. Ord., "Ames Wrought Iron Gun," pp. 1-4; 
 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, p. 132; Nav. Bur. 
 Ord., Misc. Letters Sent, V, 18-19; Dyer Inquiry, II, 58, 155. 
 
 235 (insisted) : Nav. Rec. Coll., Subject File BG, "Correspondence 
 about . . . cannon made by Horatio Ames," Horatio Ames to Gideon 
 Welles, Jan. 3, 1862 [actually 1863]. 
 
notes 335 
 
 235 (reached) : Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Sent, V, 481, VI, 442- 
 446; H. A. Wise to J. G. Nicolay, Feb. 6, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C; 
 H. A. Wise to J. A. Dahlgren, April 4, 1863, Dahlgren Mss., L. C; 
 H. Ames to E. M. Stanton, April 3, 1863, J. W. Ripley to E. M. 
 Stanton, April n, 1863, H. Ames to P. H. Watson, April 16, 1863, 
 Ord. Off., "Ames Papers"; Nav. Rec. Coll., Subject File BG, "Cor- 
 respondence about . . . cannon made by Horatio Ames," H. Ames 
 to G. Welles, March 17, 1863. 
 
 235 (enlisted) : H. Ames to L. F. S. Foster, March 14, 1863, Nav. Bur. 
 Ord., "Ames Wrought Iron Gun"; A. A. Harwood to H. A. Wise, 
 April 28, 1863, Wise Mss., N. Y. Hist. Soc; Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. 
 Letters Rec'd, XXII (new series), 106; O. S. Halsted, Jr., to Lin- 
 coln, April 25, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 235-236 (out, opened, it) : Idem. 
 
 236 (influences): M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, pp. 390-391; Nav. Bur. 
 Ord., Letters to the Navy Department, III, 133-138; Observatory 
 Journal, April 28, 1863. 
 
 237 (drizzle) : Nav. Bur. Ord., Letters to the Navy Department, III, 
 133-138; entry for April 29, 1863, in Diary of Virginia Fox, Blair 
 Family Mss., L. C. 
 
 237 (day) : A. A. Harwood to H. A. Wise, April 28, 1863, Wise Mss -> 
 N. Y. Hist. Soc. 
 
 237 (hesitation) : P. H. Watson to Lincoln, April 28, 1863, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 225; S. V. Benet 
 to J. W. Ripley, April 10, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 237-238 (Ames, them) : Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-WD-550; 
 Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, H278. 
 
 238 (service) : E. M. Stanton to J. W. Ripley, May 12, 1863, Stanton 
 Mss., L. C; Lincoln, Works, VI, 255, 270-271; Ord. Off., Letters 
 to the War Department, XIV, 253-254. 
 
 238 (terms) : Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Rec'd, XXII (new series), 
 106, Misc. Letters Sent, VI, 427, IX, 332; J. D. Brandt to H. A. 
 Wise, June 25, 1863, Wise Mss., N. Y. Hist. Soc; Scientific Amer- 
 ican, Aug. 29, 1863. 
 
 239 (inseparable) : Photograph of Ferriss in the Oneida Historical So- 
 ciety, Utica, N. Y.; Raymond G. Ferriss, Ilion, N. Y., to the writer, 
 May 9, 1954; M. M. Bagg, Pioneers of Utica (Utica, N. Y., 1877), 
 pp. 74-75; Utica directories, 1827-1829; Ord. Off., "Inventions," 
 classes 4 and 5, No. 349. 
 
 239 (bore) : D. O. Macomber to Lincoln, April 7, 1864, Lincoln Mss., 
 L. C; Charles B. Norton and W. J. Valentine, Report on the Muni- 
 
336 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 tions of War (Reports of the U. S. Commissioners to the Paris Uni- 
 versal Exposition of 1867, Washington, 1868), pp. 79-83. 
 
 239-240 (Charleston, latter, would) : Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of 
 Inventions," V, 303-307; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, WD637; 
 D. O. Macomber to Lincoln, April 7, 1864, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 240 (Charleston) : Idem.; New York Tribune, Sept. 3, 1863; New 
 York Herald, Sept. 16, 1863; Ord. Off., Letters to the War Depart- 
 ment, XIV, 395-396, 548-550. 
 
 240 (out) : Welles, Diary, I, 309; Battles and Leaders, IV, 54-55. 
 
 241 (wrong) : Welles, Diary, I, 309-317. 
 
 241 (admiral): M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 395; Welles, Diary, I, 
 
 337- 
 
 242 (flotilla): Bound Volume VII, 237-238, David D. Porter Mss., 
 L. C; D. D. Porter to Mrs. Evelina Porter, Nov. 13, 1863, May 18, 
 1864, ibid.; U. S. Patent 38,424; Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters 
 Rec'd, XXI (new series), part i, No. 94, part ii, No. 14. 
 
 242 (circulars) : O. R., Navies, series 1, XXV, 518. 
 
 242 (mind, months) : D. D. Porter to Mrs. E. Porter, Nov. 13, 
 1863, May 18, 1864, David D. Porter Mss., L. C; Bound Volume 
 VII, 237-238, ibid. 
 
 243 (1863): Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book V, H79; O. R., series 1, 
 XLVII, part ii, p. 58; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LVIII, 521; 
 Scientific American, Sept. 19, 1863; Battles and Leaders, IV, 73. 
 
 243 (flight) : Army and Navy ]ournal, July 30, 1864. 
 
 244 (death) : Quincy A. Gillmore, Engineer and Artillery Operations 
 Against the Defense of Charleston Harbor in 1863 (New York, 
 1865), p. 314; 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, p. 
 81; Washington Star, Sept. 3, 1863; Moore, Rebellion Record, VII, 
 62-63 (Incidents). 
 
 244 (all) : Battles and Leaders, IV, 73-74; O. R., series 1, XXVIII, part 
 
 i, P- 34- 
 
 244 (importunities) : Idem.; Scientific American, Oct. 24, 1863; Ord. 
 Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 250; Philadelphia Public Ledger 
 and Daily Transcript, Nov. 27, 28, 1863. 
 
 245 (order) : O. R., series 1, XLVII, part ii, p. 58; D. Ammen to H. A. 
 Wise, Wise Mss., N. Y. Hist. Soc. 
 
 245 (warfare) : Capt. E. C. Boynton, "Greek Fire and Other Inflam- 
 mables," U. S. Service Magazine, Jan. 1864, p. 55; Nav. Bur. Ord., 
 Letters Sent, LXXIV, 5-6; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, i-WD- 
 194. 
 
notes 337 
 
 245-246 (Ames, Lincoln, Lincoln, interview) : New York Tribune, Jan. 
 . 23, 1887. Brandegee's account places the episode in June 1863, but 
 September is the time indicated by contemporary records, e. g., H. 
 A. Wise to "Hon. A. Brandegee, Willard's Hotel," Sept. 25, 1863, 
 enclosing "copies of the correspondence relative to Mr. Ames' 
 wrought iron gun," Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Sent, VII, 448- 
 449. 
 
 247 (requests): Lincoln, Works, VI, 484-485; Hay, Diary, p. 107. 
 
 247 (in) : Battles and Leaders, IV, 26. 
 
 247 (Tycoon) : Hay, Diary, p. 107. 
 
 248 (Ypres) : New York City directories, 1860-1863; Ord. Off., "In- 
 ventions," class 8, No. 191, classes 4 and 5, No. 859. 
 
 248 (to) : M. V. Dahlgren, Memoir, p. 433. 
 
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (pages 249-267) 
 
 249 (Ordnance) : R. B. Marcy to Mrs. George B. McClellan, Nov. 18, 
 1861, McClellan Mss., L. C; Browning, Diary, I, 533-534; Wash- 
 ington, D. C, directories, 1862-1863. 
 
 250 (recorded) : N. A., General Records of the Treasury Department, 
 AB series, Letters from Executive Officers, 1863, War Dept, part 
 1, vol. Ill, No. 20; ibid., H series, Letters to Collector at N. Y., vol. 
 XVIII, pp. 62-63. 
 
 250 (guns) : Nav. Bur. Ord., Letters on the Armament of the Mississippi 
 Squadron, 1862-1863, pp. 135-136; Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters 
 Rec'd, XX (new series), 84, 128, 149; Nav. Bur. Ord., Letters 
 Sent, LIII, 36; W. T. Sherman to Thomas Ewing, Sr., Aug. 12, 
 1870, Ewing Family Mss., L. C. 
 
 250 (guns): Scientific American, March 28, 1863; Ord. Off., Letters 
 Rec'd, 1863, WD315, A401; Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 
 1863, WD285; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 172; Ord. 
 Off., "Experiments," class 8, No. 232. 
 
 251 (Chickamauga) : Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 1863, R128; 
 Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LVIII, 296, 335; Ord. Off., Letters 
 Rec'd, 1863, S947. 
 
 251 (Service) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 277. 
 
 251 (war) : J. R. Haskell to Thurlow Weed, Oct. 8, 1862, Weed Mss., 
 University of Rochester Library. 
 
 252 (for) : O. R., series 3, II, 858; MacDougall, "Federal Ordnance 
 Bureau," p. 166; Washington Star, Jan. 1, 1863; table of monthly 
 output, 1 862- 1 863, Springfield Armory Library. 
 
338 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 252 (Sickles) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 549; Ord. Off., 
 Register of Letters Rec'd, 1862, WD1899. 
 
 252 (price) : Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 6, No. 549; Ord. Off., Let- 
 ters Rec'd, 1863, WD63, WD130. 
 
 253 (rifles) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, WD179, H72; Ord. Off., 
 Misc. Letters Sent, LVII, 345-346. 
 
 253 (purpose): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, WD188 (filed with 
 WD292), WD606; Ord Off., Letters to War Department, 
 XIV, 158. 
 
 253 (Vicksburg) : Nav. Bur. Ord., Misc. Letters Rec'd, XX (new ser- 
 ies), 116; Scientific American, Dec. 1921, p. 103. 
 
 254 (regiments) : Battles and Leaders, III, 66; Lincoln, Works, VI, 
 108; New York Tribune, Nov. 15, 1862; Ord. Off., Register of Let- 
 ters Rec'd, 1862, WD1897; Washington Star, Jan. 7, 1863. 
 
 254 (received, infantry) : O. R., series 1, XXIII, part ii, p. 38; ibid., 
 series 3, III, 46. 
 
 254 (idea) : William F. G. Shanks, Personal Recollections of Distin- 
 guished Generals (New York, 1866), p. 241; Lincoln, Works, V, 
 283, VI, 108; Browning, Diary, I, 554; Off. Sec. War, Irregular 
 Book V, R48. 
 
 255 (made) : Washington Star, March 3, 1863; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters 
 Sent, LVIII, 16. 
 
 255-256 (brigade, raids, Brigade) : Samuel C. Williams, General John 
 T. Wilder (Bloomington, Ind., 1936), pp. 1-3, n, 14, 18-19; 
 Battles and Leaders, III, 636. 
 
 256 (began) : Stevens, Sharpshooters, p. 264; William N. Jeffers to 
 Henry A. Wise, June 18, 1863, Wise Mss., N. Y. Hist. Soc. 
 
 256 (wanted) : Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LVIII, 366. 
 
 257 (woods, battle): Stevens, Sharpshooters, pp. 304-305, 307, 309- 
 311. 
 
 257 (quick) : Ord. Off., Letters to the War Department, XIII, 419; 
 Hayden, "Explosive Rifle Balls," pp. 23-24; Martin Haynes, A 
 History of the Second Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer In- 
 fantry, in the War of the Rebellion (Lakeport, N. H., 1896), p. 
 172. 
 
 258 (weapons) : Dyer Inquiry, II, 128, 536-537. 
 258 (bore): Ibid., I, 20, 28, II, 511, 546-547. 
 
 258 (applaud) : Ord. Off., Special Files, "Misc. Letters Rec'd," 1-S-5. 
 
 259 (1863): Dyer Inquiry, II, 529, 537, 551. 
 
 259 (possible) : Ibid., II, 537; Lincoln, Works, VI, 97. 
 259 (possible) : Dyer Inquiry, I, 31, II, 537; Nav. Bur. Ord., "Reports 
 on Inventions," VI, 7. 
 
notes 339 
 
 260 (Point): Welles, Diary, I, 370-371; Dyer Inquiry, I, 31, II, 380; 
 
 Nav. Bur. Ord., "Examinations of Inventions," V, 331-334. 
 260 (Vicksburg) : Hay, Diary, p. 77. 
 
 260 (remained) : Galusha B. Balch, Genealogy of the Balch Families in 
 America (Salem, Mass., 1897), p. 306; Dyer Inquiry, I, 194, 488- 
 489, 499-500; J. W. Ripley to G. T. Balch, Sept. 19, 1864, Elihu 
 B. Washburne Mss., L. C. 
 
 261 (examination) : E. M. Stanton to J. W. Ripley, June 21, 1863, E. 
 M. Stanton to George Opdyke, Sept. 19, 1863, Edwin M. Stanton 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 261 (furnish) : Joseph Hooker to Lincoln, April 21, 1863, Hiram 
 Berdan to Edwin M. Stanton, Aug. 19, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C; 
 Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book IV, p. 195; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 
 1863, F406, F434, F451; J. W. Ripley to D. W. Flagler, July 30, 
 1863, Ord. Off., Letters to Ordnance Officers; O. R., series 1, 
 XXIV, part iii, p. 571. 
 
 261 (possible) : N. A., Adjutant General's Office, Register of Officers 
 Arriving in Washington, 1861-1867, Aug. 8, 1863; Warren Fish- 
 er, Jr., to Lincoln, Aug. 13, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 262 (shoot): Scientific American, Dec. 1921, p. 102. 
 
 262 (day) : Lincoln, Works, VI, 394-395; E. M. Stanton to J. W. Rip- 
 ley, Aug. 17, 1863; Stanton Mss., L. C; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters 
 Sent, LIX, 7. 
 
 262 (Building) : Observatory Journal, Aug. 18, 1863. 
 
 262-263 (Park, forward) : Scientific American, Dec. 192 1, p. 102; Hay, 
 Diary, p. 82. 
 
 263 (grounds) : New York Tribune, Aug. 19, 1863; Observatory Jour- 
 nal, Aug. 19, 1863; Bowen, 37th Mass. Volunteers, p. 356. 
 
 264 (mind) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, M437, S696, S714, 
 WD845; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LIX, 104. 
 
 264 (Ramsay) : New York Tribune, Aug. 21, 1863; Dyer Inquiry, I, 
 500. 
 
 264 (England): Ord. Off., "Inventions," class ic, No. 333; Hartford 
 Courant, March 17, 1870. 
 
 265 (fact) : 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, pp. 69-70. 
 
 265 (proclamation) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book V, R14; George T. 
 Curtis, Life, Character and Public Services of General George B. 
 McClellan (Boston, 1887), pp. 99-103; James C. Welling to Wil- 
 liam C. Prime, Sept. 7, 1886, George B. McClellan Mss., L. C. 
 
 266 (consented): Dyer Inquiry, I, 500-501; Townsend, Anecdotes of 
 the Civil War, pp. 79-80. 
 
 266 (him, stopgap, sadness) : Dyer Inquiry, I, 124-126. 
 
34° LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 267 (order): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, WD947, M495; Adam 
 Gurowsky to John A. Andrew, Dec. 29, 1863, John A. Andrew 
 Mss., Mass. Hist. Soc. 
 
 CHAPTER NINETEEN (pages 268-288) 
 
 268 (adopt): Welles, Diary, I, 343; Nav. Rec. Coll., Letterbook of 
 Capt. H. A. Wise, pp. 33-36; Robert Townsend to H. A. Wise, 
 Sept. 15, 1863, Wise Mss., N. Y. Hist. Soc; Edward Everett to F. 
 P. Blair, April 2, 1864, Everett Mss., Mass. Hist. Soc; Scientific 
 American, Sept. 19, 1863. 
 
 269 (stages): Lincoln, Works, VII, 118. 
 
 269 (drop): John B. Ehrhardt, Joseph Francis (1809-1893) (Prince- 
 ton, N. J., 1950), pp. 20-22; John A. Dix to Lincoln, April 17, 
 
 1863, Nicolay Mss., L. C; Joseph Francis to Lincoln, March 4, 
 
 1864, Lincoln Mss., L. C. 
 
 269 (uses) : Memorandum by Joseph Henry, Nov. 14, 1849, Henry 
 Wurtz Mss., N. Y. Public Library; Dictionary of American Biogra- 
 phy, XX, 571; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 8, No. 245; Ord. 
 Off., "Experiments," Nos. 248, 250, 252, 253; T. T. S. Laidley to 
 George D. Ramsay, Dec. 15, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Scientific 
 American, Jan. 16, 1864. 
 
 270 (hill) : Browning, Diary, I, 673; Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph 
 Office, pp. 265-266; Washington Star, June 27, 1864. 
 
 270 (instructions) : W. N. Jeffers to H. A. Wise, June 18, 1863, Wise 
 Mss., N. Y. Hist. Soc; Isaac Diller to Lincoln, and Charles M. 
 Wetherill to Lincoln, Oct. 31, 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Nav. Bur. 
 Ord., "Diller' s Powder, 1862-1863," W. N. Jeffers to H. A. Wise, 
 Oct. 24, 1863. 
 
 270 (Jeffers) : Chandler, "Civil War Nitre Shortage," pp. 148-149; 
 O. R., series 3, IV, 806; memorandum by Isaac Diller, Nov. 2, 
 1863, Lincoln Mss., L. C; W. N. Jeffers to H. A. Wise, Oct. 30, 
 1863, Wise Mss., N. Y. Hist. Soc. 
 
 271 (would): Ord Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-S-5; Dyer Inquiry, I, 
 31, II, 530, 533, 537, 54o-54i- 
 
 271 (Lincoln) : Ibid., II, 527, 532-533; Albert B. Hart, Salmon Fort- 
 land Chase (Boston, 1899), pp. 155-156; Benjamin F. Butler, Pri- 
 vate and Official Correspondence during the Civil War (5 vols.; 
 Norwood, Mass., 1917), V, 9; Thomas H. Ford to Lincoln, March 
 7, 1861, Lincoln Mss., L. C; Battles and Leaders, II, 612; Moore, 
 Rebellion Record, V, 443 (Documents) ; Leech, Reveille in Wash- 
 
NOTES 341 
 
 ington, p. 268; Thomas H. Ford to B. F. Butler, Aug. 13, 1864, 
 Benjamin Butler Mss., L. C. 
 272 (more) : Dyer Inquiry, I, 31, 493, II, 383, 546, 549. 
 
 272 (bands): Ibid., I, 37-38, 132, 515, II, 537, 545, 557; Lincoln, 
 Works, VII, 127. 
 
 273 (there) : Browning, Diary, I, 656; Dyer Inquiry, I, 516. 
 
 273 (it) : Ibid., I, 516, 525, II, 383. 
 
 274 (Ramsay) : Observatory Journal, Feb. 3, 8, 9, 1864; Ord. Off., Let- 
 ters Rec'd, 1864, W112; Dyer Inquiry, I, 31, II, 381-382, 521, 
 523; Browning, Diary, I, 658, 660. 
 
 274 (3d) : Dyer Inquiry, I, 28, II, 382-383; Ord. Off., Register of Let- 
 ters Rec'd, 1864, A89; Lincoln, Works, VII, 216, 229. 
 
 274 (controversies) : G. D. Ramsay to Lincoln, March 8, 1864, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C. 
 
 275 (prices) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1869, WD32; Dyer Inquiry, I, 
 514-515, 519,11,541. 
 
 275 (it) : Ibid., I, 32, 5i4-5 J 5> 517, II, 537, 540. 
 
 275 (adjusted) : O. R., series 3, IV, 587; Dyer Inquiry, I, 126, 497, 501, 
 II, 121, 126-127; Ord. Off., Letters to the War Dept, XIV, 497- 
 498. 
 
 276 (me): Dyer Inquiry, I, 139, 194-195, 206, 507, II, 123, 126, 129, 
 400; Scientific American, May 30, 1863; P. H. Watson to Joseph 
 Holt, Jan. 29, 1864, Joseph Holt Mss., L. C; O. R., series 3, IV, 
 582, 586-589, 592, 618; E. M. Stanton to G. D. Ramsay, June 15, 
 1864, Edwin M. Stanton Mss., L. C. 
 
 276 (in) : Dyer Inquiry, II, 326, 537. 
 
 276 (armaments) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book V, 034; Dictionary of 
 American Biography, XV, 340. 
 
 277 (condition) : Ord. Off., Letters to the War Dept., XV, 160; Dyer 
 Inquiry, II, 126. 
 
 277 (square) : Ibid., II, 537-538, 593. 
 
 278 (Lincoln) : Ibid., I, 189, 193, II, 399. 
 
 278 (them): Ibid., I, 171, 511, II, 310-311, 313-314, 3 l6 "3 I 7> 347> 
 390, 395, 534-535, 545, 592-593- 
 
 279 (President) : Ibid., I, 510-511, II, 337, 392, 538, 540, 54 2 '544> 59 2 - 
 279 (men) : Ord. Off., "Purchases of Ordnance," pp. 19, 204; Dyer 
 
 Inquiry, I, 46, II, 340, 395, 424, 560. 
 
 279 (bill) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1864, WD918; Scientific American, 
 Sept. 19, 1864; Nav. Rec. Coll., Letterbook of Capt. H. A. Wise, 
 Jan. 1862-Nov. 1864, pp. 218-219. 
 
 280 (scene): Lincoln, Works, VIII, 3; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1864, 
 B523, B562. 
 
34 2 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 280 (hope): 38th Cong., 2nd sess., Senate, Rep. Comm. 121, pp. 148- 
 149, 170-171; Carpenter, Six Months in the White House, pp. 253- 
 254; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LXII, 496, LXIII, 65; Nav. Rec. 
 Coll., Letterbook of Capt. H. A. Wise, Mar. 1864-Jan. 1865, pp. 
 181-182. 
 
 281 (handle) : Army and Navy Journal, March 25, June 3, 1865; Ord. 
 Off., "Purchases of Ordnance," p. 19; O. R., series 3, V, 142. 
 
 281 (Oliver) : Dyer Inquiry, II, 441 ; Petition of Oliver Ames in re Hor- 
 atio Ames's Estate, Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, Jan- 
 uary Term, 1872. 
 
 281 (1864) : William F. Scott, The Story of a Cavalry Regiment (New 
 York, 1893), p. 62; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1864, S336. 
 
 282 (spring, Arsenal) : Ibid., S163, W119. 
 
 282 (War) : Off. Sec. War, Irregular Book III, p. 22. 
 
 282 (savages) : Battles and Leaders, III, 522; Scientific American, Sept. 
 12, 1863; Peterson, "Explosive Bullets"; Hayden, "Explosive Rifle 
 Balls," p. 125. 
 
 283 (River): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, S947, 1864, WD258, 
 W195; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, i-S-n. 
 
 283 (Monroe) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1863, WD217; Ord. Off., Reg- 
 ister of Letters Rec'd, 1865, WD448; Army and Navy Journal, Aug. 
 12, 1865. 
 
 283 (flatcar) : Moore, Rebellion Record, VIII, 31, 41-42 (Diary); But- 
 ler, Correspondence, Butler to W. F. Smith, July 3, 1864. 
 
 284 (rifles) : O. S. Halsted to B. F. Butler, Oct. 19, 1864, Benjamin But- 
 ler Mss., L. C; Butler, Correspondence, V, 365, 369; Lyman, 
 Meade's Headquarters, pp. 281, 283-284. 
 
 284 (hints) : E. R. Bennet to B. F. Butler, Jan. 22, 1866, Butler Mss., 
 L.C 
 
 284 (war) : Stevens, Sharpshooters, p. 236. 
 
 285 (way) : Ibid., pp. 417, 462. 
 
 285 (extension) : Ibid., p. 368; Ripley, Vermont Riflemen, p. 187. 
 
 285 (war): O. R., series 3, I, 181, 331-332; Haynes, 2d New Hamp- 
 shire, p. 8; Chamberlin, 150th Pennsylvania, p. 243. 
 
 286 (ground) : Moore, Rebellion Record, VII, 58, (Incidents). 
 
 286 (wounded) : Ibid., XI, 190, 194-195. 
 
 287 (hurry) : O. R., series 1, XXXV, part i, pp. 307-308, XL, part i, pp. 
 541-542. 
 
 287 (agreeable): Gilbert A. Hays (compiler), Under the Red Patch: 
 Story of the Sixty Third Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861- 
 1864 (Pittsburgh, 1908), pp. 67-68. 
 
notes 343 
 
 287 (repeaters) : O. R., series 1, XXXVI, part iii, p. 201; Bowen, $jth 
 Mass., pp. 354, 363. 
 
 287 (carbines) : Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-T-24; Ord. Off., Let- 
 ters to the War Dept, XIV, 559; James H. Wilson, Under the Old 
 Flag (2 vols.; New York, 1912), I, 374; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters 
 sent, LX, 283, LXIX, 204. 
 
 287 (gun) : Cyril B. Upham, "Arms and Equipment for the Iowa Troops 
 in the Civil War," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Jan. 1918, 
 pp. 26-27. 
 
 288 (made) : Scientific American, March 19, May 28, 1864; New York 
 Times, June 10, 1864; Army and Navy Journal, Oct. 1, 1864; O. R., 
 series 3, IV, 802. 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY (pages 289-299) 
 
 289 (over) : Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 354. 
 
 290 (everywhere) : Scientific American, Jan. 28, 1865; Thomas, Lincoln, 
 p. 522. 
 
 290 (anywhere) : O.R., series 1, XLV, part ii, p. 488. 
 
 290 (use): Scientific American, Jan. 2, 1865. 
 
 291 (corps) : Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent, LIII, 465, LVIII, 485; Ord. 
 Off., Letters to War Dept., XIV, 31; Ord. Off., "Inventions," class 
 ic, No. 351; Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1864, WD708; Nav. Bur. 
 Ord., Misc. Letters Sent, VIII, 163; Chinn, The Machine Gun, I, 
 50; A. B. Dyer to H. A. Wise, Jan. 31, 1865, Wise Mss., N. Y. Hist. 
 Soc; Ord. Off., Special Files, "Misc. Letters Rec'd," 1-H-42. 
 
 291 (ordnance) : Scientific American, Dec. 10, 1864; Chinn, The Ma- 
 chine Gun, I, 48, 54. 
 
 291 (Run) : Dyer Inquiry, II, 400; G. D. Ramsay to George Harrington, 
 Aug. 23, 1864, Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Sent; W. Maynadier to B. 
 C. Hallin, Jan. 20, 1865, ibid. 
 
 292 (cakes) : O. S. Halsted to Lincoln, Sept. 13, Oct. 1, 1864, Lincoln 
 Mss., L. C; Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 371-372. 
 
 292 (arsenal) : Welles, Diary, II, 257, 264; Nav. Rec. Coll., Executive 
 Records, March-May 1865, No. 55. 
 
 293 (fire): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1862, WD1452, WD1576, 
 WD1594, 1864, F83, WD315; Ord. Off., "Inventions," classes 4 
 and 5, Nos. 744, 790; Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 1864, 
 WD992; Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-A-90, 1-S-199, 1- 
 WD431. 
 
 293 (candlelight) : Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 377-379. 
 
344 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 293 (air) : Ibid., 381-382, 384; Dyer Inquiry, II, 427. 
 
 293 (1865) : Ibid., II, 536. 
 
 294 (French) : Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 384, 387. 
 
 294 (side) : James Tanner to H. F. Walch, April 17, 1865, in Abraham 
 Lincoln Quarterly, Dec. 1942. 
 
 295 (Lincoln) : Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1865, WD194, WD201; Leech, 
 Reveille in Washington, p. 402; Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp 
 and Field, p. 476. 
 
 295 (last) : O. R., series 3, IV, 1280-1281. 
 
 296 (trials): Ord. Off., Letters Rec'd, 1865, WD219; Leech, Reveille 
 in Washington, pp. 408-409; Brooks, Washington in Lincoln's 
 Time, pp. 267, 270-271. 
 
 296 (clerk) : Ord. Off., Letters Reed, 1865, WD235. 
 
 296 (much) : Ord. Off., Misc. Letters Rec'd, 1-D-25; Samuel Ricker to 
 
 J. S. Black, Feb. 5, 1867, Jeremiah Black Mss., L. C; Smith, Weth- 
 
 erill, pp. 47-48. 
 
 296 (came) : Dyer Inquiry, II, 538. 
 
 297 (man) : Ord. Off., Register of Letters Rec'd, 1865, A357, WD422, 
 and passim under War Dept, May- June 1865; Ord. Off., Misc. Let- 
 ters Sent, LXIV, 193; Dyer Inquiry, II, 339. 
 
 297 (position) : J. C. B. Davis to Hamilton Fish, Oct. 13, 1874, Hamil- 
 ton Fish Mss., L. C. 
 
 297 (Passion) : Clipping, in O. S. Halsted to J. G. Nicolay, Oct. 19, 
 1862, Nicolay Mss., L. C; Newark Daily Advertiser, July 3, 1871. 
 
 298 (posterity) : Dictionary of American Biography, XX, 425, XV, 
 340; N. A., Adjutant General's Office, Personal File of George T. 
 Balch; Dyer Inquiry, I, 498, II, 127. 
 
 298 (Foundry) : Dictionary of American Biography, V, 581. 
 
 298 (world) : Scientific American, May 27, 1865. 
 
 299 (vigorously) : George S. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in 
 Public Affairs (2 vols.; New York, 1902), II, 242; Adams, Educa- 
 tion of Henry Adams, pp. 494, 496. 
 
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 345 
 
346 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
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348 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
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 Norton, Charles B., and Valentine, W. J., Report on the Munitions of 
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 Norton, Oliver W., Army Letters, 1861-1865. Chicago, 1903. 
 
 O'Brien, William J., "The Washington Arsenal," Army Ordnance, July 
 
 1935- 
 
 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in the War of the 
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 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the 
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 Olejar, Paul D., "Rockets in Early American Wars," Military Affairs, X, 
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 Parker, Thomas H., History of the 51st Regiment of Pennsylvania Vol- 
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 Paullin, Charles O., "President Lincoln and the Navy," American His- 
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 Peck, Taylor, Round-shot to Rockets. Annapolis, Md., 1949. 
 
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 Piatt, Donn, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union. N. Y., 1887. 
 
 Poore, Ben: Perley, The Life and Public Services of Ambrose E. Burn- 
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 Portrait and Biographical Record of Adams County, Illinois. Chicago, 
 1892. 
 
 Pratt, Harry E., ed., Concerning Mr. Lincoln. Springfield, 111., 1944. 
 
 Randall, James G., Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg. 2 
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 Re-union of the 28th & i4jth Regiments, Pennsylvania Volunteers. 
 Phila., 1872. 
 
 Rice, Allen T., ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished 
 Men of His Time. N. Y., 1886. 
 
SOURCES CITED 353 
 
 "Rifled Guns," Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1859. 
 Ringwalt, John L., The Diller Family. New Holland, Pa., 1942. 
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 Ripley, William Y. W., Vermont Riflemen in the War for the Union. 
 
 Rutland, Vt, 1883. 
 Roche, Daniel M., "The Acquisition and Use of Foreign Shoulder-arms 
 
 in the Union Army, 1861-1865." Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, 
 
 University of Colorado, 1949. 
 Rodenbough, Theodore F., and Haskins, William L., eds., The Army 
 
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 Russell, William H., My Diary North and South. N. Y., 1863. 
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 1926. 
 Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. 4 vols., N. Y., 1939. 
 Scott, William F., The Story of a Cavalry Regiment. N. Y., 1893. 
 Seward, Frederick W., Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Dip- 
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 N. Y., 1866. 
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 N. Y, 1875. 
 Shipley, Ruth B., "The Winder Building." Unpublished article, 1953. 
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 Stearns, Ezra S., Genealogical and Family History of the State of New 
 
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 Stevenson, Daniel, "General Nelson, Kentucky, and Lincoln Guns," The 
 
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 Stoddard, William O., Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. N. Y., 
 
 1888. 
 Stoddard, William O., Inside the White House in War Times. N. Y., 
 
 1890. 
 Tarbell, Ida M., The Life of Abraham Lincoln. 4 vols., N. Y., 1924. 
 Thomas, Benjamin, Abraham Lincoln. N. Y., 1952. 
 Thompson, Richard W., Recollections of Sixteen Presidents from Wash- 
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 Townsend, E. D., Anecdotes of the Civil War in the United States. N. Y., 
 
 1884. 
 
354 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Trollope, Anthony, North America. 3 vols., Leipzig, 1862. 
 
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 United States War Department, Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry . . . to 
 Examine into the Accusations against Brig, and Bvt. Major General 
 A. B. Dyer, Chief of Ordnance (cited as "Dyer Inquiry"). 2 vols., 
 Wash., D. C, 1869. 
 
 Upham, Cyril B., "Arms and Equipment for the Iowa Troops in the Civil 
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 Upton, Emory, The Military Policy of the United States. Wash., D. G, 
 1912. 
 
 Walworth, Reuben H., Hyde Genealogy. 2 vols., Albany, N. Y., 1864. 
 
 Warden, Robert B., An Account of the Private Life and Public Services 
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 Welles, Gideon, Diary of Gideon Welles. 3 vols., Boston, 191 1. 
 
 West, Richard S., Jr., The Second Admiral: A Life of David Dixon Port- 
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 Westbrook, Robert S., History of the 49th Pennsylvania Volunteers. 
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 Whittlesey, Derwent S., "The Springfield Armory." Unpublished Ph.D. 
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 Williams, Samuel C, General John T. Wilder. Bloomington, Ind., 1936. 
 
 Wilson, James H., Under the Old Flag. 2 vols., N. Y., 191 2. 
 
 Wilson, William B., Acts and Actors in the Civil War. Phila., 1892. 
 
 Wise, Henry Augustus, "Private Journal of Henry A. Wise, U. S. N., 
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 Woodbury, Augustus, A Narrative of the Campaign of the First Rhode 
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 Woodward, William, "Firearms — Their Evolution and Worcester's Part 
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 ( J 932). 
 W. P. A. Guide Series, Washington, City and Capital. Wash., D. C, 
 
 1937- 
 Zane, Charles S., "Lincoln As I Knew Him," Sunset Magazine, Oct. 
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A cknowledgments 
 
 My thanks, first of all, to the History Department of Boston Uni- 
 versity, and especially to Professors Warren O. Ault and Robert E. 
 Moody for a thorough grounding in history and historical tech- 
 niques without which the zeal of a converted engineer would have 
 been useless. From the moral support of Professor Warren S. Tryon 
 I first drew nerve to think seriously of writing history. Professor 
 Kenneth A. Bernard, who knows far more about Abraham Lincoln 
 and his times than I am ever likely to, prompted my initial investi- 
 gation of Lincoln's connection with Civil War technology and be- 
 came principal reader for the doctoral dissertation which was the 
 first fruit of my research. I am greatly indebted to his encourage- 
 ment and counsel. 
 
 As research assistant to Dr. Benjamin P. Thomas for more than 
 six months, I was able to discover much material useful to my 
 own research as well. At many points in my own long quest, Dr. 
 Thomas's cheerful advice and encouragement kept my spirits up; 
 and he gave up a great deal of his limited spare time to reading both 
 drafts of my book. I owe him more than I can ever repay. 
 
 Mrs. Stephen Vincent Benet, Lieutenant Commander Joseph F. 
 Dahlgren (USNR) and Robert Bradford Bartholomew, grandson 
 of General Ripley, welcomed me into their homes and generously 
 gave me access to family papers. Though I have criticized some of 
 General Ripley's official acts, his grandson's generosity has made it 
 possible for me to record the general's fine personal qualities. 
 
 The hospitality of Lewis F. Davis, Harold Peterson, Roger Brag- 
 don, Bruce Cowper and Bert Sheldon and the friendly interest of 
 Miss Laura Benet, James Ripley Jacobs, Roy P. Basler and Lieuten- 
 ant Colonel J. J. Reen have made the long search less lonely. 
 
 Among those who gave of their time and knowledge to lighten 
 my labor at many points were Miss Fidelia N. Abbott, Mrs. Alitha 
 
 355 
 
35<$ LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 H. Andrew, Miss Zelina Bartholomew, Mrs. Elmer E. Count, Jr., 
 Captain Wade De Weese (USNR), Mrs. Henry W. English, Ray- 
 mond G. Ferriss, Colonel Calvin H. Goddard, Dr. Harbeck Halsted, 
 Wilson Harwood, Colonel Berkeley R. Lewis, Roger Lewis, Francis 
 Lord, George Melcher, Schuyler Pardee, Mrs. Ruth B. Shipley, 
 Professor Bradley Stoughton, James L. Taylor, Jr., and Harry C. 
 Thompson. My thanks to all, and especially to Lieutenant Colonel 
 George M. Chinn (USMCR) , Harry E. Pratt and Louis A. Warren. 
 
 I look back gratefully to the friendly aid I received in the Manu- 
 script Room of the New York Public Library and from Wayne 
 Andrews, W. R. Leech and their associates in the New York His- 
 torical Society. Mr. Riley, Miss Collins and Mr. Wheeler of the 
 Massachusetts Historical Society have been unfailingly and cordially 
 helpful. My visits to the Connecticut Valley Historical Society, the 
 New Jersey Historical Society, the Springfield Armory Library and 
 the manuscript divisions of the Yale and Princeton Libraries were 
 made pleasant and fruitful by their staffs. For months, my calls for 
 truckload after truckload of National Archives records bore heavily 
 upon Richard G. Wood of the War Record Branch, Nelson M. 
 Blake of the Navy Record Section and their expert staffs. The phys- 
 ical labor of trundling out tons of documents was in itself enor- 
 mous, yet performed from first to last with speed, accuracy and good 
 humor. 
 
 During six months of full-time research in the Manuscript Divi- 
 sion of the Library of Congress, I came to know Dr. C. Percy Pow- 
 ell, Dr. Elizabeth McPherson, Frank White and Wilfred Langone, 
 not only as tireless and enthusiastic guides to that happy hunting 
 ground of historians, but also as good friends. 
 
 Years of using the public libraries of Maiden and Boston, Mass- 
 achusetts, and the library of Boston University, have contributed 
 much to this book and to my education generally. Boston Univer- 
 sity's rich Stone and Bullard collections of Civil War material have 
 been of immense assistance to me. 
 
 For researches undertaken in my behalf, my thanks go out: 
 
 To the Historical Societies of Connecticut, Missouri, New Hamp- 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 357 
 
 shire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; of Quincy and Adams, McLean 
 and Morgan Counties, 111.; of Oneida County, N. Y.; and of Buf- 
 falo, N. Y., Litchfield, Conn., Nashua, N. H., and Worcester, 
 Mass. 
 
 To the American Antiquarian Society, the Henry E. Huntington 
 Library, the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, the Lin- 
 coln National Life Foundation, the Ohio State Archaeological and 
 Historical Society, the State Libraries of Illinois and Indiana, and 
 the Illinois State Historical Library. 
 
 To the public libraries of Buffalo, N. Y., Jersey City, N. J., and 
 Springfield, Mass. 
 
 And to the libraries of the United States Naval Academy, Lafay- 
 ette and Oberlin Colleges, Princeton, Yale and Cornell Universi- 
 ties and the Universities of Rochester and North Carolina. 
 
 Last only in point of time is my debt of gratitude to Julius Birge, 
 who read and saw possibilities in my first draft, to Harrison Piatt, 
 who read both drafts and gave me wise and kindly editorial guid- 
 ance, and to all at Bobbs-Merrill. 
 
Index 
 
 Abbott, Jacob, 26 
 
 Absterdam, John, 258-259, 270, 273- 
 275, 278-279 
 
 Absterdam affair, 257-260, 270-275, 
 277-279, 293 
 
 Acorn, Captain, 197 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, 59, 282 
 
 Adams, Henry, 59-60, 145, 299 
 
 Aeronautics, see Balloons, Helicopter 
 
 Agassiz, Louis, 12, 14 
 
 Alligator, 177 
 
 American Arms Company, 198, 200, 
 249-250, 283 
 
 Ames, Horatio, 233-238, 245-247, 279- 
 281 
 
 Ames, James T., 148 
 
 Ames, Oakes, 233-235 
 
 Ames, Oliver, 281 
 
 Ammen, Daniel, 244-245 
 
 Andrew, John A., 37, 266 
 
 Annual of Scientific Discovery, 12 
 
 Antietam, 205, 265 
 
 Appomattox, 293 
 
 Armor, body, 135-137 
 
 Arthur, Chester A., 292 
 
 Artillery, 33-34, 124-126; ammunition 
 and projectiles, 124-125, 175, 187, 
 247-248, 260, 269; breech-loading, 
 74, 124, 126-130, 184-186, 192, 197- 
 198, 201-202, 206, 238-240, 281- 
 282; carriages, 95-96, 149-150; cen- 
 trifugal guns, 1 38-1 41; coastal, 147- 
 150; Dahlgren cannon, 6, 17-18, 
 158, 173, 210; Dahlgren howitzer, 
 5-6, 46, 293; double cannon, 141- 
 142; Perkins steam gun, 137-138; 
 rifled, 145, 147-148, 150, 186-188, 
 239-240; steel, 149, 239-240, 280- 
 281; Woodruff gun, 124-126, 130, 
 281, wrought iron, 239-240. See 
 also Absterdam affair, Ames (Hora- 
 tio), incendiary weapons, Parrott 
 guns, rockets 
 
 Ashmun, George, 52 
 Astor, John Jacob II, 118 
 Atwater, John B., 187 
 Avery, Frederick, 198, 200, 283 
 
 Bache, Alexander D., 224 
 
 Baird, Spencer F., 74 
 
 Baird, Thomas, 74 
 
 Baker, Edward D., 52 
 
 Balch, George T., 260, 264-266, 271- 
 
 2 73, 2 75- 2 76, 278-279, 298 
 Balloons, 73, 85-88, 120-121, 131 
 Ball's Bluff, 52-53, 152 
 Bancroft, George, 13, 297 
 Barnard, John G., 149, 226 
 Barney, Hiram, 74 
 Barry, William F., 124, 126, 149 
 Bartlett, Captain, 195 
 Bates, Benjamin, 223 
 Bates, Edward, 134, 153, 161, 166 
 Beardslee, George W., 226-227 
 Beauregard, Pierre G. T., 243-244 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 112 
 Benet, Stephen V. (1827-1895): career 
 
 and character, 93, 97, 298; tests 
 
 weapons, 107-108, 192, 201, 221, 
 
 232, 237, 279, 291-292 
 Benet, Stephen Vincent (1898-1943), 
 
 97 
 Benton, James G., 96, 147-148, 264- 
 
 266, 273-274 
 Berdan, Hiram, 108-113, 116, 155- 
 
 156, 206, 261, 284, 288, 297 
 Bermuda Hundred, 73, 284 
 Berney, Alfred, 229-30, 232, 236-238, 
 
 243-245, 283-284 
 Berry, Nathaniel S., 130 
 Beschke, William, 78-79 
 Bestor, George C, 173-174 
 Bignall, Thomas, 257 
 Bingham, John A., 271 
 Blaine, James G., 203 
 Blair, Montgomery, 29 
 
 358 
 
INDEX 
 
 359 
 
 Blunt, Orison, 118-121 
 
 Boetig, T. G., 137 
 
 Boker, Herman, 51 
 
 Booth, John Wilkes, 143, 295-296 
 
 Bottom's Bridge, 204 
 
 Bowles, Samuel, 26 
 
 Bragg, Braxton, 255 
 
 Brandegee, Augustus, 235, 238, 245- 
 
 247, 279 
 Breastworks, iron, 137 
 Breech-loading cannon, see Artillery 
 Breech-loading rifles, 7, 38, 99-102, 
 
 104-107, 116-117, 128, 206, 284- 
 
 285, 288, 290. See also Colt, Henry, 
 
 Marsh, Sharps, Spencer 
 Bright, John, 79 
 Brown, John, 158 
 Brown, Uriah, 171, 180 
 Browning, Orville H., 96, 125, 174, 
 
 220, 269, 271-273 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 138 
 Buchanan, Franklin, 6-9, 16, 173, 175 
 Buchanan, James, 3-4, 7, 153, 212, 239 
 Buchanan, Nannie, 9, 15, 151 
 Buell, Don Carlos, 153 
 Bull Run: First Battle of, 47-49, 64, 
 
 67, 87, 120, 151; Second Battle of, 
 
 106, 202, 205, 216, 219, 258, 265, 
 
 291 
 Bullets, 38, 52-54, 135, 192, 194, 221; 
 
 explosive, 74, 191-192, 257, 282; 
 
 manufacture of, 19, 91-92. See also 
 
 cartridges 
 Burdick, Albert, 64 
 Burnside, Ambrose E., 63, 222 
 Bushnell, C. S., 172 
 Butler, Benjamin F., 33, 66, 72-73, 
 
 139, 271; and Ames guns, 279-280; 
 
 and armored railroad batteries, 137; 
 
 and coffee-mill guns, 122-123, *98, 
 
 283; and Ellsworth guns, 198; and 
 
 Gatling guns, 290; and incendiary 
 
 weapons, 182, 283-284; and Spencer 
 
 rifles, 287 
 Butler, William, 259 
 Butterfield, Daniel, 34 
 
 Callender, F. D., 258, 272 
 Callender, Mills, 229-230 
 Calliope, steam, 142-143 
 
 Cameron, Simon, 45, 47, 48, 57, 71, 
 153, 213; characterized, 27-28; and 
 Cincinnati Cannon, 127-128; and 
 coffee-mill gun, 119, 121, 123; con- 
 duct of War Department, 28-30; and 
 foreign arms, 43, 49-51, 54; and 
 Marsh gun, 108; removal, 153; and 
 rifled cannon, 148; and Sharpshoot- 
 ers, 154; and Weston, 35-36 
 
 Capitol Building, 4, 62,, 113, 182, 189 
 
 Carbines, 36, 81, 112, 114-116, 189- 
 *90> 253, 261-262, 264, 287-288, 
 290, 295 
 
 Carondelet, 165 
 
 Carr, Lewis, 198 
 
 Cartridges, 99, 106, in, 119, 190, 
 208-209, 220-223 
 
 Casey, Silas, 221-223 
 
 Chace, W. B., 52-54, 82 
 
 Chancellorsville, 102, 256 
 
 Chantilly, 232 
 
 Charleston (S. C): in 1832, 24-25; in 
 1861, 15, 46; in 1863, 228-229, 232- 
 233, 235-236, 239-245, 247-248, 
 262; in 1864, 268, 283; in 1865, 293 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., 127, 162, 175, 219 
 
 Chehaw Station (Ala.), 286 
 
 Chemical warfare, 175, 244, 247-248 
 
 Cheney Brothers, 114, 253 
 
 Chickamauga, 251, 262, 285-286 
 
 Chickering, Jonas, 61 
 
 Chittenden, Lucius E., 40-41, 136-137 
 
 Cincinnati Breech-loading Cannon, 126- 
 128, 184-186, 201-202 
 
 Clay, Henry, 11, 173 
 
 Clemens, Samuel L., n 3-1 14 
 
 Coffee-mill gun, 118-123, 194-200, 
 206, 249-251, 282-283, 291 
 
 Cold Spring Foundry, 96-97, 187-188, 
 298 
 
 Colfax, Schuyler, 74, 134 
 
 Colt: revolver, 39, 295; rifle, 112, 135, 
 154-155, 254; Works, 114, 203 
 
 Congreve, William, 217-218 
 
 Connecticut regiments: 6th, 66; 7th, 
 286-287 
 
 Cooper, Peter, 121, 138 
 
 Cooper, Hewitt and Company, 159, 
 162 
 
 Cooper Institute, 121, 195, 206 
 
3 6o 
 
 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Corbett, Boston, 295 
 
 Craig, Henry K., 27-30, 147, 168, 205 
 
 Crater, Battle of the, 286 
 
 Crawford, Samuel W., 283 
 
 Crispin, Silas, 55-56, 190 
 
 Curtin, Andrew G., 33, 199, 226 
 
 Dahlgren, John A., 47, 89, 93, 98, 152, 
 170, 174, 178, 180, 181, 217, 249, 
 297; and Ames, 234-237; angry at 
 Russell, 8; and Beardslee detonator, 
 226-227; and breech-loading cannon, 
 126; characterized, 4, 7-8, 10, 20-21, 
 207-208, 215, 227; and Charleston, 
 15, 229, 240-241, 247-248, 256, 
 262, 268; as Chief of Navy Ord- 
 nance, 208, 214-215, 268; and coffee- 
 mill gun, 120, 122; death, 298; and 
 Diller's powder, 213, 227; early 
 career, 5-6; at First Inaugural, 4-5; 
 and Hale rocket, 5, 218; and Hyde 
 rocket, 217, 219; and inventors, 72, 
 88, 214-215; and McCarty centrifu- 
 gal gun, 141; meets Lincoln, 10; and 
 Merrimac, 173; and Military Arma- 
 ment Board, 149; as Navy Yard com- 
 mandant, 16-21, 151; and niter, 
 146, 150, 211, 270; promoted to 
 rear admiral, 227; and Rafael Re- 
 peater, 208-210; relations with Lin- 
 coln, 10, 17-21, 88, 98, 151-152, 
 173, 207-208, 213-215, 226-227, 
 236-237; in secession crisis, 6-7; and 
 Spencer rifle, 114-115; and Taylor 
 fuse, 220; wants promotion, 207- 
 208, 215 
 
 Dahlgren, Ulric, 207 
 
 Danvers, Patrick, 234 
 
 Davis, Charles H., 224, 227 
 
 Davis, David, 221, 223 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, 27, 38, 68, 101, 110- 
 iii, 146, 191 
 
 Dawes, Henry L., 152 
 
 De Kalb, 172 
 
 Denmark, King of, 39 
 
 Dennison, William, 33, 37, 128 
 
 Densmore, A. M., 78-79 
 
 De Villeroi, Brutus, 176-177 
 
 Diana, 178 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 60-61 
 
 Dickinson, Charles, 139 
 
 Dickson, Archimedes C, 258-259, 271- 
 2 79> 293, 296-297 
 
 Diller, Isaac R., 212-213, 225-227, 
 256, 270, 296 
 
 Dimmick shell, 124 
 
 Dingee, Solomon, 54-56 
 
 "Discoveries and Inventions," 13-14 
 
 Dix, Dorothea, 24 
 
 Dixon, James, 235 
 
 Dodge, William E., 180 
 
 Doughty, John W., 247-248 
 
 Douglas, Stephen A., 27, 77 
 
 Downes, Paul, 64 
 
 Draper, Simeon, 118-121 
 
 Dubois, Jesse K., 134 
 
 Du Pont, Lammot, 147, 150 
 
 Du Pont, Samuel F., 233, 235, 240 
 
 Du Pont Company, 146, 211 
 
 Du Pont powder, 212-213 
 
 Dyer, Alexander B., 290; and Abster- 
 dam affair, 258, 272, 277-279; and 
 Berdan, 109; as Chief of Ordnance, 
 277, 291, 293, 296-298; commands 
 Springfield Armory, 48; on explosive 
 bullets, 282; last years, 298; and 
 Ripley, 167-168; and Spencer rifle, 
 115 
 
 Dyer shell, 124, 258, 272 
 
 Eads, James B., 172-173, 258 
 Early, Jubal A., 136, 287 
 Edwards, Oliver, 287 
 Electric detonator, 226-227 
 Ellsworth, Elmer E., 18, 128 
 Ellsworth guns, 124, 197-198, 206, 
 
 281-282 
 Emma, 283 
 
 Enfield rifles, 40, 54, 56, 135 
 England, 27, 59, 76, 141, 145-148, 
 
 150, 211-212, 270, 282, 288 
 Ericsson, John, 61, 68, 172-173, 209 
 Etheridge, Emerson, 46, 108 
 Everett, Edward, 159 
 
 Fair Oaks, 87, 135 
 Fairbanks, Erastus, 40 
 Fenton, Reuben E., 179 
 Ferguson, Patrick, 101 
 Ferriss, George, 239-240 
 
INDEX 
 
 361 
 
 Fillmore, Millard, 189 
 
 First Mounted Rifle Brigade, 255-256, 
 
 261, 285-286 
 First United States Dragoons, 112 
 Field, Cyrus, 121 
 Fisher, Warren, Jr., 203, 253 
 Fitch, Stephen, 61 
 Flame throwers, 171, 180, 237-238, 
 
 283-284 
 Fleming, Robert L., 180-183, 201, 292 
 Fleurus, Battle of, 85 
 Floyd, John B., 27, 101 
 Foote, Andrew H., 160-167, 174, 241, 
 
 253 
 
 Ford, Thomas H., 271, 273 
 
 Ford's Theater, 182, 294 
 
 Forts: DeKalb, 226; Donelson, 164- 
 165, 170; Henry, 164-165, 170; 
 Jackson, 166; Johnson, 247; Lafay- 
 ette, 121; McHenry, 218; Moultrie, 
 24-25, 247; Pickens, 9, 46; Pulaski, 
 66, 186-187, 240; St. Philip, 166; 
 Stevens, 136; Sumter (in 1861), 9, 
 15, 18, 22, 28, 37, 46, 85, 141, 228 
 (in 1863), 229, 236, 240, 244, 247- 
 248 (in 1865), 293 
 
 Fortress Monroe, 34, 78, 101, 115, 
 170, 198, 201, 218, 283 
 
 Foster, Lafayette S., 235 
 
 Foster, William, 78 
 
 Fox, Charles H., 50 
 
 Fox, Gustavus V., 151, 169, 172, 178, 
 233, 269, 280; and mortar affair, 
 156-157, 160-161, 166-167 
 
 Fox, Virginia L. W., 167 
 
 France, 76, 134, 142, 147, 176 
 
 Frankford Arsenal, 211, 272, 279, 291 
 
 Fredericksburg, 102, 213, 219, 222 
 
 Fremont, John C, 33, 72, 157-158, 
 160, 196-198 
 
 French, Benjamin B., 190-192, 257 
 
 Gadsen, James, 24 
 Gage, John H., 129-130 
 Gaines's Mill, 87, 204 
 Gallaher, Robert H., 108, 202-203, 252 
 Gamble, Hamilton R., 57 
 Gardner, Alexander, 260 
 Gardiner, Samuel, Jr., 191-192, 257, 
 282 
 
 Gatling, Richard J., 290-291 
 
 Gatling gun, 137, 290-291 
 
 Geary, John W., 194-197 
 
 Germany, 76, 212 
 
 Gettysburg, 88, 100, 102, 104, 105, 
 
 125, 215, 256-257, 260-261, 263 
 Gibbs carbines, 261 
 Gillmore, Quincy A., 186, 240, 242- 
 
 245, 247, 280 
 Gist, Moses, 221-222 
 Glendale, 204 
 Godwin, Parke, 138 
 Golding's Farm, 200 
 Goodwin, William F., 184-185, 192 
 Grant, Ulysses S., 102, 152, 162, 164- 
 
 165, 253, 282-284, 292-293 
 Great Britain, see England 
 "Greek Fire," 179-182, 200-201, 206, 
 
 232, 241-244, 284 
 Greeley, Horace, 84, 189 
 Greenwood, Miles, 93 
 Gregory, Francis H., 240 
 Griffiths, J. W., 217 
 Grimshaw, Colonel, 222 
 Grinnell, Moses H., 252 
 Grover's Theater, 293-294 
 Gunpowder, 146, 150, 213-214, 269. 
 
 See also Diller, Niter 
 Gwyn, , 217 
 
 Hagner, Philip V., 54-56 
 
 Hale, William, 5, 218 
 
 Hall, John, 101 
 
 Hall rifle, 101 
 
 Halleck, Henry W., 152-153, 160- 
 161, 167, 228, 254, 261, 264, 294 
 
 Halsted, Oliver S., Jr. (Pet), 241, 291- 
 292; and Ames, 235-238, 245-247, 
 280; and Berney, 229, 236, 243-245, 
 283-284; career and character, 230- 
 232; and Charleston, 229, 235, 243- 
 245; death, 297; and Dingee con- 
 tract, 55-56 
 
 Halsted, Oliver S., Sr., 230 
 
 Hamlin, Hannibal, 36, 74, 143 
 
 Hampton Roads, 172-174, 177 
 
 Hancock, Winfield S., 290-291 
 
 Harper, J. W., 138 
 
 Harper's Ferry, 42, 194-195, 197, 206, 
 271 
 
362 
 
 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Harper's Ferry rifled muskets, 51, 112 
 
 Harris, Ira, 35 
 
 Harris, William H., 35 
 
 Harwood, Andrew A., 16, 19, 82, 88, 
 
 106-107, 114, 146, 234, 236-237 
 Haskell, James R., 211 
 Haupt, Herman, 215-217 
 Hay, John, 74-76, 79, 262 
 Heddon, Josiah, 51-52 
 
 Hegon, , 129 
 
 Helicopter, steam-driven, 73 
 
 Henry, Joseph, 83-86, 88, 146, 211, 
 
 224, 269 
 Henry rifle, 99 
 
 Herndon, William H., 12, 82 
 Hewitt, Abram S., 159, 162 
 Hill, Ambrose P., 204 
 Hitchcock, Ethan A., 168, 295 
 
 Hochstatter, , 212 
 
 Hoe, Richard, 61 
 
 Hoey, John, 51-52 
 
 Holenshade, James C. C, 184-186, 201- 
 
 202, 205 
 Holloway, David P., 65, 95 
 Holmead, J. E., 65 
 Holt, Joseph, 65 
 Hooker, Joseph, 238, 256 
 Hooper, Samuel, 78 
 Hoover's Gap, 255-256 
 Hopkins, Obadiah, 149-150, 179, 188 
 Hotchkiss shells, 124, 274-275 
 Howard, Oliver O., 32 
 Howe, Elias, 61, 119 
 Hubbard, John H., 235 
 Hunt, Henry J., 149 
 Hunter, David, 223 
 Hyde, Joshua B., 218-220 
 
 Illinois Central Railroad, 13, 48 
 
 Illinois regiments: 3rd Cavalry, 183; 
 6th Cavalry, 125, 281; 101st Infan- 
 try, 50 
 
 Incendiary weapons, 76, 78, 179-180 
 
 India, 146, 217, 270 
 
 Iowa regiments: 2d Cavalry, 287; 4th 
 Cavalry, 281, 287; 5th Infantry, 286 
 
 Ironclad warships, 68, 150, 156, 171- 
 177, 180, 204, 233, 280 
 
 Isherwood, Benjamin F., 138 
 
 Island Number Ten, 165-166 
 Italy, 76 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, 23-24, 79, 249 
 Jackson, Thomas J. (Stonewall), 196- 
 
 197, 201, 271 
 James, Charles T., 148 
 James shell, 124, 148, 186 
 Japan, 5-6, 27, 120, 146, 211 
 Jeffers, William N., 225-226, 256, 270 
 John Brown's Body, 97 
 Johnson, Andrew, 108, 143 
 Johnson, Bushrod, 255 
 Johnson, Columbus, 76 
 Johnston, Joseph E., 15 
 Joinville, Prince de, no 
 Jones, Edward W., 65 
 Jones, Paul Franklin, 95-96 
 Joslyn Arms Company, 203 
 Joslyn rifle, 128 
 
 Kearney, Philip, 231-232, 235 
 
 Kellogg, Benoni, 281 
 
 Kelly's Ford, 285 
 
 Kentucky, arming of , 43-47, 56-58, 154 
 
 Kerr, Orpheus C. (Robert H. Newell), 
 
 143-144 
 Key, Francis Scott, 218 
 King, Horatio, 239 
 Kingsbury, Charles P., 33-34, 126, 
 
 129, 200, 205, 281 
 Kinsman, Seth, 39 
 Kirkwood, Samuel J., 37 
 Knap, Rudd and Company, 157-158 
 
 Laidley, Theodore T. S., 211, 270, 272, 
 
 276-278, 297 
 Lane, James H., 223, 271 
 Lavender, Captain, 268 
 Lee, Robert E., 15, 202, 205, 257, 262, 
 
 293 
 
 Liebig, Justus, 212 
 
 "Lightning Brigade," see First Mount- 
 ed Rifle Brigade 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham (1 744-1 786), 39 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865), 7, 22, 
 28, 38, 42, 102, 194, 198, 297-298; 
 and Absterdam shell, 257-260, 271- 
 275, 279, 293, 296; and Ames 
 wrought iron cannon, 235-237, 245- 
 
INDEX 
 
 3^3 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham — cont. 
 
 247, 279-281; appearance, 3-4, 10- 
 11, 80, 245-246; and arms distribu- 
 tion, 40-41, 43-47; on arms short- 
 age, 37, 43; and Atwater rifling sys- 
 tem, 187; and balloons, 85-88; and 
 Beardslee electric detonator, 226- 
 227; and Benet, 96-97, 298; and 
 Berdan, 109-113, 154, 205-206, 
 261; and Berney incendiary fluid, 
 229, 232, 236-238; and body armor, 
 135-137; and breech-loading rifles, 
 99, 103-104, in, 284-285, 288, 
 299; and centrifugal guns, 1 39-141; 
 and Chace bullet, 52-54; and "cham- 
 pagne experiments," 89-90, 94-95; 
 and Charleston (S. C), 229, 232- 
 
 248, passim; and Cincinnati Breech- 
 loading Cannon, 126-128, 184-186, 
 201-202; and coffee-mill machine 
 gun, 119-123, 195-197, 199-200, 
 210, 251, 283, 291; and crank in- 
 ventors, 1 31-144, 175; and Dahl- 
 gren, 10, 17-21, 88, 98, 151-152, 
 173, 207-208, 213-215, 217, 226- 
 227, 236-237, 268; death and funer- 
 al, 294-295; and Diller's powder, 
 211-214, 225-227, 270, 296; and 
 Dingee contract, 54-56; and Ells- 
 worth breech-loading cannon, 128- 
 129; and end of war, 289, 292-293; 
 and First Bull Run, 47-48; First In- 
 auguration, 3-5; and Fleming incen- 
 diary fluid, 180-181, 183, 201, 292; 
 and foreign arms, 49-52, 54-56; and 
 Francis pontoons, 269; and Franklin 
 Buchanan, 6, 8-10; and Gardiner ex- 
 plosive bullet, 191-192; and Gat- 
 ling machine gun, 290-291; and 
 Goodwin breech-loading cannon, 
 184; and Halsted, 55-56, 231-232, 
 235-238; and Haupt questionnaire, 
 215-217; and Henry, 83-85, 88, 269; 
 and Hopkins gun carriage, 149-150; 
 and Hyde war rocket, 219; and in- 
 cendiary weapons, 180, 233, 245; as 
 inventor, 62-63, 65, 67, 292, 298; 
 and inventors, 70, 74-82, 216, 227, 
 291-292; and ironclad warships, 
 171-175; and Jones gun carriage, 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham — cont. 
 
 95-96; and Joshua C. Stoddard, 
 142-143; and Kentucky, 43-47, 56- 
 58; knowledge of small arms, 39; 
 loses interest in new weapons, 260; 
 and McClellan, 13, 48, 122-123, 
 167, 170, 232; and Marsh breech- 
 loader, 107-108, 202, 252; and Mil- 
 itary Armament Board, 149-150; 
 and mortar boats, 157, 159-167; and 
 mounted infantry, 253-254; and 
 niter supply, 146-147, 150, 211-212, 
 270; and outbreak of war, 15; at 
 Parrott foundry, 187-188, 298; and 
 Peckham cartridge, 220-223; an ^ 
 Perkins steam gun, 138; and Peter 
 Yates, 132-134; and Plant rocket 
 torpedo, 178; and Rafael Repeater 
 (machine gun), 208-211, 251; and 
 Ramsay, 93-95, 98, 140, 264-266, 
 272, 276, 298; and rifled cannon, 
 148, 186-188; and rifles, 39-40, 52; 
 and Ripley, 29-32, 34-36, 39-41, 53- 
 54, 82, 125-127, 130, 149, 167-169, 
 190, 264, 269; and Rollins breech- 
 loading cannon, 129-130, and Sever- 
 son, 175-176; and Short incendiary 
 shell, 179-182, 200-201, 232, 243; 
 and signal rockets, 269-270; and 
 Spencer breech-loader, 114-116, 261- 
 264, 267; and Strong breech-loading 
 carbine, 188-190, 193; and sub- 
 marines, 176-178; on supposed ex- 
 perts, 222; and Taylor fuse, 220; 
 and technology, 10-15, 60-62, 89, 
 216, 289-290, 299; and Totten, 82- 
 83, 88, 149-150, 175; and Trent af- 
 fair, 145, 150; visits Washington 
 Arsenal, 89-91, 95-96, 98, 119, 122, 
 140, 148, 185-186, 273-274, 292; 
 visits Washington Navy Yard, 8-10, 
 17-21, 43, 47, 89, 98, 114, 151-152, 
 *73, I75> 185-186, 209-210, 219, 
 221, 239-240, 259, 269; and War 
 Orders, 169-170; and water walkers, 
 134-135; and the weather, 152-153; 
 and Woodruff gun, 125-126; and 
 Worster, 182-183, 201; and Wurtz 
 artillery cartridge, 269 
 
 Lincoln, Edward B., 52 
 
3 6 4 
 
 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Lincoln, Mary Todd, 9, 44, 50, 84, 231, 
 
 294 
 Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, 44, 180 
 Lincoln, Robert T., 60-63, 237, 262 
 Lincoln, Thomas, 180 
 Lincoln, Thomas (Tad), 9, 231 
 Lincoln, William W., 9, 84, 183, 231 
 "Lincoln guns," 47 
 Littlefield, James, 78 
 Longstreet, James, 256-257, 285 
 Lowe, Thaddeus S. C, 85-88, 96 
 
 McCabe, Dr., 78 
 
 McCarty, Robert, 1 39-141 
 
 Machine guns, 118-119, 121. See also 
 coffee-mill gun, Gatling gun, Rafael 
 Repeater 
 
 McClellan, George B., 47, 93, 126, 
 151-152, 173, 195, 196, 198, 222; 
 and Armament Board, 148-149; and 
 arms purchases, 72; and Berdan, 
 no, 1 1 2-1 1 3, 155; and coffee-mill 
 gun, 122-123; and Dingee contract, 
 54-56; and incendiary weapons, 180, 
 200; last campaign, 205, 265; and 
 mortar boats, 157-158, 161, 167; 
 prewar career, 13; put in command 
 of Army of Potomac, 48; removed 
 from command, 231-232; and Spen- 
 cer rifle, 115; and War Orders, 170 
 
 McDowell, Irvin, 47, no 
 
 McKay sewing machine, 67 
 
 Macomber, David O., 239-240 
 
 Magoffin, Beriah, 47 
 
 Magruder, George A., 16 
 
 Magruder, John B., 198 
 
 Malvern Hill, 51, 105, 204 
 
 Mann, H. F., 74 
 
 Mansfield, Joseph K. F., no, 119 
 
 Marsh, Samuel Wilmer, 107-108, 202- 
 203, 252 
 
 Marsh breech-loading rifle, 99, 107- 
 108, in, 116, 202-203, 2 5 2 
 
 Marsh Patent Fire Arms Company, 
 252 
 
 Marye's Heights, 222 
 
 Mason, James M., 145, 150 
 
 Massachusetts regiments: 5th, 63; 6th, 
 15, 62; 8th, 62, 66; 37th, 287 
 
 Maxwell, James Clerk, 59 
 
 Maynadier, William, 32, 125, 168, 266 
 
 291 
 Meade, George G., 256-257, 262, 283- 
 
 284 
 Mechanicsville, 204 
 Meigs, Montgomery C, 30, 153, 160, 
 
 173-174, 188-189 
 Merrimac, 6, 150, 171-175, 177 
 Mexico, 76, 82, 141 
 Middleburg, 195 
 Mills, J. D., 118-123, 198, 250 
 Mitchell, William, 219 
 Monitor, 68, 172-175, 177, 204 
 Montague, Colonel, 287 
 Morgan, Edwin D., 109, 138, 208 
 Morgan, John H., 253-254 
 Morrill, Lot, 36 
 Mortar boats, 156-167 
 Mortars, 156-158, 160-167 
 Morton, Oliver P., 33, 38-39, 57, 254 
 Mullikin, Nathan, 103, 114-115 
 Murray, Francis, 225 
 Musket shells, see Bullets, explosive 
 Muskets, see Small arms 
 
 Napoleon guns, 124 
 
 National Academy of Sciences, 224 
 
 Nelson, William, 45-46 
 
 New Hampshire regiments: 2d, 257; 
 
 14th, 136 
 New Orleans, operations against, 157, 
 
 160, 162, 166-167, 182 
 New York Arsenal, 54-55 
 New York regiments: 1st, 95; 7th, 29, 
 
 62; nth (Ellsworth), 128; 31st, 
 
 200; 56th, 198-199, 206; 71st, 17- 
 
 18; 1 2th Militia, 197 
 Newbro, S. D., 121 
 Niagara, 158 
 Nicolay, John G., 75-76, 78-79, 131- 
 
 132 
 Niter, 145-147, 150, 211-212, 270 
 Norfolk Navy Yard, 159, 171 
 Norris, Hamilton, 217 
 Nugent, Edward, 118-119, 282 
 
 Olustee, 286-287 
 Opdyke, George, 252 
 Ordnance Bureau, Navy: in 1861, 15- 
 16, 19, 159; in 1862, 207-208, 216- 
 
INDEX 
 
 365 
 
 Ordnance Bureau, Navy — cont. 
 
 217; in 1863, 225; and inventors, 
 71-72, 74, 223-224, 268. See also 
 Dahlgren (John), Harwood, Wise 
 (Henry Augustus) 
 
 Ordnance Department, Army: under 
 Craig, 27-30, 147; under Dyer, 291, 
 293-298; and inventors, 70-74, 77, 
 79, 223-224; under Ramsay, 267, 
 271, 275-277; under Ripley, 30-34, 
 50, 260-261. See also Craig, Dyer, 
 Ramsay, Ripley (James) 
 
 Page, William, 74 
 
 Palmer, William, n 8-1 19 
 
 Parrott, Robert P., 97, 147-148, 187- 
 
 188, 236 
 Parrott rifled cannon, 124, 147-148, 
 
 186-188, 236, 240, 243-244, 247, 
 
 280, 283 
 Parrott shells, 124, 188, 260 
 Parsch, Adalbert, 74 
 Patent Office, 60-65, 141, 292 
 Pea Ridge, 183 
 Peckham, Peter W., 220-224 
 Peninsula Campaign, 170, 173, 198- 
 
 201, 218, 283 
 Penitentiary, United States, 90-91, 
 
 292 
 Pennsylvania regiments: 23rd, 50-51; 
 
 28th, 194-195; 49th, 200; 63rd, 287; 
 
 83rd, 199; 104th, 50; 150th, 103; 
 
 nth Cavalry, 218 
 Pensacola, 17-18, 21 
 Perkins, Jacob, 137 
 Permanent Commission, 224, 227 
 Perry, Matthew C, 5-6 
 Persia, 27 
 Petersburg, 279, 283, 285-286, 289- 
 
 290, 292-293 
 Philadelphia Navy Yard, 176, 225 
 Piatt, Donn, 169 
 Pierce, Oliver B., 177 
 Plant, Pascal, i77-r78 
 Poinsett, Joel R., 24-25 
 Pomeroy, Samuel C, 223 
 Pope, John, 197, 202, 205, 215-216 
 Porter, David D., 227, 240-242, 250, 
 
 283-284, 290; and mortar schooners, 
 
 157-161, 166-167 
 
 Porter, Evalina D., 241-242 
 Post, Colonel, 154-155 
 Pratt, C. E., 200, 206, 251 
 Putnam, George P., 138 
 
 Rafael, [George?], 208 
 
 Rafael Repeater (machine gun), 208- 
 211, 251 
 
 Ramsay, George D., 73, 181, 190, 245; 
 and Absterdam shell, 272-275, 279; 
 and Balch, 265-266, 271, 275-276; 
 and breech-loading cannon, 126; and 
 breech-loading rifles, 287-288; as 
 Chief of Ordnance, 264-267, 271, 
 275-277, 291; as commandant of 
 Washington arsenal, 92-95, 98, 265, 
 292, 298; and Ellsworth gun, 129, 
 197; last years, 298; and McCarty 
 gun, 140 
 
 Ramsay, George D. (Lt.), 271 
 
 Raymond, Charles, 142, 264 
 
 Reno, Jesse L., 32 
 
 Rhode Island regiments, 1st, 63-64, 66 
 
 Richardson, Dr., 78 
 
 Richmond, fall of, 293 
 
 Ricker, Samuel, 212, 296 
 
 Rifles, see Small arms, rifled 
 
 Rifling, 37-38, 187 
 
 Ripley, Adie, 24 
 
 Ripley, James W.: appearance, 22-23, 
 40; and arms contracts, 49-51, 55- 
 56; attempt to replace, 167-168; and 
 Berdan, 109, 112, 154-156, 261; and 
 breech-loading cannon, 126, 202; 
 and breech- loading rifles, 106-108, 
 112, 116, 154-155, 190, 203, 205, 
 252-256, 263-264, 288; as Chief of 
 Ordnance, 29-36, 40, 249, 260-261, 
 264-265; and coffee-mill guns, 120, 
 196-197, 200, 249-251, 283; decline 
 and fall, 260-261, 264, 266-267; and 
 foreign arms, 42-43; and incendiary 
 weapons, 180, 182, 201, 238, 292; 
 and individual inventors, 53-54, 108, 
 121, 125-128, 130, 138, 175, 182, 
 184, 190, 202, 223, 234-235, 238, 
 248, 252, 259-260, 271, 292; and 
 inventors, 53, 69-74, 81-82, 88, 95, 
 97, 131, 175. 179, 223-224, 268; 
 last years, 297-298; and Lincoln, 29- 
 
3 66 
 
 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Ripley, James W. — cont. 
 
 32, 34-36, 39-41, 53-54, 82, 125. 
 
 127, 130, 149, 167-169, 190, 264, 
 269; and Military Armament Board, 
 149; and mortar boats, 161-162, 167; 
 and niter supply, 146; prewar career, 
 23-27, 158; question of loyalty, 127- 
 
 128, 251, 264-265; and Rafael Re- 
 peater, 210- 211, 251; and rifled can- 
 non, 148; and rifles for the 1st Ver- 
 mont, 40-41; and small arms crisis 
 of 1861, 37, 39-44, 48-52, 55-56; 
 and smoothbore muskets, 39-42; and 
 Spencer rifles, 116, 252-256, 263- 
 264; and standardization of artillery, 
 124-125; and Stanton, 167-169, 184, 
 253, 261, 264 
 
 Ripley, Roland, 24 
 
 Ripley, Roswell S., 128 
 
 Ripley, Sarah D., 24, 249 
 
 River Queen, 292 
 
 Rock Island Arsenal, 42 
 
 Rockets, 5, 143, 177-178, 180, 217- 
 
 220, 269 
 Rodgers, John, 160, 243 
 Rodman, Thomas J., 70, 93, 149, 168, 
 
 224, 264 
 Rollins, George A., 129 
 Rollins breech-loading cannon, 129- 
 
 130 
 Rosecrans, William S., 65, 213, 250- 
 
 251, 254-255, 258, 262, 282 
 Rousseau, Lovell H., 56, 254-255, 261- 
 
 264, 266-267, 286 
 Russell, William H., 95 
 
 St. Louis, 172 
 
 St. Louis Arsenal, 93 
 
 Saltpeter, see Niter 
 
 San Jacinto, 145 
 
 Savannah, operations against, 186, 
 289 
 
 Schenck, John H., 282-283 
 
 Schuyler, George L., 49 
 
 Scott, Thomas A., 49, 110-112, 163 
 
 Scott, Winfield, 4, 30, 82, 187, 194, 
 212, 218; and Berdan, 108-109; and 
 Lowe, 86-87; an d Ripley, 25, 29 
 
 Seven Days' Battles, 200-201, 204-205 
 
 Severson, Benjamin, 175-176, 188, 224 
 
 Seward, William H., 47, 64, 77-78, 
 
 118, 173; and niter supply, 146, 150; 
 
 at Washington Navy Yard, 18, 20, 
 
 43, 209, 219 
 Sharps, Christian, 101 
 Sharps breech-loading rifle, 46, 101, 
 
 104, 106, 111-113, 154-156, 204- 
 
 205, 254, 256-257, 262-263, 284- 
 285 
 
 Shield, E. M., 162 
 
 Shenkl shell, 124 
 
 Sheridan, Philip, 298-299 
 
 Sherman, William T., 228, 250, 282, 
 
 286, 289 
 Sherwin, Walter G., 126-128, 184 
 Sholes, Christopher, 134 
 Short, Levi, 179-182, 192, 200-201, 
 
 206, 232, 241-244 
 Sickles, Daniel E., 252 
 Signals, night, 84-85, 269-270 
 Simmons, James F., 49 
 
 Sixth Corps, 251, 287 
 
 Skinner, Benjamin F., 286-288 
 
 Slidell, John, 145, 150 
 
 Small arms, distribution, 37, 43-47, 
 50-51, 56-58, 91, 153; foreign, 40, 
 42-43, 49-52, 54-56, 106-107, 135, 
 287; manufacture, 42, 48, 106-107, 
 168, 202-204, 252, 2 78; rifled, 37- 
 43, 48-56; smoothbore, 37-43, 52- 
 53; supply, 33-34, 37, 42-43, 48-52, 
 54-58, 106-107, 251-252, 263-264, 
 278. See also breech-loading rifles, 
 Springfield rifle 
 
 Smith, Caleb B., 52, 65, 74, 91 
 
 Smith, J. S., 135 
 
 Smith, Joseph, 177 
 
 Smith, Kirby, 296 
 
 Smithsonian Institution, 74, 80, 83-85 
 
 Spain, 76 
 
 Spaulding, Elbridge G., 179 
 
 Speed, Joshua F., 45-46, 57-58, 93, 
 
 133, 154 
 
 Spencer, Christopher, 11 3-1 14, 116, 
 203, 253, 261-263 
 
 Spencer: carbine, 114-115, 253, 287- 
 288, 290, 295; Repeating Rifle Com- 
 pany, 116, 203-204, 223, 253, 256, 
 263; rifle, 114-116, 203-204, 206, 
 252-256, 261-264, 267, 285-287 
 
INDEX 
 
 367 
 
 Sprague, William, 232 
 
 Springfield (Mass.) Armory, 25-27, 
 102, 109, 115, 167-168, 203, 277, 
 290; production, 42, 48, 168, 252, 
 278 
 
 Springfield rifle, 41-42, 69, 99-100, 
 105, 107, 109, 112, 263, 284 
 
 Stanton, Edwin M., 52, 130, 170, 173, 
 175, 204, 293-296; and Absterdam 
 affair, 271; appointed to War De- 
 partment, 153-154, 202-203; charac- 
 terized, 153-154, 169; and Dyer, 
 291; and Ferriss gun, 238-239; and 
 incendiary weapons, 237-238, 292; 
 and inventors, 77, 79, 136, 184, 269; 
 and mortar beds, 162-163; and Ram- 
 say, 93, 265-266, 275-277, 298; and 
 Ripley, 167-169, 184, 253, 261, 
 264; and Sharpshooters, 154-155, 
 206 
 
 State of Georgia, 178 
 
 Stebbins, E. N., 194 
 
 Stevens, Thaddeus, 203 
 
 Stoddard, Joshua, 142-143 
 
 Stoddard, William O., 76, 79, 99, 102, 
 107 
 
 Stonewall Brigade, 256 
 
 Strasbaugh, Barnard A., 286 
 
 Strong, Samuel, 188-190, 193 
 
 Submarines, 73, 176-178 
 
 Sully, Alfred, 281-282 
 
 Swamp Angel, 243-244, 247, 283 
 
 Symington, John, 163 
 
 Taney, Roger B., 4 
 
 Tanner, James, 291, 294, 296 
 
 Taylor, Thomas, 220 
 
 Technology: Northern, 59-69; South- 
 ern, 67-68 
 
 Tennessee River campaign, 156, 159- 
 160, 164-165 
 
 Thayer, Eli, 65, 128-129, 282 
 
 Thomas, George H., 282, 287 
 
 Thomas, Lorenzo, 169 
 
 Thompson, Richard W., 108 
 
 Tinker, Charles, 11 -12 
 
 Tippett, Edward, 1 31-132 
 
 Todd's Tavern, 285 
 
 Torpedo, self-propelled, 178 
 
 Totten, Joseph G., 82-83, 88, 96, 149- 
 
 150, 175, 179, 186 
 Townsend, Edward D., 81 
 Treasury Building, 22, 60, 63 
 Treasury Park, 52-53, 79, 102-104, 
 
 115, 180-181, 183, 237-238, 262- 
 
 263 
 Trent affair, 145, 147-148, 150, 211 
 Twain, Mark, see Clemens 
 
 Union Defence Committee, 118, 128 
 Union Firearms Company, 202-203, 
 
 252 
 Union Repeating Gun, see Coffee-mill 
 
 gun 
 United States Sharpshooters, 109-113, 
 
 116-117, 154-156, 203-206, 256-257, 
 
 261, 284-285 
 
 Vail, Alfred, 61 
 
 Van Wyck, Charles H., 198-199, 206, 
 
 283 
 Venezuela, 250 
 Vermont regiments, 1st, 40-41 
 Verne, Jules, 176 n 
 Vicksburg, 232, 235, 241-242, 253, 
 
 257, 260, 282 
 
 Wade, Benjamin F., 184 
 
 Wallace, Dr., 78 
 
 Wapping Heights, 105 
 
 Warren, Gouverneur K., 283 
 
 Warwick Court House, 199 
 
 Washburn, "Cy," 281 
 
 Washington, D. C: in 1861, 3-4, 15- 
 17, 19, 22, 29-30, 62-63; in 1862, 
 91-92, 152-153, 205, 207; in 1863, 
 255, 262; in 1864, 273-274, 287; in 
 1865, 289, 292-296 
 
 Washington (D. C.) Arsenal, 98, 194, 
 200, 264-266, 282, 292, 294, 298; 
 appearance and functions, 89-94; 
 weapons trials at, 90, 95-96, 122, 
 135, 140-141, 148, 187, 190, 201, 
 273-274, 279, 290. See also Ramsay 
 
 Washington (D. C.) Navy Yard, 4, 
 22, 47, 208, 218, 293, 295; appear- 
 ance and functions, 5-9, 16-21, 91, 
 151; weapons trials at, 89, 114, 144, 
 
 151, 185-186, 200-201, 209-210, 
 
368 
 
 LINCOLN AND THE TOOLS OF WAR 
 
 Washington (D. C.) Navy Yard — cont. 
 219-221, 259, 269-270. See also 
 Dahlgren 
 
 Watertown Arsenal, 36, 168 
 
 Water walking, 134-135 
 
 Watson, Peter H., 36, 215-216, 253, 
 266-267; characterized, 169; leaves 
 War Department, 275-278; and 
 new weapons, 78, 177, 192, 203, 
 213, 221, 223, 257, 282; and Rip- 
 ley, 169, 250, 260-261, 264 
 
 Weed, Thurlow, 50, 147, 211, 271 
 
 Welles, Gideon, 106, 114, 157, 173, 
 178, 232, 235; characterized, 20; 
 and Dahlgren, 16, 20-21, 207-208, 
 214-215, 227, 240-241; and Diller's 
 powder, 225, 227; on Haupt affair, 
 217; and inventors, 71, 175, 223- 
 224 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 136-138 
 
 Wells, David, 12 
 
 Weston, Charles, 35-36 
 
 Wetherill, Charles M., 212-213, 225, 
 270, 296 
 
 White, Andrew, 64 
 
 White Lot, see Treasury Park 
 
 Whitney, James, 26-27 
 
 Whitworth guns, 124, 282 
 
 Wiard steel cannon, 124, 149 
 
 Wikoff, Henry, 49-50 
 
 Wilder, Edward B., 121, 188 
 
 Wilder, John T., 255-256, 286, 288 
 
 Wilkes, Charles, 145 
 
 Williamsburg, 135 
 
 Wills, George, 200 
 
 Wilson, Henry, 79, 138, 140 
 
 Wilson, James H., 287, 290 
 
 Winans, Ross, 139 
 
 Wise, Henry Alexander, 158-159 
 
 Wise, Henry Augustus, 225, 238, 256; 
 and Ames, 236-237, 279-280; career 
 and character, 16, 146, 158-159, 
 207-208, 268-269, 297; and mortar 
 boats, 158-163, 167, 171; and other 
 new weapons, 175, 177-178, 230, 
 290 
 
 Wise, John, 85 
 
 Wood, John, 125 
 
 Woodruff, James, 125 
 
 Woodward and Cox, 123, 195, 197- 
 198 
 
 Worster, J. Rutherford, 182-183, 192, 
 201, 292 
 
 Worster, James, 182-183 
 
 Wurtz, Henry, 269 
 
 Wyman, Jeffries, 12 
 
 Yates, Peter, 132-134, 224 
 Yorktown, 198-199, 201, 206, 218, 
 230 
 
 Zane, Orloff A., 258-259, 271-275, 
 278-279 
 
t 
 
 
 I 
 
» 
 
 ^^K-tft 
 
 i 
 
(Continued from front flap) 
 
 bers-some fully drawn, some sketched. Lobbyists, 
 one discovers, were much the same then as now. 
 
 Lincoln was in the thick of it. He wanted mortar 
 boats to help open the upper Mississippi as they 
 had helped Porter take New Orleans. When he 
 discovered a big snafu had delayed production he 
 lost his temper. Heads nearly rolled. 
 
 One J. D. Mills came to Washington with a 
 crude machine gun soon christened the cofTee-mill 
 gun. Both Lincoln and that gadgeteer Ben Butler 
 were delighted by its ingenious mechanism. A few 
 guns saw service. 
 
 Probably the biggest and longest controversy 
 involved muzzle-loading and breech-loading rifles. 
 Ripley liked the muzzle-loader, which was cheap 
 and available. Soldiers wanted breechloaders. A 
 man needed almost a minute to load a muzzle- 
 loader and he had to stand up while he did it. He 
 could lie down and load a breechloader at least 
 five times as fast. Lincoln had a Spencer breech- 
 loading repeater given to him. He used to rest his 
 nerves by target shooting with it in Treasury Park. 
 He liked it. A few got past Ripley. 
 
 In addition to these and other standard arms, 
 the inventors offered a wide catalogue of innova- 
 tions: rockets, steam guns, liquid fire, a subma- 
 rine, explosive bullets, a proposed poison gas, and 
 so on down to the fantastic. The more portable 
 items they brought with them into Lincoln's study. 
 
 Robert Bruce spent three years digging his ma- 
 terial out of the archives. It would have been worth 
 twice the time. This is not only the arms story of 
 the Union army, not only a new aspect of Lincoln, 
 but a big American story of Washington in war- 
 time which will infallibly appeal to everybody who 
 ever had any contact with the armed services. 
 
From the Foreword by 
 
 BENJAMIN P. THOMAS 
 
 noted Lincoln biographer 
 
 Behind the solemn, furrowed countenance of Abraham 
 Lincoln was an inquisitive mind. On the practical level 
 Lincoln's curiosity directed itself, among other things, to 
 mechanical devices. The war came, and Lincoln the Presi- 
 dent, in whatever time he could spare, turned his mechan- 
 ical bent to the improvement of the tools of war. The 
 subject, though touched upon, has never been adequately 
 explored. In developing it fully, Robert V. Bruce has writ- 
 ten an original and exciting book, one which probes new 
 recesses of Lincoln's mind and personality. And there is 
 a great deal more to the story than has been supposed. 
 
 Besides finding a fresh theme in the much-tilled Lincoln 
 field, Bruce has presented it delightfully. His characters 
 breathe. He explains technical matters with such simple 
 ease that they cease to be technical. The world's frantic 
 search for new weapons in our day adds to the book's 
 significance. 
 
 I am pleased and proud to help give it a healthy start 
 in life. With something of the same sense of satisfaction 
 an obstetrician must feel in ushering a sound, sturdy, ap- 
 pealing creation of another sort into the world, I slap it 
 heartily on the backside of the cover and commend it to 
 your careful attention.