10/05/2019
Repeaters: Successors to the Rifle Musket – Part 2
Part 1 of this article observed that, by the mid-Nineteenth Century, many efforts were being devoted to the creation of repeating fi****ms meant to supersede the rifle musket. Here I will review a trio of weapons that, in my opinion, were milestones in this endeavor: C**t’s New Model Revolving Rifle, the Spencer Repeating Rifle, and the Henry Rifle.
C**t’s New Model Revolving Rifle
In 1836 Samuel C**t patented the five-shot C**t Paterson revolver, the first commercial repeating firearm employing a revolving cylinder with multiple chambers aligned with a stationary barrel. Because C**t lacked the facilities to manufacture pistols, he collaborated with the armory run by the family of Eli Whitney Jr., the son of the cotton-gin developer and pioneer in manufacturing with interchangeable parts. By the time the Civil War broke out, Samuel C**t was producing revolvers for personal, law enforcement and military use.
Even as the C**t’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company’s handgun designs evolved, the firm sought ways to broaden its market. In 1855 the company had a revolving rifle that became the first of its type to be adopted by the United States military. However, a series of problems kept it from being issued until 1857. The Model 1855 was available in several calibers, .36 and .44 (six-shot cylinder) and .56 (five shot). In addition, the rifle could be ordered with barrels of 15, 18, 21 or 24 inches. So many variants must have made inventory management a headache.
Paper cartridges (ignited by percussion caps) were the revolving rifle’s Achilles Heel. Gunpowder leaking from improperly sealed cartridges could lodge in recesses around the cylinder. Hot gas leaking from the gap between the firing cylinder and barrel touched off this loose powder, with the result that all cartridges in the cylinder were set off, simultaneously. This phenomenon, known as “chain fire,” endangered the rifle’s firer, whose face and hands were in close proximity to the cylinder. To counter this shortcoming, soldiers were instructed to thoroughly clean their C**ts, or load and fire one round at a time. The latter cut the ground from under the C**t’s design as a repeater!
Despite this flaw the U.S. government purchased over 4,500 C**t New Model Revolving Rifles during the war. There was at least one instance where the C**t showed its combat potential: during the Battle of Chickamauga (September 10-18, 1863) the volume of fire put out by the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry convinced the Confederates opposing them that they were up against an entire division of Union troops. Despite such isolated bright spots, the military decided to discontinue use of the Model 1855.
Spencer Repeating Rifle
The design for Christopher Spencer’s repeating rifles and carbines was finalized in 1860. A lever action, magazine fed weapon, the Spencer was the world’s first metallic cartridge military repeater. Its ammunition was .56-56 caliber, copper rimfire cartridges, a technological advance that cured the C**t’s chain fire malady. A great success, between 1860 and 1869 over 200,000 examples were manufactured. The Union Army was the Spencer’s primary adopter, with the cavalry favoring the shorter, carbine model.
A lever on the Spencer extracted an expended case from the breech, after which a fresh cartridge was fed into it from a seven-round magazine located in the buttstock. The hammer had to be manually cocked each time, before the weapon was fired. Once the magazine was emptied it had to be removed and refilled before firing could resume. Ammunition replenishment was achieved by putting individual rounds into the magazine tube, or by using a device called the Blakeslee Cartridge Box. The Blakeslee Box was a wood-and-leather container with a shoulder strap. It held six, ten or thirteen preloaded tin tubes, each of which contained seven rounds. These tubes’ contents could be poured into the Spencer’s buttstock, enabling a rapid return to action.
The rapid-firing repeaters gave military authorities pause. They worried that soldiers would quickly expend all their ammunition, making resupply a logistical nightmare. This concern didn’t fade with the passage of time: I understand the same objections arose when the first M-16 rifles, capable of being fired in full-automatic mode, were used during the Vietnam War. To allay what came to be called “spray and pray,” the M-16’s firing selector was subsequently modified to feature three-round burst fire option.
The Spencer was initially adopted by the United States Navy, then the Army followed suit. This repeater experienced its baptism of fire in the Gettysburg Campaign of 1863, in the hands of the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves. The Spencer proved to be a very reliable battlefield weapon. Capable of sustained fire of 20 rounds per minute, its jacketed ammunition was resistant to moisture and rough handling. Sometimes Spencer’s were captured by Confederate troops but the inability of their government to manufacture ammunition for them limited their usefulness. When the Spencer was declared surplus it was sold to France, where it was utilized in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
The Henry Rifle
I believe the Henry Rifle’s appearance represented a watershed in American military rifle design. Like the Spencer Repeater, the Henry was a lever action, breech loading, magazine fed gun with metallic cartridges. The features that set Benjamin Tyler Henry’s design apart from its forerunners were a tube magazine mounted under the barrel, and the fact that, jacking the lever not only ejected the spent cartridge, but also cocked the hammer when the fresh round entered the chamber. The magazine was loaded from the front and was capable of housing an astonishing fifteen .44 caliber rimfire bullets, plus one in the chamber.
A slow rate of production (150 – 200 per month until 1864), combined with a high price ($40 and up) severely limited the Henry’s battlefield use. Indeed, only about 14,000 examples had been manufactured by the time production ended in 1866. The Federal government purchased fewer than 1,800 Henry’s during the Civil War, but as many as 7,000 of them were bought by individual soldiers, with their own money. Spending more than forty dollars on a weapon, when a private earned just $13 per month showed the confidence engendered by this new firearm. Indeed, it is reported that many soldiers who reenlisted in 1864 used the bounty associated with this commitment to avail themselves of a Henry Rifle of their own.
As was the case with the Spencer, the Henry’s high rate of fire made standard infantry tactics of the day obsolete. It was issued primarily to raiding parties, skirmishers, and scouts. The few Rebels fortunate enough to find themselves in possession of a Henry Rifle were once again hobbled by the Confederate armory’s inability to manufacture its ammunition. When famed Confederate cavalry commander Colonel John Mosby encountered the Henry for the first time, he is reputed to have referred to it as “that damned Yankee rifle that can be loaded on Sunday and fired all week.” This description stuck with it ever afterward.
The Henry Rifle appeared in a handful of Civil War actions, including the Battle of Franklin in 1864 but it really came into its own during the Plains Wars: many of the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors that defeated General George A. Custer’s 7th Cavalry troops at the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn were armed with Henry repeaters.
Unlike the C**t and Spencer repeating rifles, the Henry design lived on after the Civil War. It evolved first into the renowned Wi******er Model 1866, whose side gate loading mechanism overcame the challenge of having to load a tube magazine. The Wi******er Model 1873 became the most famous lever action Wi******er, being called “The Gun that Won the West.”
In Conclusion
The weapons covered in this article represent just the tip of the repeating firearm iceberg. Each had its plusses and minuses. Fielded in the midst of a turbulent era in American history, they were the products of men whose desire was to sell a cutting edge weapon to the government, and to—forgive the allusion—make a killing. I hope you have found my exploration of this topic to be of interest. Please invite your friends to visit and follow this page. Thank you!
