First I would like to mention a new book "Arming the World" published this year. A very interesting book with tons of information. I had to reread the first 110 pages three times he has so much information crammed into them.

To begin with we really have to go back 65 years to 1795 when the new fledgling government setup two National Armories One in Springfield, Mass and the other in Harpers Ferry Virginia. The person that actually picked these locations was a fellow name G Washington. Why were they selected??? Both on rivers and both inland. The rivers were for water power and for shipping by barge and in land was away from the coast in case of an invasion which would come from the sea.

Both arsenals made thousands and thousands of muskets from 1795 up until the Civil War. From inception until 1842 everything was in the form of Flintlock Muskets and pistols. From 1808 on the government also purchased quantities of muskets from private manufacturers. By 1840 the Arsenals and armories had thousands muskets in inventory almost all in 69 caliber smoothbore.

Something happened in the 1830s the percussion cap came into being which made the Flintlock musket obsolete.

In 1841 the government adopted the percussion Model 1841 rifle, called the Mississippi rifle in 54 caliber, which was produced by Harpers Ferry Armory and a number of sub contractors. Also in 1842 both Armories started producing the Model 1842 smooth bore Musket in 69 caliber. This is where it really starts to get interesting.

One of the subcontractors for the Mississippi rifle was a company in Windsor Vermont, Robbins and Lawrence. Robbins and Lawrence were engineers and machinists. In order to lower the price so they could get the contract they built a number of machines to make the Mississippi rifle with a minimum of hand work. The first contact they got was for 10,000 rifles within an allotted time frame which they made with time to spare. All parts were made to exact gauges and interchangeable
This concept was developed by Whitney when they were making Flintlock muskets.

Why did I single out Robbins and Lawrence???

In 1851 England had the Crystal Palace grand exhibition in London which basically a worlds fair. The US sent a small display and in that little minimal display were 6 Mississippi rifles made by Robbins and Lawrence. The British Ordinance officers were literally blown away that these rifles were made almost entirely by machine and all parts were interchangeable. British long arms were made by machinery but much of the fitting work was by hand. They had barrel makers, lock makers and stockers.

The British immediately sent a delegation to the US and visited a number of gun manufacturers in New England. The delegation spent $100,000 and bought 57 machines from Ames and Robbins and Lawrence which were shipped back to England to Enfield Lock. This was the formation of the British Royal Small Arms Manufactory at Enfield Lock. Years later one US general visiting Enfield was surprised to find most of the machinery with Ames and Robbins and Lawrence name plates. One of the machines that profiled butt stocks was in production at Enfield for over 100 years.

The original Robbins and Lawrence factory in Windsor Vermont is still standing and it is now the American Museum of Precision Machinery. It is a great place to visit and has a number of the original machines that are still operational.

This bringing the British into the picture. In 1851 the British developed a rifled 70 caliber musket. This actual musket was used in the Crimean war. It used a variation of what we call a Minnie Ball. It shot a monster 750 grain bullet but the accuracy was far superior to the smooth bore musket. By 1853 they had reduced the bore to .577 and the manufacture of the Enfield musket was started on the new US purchased machinery.

The development of the British cartridge itself could be the subject of a two hour talk. I would refer you to a book "The English Cartridge" by Bret Gibbons. He has done a great job researching the development of the bullet and cartridge. Bret has a shop in Gettysburg called Paper Cartridges and he makes and sells reproduction British and American cartridges. The 1853 bullet was the basic Minne Ball that we know today but with an iron plug in the hollow base. The object of the iron plug was upon the explosion of the powder the iron plug would be driven into the base expanding the bullet into the rifling. The cartridge was paper wrapped and the outside paper lubricated. This basically became a paper patched bullet. With the outside lube it was subject to collecting dirt and grime which would make it difficult to load.

In 1853 James Burton at Harpers Ferry experimented with the English bullet design and found that the iron plug was unnecessary and by adding lubricant grooves the bullet was very accurate and the paper cartridge he developed was must easier to manufacture. This became the basis of the Model 1855 Springfield Rifle Musket 58 caliber along with the Maynard tape primer.

In 1854, Burton left Harpers Ferry to take a job with the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts, which supplied both federal armories (Harpers and Springfield) with precision machinery for the manufacture of firearms. Just one year later, in June 1855, Burton accepted a five-year contract as Chief Engineer of the Royal Small Arms Manufactory in Enfield Lock, England. Here, Burton was responsible for setting up new production machinery purchased in the United States, much of it from Ames. In 1861 Burton joined the Confederate Army and was put in charge of Richmond Armory.

Lets pick a year and look at the status of US federal firearms. 1860… Five years into the production of the 1855 rifled musket about 60,000 had been produced about 1/3 stored in southern arsenals. The government had about 400,000 smoothbore muskets many of them flintlocks in inventory. Of this number 160,000 were considered not suitable for use. Since the adoption of the 1855 many of the 1842 smoothbore were rifled and fitted with long range rear sights. In 1857 Remington was contracted to make 20,000 percussion locks and breeches which Frankfort Arsenal used to convert Model 1816 Flintlocks to percussion and at the same time rifled the barrels.

Hewes and Philips in Newark, NJ modified 25,000 flintlock muskets to percussion and rifled many of them. Other contractors also did the same. War breaks out in 1861 and the confederates take Harpers Ferry immediately. Lincoln calls for 100,000 volunteers and what do you arm them with??? Of course the 1855 Springfield was the arm but they only had about 40,000 the other 20,000 or so were in southern hands. The remaining troops were armed with an assortment of smoothbore and rifled 69 caliber muskets. Now what does the government do….they panic of course. Springfield Armory goes into full production of a new model the 1861 which was really just the 1855 without the Maynard tape primer system. This made it easier and faster to produce. The other thing the Union did was to contract with anyone that could make a musket. Within a few months they had over 25 contacts with manufacturers for muskets. Many of the contractors were not able to ever deliver but many did from small to large quantities. We all know Colt made over 200,000 revolvers for the Union during the war but they also made 100,000 58 caliber special model rifled muskets. They were excellent well made and became the basis of the Model 1863 made at Springfield Armory.

The last rifled musket made by Springfield was the 1863 type II made from 1864 thru the end of the war. This was the 1863 with band springs added. It was found that the 1863 without bands that the bands became loose when the stock shrank or dried out a bit. During the war the Union made or purchased over 1,000,000 rifled muskets.

Those are the basic models made here in the US and the other that should be mentioned is the P53 Enfield style rifled muskets that were purchased in Europe.

In the 1990s I wrote a booklet called the "Reenactors Guide to Shooting the Rifled Musket". To write this booklet I tested 12 different reproduction muskets with different styles of Minnie bullets, different powder charges and recorded my findings and recommendations for shooting the rifled musket. How accurate was the rifled musket as compared to the smoothbore musket? Shooting an old smoothbore you were lucky to hit a man size target at 50 to 75 yards. Everything was in ranks and volley fire. Taking a 58 caliber rifled musket it is easy to hit a man-sized target at 200 yards.

To illustrate how accurate the rifle musket is; in the 1990s while shooting individual matches at the N-SSA Nationals I looked over and saw my good friend George Garrison sitting on the ground holding his musket. I asked George "what is wrong?" and he said to look through the scope. What I saw was a 10 shot target which was a 98 out of 100, a National record. That record stood for almost ten years and George shot it was an original Colt rifled musket!

You have to remember that even though the 58 caliber rifled musket was accurate, the practice was only to teach the average soldier how to load and fire, not aiming and target practice. It was not until after the Civil War that that target practice became a standard practice.

I would like to close by telling a story about one person you may not have heard much about. His name was Marcellus Hartley. Hartley, with Schuyler and Graham formed a company Schuyler, Hartley and Graham in New City in 1854. They were providers of Military Goods. If you were an officer you went to them to get your tailored uniform and nice dress sword and side arm. They were not surplus dealers at the time and they imported many of the items from Europe.

In 1861 Marcellus Hartley, because of his European contacts, was commissioned by US government, given a pot of money, and sent to England to buy any muskets he could. This was to help arm to Union and to keep the Confederate agents for buying them. He was very successful and during the war. He was able to purchase over 200,000 muskets for the Union.

Now why did I pick out him to talk about?? Hartley was a business man and by the end of the war he felt the future was in metallic cartridges. During the war the Union purchased over 100 million metallic cartridges for Spencers, Maynards, Burnsides, Gallegers etc. At the end of the war the government cancelled all contracts which let several of the cartridge manufacturers almost bankrupt.

Marcellus Hartley bought up these small cartridge companies, moved them to Bridgeport, Conn and formed Union Metallic Cartridge Company and started cranking out cartridges for the commercial market, which was starting to boom after the war.

Thats not the end of the story. In the 1880s when Remington went into receivership, he bought Remington and formed Remington - UMC. He was also involved with Maxim on some electrical inventions which lead to the founding of Westinghouse. At one point he also owned part of Winchester.
He died in 1902 one of the wealthiest men in the country, just two hours before he was going to meet with John Browning to discuss Browning's new autoloading shotgun.