On August 17, 1863, Christopher M. Spencer, inventor of Spencer rifle, presents his new repeating rifle to President Abraham Lincoln and demonstrates how to assemble it. Lincoln was always keen on implementing new military technology during the Civil War, although his generals were not always so eager to follow his lead. Chief of Ordnance James Wolfe Ripley argued that more advanced weaponry was not self-evidently better in the field. Complicated weapons in the hands of untested soldiers and poor weather conditions led to vast inefficiencies in his mind, so Ripley denied the use of some of the new-fangled ideas Lincoln liked.
Lincoln did understand this concept and rarely overruled Ripley and officers in the field if they felt they knew better. John Hay acknowledged that “Lincoln had a quick comprehension of mechanical principles and often detected a flaw in an invention which the contriver had overlooked.” But just as keenly he understood how some mechanics could be useful, so Lincoln continued to push the idea of advancing weaponry as much as was practical. When something of particular value in his mind came along, he was more assertive in telling Ripley and others to put it into circulation. One example was the Spencer repeating rifle.
Spencer was born in Manchester, Connecticut, just east of the capital, Hartford. Only thirty years old when he first walked into the White House without challenge carrying one of his rifles and a supply of cartridges, Spencer was already an avid inventor. He would later go on to invent a steam-powered horseless carriage. He had previously worked for Samuel Colt’s firearms factory. This new rifle featured breech-loading repeating rounds capability, a huge step forward from the standard issue musket.
Most breech-loading rifles were still single-shot weapons. The Spencer had a seven-round tube magazine that loaded from the butt of the rifle, feeding each shell into the breech with a lever that expelled the spent shell. Experienced users could fire twenty rounds per minute, compared to only two or three with a muzzleloader. The short barrel made it perfect for cavalry, which was its main use both during and after the Civil War. Lincoln personally tested the rifle. Spencer had a private meeting with the president, who found the mechanism fascinating. Spencer later suggested, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, that Lincoln put the rifle back together after watching Spencer take it apart and lay the parts on the table. The next day, Lincoln and Spencer went out to the field behind the White House, set up a board “about six inches wide and three feet high, with a black spot on either end, about forty yards away.” Six of Lincoln’s seven shots hit close to the bull’s-eye. John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary, admitted that “the President made some pretty good shots.”
Finding the Spencer repeating rifle to be a sufficient advancement, Lincoln overruled Ripley’s reticence and ordered the military to purchase ten thousand units for distribution. By the end of the war, nearly one hundred thousand Spencer rifles and carbines were in service. Various breechloaders, rifles, carbines, and repeaters by Spencer, Enfield, Sharps, Whitworth, Springfield, and others played important roles in the war, including Berdan’s sharpshooters at Gettysburg and the critical Battle of Chickamauga.
[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, available from all booksellers now]
[Photo credit: Hmaag, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons]
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
