Army Revolver Contract
O
n January 2, 1864, ordnance inspectors accepted the final delivery of Remington revolvers on the contract of July 6, 1863. Remington was now armed with a new contract for 64,900 army revolvers, the largest contract for small arms granted by the department during the war.Remington’s success in negotiating such a large order was facilitated by the department’s diffi-culties in concluding an agreement with Colt the previous October. With the new modifica-tions incorporated during the previous year, the department now recognized Remington revolvers as the finest available. The accolades received by the Remington New Models were not lost on the military establishments of foreign governments. Near the end of1863, the Swiss gov-ernment requested a sample revolver from the Ordnance Department. George D. Ramsey, chief of ordnance, ordered a revolver from Remington to satisfy that request; on January 16, he acknowledged its receipt:
Gentlemen,
Your letter of the7th inst. stating that you forwarded the Pistol for the Government of Switzerland, enclosing invoice and bill of lading for same, is received. The pistol itself came duly to hand today in good order and condition.1
On January 11, Ramsey contacted both Remington and the inspector of contract arms, William A. Thornton, concerning the sample revolvers the former was required to furnish for their new contract:
Gentlemen,
Your letter of the8th inst. is received as well as the model Pistol mentioned therein. The Pistol you sent to Col. Thornton in New York should first have been sent to this office and forwarded from here to Col. Thornton.2
Sir,
Messrs. E. Remington & Sons in a letter dated the8th inst. state that they had forwarded to you on that day a model pistol. This pistol should first have been sent to this office, and transmitted since to you.
You will be pleased to examine this new arm and if it meets with your approval, forward it to this office at earliest convenience.3
Three days later, Ramsey urged both Remington and Thornton to hasten revolver deliveries:
Gentlemen,
I have to request that you will expedite as much as possible your deliveries of Revolvers.
You have6,500 due on your Contract for 64,750 [sic] this month. Revolvers are urgently needed. Please report what your deliveries will be.4
Sir,
I have to request that you will urge on as rapidly as possible the manufacture of the revolvers due from E. Remington & Sons and from the Starr Arms Co. as they are urgently needed.5
On January 20, Remington responded to Ramsey’s letter of the fourteenth:
Sir,
In reply to your communication of the14th we would respectfully state that since the 1st of Jany. we have delivered to the Government1,800 Army Revolvers and will be able, we believe to deliver2,000 to 2,500 more by the last of the month.
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Figure 58
Portrait of boy soldier, Morris Gallery of Cumberland, Nashville, Tennessee. (Courtesy:
Library of Congress)
We have been greatly interrupted and retarded in our work in consequence of stock used for the frame of the Revolver having been lost at sea with the vessel on which it was shipt [sic] from England. But for this we would have been able to have delivered the number our contract calls for this month.
We believe that in the future we will be able to furnish the requisite number called for by the contract.6
Remington was either inordinately optimistic about the number of revolvers that its armories could produce or was becoming more adept at prevarication to pacify the department.
At the time that this letter was penned, the company had delivered only thirteen hundred revolvers and would deliver only twelve hundred more in January; revolver production for this month was down one thousand from the previous month.
On January 22, Ramsey again contacted both Thornton and Remington to advise them that they had received erroneous advice in the department’s previous communications of January 11:
Sir,
The letter of the11th inst from this office in reference to the model pistol furnished to you by Mr. Remington & Sons, was by a clerical error, and made to convey an erroneous idea. The words “charges you” should be inserted after the word “this office” in the fifth line. I would state for your information the following facts with regard to the inspection of small Arms.
The regulations of this office now require that two samples be furnished under any contract.
REMINGTON’S THIRD ARMY REVOLVER CONTRACT
Figure 59
Federal soldier with his musket and Remington revolver. (Courtesy: Library of Congress)
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These are to be forwarded to this office for final approval. They will then be labeled and receive the Seal of this office, after which one sample will be retained and the other will be sent to you for your information and guidance.
It is desirable that this plan should be strictly adhered to. The Messrs. Remington have been informed of the fact.7
Gentlemen,
The letter of the11th inst. acknowledging yours of the 8th inst was by a clerical misappre-hension written erroneously, with the intention of correcting the ideas which you must necessarily have formed. I would state the rule of this office with regard to samples of small arms. The two samples to be furnished under every Contract are first to be sent to the Inspector, Col. Thornton and transmitted through him to this office for final approval.
It is requisite to prevent confusion that this rule be complied with and that the foregoing is furnished for your guidance.8
It would seem that Ramsey, recently installed as chief of ordnance, had received some erro-neous advice concerning the sample arms required. After three attempts, he finally got it right.
On previous contracts only one sample arm had been submitted. Two specimens were now required, one for the inspector and another for deposit in the Ordnance Office.
On January 23, Ramsey responded to an inquiry from Maj. F. D. Callender, commander of the St. Louis Arsenal:
Telegram
Telegram received. Issue no carbines or pistols except upon requisitions approved at this office.9
This was followed on February 5, with a letter to Callender:
Sir,
In reply to your requisition of the1st inst., I have to say, Revolvers are so scarce that they can be issued only on actual requisitions from the Regiments requiring them.10
In February, Remington increased deliveries to an unprecedented four thousand revolvers.
They repeated this figure again in March, but in April deliveries again fell to three thousand. The department issued these to satisfy requisitions from the field as fast as they were delivered.
The department’s unyielding attitude to the demands of Colt management the previous October was having telling effects on supplying troops with revolvers; they were now relying solely on those offered by Remington and Starr. The latter company was furnishing about two thousand revolvers per month, but this number did not offset the loss of production from Colt, who had been delivering approximately five thousand per month when their contract expired the previous November. The cessation of deliveries by Colt did not go unnoticed by other con-tractors. On January 4, 1864, the department sent the following to Thornton:
Sir,
A letter has been delivered to this office from Eli Whitney, dated December23, 1863, stating that he has two Army size revolvers cal .44/100 which he wishes to furnish to the Government. Mr. Whitney has been directed to present these pistols to you. You will please, therefore, examine them, and report the results at your earliest convenience.11
The revolvers were delivered to Thornton, who made a favorable report to the department.
I have not located Thornton’s report, but on January 19, Ramsey sent the following to Whitney:
Sir:
I transmit Quintuplicate copies of a contract for1,000 pistols, which contract please execute and immediately return. The certificate as to the liability of the sureties must be signed by a judge of the U.S. Court.
By direction of the Secretary of War, I have to inform you that if you fulfill the contract for1,000 pistols and they shall on trial in the field prove satisfactory, that this department will then receive from you nine thousand (9,000) more of the pistols at twelve dollars ($12.) each, provided they shall be delivered at the rate of not less than 2,000 per month after notice that they are of approved quality.12
The limited order for only one thousand revolvers was in keeping with the recommenda-tions of the Owen-Holt Commission; new types of arms were to be tried in the field before large orders were offered. Whitney was not pleased with the terms of the contract; I suspect that his objections related to the small number of revolvers specified in the initial order. In a letter to Ramsey dated January 30, he requested that the contract be modified. Ramsey responded on the fourth of February:
Sir:
Your letter of the30th ult. has been received. Your contract for 1,000 pistols was made out in accordance with instructions received from the Secretary of War, and none of its terms and conditions can be altered. The contract is herewith returned for immediate execution.
This Department cannot send the two Remington Pistols you ask for.13
Whitney’s objections to the contract were evidently sufficient to warrant his refusal to exe-cute the same. There is no record that this contract was exeexe-cuted or evidence that Whitney pro-duced more than the two army-size revolvers submitted to Thornton. Whitney’s record in delivering serviceable navy-size revolvers to the department seems to validate his objections (fig-ure 60). Tooling up for a new size revolver with a potential contract limit of one thousand revolvers was a risky venture.
I have previously mentioned second-class revolvers but have not elaborated on the subject.
This term was coined by the department to describe those arms that were functional, yet did not measure up to the department’s exacting standards. The department had accepted two previous deliveries of these revolvers from Remington, the first consisting of six hundred Navies on REMINGTON’S THIRD ARMY REVOLVER CONTRACT
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November 21, 1862; these were accepted on the navy contract of June 13, 1862. The second lot of seven hundred Armies was purchased from Remington on July 6, 1863, at the conclusion of the first army revolver contract.
In the early months of the war, there was an unprecedented demand for revolvers of any type, and this demand was not limited to the military. Arms dealers were also seeking revolvers;
most of these were, in turn, sold to agents of the government, many at a tidy profit. There was also a demand from the public; Union volunteers often purchased their own sidearms, while others were presented revolvers as gifts by friends, family, fraternal organizations, and business associates. There was a third market for revolvers, created by brokers or agents of the Confederacy seeking arms for illegal trade to the South. There seems to be a paucity of informa-tion on this subject, but it was a fact of life. Newspapers of the day ran more than one article describing the seizure of arms destined for Jefferson Davis’s troops. There were many other ship-ments that were not apprehended and made the successful transition to the Confederacy.
By early 1862, the department’s practice of purchasing revolvers on the open market for Union troops had all but ceased. By mid-1864, the Union Army was on the offensive, and the department had successfully satisfied the more pressing requisitions for small arms. The demand for revolvers by the public had also subsided, and Remington was faced with disposing of several thousand second-class revolvers that had not been accepted by the department. The company placed advertisements in newspapers and magazines, touting their wares to the public, but this evidently did not produce the desired results (figure 61).
The firm took note of the practice of Samuel Colt, before his death, of bestowing lav-ishly embellished revolvers on high-ranking army officers and government officials. They decided that this strategy might be useful in bringing their revolvers to the attention of the various Federal states, all of which had their militia groups actively engaged in the war. They were probably unaware that most state militia requisitions were now being satisfied by the War Department.
A small lot of New Model Army Revolvers were selected from Remington’s assembly room and given special attention as to fit and finish. They were serially numbered in a separate range, Figure 60
Whitney Navy Revolver. (Author’s photograph)
REMINGTON’S THIRD ARMY REVOLVER CONTRACT
beginning with the number 1. When assembled, they were sent to a custom shop in New York City, where they were fitted with ivory grips carved with the individual state coat of arms on the left grip and the Federal eagle on the right. This was all of the embellishment that the revolvers received; there was no engraving or plating. The revolver and its appendages were then fitted to a handsome partitioned hardwood case.
When the shop making the enhancements returned the revolvers to Remington, they were shipped, together with a standard New Model Army Revolver, to the various recipients, with a cover letter soliciting orders for revolvers and muskets. The dates mentioned in the letters below, acknowledging receipt of the revolvers, indicate that the arms were sent on different dates, the first lot in March and the second in June. I was fortunate to locate ten letters of acknowledgment for these revolvers but assume that more than ten revolvers were dispatched, as other revolvers (not represented by letters) are extant. I have reproduced the letters received for the March shipments:
State of Rhode Island
Executive Department Providence, Mar.15, 1864 Messrs. E. Remington & Sons
Ilion, New York Gentlemen:
Your favor of the8th inst. has been received, as also the two revolvers for which you will please accept our thanks.
The ivory stocked one is a beautiful piece of workmanship and has attracted much attention from our citizens. Indeed, both are considered admirable weapons, and should the State at any time be in need of arms of this description, I am confident that it could not do better than purchase those of your manufacture.
I am Very Truly Yours James Y. Smith, Gov.
Figure 61
Remington advertisement from Harper’s Weekly magazine, August 22, 1863.
(Courtesy: Roy Marcot)
State of Wisconsin
Yours of the7th inst. has been received, and also sample Revolvers per express. The Revolvers are very fine ones and reflect much credit upon your establishment. Our State does not contemplate purchasing any arms at present, but should this be deter-mined on at any future time, I should be pleased to recommend the Arms manufac-tured by your firm.
What disposal do you wish to have made of the Revolvers sent?
Respectfully,
I acknowledge the receipt per express of a box with specimen of your Army Revolver (Ivory Stocked) having on one side the Coat of Arms of my State & the National Eagle on the other, also box with revolver in plain style.
Having had the opportunity of witnessing in the field the excellence of your manufac-ture of arms, I appreciate highly the specimen sent me.
Should we have occasion to make further purchases for use of Kentucky Troops in the field, an order will be given to purchase of your manufacture.
Respectfully,
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the exceedingly beautiful revolvers sent by you by express to my address.
I cannot too highly compliment the style of workmanship of the one with Ivory stock bearing upon one side the Coat of Arms of this State and upon the other the National Emblem. The whole is exquisitely wrought, and for the compliment thus paid to the State please accept my warm thanks.
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In the event our State Legislature at its next session should pass an act to reorganize the Militia of this State as I have strong hopes they will, it will be necessary for us to pur-chase a quantity of Arms, and it will give me great pleasure to examine your manufacture with a view to a purchase.
Your favor of March8th came duly to hand and with it the two cases of pistols. For the one you have so beautifully embellished with the State Coat of Arms, I tender you my most cordial thanks.
I have delayed replying to your note for the passage of our appropriation bill. At pres-ent I desire to order for the use of our penitpres-entiary one dozen of the Revolvers similar to the plain specimen sent me, as which you may regard that as one of the order. I am not prepared at present to make further orders, but shall probably do so hereafter. How soon and at what price will the present order be filled? The officials at the prison are anxious to get them as soon as practicable.
Very Respectfully Jno. Brough
P.S. For the account accompanying the above order, please send the bills in duplicate, either receipted, or by express with authority to receipt here. If receipted we will send draft on New York without charges.14
A few years ago, I was privileged to correspond with a descendant of the Civil War governor of Vermont. I was delighted to find that the ivory-stocked revolver sent to his great-great-grand-father was still in his possession. The case and accoutrements had been misplaced many years before, and the revolver showed the ravages of three generations of children playing “cowboys and Indians.” Surprisingly, the ivory grips were intact, and the Vermont coat of arms and Federal eagle are still discernable (figure 62).
J. Gregory Smith, governor of Vermont, had maintained a family residence in St. Albans.
The astute reader will notice that his letter to Remington was written from that location rather than the capital, Montpelier. Smith’s descendant, John G. Smith, was kind enough to share a copy of a letter written to the governor by his wife, shortly after the St. Albans Raid. This was the northernmost skirmish of the Civil War and occurred on October 19, 1864. Twenty-two Southern sympathizers crossed the international border from Canada, robbed three banks of approximately two hundred thousand dollars, and fled back over the border. On the following REMINGTON’S THIRD ARMY REVOLVER CONTRACT
day the governor’s wife wrote a letter to her husband detailing her account of the raid. She stated that she had “ordered the house shut and locked, hunting myself for weapons, but noth-ing could be found but your carved pistol empty.”
The serial number of the Vermont revolver is 10. I have examined the Missouri revolver, with serial number 19 (figure 63). The Illinois state seal specimen is in a private collection and carries serial number 4 (figure 64). No letters have surfaced for the latter
The serial number of the Vermont revolver is 10. I have examined the Missouri revolver, with serial number 19 (figure 63). The Illinois state seal specimen is in a private collection and carries serial number 4 (figure 64). No letters have surfaced for the latter