![]() ![]() He pointedly asked Brigadier General James W. However, there was a very influential observer at the test- President Abraham Lincoln. He buried one of his loaded guns, then dug it up, soaked it in salt water and proceeded to fire it 250 times without cleaning it. Undaunted, Spencer conducted another test that same month, this time for the U.S. Of course, the Army was slow to acknowledge any gun other than the time-tested single-shot muzzleloader. Then the hammer was manually cocked and the trigger pulled. Raising the lever inserted the cartridge into the chamber. ![]() To fire the Spencer, the lever was opened, which dropped the carrier to pick up a cartridge from the tubed plunger. In spite of a complication of parts, the Spencer proved capable of firing seven shots in 10 seconds (one wonders if these were "aimed" shots) and went through 500 rounds with only one failure, which- for a black-powder gun with its propensity for fouling- was remarkable. On June 7, 1861- just three months after Fort Sumter- Spencer's rifle was tested by the U.S. ![]() His father, Ogden Spencer, agreed to finance his son's gunmaking venture and employed the talents of a gunmaker appropriately named Luke Wheelock. For Spencer, the timing could not have been better. His idea for a lever-activated, rotating-block, seven-shot repeater loaded via a spring-powered magazine tube in the buttstock was granted a patent on March 6, 1860, the eve of the Civil War. Following that auspicious beginning, the entrepreneur went on to devise a machine for labeling spools of thread and built a steam-powered horseless carriage far ahead of its time and, consequently, successful only in spooking real horses.īut it is for Spencer's concept of a repeating rifle that he is remembered today. They range from the Henry Repeating Rifle- forerunner of the Winchester lever action- to obscurities such as the Triplett & Scott by the Meriden Manufacturing Company.īut somewhere in between, the Spencer Repeating Carbine emerges, a brilliant design fanned by the flames of the War Between the States and just as quickly extinguished by the calming waters of peace.Īt 14 years of age, Christopher "Crit" Miner Spencer's first attempt at gun design took place when he sawed off the barrel of his grandfather's Revolutionary War musket to make it easier to carry. But there were also a few repeating rifles firing metallic cartridges used in the Great Rebellion. Mention longarms of the Civil War and we tend to think of the 1861 Springfield and other single-shot muzzleloaders. ![]()
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