Oct 18, 2014 1865 Spencer Carbine Serial Number 1865 Spencer Repeating Carbine Stabler Cut-Off Device, Repeating Position 1865 Spencer Carbine Manufacturers Stamp The Civil War Arsenal has been focusing mostly on Confederate Weapons, the author has been crazed by these Southern beauties. But the Arsenal is full of other war time weapons that have been.
Engineer Christopher Miner Spencer was one of those 19th century Yankee polymaths who was responsible for a huge number of different, fascinating contrivances. But it was his eponymous repeating rifle that really established his place in the hierarchy of American inventors. His remarkable seven-shooter was a wonder. Few military arms could come close to its reliability for a good number of years following its introduction.Spencer patented his rifle on March 6, 1860. Featuring a rotating block and tubular magazine in the butt, the gun was a snap to use. The shooter simply dropped a number of cartridges, nose-first, into the magazine, then the spring-loaded follower was inserted into the tube and locked into place. Next, the hammer was put on half cock, and the lever lowered to allow a cartridge to be pushed into position by the follower.
Raising the lever chambered the round. Now all one had to do was cock the hammer, aim, fire and repeat the process until the magazine was empty.
Spent cases were ejected from the top of the receiver.A factory was established at Cheney Brothers Silk Mfg. Co., where Spencer worked, and his arms company was in business. Early models involved smallbore sporting rifles, of.36 and.44 caliber, as well as prototype.44-cal. Military arms.At the beginning of the Civil War the Union Army’s principal infantry arm was a single-shot muzzleloading rifled musket, and the cavalry was supplied with a wide variety of breechloaders and muzzleloaders. After demonstrating his arm to the Navy Dept. In mid-1861, the U.S.
Navy put in an order with Spencer for 700 rifles, which he boosted to 1,000. When some Army officers saw the rifle work, many were so impressed they purchased them privately for themselves and their men.The gun was chambered in a rimfire.56-56 cartridge, though the caliber was actually.52-the.56-56 designation coming from the measurements at the top and bottom of the case, the bullets themselves actually ran in the 0.540'-0.552' range.Reports from the field were universally favorable. The majority of early Spencers appear to have been rifle-length long arms, though it was as a carbine that the repeater really came into its own. Following Christopher Spencer’s personal shooting session with President Abraham Lincoln, the War Dept.
Increased orders dramatically. By the time the Civil War ended, some 50,000 had been made, not counting the follow-on.50-cal. Model 1865 manufactured by the Burnside Rifle Co., a plant drawn into production because the main manufacturing facility just couldn’t keep up with demand. It became the North’s second most popular carbine, topped only by the Sharps, and it was so highly sought-after that practically all delivered before the cessation of hostilities saw use.
Today it is unusual to find a wartime Spencer in exceptional condition.The Spencer shown here is in NRA Antique Very Good condition, with an excellent bore, traces of case-hardening and a good bit of patina on the barrel. As such, it would be worth $2,750 to $3,000.Gun: Model 1860 Spencer CarbineManufacturer: Spencer Repeating Rifle Co., Boston, Mass.Serial Number: 54803Condition: NRA Antique Very GoodCaliber:.56-56 Spencer RimfireValue: $2,750 to $3,000.
Diagram of the Spencer rifle showing the magazine in the buttThe design for a magazine-fed, lever-operated rifle chambered for the cartridge was completed by Christopher Spencer in 1860. Called the Spencer Repeating Rifle, it was fired by cocking a lever to extract a used case and feed a new cartridge from a tube in the buttstock. Like most firearms of the time, the hammer had to be manually cocked after each round in a separate action before the weapon could be fired. The weapon used copper rimfire cartridges, based on the 1854 patent, stored in a seven-round tube magazine.
A spring in the tube enabled the rounds to be fired one after another. When empty, the spring had to be released and removed before dropping in fresh cartridges, then replaced before resuming firing. Rounds could be loaded individually or from a device called the Blakeslee Cartridge Box, which contained up to thirteen (also six and ten) tubes with seven cartridges each, which could be emptied into the magazine tube in the buttstock.Unlike later cartridge designations, the.56-56 Spencer's first number referred to the diameter of the case just ahead of the rim, the second number the case diameter at the mouth; the actual bullet diameter was.52 inches.
Cartridges were loaded with 45 grains (2.9 g) of, and were also available as.56-52,.56-50, and a wildcat.56-46, a version of the original.56-56. Cartridge length was limited by the action size to about 1.75 inches; later calibers used a smaller diameter, lighter bullet and larger powder charge to increase power and range over the original.56-56 cartridge, which was almost as powerful as the.58 caliber rifled musket of the time but under-powered by the standards of other early cartridges such as the and.History At first, the view by the Ordnance Department was that soldiers would waste ammunition by firing too rapidly with repeating rifles, and thus denied a government contract for all such weapons. (They did, however, encourage the use of carbine breech loaders that loaded one shot at a time. Such carbines were shorter than a rifle and well suited for cavalry.) More accurately, they feared that the Army's logistics train would be unable to provide enough ammunition for the soldiers in the field, as they already had grave difficulty bringing up enough ammunition to sustain armies of tens of thousands of men over distances of hundreds of miles. A weapon able to fire several times as fast would require a vastly expanded logistics train and place great strain on the already overburdened railroads and tens of thousands of more mules, wagons, and wagon train guard detachments. The fact that several Springfield rifle-muskets could be purchased for the cost of a single Spencer carbine also influenced thinking. However, just after the, Spencer was able to gain an audience with President, who invited him to a shooting match and demonstration of the weapon on the lawn of the.
Lincoln was impressed with the weapon, and ordered Gen. To adopt it for production, after which Ripley disobeyed him and stuck with the single-shot rifles.The Spencer repeating rifle was first adopted by the, and later by the, and it was used during the, where it was a popular weapon.
The occasionally captured some of these weapons and ammunition, but, as they were unable to manufacture the cartridges because of shortages of copper, their ability to take advantage of the weapons was limited.was the first major battle of the war where Spencer rifles were used, as they had recently been issued to the. They were used at the and had become fairly widespread in the Western armies by 1864. Repeater rifles for comparison were rare in the Army of the Potomac.Notable early instances of use included the (where 's 'Lightning Brigade' of mounted infantry effectively demonstrated the firepower of repeaters), and the, where two of the (under ) carried them at the and at. As the war progressed, Spencers were carried by a number of Union cavalry and mounted infantry regiments and provided the Union army with a firepower advantage over their adversaries. At the, 9,000 mounted infantrymen armed with the Spencer, under the command of Maj. Gen., chief of cavalry for the Military Division of the Mississippi, rode around Gen.
Hood's left flank and attacked from the rear. President Lincoln's assassin was armed with a Spencer carbine at the time he was captured and killed. Spencer 1865 Carbine.50 caliberThe Spencer showed itself to be very reliable under combat conditions, with a sustainable rate-of-fire in excess of 20 rounds per minute.
Compared to standard muzzle-loaders, with a rate of fire of 2–3 rounds per minute, this represented a significant tactical advantage. However, effective tactics had yet to be developed to take advantage of the higher rate of fire. Similarly, the supply chain was not equipped to carry the extra ammunition. Detractors also complained that the amount of smoke produced was such that it was hard to see the enemy, which was not surprising since even the smoke produced by muzzleloaders would quickly blind whole regiments, and even divisions as if they were standing in thick fog, especially on still days.One of the advantages of the Spencer was that its ammunition was waterproof and hardy, and could stand the constant jostling of long storage on the march, such as. The story goes that every round of paper and linen ammunition carried in the supply wagons was found useless after long storage in supply wagons.
Spencer ammunition had no such problem.In the late 1860s, the Spencer company was sold to the Fogerty Rifle Company and ultimately to. Many Spencer carbines were later sold as surplus to France where they were used during the in 1870.Even though the Spencer company went out of business in 1869, ammunition was manufactured in the United States into the 1920s. Later, many rifles and carbines were converted to, which could fire cartridges made from the centerfire brass. Production ammunition can still be obtained on the specialty market.
See also.Notes. ^ Walter, John (2006). The Rifle Story. Greenhill Books.
P. 69., House Documents, 1861, P. Archived from on 7 September 2012. Retrieved 17 April 2018. The M-1863 version. The M-1865 version. Walter, John (2006).
The Rifle Story. Greenhill Books. Pp. 256, 70–71.
The fire-rate of the Spencer was usually reckoned as fourteen shots per minute. The Spencer rifle with a Blakeslee quickloader could easily fire twenty aimed shots a minute. Retrieved 2011-02-23. National Museum of American History.
Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2008-06-12. Philip Leigh 'Lee's Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies' (Yardley, Penna.: Westholme Publishing, 2015), 25-36. Davis, Burke (1982). The civil war: strange & fascinating facts (1st ed.). New York, NY: Fairfax Press. Smithsonian Institution.
Retrieved 9 September 2010. Rummel III, George, Cavalry of the Roads to Gettysburg: Kilpatrick at Hanover and Hunterstown, White Mane Publishing Company, 2000,. Steers, Edward (12 September 2010). University Press of Kentucky. Aotc.net Army of the Cumberland.
Retrieved 9 September 2010. Archived from on 17 April 2010. Retrieved 9 September 2010. Pritchard, Russ A. (1 August 2003). Globe Pequot Press.
Pp. 49–41. Houze, Herb (28 February 2011). Iola, Wisconsin: Gun Digest Books. Pp. 69–70.
Tucker, Spencer (21 November 2012). P. 1028.
Flatnes, Oyvind (30 November 2013). Crowood Press, Limited. P. 410.Further reading.
Chris Kyle and William Doyle, 'American Gun: A History of the U.S. In Ten Firearms'.
Earl J. Coates and Dean S. Thomas, An Introduction to Civil War Small Arms., Weapons of the Civil War. Barnes, Cartridges of the World. Philip Leigh Lee's Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies, (Yardley, Penna.:, Westholme Publishing, 2015), 214. Marcot, Roy A.
Spencer Repeating Firearms 1995. Sherman, William T. Memoirs Volume 2 - contains an account of the success of the Spencer on combat (pp. 187–8) and reflections on the role of the repeating rifle in warfare (pp. 394–5).External links. for the Spencer action. of Spencer rifle, 3981.
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