Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History (15 page)

“Berdan borrowed his sergeant major’s personal breechloader. Then Scott, like the Serpent in the Tree, said, ‘Now, you must fire standing, for officers should not dirty their uniforms by getting into rifle pits.’

“Berdan answered as coolly as could be, ‘You are right, Colonel Scott. I always fire from the shoulder.’ It was a huge, heavy gun, too.

“‘What point are you going to fire at?’ Scott asked.

“‘The head.’

“Scott added, ‘Fire at the right eye!’

“Scott gloated as the target was brought in, thinking he had run a log through his spokes. Then, I swear, his face fell to his boots as everyone could see Jeff Davis’s right pupil had been cleanly shot through! Now Berdan is an uncommonly good shot, but even Davy Crockett or Dan’l Boone would have trouble with that shot. Who cared? I don’t know when I had laughed so hard, but I did control myself long enough to call back from my carriage, ‘Colonel, come down tomorrow, and I will give you an order for your breechloaders!’
³

“And you might think that was the end of that. Ripley simply refused to fill the order, and Scott backed him up.” Sharpe’s eyebrows rose in incredulity. “Yes, I thought so, too. And so did General McClellan, who tried to compromise the issue by requesting the Colt repeating rifle, but if Ripley could scorn the President, who was the general in chief of our armies? Ripley did not report to him. The matter rested as the boys in Berdan’s regiment stewed and fumed. They even offered to buy the Sharps and pay the difference between that and the Springfield, but Ripley had the same answer for that, too—no.

“About this time, I met this young feller from Connecticut named Chris Spencer. He was about as inventive as it is possible to be with this
repeating rifle.
⁴
Dahlgren gave it a test and couldn’t have been happier. Five hundred cartridges fired and one misfire—and that due to bad fulminate. Dahlgren didn’t hesitate and ordered seven hundred Spencers for the Navy. It was from Dahlgren that I heard about this marvel, and I went down to the Navy Yard to see it and meet the inventor. Then McClellan sets up a board to test it. The members of the board practically beat it to pieces; it still fired as well at the end as the beginning.
⁵
Again McClellan recommended it enthusiastically. But Ripley whined that it was too heavy and too expensive and needed special ammunition, and insisted that the Army’s weapons must be standardized. He also, and I must say slyly, said that seventy-three thousand breechloaders had already been ordered, but these were only for the cavalry. I guess even he did not have the face to insist that mounted men carry muzzle-loaders.

“Spencer came to see me and laid it all out. There was nothing for it. I sent him an order—buy those weapons. And you know Ripley even staved that off. And still Berdan’s men had no decent weapons. Those boys finally did what I could not. They threatened to mutiny in January ’62, and it came close to a fight right in the shadow of the Capitol. God knows he did not fear me, but I guess that scared Ripley. Ripley signed the order for the Sharps, probably with smoke billowing out of his ears.

“Replace him? Would that I could! But who would I find to replace him? There is no one else with his qualifications. Then even should I be able to find a replacement, the law requires a formal retiring board, and that would be drawn out and public. In fairness, I must admit that I owe to Ripley the fact that we are able to get a fine Springfield musket into the hands of every soldier by now, and the man has the uncanny ability to squeeze a penny until it screams, but we could have done so much better.

“Let me give you another example. I saw it early in the war in the loft of Hall’s Carriage Shop across from the Willard Hotel.” An observer would later describe Lincoln’s delight with the weapon.

Mounted on a two-wheeled slight artillery carriage, the Union Repeating Gun consisted of a single rifle barrel with an ingenious breech mechanism. On top was a hopper which Mills had filled with steel cartridge cases, designed to hold regular .58-caliber paper cartridges. Lincoln turned a crank on the side of the gun and delightedly watched the cartridge cases drop
one by one into the grooves of a revolving cylinder, while the mechanism automatically tripped the firing pin, extracted the cylinders and dropped them into a receptacle for reloading. Seeing the level of the cases sink lower in the hopper while others were spewed into the receiving tray.
⁶

“Yes, right then and there I saw its resemblance to a coffee mill with the hopper and all. That’s just what I called it, the ‘coffee mill gun,’ and the name kind of just stuck. The inventor, a fellow named J. D. Mills, called it the ‘Union Repeating Gun.’ Said it was ‘an army in six feet square.’ Why, he never got over the name change. Hurt his feelings something powerful.”

Lincoln interrupted himself to order the driver to stop next to a construction site. He got out of the carriage and walked over to a woodpile. He picked up an ax as the workmen recognized him and crowded around. “Sharpe,” he said, “you may talk about your ‘Raphael repeaters’ and ‘XI-inch Dahlgrens,’ but here is an institution that I understand better than any of the generals or weapons makers.” He held the ax out at arm’s length by the end of the handle. His arm did not betray the slightest tremble.
⁷

So, thought Sharpe, Fox’s story was true. The man’s strength is phenomenal. He said, “No, sir, I think you understand a great deal more.”

Lincoln winked. “Care to try, Sharpe?”

“No, sir, not on my best day.”

Lincoln laughed and slowly lowered the ax to the ground without a tremble. The workmen crowded around to shake his hand until he waved good-bye and climbed back into the carriage. Still, he could not shake his unhappiness with the chief of ordnance.

“Ripley was badgered into a field test at the Washington Arsenal, and I made sure a good crowd was there—three cabinet officers, five generals, and the governor of Connecticut, too. Everybody but Ripley was impressed. I even sent him a note telling him it was worth the attention of the government. Still nothing happened. Finally, I bought ten of them on my own on the spot. I pushed McClellan into ordering another fifty. I put them in the hands of the generals, and do you know what happened? Nothing. Good ideas are laying around like chestnuts in the fall, Sharpe, and no one has the wit to pick them up.” Lincoln slumped back in his seat, “I just can’t do it all.”

Then he straightened up again. “There was small fight in Middleburg, Virginia, last October where the gun was actually used. It was turned on a squadron of cavalry and cut them up so badly that they fled the field.”

Sharpe commented, “It is a common problem. These weapons arrive, and no one has any idea how to use them, and more importantly, no one has the sole responsibility of seeing that they are used and used properly. Let me give you an example, sir. You godfathered the Balloon Corps and when Hooker was with the Army, Dr. Thaddeus Lowe’s balloons did great work. They were a vital source of intelligence, which I found most useful in supplementing the work of my bureau.” Sharpe referred to the hydrogen gas balloons invented by Dr. Thadeaus Lowe. It was only a demonstration with Lincoln himself that had resulted in their introduction into the Army. Hooker had been the first general ever to go up in a balloon. They proved critical in the survival of McClellan’s Army in the Peninsular Campaign. And so ubiquitous were they hovering over the Union lines, peering into the enemy’s depth, that the Confederates developed a healthy fear of them and went to great lengths to hide from their searching telescopes. Reports flashed from telegraphers in the balloons whose wires ran down the heavy tethering cables and directly across the battlefields to Army headquarters. “I tell you, sir, I have no other words than to describe their reports as ‘near-time’ intelligence. Nothing else at our disposal for the collection and transmission of intelligence was almost instantaneous.

“The corps just died of neglect, sir,
neglect
, and petty-minded spite. The officer appointed to supervise the Balloon Corps, since Mr. Lowe remained a civilian contractor, was as officious as he was small minded and rank conscious. He drove Lowe to resign by reducing his pay and refusing to seek funds to repair or replace the worn-out balloons. When Lowe left, the Balloon Corps died.”
⁸

Lincoln’s jaw set. “I will tell you, Ripley is only a pale shadow to John Dahlgren when he was chief of naval ordnance. He was rich in invention, open minded, and with the knowledge of technical things that I found in almost no one else. Is it any wonder that I looked to him for shrewd advice and friendship? I must look after his poor boy now. But I don’t think we have heard the last of young Colonel Dahlgren, one leg or no.”

As they rode along, Lincoln said, “You know, Sharpe, Lowe told me the story of his first flight when he was a cobbler’s apprentice in Portland. That was just when his young imagination was all aflame with the
idea of flight. Naturally, he did not have anything like a balloon. He did have a kite, and there was this ferocious old tom in the cobbler’s shop, a great, vicious rat killer. One night he cornered the beast and forced him into a cage. He tied the cage to the kite along with a lantern. He let the offshore winds blow it to a thousand feet and lashed it a post to let it sway in the wind. Ran around town, he did, looking at it from every angle and admiring his feat. When he finally pulled it down, the tom was a shrunk furry bundle. The mean had been scared clean out of him.”
⁹

When they arrived at the Ordnance Bureau, the doorkeeper opened the double doors for them as a clerk ran up the iron stairs to tell Ripley the President was here. Ripley barely looked up from his pen to reply, “He knows where he can find me.”

The clerk had barely disappeared when Lincoln and Sharpe entered Ripley’s office. Sharpe was getting used to Lincoln’s disdain for ceremony. Ripley rose from his desk. “Good morning, Mr. President.”

“Good morning, Colonel.” Lincoln introduced Sharpe. “I wanted him to meet you, Colonel, because he has my entire confidence and will be monitoring the development of advanced weapons in other countries, especially breech-loading and repeating weapons. We have to know what possible enemies are up to. I understand the Prussians are quite happy with their new needle gun.”
¹⁰
Ripley radiated hostility despite that play on words of being needled entirely escaped him.

“I’m sure the Prussians will regret the decision, Mr. President, just as we would had we bought large numbers of these new-fangled gimcracks.”

Lincoln smiled. “You mean the new-fangled gimcracks I keep telling you to order and that don’t get ordered. Colonel Berdan has renewed his request for Spencers after Gettysburg. What have you done about it?”

Ripley mumbled something about suppliers unable to meet contracts. “They are faulty weapons, too great an expense, and an interruption of standardized production. Also, they showed no noticeable improvement on the battlefield.”

Sharpe jumped in here, “I take it then you were at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, sir. You must have some firsthand knowledge to sustain that statement.”

“No, sir, but on good authority, I have heard that…”

“Well, I was on both fields, sir, and your ‘good authority’ is nothing of the sort. At Chancellorsville, Berdan’s men taught the Stonewall Brigade about the meaning of the word ‘retreat.’ At Little Top on the
field at Gettysburg, barely one hundred sharpshooters did the duty of a full regiment and carpeted its rocky slopes with the bodies of Hood’s Texas Brigade. The sharpshooters alone delayed Longstreet’s attack on the Peach Orchard by a vital forty minutes. I interviewed one of the sharpshooters who was captured in the fight and escaped. He said, ‘It is impossible for me to describe the slaughter we had made in the ranks. In all my past service it beat all I had ever seen for the number engaged and for short a time. They were piled in heaps and across each other.’ That forty minutes saved the day, Colonel.”
¹¹

Ripley was squirming. He would not give up, though, and countered, “Even if we issued the entire Army of the Potomac with Sharps, we could never supply the ammunition to feed it. The expense would be enormous.”

“That conclusion might seem sound for someone who lives in an office,” Sharpe paused to emphasize his next sentence, “and for someone who has not heard the whistle of bullets.” Ripley flushed. He may have been a military bureaucrat, but he knew a soldier’s insult when he heard it. Lincoln recalled someone’s definition of a gentleman as someone who never unknowingly gives offense.

Sharpe continued, “Consider, Colonel, that if the entire Army of the Potomac had been issued with the Sharps before Gettysburg, Lee would never have escaped.” Lincoln grew suddenly intent. “We would have shot him completely to pieces. Nothing would have remained to escape across the Potomac. With Lee destroyed, the rebellion would have lost its main prop and soon collapsed. I think it worth the trouble of supplying sufficient ammunition for results like that. After all, we are not talking about a sustained effort of years. How many battles do you think we would have to fight with a seven-to-one firepower advantage over the enemy?

“And it is a completely one-sided advantage. The rebels have no capacity whatsoever to match us with such weapons or ammunition. They must rely upon the British for Enfields, and even the British cannot supply them with breech-loading weapons of the quality and number we are now capable of producing.”
¹²

The carriage drew up to the main entrance of the train station just north of Capitol Hill and two men got out. They had been deep in conversation all the way from the British embassy. “I cannot tell you, Hancock, how
useful this visit has been to me.” From under the large front portico, an ordinary-looking man was paying attention to the two.