First Freedom Read online

  2 Barnard, Henry, Armsmear: The Home, the Arm, and the Armory of Samuel Colt: A Memorial (National Archives, 1862), p. 298.

  3 Barnard, Armsmear, p. 301.

  4 Manby, Charles (ed.), Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 11, Session 1851–52, p. 38. (Published by the Institution, 1852).

  5 Patent USX9430 I1, Feb. 25, 1836. https://patents.google.com/patent/USX9430

  6 Trumbull, Levi R., A History of Industrial Paterson (National Archives, 1882).

  7 Army and Navy Chronicle, and Scientific Repository, vol. 5.

  8 Andrews, Stephen P., Jan E. Dizard, and Robert Muth (eds.), Guns in America: A Historical Reader (NYU Press, 1999), p. 61.

  9 Manby, Charles (ed.), Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers with Abstract of the Discussions, vol. XI, Session 1851–52. (Published by the Institution, 1852).

  10 Andrews, Dizard, and Muth, Guns in America, p. 65.

  11 Lundeberg, Philip K., “Samuel Colt’s Submarine Battery: The Secret and the Enigma,” Smithsonian Research Online, https://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/2428.

  12 Schiffer, Michael B., Power Struggles: Scientific Authority and the Creation of Practical Electricity Before Edison (MIT Press, 2008), p. 124.

  13 Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The Democratic Experience (Random House 1973), p. 35.

  14 Pegler, Martin, Colt Single-Action Revolvers (Osprey, 2010), p. 25.

  15 Barnard, Armsmear, p. 206

  16 Andrews, Dizard, and Muth, Guns in America, p. 71.

  17 Smith, Anthony, Machine Gun: The Story of the Men and the Weapon That Changed the Face of War (St. Martin Press, 2002), p. 57.

  18 Lamb, Martha Joanna, The Homes of America (D. Appleton, 1879), p. 181.

  19 Grant, Ellsworth S., “Gunmaker to the World,” American Heritage Magazine, June, 1968, Volume 19, Issue 4.

  20 Tucker and Tucker, Industrializing Antebellum America, p. 86.

  21 Morris, Charles R., The Dawn of Innovation, p. 157.

  22 Tucker and Tucker, Industrializing Antebellum America, p. 66.

  23 Ibid., p. 78.

  24 Trimble, Marshall, “The Peacemaker,” True West, June 16, 2016.

  25 Punch, Volumes 21–22 (1851), p. 11.

  26 Household Words, A Weekly Journal, Volume 9 (1854), p. 354.

  27 Dickens, Charles, No. 218 of Charles Dickens’ “Household Words,” May 27, 1864. It can be found in, Colt, Samuel, “On the Application of Machinery to the Manufacture of Rotating Chambered-breech Fire-arms” (National Archives, 1855), p. 354.

  28 Phelps, William M., Devil’s Right Hand: The Tragic Story of the Colt Family Curse (Lyons Press: 2013), p. 254.

  10: Bullet

  1 Greener, W. W., The Gun and Its Development (Skyhorse; 9th edition, 2013), p. 589.

  2 Ibid., p. 633.

  3 Scientific American, vol. 4, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-minie-rifle-ball/

  4 Leonard, Pat, “The Bullet That Changed History,” New York Times, Aug. 31, 2012.

  5 Stamp, Jimmy, “The Inventive Mind of Walter Hunt, Yankee Mechanical Genius,” Smithsonian, Oct. 24, 2013.

  6 Ibid.

  7 For more on the Robbins and Lawrence factory, see Robbins & Lawrence Armory and Machine Shop/American Precision Museum, http://www.crjc.org/heritage/V09-60.htm.

  8 Trevelyan, Laura, The Winchester: The Gun That Built an American Dynasty, p. 2.

  9 Ibid., p. 10.

  10 Ibid., p. 17.

  11 Johnstone, William W., Winchester 1887 (Pinnacle, 2015), p. 199.

  11: Those Newfangled Gimcrackers

  1 Bilby, A Revolution in Arms, p. 68.

  2 Bartlett, Rev. W. A., “Lincoln’s Seven Hits with a Rifle,” Magazine of History: With Notes and Queries (Published by W. Abbott., 1922).

  3 The Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1865 (Gould and Lincoln), p. 98.

  4 National Firearms Museum, U.S. Spencer Lever Action Repeating Carbine. http://www.nramuseum.org/guns/the-galleries/a-nation-asunder-1861-to-1865/case-14-union-carbines/us-spencer-lever-action-repeating-carbine.aspx

  5 Bruce, Robert V., Lincoln and the Tools of War (Bobbs Merrill, 1956), p. 114.

  6 Rose, American Rifle, p. 178.

  7 Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 114.

  8 Ibid.

  9 American Firearm Museum exhibit, “U.S. Spencer Lever Action Repeating Carbine.”

  10 Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 25.

  11 Popular Science, May 1961, p. 73.

  12 Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 102.

  13 Worman, Firearms in American History, p. 114.

  14 Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 115.

  15 Gettysburg National Military Park, Weapons at Gettysburg—The Spencer Repeating Rifle. https://npsgnmp.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/weapons-at-gettysburg-the-spencer-repeating-rifle/

  16 Rose, American Rifle, p. 147.

  17 Minetor, Randi, Historical Tours Gettysburg: Trace the Path of America’s Heritage (Globe Pequot, 2015), p. 50.

  18 Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 109.

  19 Stevens, Captain C. A., Berdan’s United States Sharpshooters in the Army of the Potomac, 1861–1865 (Price-McGill, 1892), p. 11.

  20 Trevelyan, The Winchester, p. 21.

  21 Bilby, Joseph G., A Revolution in Arms, p. 22.

  22 “The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Record,” series I, vol. XLV, in two parts. Part II—Correspondence, Etc. (US Government Printing Office, 1984), p. 466.

  23 Leigh, Phil, “The Union’s Newfangled Gimcrackers,” New York Times, Jan. 23, 2012.

  24 Popular Science, May 1945, p. 208.

  12: Fastest Gun in the West

  1 Rosa, Joseph G., Wild Bill Hickok, Gunfighter: An Account of Hickok’s Gunfights (Red River, 2001), p. 91.

  2 Holland, Barbara, Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling From Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk (Bloomsbury, 2003), p. 100.

  3 Wilson, John Lyde, The Code of Honor: Or, Rules for the Government of Principals and Seconds in Duelling, (Thomas J. Eccles, 1838), p. 4.

  4 Custer, George A., My Life on the Plains. Or, Personal Experiences with Indians (Sheldon, 1874), p. 34.

  5 Rosa, Wild Bill Hickok, p. 80.

  6 Garavaglia, Louis A., and Charles G. Worman, Firearms of the American West, vol. 2, p. vii.

  7 Owens, Ron, Oklahoma Heroes: The Oklahoma Peace Officers Memorial (Turner, 2002), p. 72.

  8 Hardin, John Wesley, The Life of John Wesley Hardin (Seguin, Texas: Smith & Moore, 1896), p. 14.

  9 Garavaglia and Worman, Firearms of the American West, vol. 2, p. 253.

  10 Vie militaire dans le Dakota, notes et souvenirs (1867–1869) (published posthumously in 1926 in English as Army Life in Dakota), p. 34, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000235213.

  11 Worman, Charles G., Gunsmoke and Saddle Leather: Firearms in the Nineteenth-century American West (University of New Mexico Press, 205), p. 181.

  12 Dykstra, Robert R., The Cattle Towns (University of Nebraska Press, 1968), p. 116.

  13 Dykstra, Robert R., “Quantifying the Wild West: The Problematic Statistics of Frontier Violence,” Western Historical Quarterly, 40, no. 3 (Autumn 2009), pp. 321–47.

  14 Lee, Wayne C., Deadly Days in Kansas, (The Caxton Printers, 1997), p. 56.

  15 Dillon, Richard, “Ben and Billy Thompson’s Cow Town,” April 8, 2008, HistoryNet.com.

  16 Wunder, John R., “Frontier Violence,” The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains (University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 2004), http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ii.026.

  17 Kessler, Glenn, “Rick Santorum’s Misguided View of Gun Control in the Wild West,” Washington Post, April 29, 2014.

  18 Schweikart, Larry, “The Non-Existent Frontier Bank Robbery,” Foundation for Economic Education, Monday, Jan. 1, 2001.

  19 FBI, Bank Crime Statistics 2015, https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/stats-services-publications-bank-crime-s
tatistics-2015-bank-crime-statistics-2015/view.

  13: The Showman

  1 Warren, Louis S., Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (Vintage, 2006), p. 46.

  2 Ibid., p. 47.

  3 Harpers Weekly, December 14, 1867, pp. 792, 797–98, http://thewest.harpweek.com/Sections/Buffalo/BuffaloHunting1002.htm.

  4 For more on “Beecher’s Bibles,” see Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/beecher-bibles/11977.

  5 Shields, G. O., Rustling in the Rockies: Hunting and Fishing by Mountain Stream (Belford, Clarke, 1883), p. 151.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Spangenberger, Phil, “The ‘Shoot Today, Kill Tomorrow’ Gun,” True West online, May 20, 2014, https://truewestmagazine.com/the-shoot-today-kill-tomorrow-gun/.

  8 King, Gilbert, “Where the Buffalo No Longer Roamed,” Smithsonian, July 17, 2012, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904/.

  9 For further reading on the decimation of the buffalo, see Drew Isenberg’s The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

  10 Robbins, Jim, “Historians Revisit Slaughter on the Plains,” New York Times, November 16, 1999.

  11 Midwest Archeological, Little Bighorn Archeological project, https://www.nps.gov/mwac/libi/firearm.html.

  12 Wetmore, Helen Cody, Last of the Great Scouts: The Life Story of Col. William F. Cody, “Buffalo Bill” as Told by His Sister (Duluth Press, 1913), p. 204.

  13 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, p. 241.

  14 Kasper, Shirl, Annie Oakley (University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), p. 215.

  15 Ibid., p. 215.

  16 Letter to President William McKinley from Annie Oakley, April 5, 1898, National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/recover/example-02.html.

  14: Hellfire

  1 Scientific American, vol. 26, March 2, 1872, p. 2.

  2 Daily Alta California 20, no. 6562, March 3, 1868.

  3 Keller, Julia, Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It (Penguin, 2008), p. 27.

  4 Ohio State University, Exhibitions, Civil War Battlefield Medicine, https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/cwsurgeon/cwsurgeon/amputation.

  5 Burns, Stanley, MD, Behind the Lens: A History in Pictures, Surgery in the Civil War, PBS.

  6 Maryland Medical Journal 46, no. 5, “Medical Fame Outside of Medicine,” p. xxi.

  7 Ellis, John. The Social History of the Machine Gun (Random House, 1975), p. 11.

  8 Chinn, George M. “The Machine Gun, Development During World War II and Korean Conflict by the United States and their Allies, of Full Automatic Machine Gun Systems and High Rate of Fire Power Driven Cannons,” Prepared for the Bureau of Ordnance, Department of Navy, 1951 (unclassified in July 1970), p. 36.

  9 Perkins, Jacob, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/manufacturing-processing/jacob-perkins.

  10 Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 138.

  11 Ibid., p. 120.

  12 Chivers, C. J., The Gun (Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 26.

  13 Cavendish, Richard, “The First Commercially Successful Machine Gun Emerged,” History Today 62, no. 11, Nov. 2012.

  14 Moss, Matthew, “The Story of the Gatling Gun: Why You Still Know the Name of a 19th Century Weapon,” Popular Mechanics, Aug. 22, 2016.

  15 Chivers, The Gun, p. 29.

  16 Journal of Civil War History, Kent State University Press, 1963, p. 50.

  17 Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, p. 261.

  15: An American in London

  1 Maxim, Hiram Stevens. My Life (Methuen, 1915), p. 315.

  2 Editorial board, “Terrible Automatic Engines of War,” New York Times, March 28, 1897, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E0DE3DF1630E132A2575BC2A9659C94669ED7CF.

  3 Browne. Malcolm W., “Deadly Weapon Now 100 Machine Gun Victims Hit Untold Numbers,” New York Times, December 15, 1985.

  4 Mottelay, P. Fleury, The Life and Work of Sir Hiram Maxim: Knight, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Etc; Etc, (John Lane, 1920), p. xi.

  5 Ibid., p. x.

  6 Maxim, My Life, p. 163.

  7 Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun, p. 13.

  8 Mottelay, P. Fleury, The Life and Work of Sir Hiram Maxim p. 10.

  9 Pauly, Roger. Firearms: The Life Story of a Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 123.

  10 Maxim, My Life, p. 164.

  11 Sanford, P. Gerald, Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise Concerning the Properties, Manufacture, and Analysis of Nitrated Substances, Including the Fulminates, Smokeless Powders, and Celluloid (D. Van Nostrand, 1906), p. 351, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15308.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Flynn, John T., “The Merchant of Death: Basil Zaharoff,” Mises Institute, Aug. 24, 2007.

  14 Maxim, My Life, p. 213.

  15 For more on German machine guns of World War I, see Bruce, Robert V., Machine Guns of World War I: Live Firing Classic Military Weapons in Color Photographs (Crowood Press, 2008).

  16 Chivers, The Gun, p. 106.

  16: American Genius

  1 Browning, John M., and Curt Gentry, John M Browning: American Gunmaker (Browning Company; 10th edition, 2000), p. 47.

  2 Garavaglia, Louis A., and Charles G. Worman, Firearms of the American West, vol. 2, p. 207.

  3 Browning, and Gentry, John M. Browning, p. 97.

  4 Campbell, Dave, “A Look Back: The Winchester Model 1885 Single-Shot Rifle,” American Rifleman, May 2, 2016.

  5 Browning, and Gentry, John M. Browning, p. 140.

  6 Chinn, George M. The Machine Gun, Development During World War II and Korean Conflict by the United States and Their Allies, of Full Automatic Machine Gun Systems and High Rate of Fire Power Driven Cannons, p. 163.

  7 Strohn, Matthias (ed.), World War I Companion (Osprey Publishing, 2013), p. 91.

  8 Remington Society, “The Story of Eddystone,” http://www.remingtonsociety.org/the-story-of-eddystone/.

  9 Chinn, George M. “The Machine Gun, Development During World War II and Korean Conflict by the United States and their Allies, of Full Automatic Machine Gun Systems and High Rate of Fire Power Driven Cannons,” p. 176.

  10 Ibid., p. 164.

  11 Browning, and Gentry, John M. Browning, p. 162.

  12 La Garde, Louis Anatole, Gunshot Injuries: How They Are Inflicted, Their Complications and Treatment (William Wood, 1916), p. 70.

  13 “Official History of the 82nd Division American Expeditionary Forces: ‘All American’ Division, 1917–19,” p. 61.

  14 Browning, and Gentry, John M. Browning, p. 223.

  17: The Chicago Typewriter

  1 Bergreen, Laurence, Capone: The Man and the Era (Simon & Schuster; reprint edition, 1996), p. 213.

  2 Willbanks, James H., Machine Guns: An Illustrated History of Their Impact (ABC-CLIO, 2004), p. 86.

  3 Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun, p. 13.

  4 Yenne, Bill, Tommy Gun: How General Thompson’s Submachine Gun Wrote History (Thomas Dunne, 2009), p. 31.

  5 Blumenthal, Karen, Tommy: The Gun That Changed America (Roaring Brook Press, 2015), p. 69.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Northwestern, Pritzker School of Law, “Learning from the Past, Living in the Present: Patterns in Chicago Homicides, 1870 to 1930,” Nov. 17, 2000, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/about/news/newsdisplay.cfm?id=463.

  8 Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World, Brown University, https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/13things/7730.html.

  9 Blumenthal, Tommy, p. 68.

  10 Wack, Larry, FBI (Ret.), “FBI Firearms & the Myth of the 1934 Crime Bill,” June 10, 2016, p. 5.

  11 Flink, James J., The Automobile Age (MIT Press, 1988), p. 25.

  12 Presidential Statement on Signing Crime Bill, May 18, 1934, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/
ws/index.php?pid=14877.

  13 Blumenthal, Tommy, p. 182.

  18: Great Arsenal of Democracy

  1 Hunt, Frazier, MacArthur and the War Against Japan (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), p. 71.

  2 Teale, Edwin, “He Invented the World’s Deadliest Rifle,” Popular Science 137, no. 6 (Dec. 1940).

  3 McCarten, John, “The Man Behind the Gun,” New Yorker, February 6, 1943, p. 22.

  4 Rose, American Rifle, p. 301.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Hoffman, John “A History of Innovation: U.S. Army Adaptation in War and Peace,” U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2009, p. 6.

  7 Ibid., p.10

  8 Ibid.

  9 Modern Marvels: United States Army Weapon—M16 Assault Rifle. Documentary, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d59EWOzjtSo.

  10 Thompson, Leroy, The M14 Battle Rifle (Osprey, 2014), p. 17.

  19: Fall and Rise of the Sharpshooter

  1 Bailey, Sarah Pullam, “Here’s the Faith in the ‘American Sniper’ You Won’t See in the Film,” Washington Post, Jan. 14, 2015.

  2 For more on snipers of World War II, see Haskew, Michael E., The Sniper at War: From the American Revolutionary War to the Present Day (Amber Books, 2012).

  3 Rose, American Rifle, p. 197.

  4 Calabi, Silvio, Steve Helsley, and Roger Sanger, “The Rigby Match Rifle, Creedmoor & More,” American Rifleman, Oct. 31, 2012.

  5 Leech, Arthur Blennerhassett, Irish Riflemen in America (National Archives, 1875), p. 60.

  6 Calabi, Silvio, Steve Helsley, and Roger Sanger, “The Rigby Match Rifle, Creedmoor & More,” American Rifleman, Oct. 31, 2012.

  7 Leech, Irish Riflemen in America, p. 60.

  8 Moskin, J. Robert, The U.S. Marine Corps Story (Back Bay Books; Third edition 1992), p. 102.

  9 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, Belleau Wood, official website of the United States Marines. See http://www.6thmarines.marines.mil/Units/1st-Battalion/History/.

  10 Moskin, The U.S. Marine Corps Story, p. 121.