For many years now, my focus of study has been the development of the Union cavalry through 1863. During the last several years, however, I have prepared a couple presentations on the cavalry postwar. While researching those programs, several carbine related documents have caught my eye.

Following the Grand Review, the men of the Michigan Brigade boarded trains the next day, bound, though they did not know it at the time, for duty on the plains. While staging at Fort Leavenworth, some of the men received orders to turn in their Spencer carbines. As a trooper in the 7^th Michigan wrote in June, “We get revolvers in place of the Spencers carbines we had at first. Each man will be armed with a revolver and saber.” In August, and after describing how some of the men had defended a stage station, a trooper noted, “I am inclined to think the boys might have done better, but owing to the fact of their being armed only with pistols and sabres they could not do much.”

To confuse the matter, some men retained their Spencers. Describing the defense of another stage station, a trooper described the men “grinding off their Spencers in real old Virginia style…” Then, a week later, the same soldier reported receiving “a shipment of Joslyn” carbines. All of which begs the question, Why the change? Why the order to turn in their Spencers and why replace them with an inferior weapon?

The men of the brigade saw a variety of duty after the war, some assigned to active campaigns and others ordered to guard stage routes and relay stations. Wherever and whatever their duty, none of them would be fighting a foe employing the linear tactics used by the armies during the war. And if the Spencers had performed well against an enemy using linear tactics, might the weapon be equally effective against a foe using non-linear formations? Or at least more effective than a single shot carbine? Still, when the men received additional weapons, they received single-shot Joslyns, even though, as a trooper noted, “the Spencer is worth five of them.”

Quarterly Regimental Ordnance Returns are helpful in determining the make and quantity of weapons carried by each regiment during the early and middle stages of the war but the returns end in September 1864. As a result, verifying what the men of the Michigan Brigade carried at Appomattox and beyond is difficult. The September 1864 return shows 96 Spencers and one Burnside carbine in the 7^th Michigan. The same report lists 271 Spencers in the 1^st Michigan, 163 in the 5^th Michigan, along with four Spencer Rifles and one Smith Carbine. The 6^th Michigan counted 248 Spencers, two Sharps and one Burnside. The 5^th Michigan, which had the earliest muster out date, never went west but the other regiments did. Exactly how many men retained the weapons they carried during the war and how many received orders to turn in their weapons is unknown. The notion of taking carbines away from men just before sending them into unfamiliar territory to face an unknown foe strikes me as odd, but the orders to do so proved but a small point in a larger story, and, at the time, I gave the question little further thought.

The presentation on the Michigan Brigade postwar led to another presentation for this coming summer, looking at George Custer’s time in Louisiana and Texas in 1865 and 1866. I wanted to look beyond the story his critics told decades later in oft-quoted regimental histories published after his death in 1876. Doing so meant examining surviving documents from his command in the National Archives, and I soon encountered additional reports of men being ordered to turn in superior weapons in favor of inferior weapons. Actual orders for doing so and possibly the reasoning behind the decisions may lie in the records of the Ordnance Department but time precludes a deep search prior to the presentation. And, again, the carbine question is beyond the scope of the presentation.

Still, one thought immediately came to mind; the government’s desire to quickly take advantage of what we might term today ‘the peace dividend.’ In other words, putting an end to the skyrocketing costs of the war, to include mustering men out of service, ending contracts and selling off surplus equipment, and doing so as quickly as possible. Such desires immediately ran into roadblocks, including the need to enforce Reconstruction laws in the South, conflicts with Native Americans in the West, and a potential conflict along the Rio Grande River.

I claim no expertise here, but the government appears to have, unrealistically, tried to accomplish everything at the same time. Doing so led, in my view, to widespread dissension within the ranks of volunteer regiments forced to stay in service – dissension on a scale I had never imagined nor seen sufficiently examined. Faced with such rebellion within his ranks, Custer took an especially controversial approach to quashing the dissent. As a result, he has, in my opinion, become the focus of most every discussion of the mutinous attitudes of the volunteers, leaving the mistaken impression that he was the problem and thus, the only officer to face such resistance from his men. Not so, but to say more here, will quickly take me away from the carbine question.

I had no familiarity with most of the regiments I needed to examine, as only one of them, the 12^th Illinois, had spent time in the Army of the Potomac. The others had all seen service in either Western Virgina, West Virginia or in the Western Theater.

The winter of 1863-64 saw an army-wide effort to ‘veteranize’ the senior regiments whose term of service would expire in the spring and summer of 1864. Inducements of bounties and 30-day furloughs convinced many veterans to re-enlist, while also bringing new men into the ranks. Prior to going home on furlough, the men turned in their equipment, weapons, and horses, which were then distributed to other units as needed. When the men returned, they needed to be re-armed and re-equipped. With the furloughed regiments returning to service at roughly the same time, efforts to arm and equip them emptied the arsenals and overtaxed the factories.

The following letter, from Col. John Mizner, 3^rd Michigan Cavalry, in Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 30, 1864, to Gen. Henry Halleck in Washington, suggests the problems many commanders faced.

“On the 19^th of last January, upwards of 550 or four-fifths of my regiment re-enlisted at La Grange, Tennessee, returned to [Michigan] and were furloughed on the 8^th of February.

“I corresponded immediately with the Cavalry Bureau concerning the purchase of horses to re-mount my regiment, and forwarded a requisition for arms and equipments to the Ordnance office at Washington…

“The regiment was ordered to St. Louis on the expiration of its furlough to be mounted and equipped. Meanwhile, by the vigorous efforts of officers and men, it has been filled up to the maximum strength, now being upwards of 1300 men. On its arrival at St. Louis, March 20, 1864, I again forwarded a requisition for Spencer Rifles and equipments…Fifty days afterward Starr carbines were received, but no horse equipments have yet been furnished.

“During its stay in St. Louis, the regiment was armed with smooth-bore muskets, 69. [caliber] and placed on duty in that city. On the 14^th, after waiting 50 days for horses, arms and equipments, the regiment was ordered to this place for immediate field service and would have gone without even decent infantry equipment had not the carbines arrived just in time to take the place of the muskets, as the last of the regiment was embarking on transports. Since their arrival, I have become satisfied that the difficulty of mounting the regiment will be greatly increased. Every effort on my part has been made for the mounting and arming of the regiment for active service… but without results.

“The regiment has always been a strong one… It re-enlisted almost unanimously …left the state … confident in their strength and experience, and with high hopes and buoyant spirits…As an aggravation of their disagreeable condition, and a slur on their veteran stripes, it has watched the mounting of five regiments by the Cavalry Depot at St. Louis since their arrival at that place, one of which was entirely made up of raw recruits…I trust that this regiment may be speedily mounted and employed in its legitimate duties as a cavalry regiment.”

Demand for the Spencer carbine had continued to grow as the weapon finally became available in large numbers but demand outstripped production. Colonel Mizner competed against many other regiments, including the regiments in the Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac, looking to receive the weapons prior to the spring and summer campaigns. The December 1863 returns show Mizner’s men carrying a combination of Colt Revolving Rifles, Burnside, and Smith Carbines, one Sharps Carbine and one Spencer Rifle, along with nearly 400 Colt Revolvers. The Wolverines apparently turned all these weapons in before returning home on furlough.

By June 30, 1864, the logistical nightmare presented by the variety of weapons had been resolved, with the regiment now counting 894 Starr Carbines and one Burnside but none of the Spencer Rifles Mizner had requested. The last returns are essentially the same.

Between the September 1864 quarterly return (the last on record) and November 22, Mizner reported receiving 240 Sharps, to supplement the other weapons already noted. But remember that the regiment counted 1300 men in March but carried fewer than 900 carbines. In addition, fewer than one-third of the men carried a revolver. In mid-January 1865, Mizner continued to press for Spencer carbines, requesting 140 of them. In October 1865, and with the men now stationed in San Antonio, Texas, an inspector counted 573 officers and men present for duty and a total of 845 men present and absent. As to weapons, the inspector counted a mere 56 Spencers, with an apparent penciled correction of 54 alongside. The officer cites no other carbines or pistols but counted 307 cartridge boxes.

As the war wound down, other factors determined which regiments received which weapons. The following three communications from the commander of the 6^th West Virginia Cavalry provided further impetus to take a little deeper look at the question initially posed by the Michigan Brigade regiments losing their Spencers in lieu of single-shot Joslyns. And, to avoid confusion, the 3^rd Michigan was not part of the Michigan Brigade.

The 5^th West Virginia Cavalry had been consolidated into the 6^th West Virginia in mid-December 1864. In late-February 1865, the regiment remained at a remount facility in Maryland. On February 25, the commander received orders “to draw without delay sufficient arms… to fully equip his regiment for duty. He will draw Sharps Carbines.” Three weeks later he received orders to turn in “all Sharps Carbines…he may have and draw the Joslyn Carbine.” Then, on April 15, orders arrived instructing him to turn in at once “all the Joslyn Carbines in his command…”

Looking at the last message, one may rightly ask, why? Lee had surrendered and the war is ending, but should anyone have assumed the men would be going home soon? No. Like the Michigan Brigade, the 3rd Michigan and many other regiments, the West Virginians soon received orders westward. But taking the orders together, why distribute the Sharps carbine, believed by many to have been a better weapon than the Spencer and then, almost immediately, replace it with the inferior Joslyn, and then recall all the carbines?

According to John McAulay, the author of several well-researched carbine studies, the army began disposing of surplus weapons within five months of Lee’s surrender. McAulay nicely documents the process in Carbines of the U.S. Cavalry, 1861-1865. But one of his comments especially caught my eye.

Addressing the army’s inability to meet demands for the Spencer in early-1865, McAulay explains how the army began looking at the reputation of regiments in terms of “discipline and efficiency,” and refusing to issue the best weapons to regiments deemed sub-standard. Had the reputation of the West Virginians contributed to the decision cited above to replace the Sharps carbines with Joslyns?

In late-November 1864, the 5^th and 6^th West Virginia had been overrun while guarding a supply depot at New Creek, West Virginia. The army court-martialed the colonel of the 6^th West Virginia two weeks later, found him guilty of all charges, and dismissed him from the service. As a means of punishing the men, the two regiments had been dismounted. In early-April, the commanding officer of the now consolidated regiment noted how the “officers and men” had heard “the jeers of other regiments, and of the people at home, for suffering ourselves to be surprised by the enemy at New Creek.” A week later, a superior officer told the commander, “I have ordered your regiment to be mounted… Your regiment was dismounted on account of the New Creek affair, but from what… I saw myself at my last inspection, I hope the regiment will not disappoint my expectations in their discipline… The matter rests with you and the officers, and I wish them to understand it.” Even though the men would be remounted and sent back to the field, I suspect the army recalled the Sharps carbines based upon their previous misbehavior in the face of the enemy.

After the Grand Review, and as many soldiers, much to their dismay, found themselves ordered to Louisiana, Texas, and points farther west, another army directive came into play and created further dissension within the ranks and headaches for the government. On May 8, 1865, the War Department issued General Order 83, stating, “Immediately upon receipt of this order…all volunteer soldiers of the cavalry arm whose term of service expires prior to October 1, 1865, will be mustered out and discharged the service of the US.” However, the order proved unrealistic in the face of competing objectives. Reality forced the army to modify the deadline, and in doing so created further dissension.

Senior regiments, in which the men had agreed to re-enlist during the winter of 63-64, now watched as junior regiments mustered out ahead of them. In the Michigan Brigade, the senior 1^st Michigan would now be the last of the four regiments to muster out. The 5^th Michigan, the most senior of the three other regiments mustered out first, followed by the 6^th Michigan. The 7^th Michigan, with some companies not mustering into service until the summer of 1863, would eventually be consolidated with the 1^st Michigan and muster out last. I mention this because preliminary evidence suggests that as regiments mustered out, the men passed their weapons to units being left behind, especially when they handed off weapons superior to those carried by the men remaining on station.

Some of the men in the Michigan Brigade had been ordered to turn in their Spencers, either before leaving Washington or once they reached Fort Leavenworth, though I only have contemporary evidence of this for the 7^th Michigan. Any explanation for the decision remains to be found.

Though the men of the brigade had rarely failed on the battlefield, the 1^st Michigan had embarrassed itself while returning from furlough. As the regiment evacuated the barracks in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, several men (the blame fell on disgruntled new recruits) set the buildings on fire. Then, during a stopover in Elmira, New York, the regiment participated in a riot in which men died and others were seriously injured. The army held the officers to blame for the arson in Michigan and withheld their pay for several months. I am not aware of any other penalties, such as the punishment later incurred by the 6^th West Virginia, but the problems within the 1^st Michigan only got worse after the regiment reached Kansas.

In July, Gen. Robert Mitchell described the situation with the 1^st Michigan thusly. “This regiment since its arrival…has presented a picture of frightful demoralization and utter lack of discipline among both officers and men. Desertions have constantly occurred in large numbers, the public property in the hands of the men has been disposed of to citizens and nearly everything that constitutes the extreme of disgraceful inefficiency or a worse quality on the part of the officers and ruffianism, dishonesty, and disorder among the men has been shown in the conduct of this regiment.”

The West Virginians joined the Wolverines at Fort Leavenworth, at which time, the loyal Virginians reportedly carried Spencer carbines. Shortly thereafter, half, to maybe two-thirds of the Virginians mutinied and refused to march farther west. Later, and with the 6^th West Virginia and 6^th Michigan both either at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, or nearby, the army ordered the commander of the 2^nd Missouri Cavalry to turnover to the Virginians “100 Spencer carbines or rifles…and 10,000 Spencer cartridges.” Likewise, the commander of the 6^th West Virginia received orders to “turn over to Col. [James] Kidd, 6^th Michigan, all carbines and rifles in his possession other than Spencers.” In turn, Kidd received orders to turn over “all Remington Pistols and an equal number of holsters and cartridge boxes” to the Virginians.

Again, we see a dizzying shuffling of weapons and equipment, but we can also, I believe, reach a reasonable explanation with some certainty for the orders just cited. Of the three regiments involved in the re-distribution described above, the 2^nd Missouri was the most senior and officially mustered out of service in September 1865. The 6^th Michigan was the next in seniority, mustering out in November 1865, followed by the West Virginians, mustering out in May 1866. The men of the 6^th West Virginia, with the longest service still ahead of them, received as many Spencers as were then readily available.

Many questions remain and many answers remain to be found, but one question prevails: Was the army trying to do too much, with too little, too quickly?

Sources:

Documents from the National Archives

The Edwin Havens Letters, Michigan State University

The Philip Segur Letters, University of Michigan

Wheeling Daily Intelligencer

James Genco, Arming Michigan’s Regiments, 1862-1864

John McAulay, Carbines of the U.S. Cavalry, 1861-1865

Horace Mewborn, “None Were Truer or Braver,” Elijah V. White’s 35^th Battalion Virginia Cavalry

---