“It was under my administration, [as head of the Cavalry Bureau] …that the Spencer magazine carbine was adopted as the standard [carbine] for the cavalry service, and the division which I commanded in Sheridan’s cavalry was the first in the world completely supplied with that or any similar arm.” So wrote Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson, in his memoir, Under the Old Flag, published in 1912. “Fortunately, while chief of the Cavalry Bureau,” Wilson continued, “I had induced the chief of Ordnance to contract for all the Spencer magazine carbines that could be turned out, and…I at once made requisition for five thousand, or enough to supply the entire [3^rd Division], but it was three months before the contractors could deliver them. Meanwhile, the regiment[s] did the best [they] could with Burnside, Smith, Sharp[s], and Colt carbines, supplemented by sabers and revolvers.”

Reaching his division’s winter encampment site, near Stevensburg, Virginia, on April 17, 1864, Wilson counted seven regiments, the 2^nd, 5^th, and 8^th New York, 18^th Pennsylvania, 3^rd New Jersey, and 1^st Connecticut, as well as elements of the 3^rd Indiana and 2^nd Ohio, totaling 3,814 men, of whom 1,122 were either riding unserviceable horses or waiting for a horse. With a lot of ‘me’ and ‘I,’ to this point, Wilson has claimed a lot of credit for himself. Some of Wilson’s claims might be challenged but assuming his last statement is accurate, the state of his division is startling. With little more than two weeks before the start of the Overland Campaign, nearly one-third of his men were either without a horse or riding a horse deemed unfit for service.

George Custer’s Michigan Brigade had recently been transferred from the 3^rd Cavalry Division to the 1^st Division, in order to avoid conflicts of rank between the senior Custer and the more recently promoted Wilson. Few commands are more often linked to the Spencer rifle and carbine than Custer’s Wolverines. Lt. Asa Isham described the circumstances of the men in the 7^th Michigan receiving their Spencer carbines in his regimental history. On “May 4, 1864”, Isham recalled, “…our column was headed for the Rapidan. At Stony Mountain we bivouacked, where we broke up our Burnside carbines and received Spencer repeating carbines in their stead.”

In another example, Col. Theophilus Rodenbough, in compiling the history of the 18^th Pennsylvania Cavalry in 1909, claimed, “At Washington [in July 1864] the brigade was armed with Spencer repeating carbines.”

All of these decades later, historians, writers and students of the war may be forgiven for reporting or believing that by early summer of 1864, every man in the Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac, carried a Spencer carbine, a revolver and a saber into every contest with their, by comparison, destitute Southern counterparts. But just how accurate are the recollections of Wilson, Isham, Rodenbough, and others? Can we get a little closer to the truth.

I do not believe that the Ordnance Department ever designated the Spencer carbine as the standard carbine for the cavalry service. The company simply could not produce enough weapons fast enough to meet the demand, nor could other manufacturers produce enough of their own weapons to meet the demand. When the war ended, the War Department still had open contracts with several carbine manufacturers.

Moreover, the department created some of their own problems in trying to settle upon a standard calibre. By November 23, 1863, the Secretary of War had settled upon .44 as the standard calibre for future production, but he ordered the department to begin tests “to determine the proper charge of powder and length of cartridge for both .44 and .50.” Even as army officials seemed to have settled the question, they vacillated and began leaning toward .50 calibre as the standard, leaving manufacturers, who had already begun re-tooling their machinery, in a difficult position. Any delays in making a final decision would not only impact production of the weapon but also ammunition production.

As the manager for the Joslyn company explained to General Ramsay, commanding the Ordnance Department, on December 10, 1863, “I am disappointed at receiving no reply to my inquiries about calibre but of course considered your [previous instructions] decisive and had made our arrangements accordingly but have just [learned] … that the latest decision adopts .44 as the calibre and [we are directed] to make our preparations for the gauges. As we are without official instructions on this point and have our arrangements and tools under way for .50 we are in doubt what to do, though … instructions are peremptory to conform to .44. The last change involves the making of new tools throughout as we must reduce the outside measurement also to conform in weight to standard adopted [emphasis in original]. Please advise me immediately as to your wishes in our case, and if you can obtain such an extension of time as may be necessary, consistent with the utmost expedition which is possible in view of necessary changes.”

Other correspondence further suggests the uncertainty coming from the Ordnance Department and the resulting confusion, expense, and delays among the weapons manufacturers. Despite the seeming finality of each decision, the lack of clarity continued into 1864. As General Ramsay told an officer at the Springfield Armory in February 1864, “…In view of the unsatisfactory results thus far obtained with the .44 calibre, and of the time which has already elapsed without any definite conclusion being arrived at, it has been thought best to postpone for the present any decision as to…calibre of our service carbines until the whole subject in all its details has been more thoroughly investigated.” Ramsay then directed the officer to conduct a series of tests, “To establish which of the two, .44 or .50 calibre is best suited to the military service.” Once the officer reached a decision, he was to “determine which of the various carbines now in use is the best using the same calibre, weight of ball [etc.]” Ramsay then closed with the admonition to press the work, so as to reach a decision as quickly as possible. Still, the process dragged on into 1865, before the army settled on .50 calibre as the standard.

While the question of calibre may seem a diversion from my original questions, we must remember that each of these companies operated on very thin profit margins as they sought to maintain their contracts with the War Department, and all seemed to struggle to meet production deadlines. The uncertainty over the calibre of future models and the resulting delays and expense created by producing new models and machinery only served to create additional delays and to push some of the companies closer to financial ruin.

By the end of 1863, Spencer had delivered about half the weapons called for in its first contract, with 2,000 being delivered in October, another 2,000 in November, and 3,000 in December. In mid-December, the company signed a second contract, for 34,500 carbines, with one-third (11,500) of the weapons to be delivered through May 1864. But by May 17, two weeks into the Overland Campaign, the company had delivered but 7,000 and not all of those had gone to the Army of the Potomac.

With this information as background, could General Wilson have asked for and received 5,000 Spencers for his division by the summer of 1864 (remember that his division counted fewer than 5,000 men)? He certainly could have asked for them, but I have not found any proof that he did. I have, however, seen the letter from then commander of the Ordnance Department, Gen. Alexander Dyer, of April 20, 1865, in response to Wilson’s request for 4,600 Spencers. And though Dyer’s wording is confusing, Wilson may have asked for 6,000 Spencers just a few days earlier. Thus, he had requested either 10,600 Spencers in total or he had reduced his first request from 6,000 to 4,600. By then, Wilson was leading cavalry in the Western theater and Lee had already surrendered at Appomattox.

Absent a requisition from Wilson and some confirmation from the Ordnance Department to verify Wilson’s recollection, we can turn to the Quarterly Regimental Ordnance Returns. Though the records at the archives are not complete to the end of the war, the easiest way to search them, without traveling to Washington, is via the Research Arsenal website at Civil War Database | 100,000+ Documents | Research Arsenal. With a subscription and a short investment in time, one can check the make and quantity of carbines, revolvers and sabers carried by the men in Wilson’s regiments. I checked the June 30 and September 30 returns based upon Wilson’s wording in his recollections. But I must offer another caveat, the numbers listed on each return almost certainly do not reflect the actual numbers for June and September 30. Other dates, some many months later, have been written into the ledgers, and while I cannot state with certainty what these dates mean, I suspect they are the actual dates each company submitted the information. If so, we cannot say with any certainty how many Spencers each of his regiments carried during the latter half of 1864.

And before listing my numbers, I caution that some degree of error probably crept into my count as my aging eyes tried to follow the appropriate lines across very large ledger book pages. Also, the returns do not reflect the number of men in the regiment at the time. Nor did each regiment have a full complement of companies with the army. Those concerns aside, what do the September 30 returns tell us about the weapons carried by Wilson’s 3^rd Division.

8^th New York – 16 Spencers, 131 Sharps, 212 revolvers, and 190 sabers.

5^th New York – 180 Spencer carbines, 2 Burnsides, 233 revolvers, and 238 sabers.

2^nd New York – 188 Spencers, 18 Sharps, 103 revolvers and 227 sabers.

18^th Pennsylvania – 262 Spencers, 24 Burnsides, 307 revolvers, and 375 sabers.

3^rd New Jersey – 61 Spencers, 6 Burnsides, 27 Sharps, 163 revolvers, and 160 sabers.

2^nd Ohio – 162 Spencers, 163 Sharps, 41 Burnsides, 41 revolvers, and 336 sabers.

1^st Vermont – 16 Spencers, 3 Burnsides, 174 Sharps, 149 revolvers, and 318 sabers.

The latest return for the 1^st Connecticut is the June 30 return – 14 Spencers, 56 Burnsides, 166 Sharps, 87 revolvers, and 158 sabers.

The 3^rd Indiana, which had only a handful of companies with the army, reported no carbines, 8 revolvers and 5 sabers.

I believe these numbers reflect 1,696 carbines of all makes in Wilson’s division, including 885 Spencers, or just more than half of the total. The number is higher than I expected but far from the number Wilson implies. I also counted 1,303 revolvers and 2,007 sabers. One quickly sees that not every man in the ranks carried all three weapons. The mythical Union horn of plenty was not quite as bountiful as some would have us believe. And contrary to Wilson’s postwar account, none of his regiments appear to have carried either Smith or Colt carbines.

Beyond the quarterly returns, the ordinance officer attached to headquarters, Army of the Potomac, compiled a monthly report titled Consolidated Report of Make, Kind, and Calibre of Arms in the Army of the Potomac. He lists no Spencers on his May 15 report. The July 1 report (I did not find a report for June), shows a total of 1,012 Spencer carbines in the Cavalry Corps, with 795 in the 1^st Division, 42 in the 2^nd Division, and 175 in Wilson’s 3^rd Division. However, the August 1 count of just 15 Spencers, as well as the September 1 count of only 29 Spencers, confirms that these reports are not reliable either, especially for the Cavalry Corps as it often operated well away from the main army. The November 1 report lists 594 Spencer carbines but 917 Spencer rifles, a weapon no longer being produced in any numbers, as the company concentrated on meeting its carbine contracts.

But regarding my mythical horn of plenty, as I pointed out in my book Small but Important Riots, by mid-June 1863, the Union arsenals had exhausted their supply of carbines. Demand had exceeded production, and the War Department would not sign a contract with Spencer Firearms for several more weeks. The supply of Sharps carbines, the preferred carbine at the time, had been entirely depleted. But as I worked on my book, I did not realize just how long the shortages persisted.

As more cavalry regiments came online, to include militia units and frontier regiments, General Ramsay told one of his inspectors on October 19, 1863, to “Forward all the Sharps carbines to the Washington Arsenal until further orders. Stir up all the carbine and pistol makers, …to make as large deliveries as possible.

On November 5, another ordnance officer told his counterpart with the Army of the Potomac, “Sharps carbines cannot be furnished.” On January 29, 1864, General Ramsay told an officer at Huntsville, Alabama, “Cavalry arms … cannot be furnished to infantry regiments unless [they have been] mounted by order of the Sec of War.” He also stated, “The supply of Spencer arms is so small that none can be promised at present.” On February 11, Ramsay told an officer in New Orleans, that revolvers “cannot be obtained” at present. Then, in an effort to prevent officers from circumventing the chain of command, especially those with new units, Ramsay declared that all requests for cavalry arms must go across his desk. On February 22, 1864, Ramsay denied a request from an officer at Vicksburg, telling him, “The carbines cannot be supplied.” He then explained that no weapons would be supplied to new units until the men had been officially mustered into service.

On March 2, 1864, Ramsay told an officer with the Department of the Cumberland, “[in reference to your call for] 5,000 carbines, I have to say that is entirely beyond the power of this Dept. to provide them at present. Every manufactory for cavalry arms is now pushed to its utmost capacity, and yet the supply is scarcely sufficient to arm the regiments now organizing and re-organizing which are without arms of any kind.” Ramsay again explained the policy of not issuing weapons to troops, either new or those who were re-enlisting, until they had been mustered into service. Annoyed with having to continually repeat himself, he told the officer, “It is exceedingly embarrassing for this office to receive constant requisitions for supplies which it is entirely unable to furnish.” Coincidently, this request for 5,000 carbines came at about the time Wilson remembered calling for 5,000 for his division.

By March 5, the War Department had also adopted a policy of not issuing a carbine, revolver, and saber, to each man in a unit. As Ramsay told the commander of the Washington Arsenal, if “the [11^th New York] have turned in the Burnside carbines… you can issue the Starr pistols… The object is not to let them have both.” On April 2, Ramsay told an officer at the Indianapolis Arsenal, “it has been decided by the Cavalry Bureau that three arms shall not be issued to cavalry.” Further, militia units would not be armed until after volunteer units had been supplied. Lastly, Ramsay determined to take a unit’s reputation into consideration, telling a subordinate to “give the 1^st Class arms to the best troops and then hand off the 2^nd Class to those troops considered not so good.”

Finally, what of Lt. Asa Isham’s recollection that on May 4, 1864, the men of the 7^th Michigan “broke up our Burnside carbines and received Spencer repeating carbines in their stead.” The June 30 return shows the regiment armed with 66 Spencer rifles, 18 Spencer carbines and 7 Burnside carbines. Of the reporting companies, one reported in June, one in July, two in August, one each in November and December, two in January 1864 and one in February. The September return reflects 92 Spencer carbines and one Burnside. But only one company reported in September, another one reported in November, five in December, two in January and one in February. Thus, the numbers are unreliable, as the men certainly lost weapons in the near constant combat of the spring, summer, and fall. But other contemporary information is available.

On May 31, General Ramsay queried the ordnance officer attached to headquarters, Army of the Potomac, regarding the weapon switch. Ramsay appears to have closely controlled the dispersal of all Spencers, and I suspect the tone of his order reflects the fact that the issue of these Spencers had taken place without his approval. Ramsay would have been equally upset to hear the Burnsides had been destroyed, when he needed every carbine he could put his hands on.

“It is reported,” Ramsay wrote, “that the 7^th Michigan Cavalry which was…armed with the Burnside carbine, had issued to them when leaving Brandy Station, for some reason not stated, a new armament of Spencer carbines… It appears that the men carried the two arms for some two days when the Burnsides were broken up and thrown away. You will…take measures to inspect the arms of that regiment, examine the last property returns made by the different companies, see what stores they appear to be accountable for and if there be any deficiency ascertain how it has occurred, obtain all the information you can in relationship to this matter and report the results to this office.”

The officer replied on July 16. “I yesterday visited the 7^th Mich Cavalry to ascertain the facts connected with the destruction of the Burnside carbines, with which the regiment was armed previous to this campaign.”

“The Spencer carbines were drawn on the 3^rd of May by … [the assistant ordnance officer], 1^st Division, Cavalry Corps. Requisitions had been made for them sometime previous, so as to have a uniformity of arms in the brigade.

“Orders had been given by Gen’l Custer, Comd’g Brigade to the Comd’g Officer of the 7^th Mich to turn over the Burnside carbines to Lt. Col. [Ebenezer] Gould, Comd’g the dismounted men of the corps as soon as he received the Spencers. These were sent to the regiment on the morning of the 4^th of May, the day on which the army moved. The men were immediately supplied with the Spencers instead of the Burnsides and an attempt was made to turn over the latter to Lt. Col. Gould. But this officer was absent, and his command had already moved.

“The Comd’g Officer of the 7^th Mich then ordered all the men to carry both carbines as far as Stevensburg, where he hoped to obtain transportation for the Burnsides. This he was unable to do, and both carbines were carried through the battles of the Wilderness and as far as Todd’s Tavern, near Spotsylvania Court House. Here one hundred and seventeen Burnsides were destroyed by order of Maj. Henry W. Granger, comd’g the regiment. Major Granger was afterwards killed [at Yellow Tavern].

“I ascertained these facts from [the assistant ordnance officer] of the regiment. His statements were verified by several other officers of the regiment. The only papers giving any evidence of the transaction were the invoices … showing that two hundred and seventeen Spencer carbines had been transferred to the regiment on the 4^th of May. The arms have not yet been accounted for.”

Again, memory is faulty. The men did not destroy their Burnsides on May 4 at Stony Mountain. Instead, the men carried two carbines for several days. Without saddle scabbards, the men must have carried both weapons slung on their shoulders or one slung and the other in their free hand or maybe secured in their blanket on the saddle. Rather than Stony Mountain, the men destroyed the Burnsides near Todd’s Tavern.

The December 1863 return shows the regiment had 143 Burnsides (a first quarter return for 1864 does not exist). They destroyed 117 Burnsides after receiving 217 Spencers, of which only 92 were reported still in service on the September return. Accounting for the unreliability of the recording dates, more than half of the Spencers had been lost by the following February when the last company finally submitted its 3^rd quarter return.

The officer’s statement further reveals that after the long winter encampment and all the preparations for the spring campaign, the Cavalry Corps headed into the Wilderness with a detachment of dismounted men attached to the army as foot-soldiers. But therein lies a story for another time.

Sources:

Unpublished documents at the National Archives

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

Asa Isham, Seventh Michigan Cavalry of Custer’s Wolverine Brigade

Isham, “Through the Wilderness to Richmond,” Papers Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States

Roy Marcot, Spencer Repeating Firearms

Publication Committee, History of the Eighteenth Regiment of Cavalry Pennsylvania Volunteers

James Wilson, Under the Old Flag

---