COLT SINGLE ACTION ARMY POSITIVELY USED BY ONE OF CUSTER'S MEN

AuctionZip James D. Julia Auctions ^ | April 8, 2017 | By James D. Julia

[Swordmaker]

By the way, both the Colt SA and the Winchesters start suffering weight and balance problems for the shooters in the smaller calibers. Smaller bore means more metal and heavier barrels at the end of an extended lever as you tried to aim. Worst of the lot were the long barreled Winchester 1873s chambered in .22. Cheap to shoot but you had to develop Gorilla arms to do it!

[schurmann]

“...It was not the .45-90 but the .45-75 I was thinking of. .... . . But if the action could handle the .50-95, it could easily have handled the military .45-70 cartridge,...”

The M1876 action was limited by size: too short for 45-70. 45-60, 45-75, and 50-95 are all shorter. And their ballistic performance never approached 45-70 - max bullet weights were 300gr, 350gr, and 350gr respectively. All lighter than the military bullets for 45-70: 405gr and 500 gr. Light, stubby bullets do not retain velocity well, and none of those rounds had much speed to start with.

And, like the M1873, the M1876 did not boast a particularly strong locking system, so uploading could not take those cartridges very far.

I envy your encounters with Colt Single Actions chambering 25-20: after departing active duty I worked for 15 years in gun repair but never saw one. Could have been local gunsmith modifications; the model has been around awhile, far from the factory. Numbers of First Gen guns suffer rework even now; many are quite innocently done but a small percentage undergo rebarreling and rechambering to boost collector value. Ethically dodgy.

Handguns chambering much smaller cartridges than the originally designed rounds do feel perceptibly heavier, but I’ve yet to hear a user complain.

I worked on two Winchester ‘73s in rimfire (one original, one a Taurus replica), and they are a chore to lift.

[Swordmaker]

I envy your encounters with Colt Single Actions chambering 25-20: after departing active duty I worked for 15 years in gun repair but never saw one. Could have been local gunsmith modifications; the model has been around awhile, far from the factory. Numbers of First Gen guns suffer rework even now; many are quite innocently done but a small percentage undergo rebarreling and rechambering to boost collector value. Ethically dodgy.

The .25-20's were both Colt factory originals. . . there was no indications they were post factory modifications. One had a factory box with the caliber designation on the box. Colt never turned down a special order to my knowledge. I have seen a SAA with a 2" barrel direct from the factory. Why anyone would want such a stubby gun is anyone's guess, but Colt made it in the custom gun shop. The .25-20 came from their custom gun shop as well.

Handguns chambering much smaller cartridges than the originally designed rounds do feel perceptibly heavier, but I’ve yet to hear a user complain.

Heavier handguns have lower recoil. . . and those who choose them are unlikely to complain about their choices after making that selection.

I worked on two Winchester ‘73s in rimfire (one original, one a Taurus replica), and they are a chore to lift.

The antique Winchester '73s in the .22 chambering are the most likely to be in better condition than any of the other calibers as they were more likely to have not been carried around as a utility gun and mistreated.

The only others in standard calibers are the fancy finish engraved guns. I've seen more of the .22 '73s in near mint condition than any other except for the '73 musket model. You see more of the musket in near mint or even mint condition because Winchester was unable to sell many of those into the military market and wound up selling its surplus inventory to Bannerman's Guns in the 1910s and 1920s and most of them wound up in the hands of people who just stashed them in closets. I wound up with one that still had the original shipping grease on it and the original cleaning rods in the stock still wrapped in the original brown paper! Now that's "mint."

[Swordmaker]

I worked on two Winchester ‘73s in rimfire (one original, one a Taurus replica), and they are a chore to lift.

Oh, incidentally, one of my customers at Simms was a collector who had a Winchester 1873 chambered in .22 Short with a special order 30" octagon barrel with full length magazine. Talk about masochistic tendencies in trying to aim off the shoulder. Pretty gun, but it had feed problems. It would feed fine when the mag was full but the spring would be too weak to feed when it got about half way through the load of rounds. Our gunsmith tried a more modern spring but the length was still just too great. The gunsmith suggested putting in a block and a shorter spring and accepting a lower round capacity but the owner did not want that. The owner kept the original spring in the interests of antiquity, but shot it with the modern spring. The new spring would start having jam problems at about 10% to 5% left in the magazine. Better than half way, but still just too long a stack.

As a gunsmith, did you ever see any of John Martz's custom rebuilt Lugers? We used to take a lot of them from him on consignment. . . his custom baby Lugers sold like hot cakes. . . he was a true artists as a gun smith.

This looks like one of the cased Luger Carbines Martz made that we sold.

John would come in and buy any mis-matched Luger we got in to use in his hobby. . .

[schurmann]

“... one of my customers at Simms was a collector who had a Winchester 1873 chambered in .22 Short with a special order 30” octagon barrel with full length magazine. ... Pretty gun, but it had feed problems. ...”

My sense of the situation was that M1873s in rimfire experienced more malfunctions than the ones chambering centerfire rounds. Too far a stretch for modifications to the original design, perhaps?

I’ll defer to you on Colt’s inclination to honor special- order requests like 25-20 for a Single Action. 120 years ago, even the biggest gun manufacturers were more inclined to fill the needs of a customer who wanted something outside their routinely produced lineup. Custom shops still do some of it, but prices can become exciting.

Lovely imagery on the Martz custom Lugers.

While employed in the trade, I was never privileged to see anything so unusual.

When I departed active duty, the family moved to a small town in western South Dakota. Gun collectors do not live here; they scarcely bother to travel through on buying sweeps.

Lots of old guns, though few in any condition: most still in daily use, owned by hard-bitten ranchers who get really grouchy when their 130-year old Winchester ‘73 malfunctions. And grouchier, when they get the repair estimate. The oldest we worked on was a 32-20, dating to 1887 or so.

Routine gun repair/rework boiled down to installation of muzzle brakes, stock bedding, trimming shotgun stocks - or adding length - with installation of recoil pads, a few trigger jobs, some re-barreling of varmint rifles, removing stuck rounds, cutting and recrowning barrels suffering bulged or split muzzles, installation of night sights. And cleaning dirty guns: mostly rimfires and shotguns.

[Swordmaker]

When I departed active duty, the family moved to a small town in western South Dakota. Gun collectors do not live here; they scarcely bother to travel through on buying sweeps.

Interesting story relating to South Dakota and old guns. A friend, John Motter, was a salesman for North American Eutectic, selling welding powders, on a trip through South Dakota stopped in a junk shop. There he saw an old Colt black powder 5 ½" Single Action in .45 Colt in fairly good condition hanging behind the sales counter. This was in the early 1970s. They wanted $125 for it. It had a stylized FL carved on the frame and on the grips.

I helped him do the research on the gun, writing a letter to the Colt Historian to find out what they knew about it. They sent back that they had sold it in a group of five guns to a hardware store in South Dakota in October of 1878. I don't recall what town the hardware store was located in but I gave John the letter.

On his next trip to South Dakota, he happened to be driving through that town and lo and behold there was a hardware store with that same name. . . still in business! He stopped in and asked if there was any chance they had kept records from the period when the gun was sold. They said they did, and he was welcome to look, if he wanted. He checked the records and found that the Colt Single Action had been sold in November of 1878 to one Frank Leslie.

John got interested in researching Frank Leslie, who turned out to be a fairly famous gunslinging outlaw called "Buckskin Frank," who owned a ranch in the area and had a registered brand in the form of a stylized FL that matched the marks on the gun. He is also the man who has the most credible claim to have shot and killed another famous gunslinger named Johnny Ringo. At least one witness claimed to have seen Frank Leslie kill Ringo.

On the other hand, some claim that Ringo killed himself.

I met John when he brought me a gun he had been given by a guy he met who was shooting at the lane next to him at the local gun range when he was there shooting his replica 1851 black powder Colt revolver. He was interested in John's replica and mentioned he had one "just like that at home, only bigger." So after an afternoon of shooting John's replica, they went to the guy's house and he hauls a gun in a double holster, wrapped up in a pair of his old pajamas out of a drawer. John, on seeing it thinks, "Oh, my God, it's a Walker Colt!"

Only it wasn't, John was wrong. The gun was, however, in an exceedingly rare original Walker double Saddle holster rig from 1847 with only one gun, plus he had an original Walker powder flask. . . but the gun was NOT an 1847 Colt Walker. The guy who owned them said he was in the midst of a bitter divorce and his wife would just make him get rid of all of his stuff to pay her, so he GAVE the gun, holster rig and powder flask to John!

This is not John's Fluck Dragoon, just one in poorer condition, but a good example.

At the time, John did not know for sure what he was looking at in the leather and flask, but he knew the gun was some kind of a Dragoon. . . but it didn't look like a normal Colt Dragoon he knew anything about so he brought it to me to see if I could identify it. I had to research it. . . and was finally able to identify it as a Colt "Fluck" Dragoon, one of the guns Colt made to replace the Walker's that had been destroyed in service to the Texas Rangers. These Dragoons used a Walker frame without the Walker curved grip notch, cylinder, grip, and trigger guard, but a 1st model Colt Dragoon Barrel, but these guns had their own serial number range starting at 3001. It was at first thought there were only about 300 or so made, but another run of about 700 were identified. There were at that time 27 known Fluck (named for the gun collector who had discovered they even existed) Dragoons in existence. . . and here was the 27th. As of 2015, 71 have been found. John's gift gun was in near perfect condition with almost 85% of the original finish! Now called First Model Dragoons, or Second Contract Colts, they are far rarer than the Walkers they replaced.

Damn lucky son of a Bitch. . . why doesn't anything like that ever happen to me?

In any case, John Motter took over my job managing the Old Sacramento Armoury when I got married and went to work for the US, Chamber of Commerce (I needed a bigger pay check). He got so involved in tracking down the history of antique guns and providing details to the Colt Factory on his research that they offered him the position of being the Colt Historian and he spent several years in that position at the Colt Factory.

[schurmann]

REF: your Post 46, on gun-collection “finds” in South Dakota, provenance involving Frank Leslie, Colt’s History Office corroboration etc.

Great tales from the trade. SD is an out-of-the-way place, harboring long-lost mysteries just around the next corner. Collecting “finds” are rare but still happen.

Colt’s revolvers of the percussion period rank foremost in looks and design, among firearms of the 19th century. Later arms may be more advanced technically, but the handling qualities of pieces like the 51 Navy have not been surpassed. Always a visual treat, no matter how worn.

Thanks for keeping things going in the profession.

[schurmann]

“Estimated to sell at $175,000.00 to 275,000.00. Opening bid was a mere $90,000.00”

Results are in; the Colt Single Action of the thread title sold at $460,000.00. Top-priced firearm at James D Julia’s spring auction held 11-13 Apr.

See the list of ten top prices at

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/04/20/10-expensive-firearms-sold-james-d-julia-april-2017-auction/

There are more than ten guns on the list.

[Swordmaker]

Results are in; the Colt Single Action of the thread title sold at $460,000.00. Top-priced firearm at James D Julia’s spring auction held 11-13 Apr.

Oh, my goodness. They really underestimated the allure of a failed military leader like Custer, didn't they? That was certainly out of my price range, much as I would like to have bid on some of those guns.

[Swordmaker]

I note that the lowest priced gun on the list was the proof 1911 from Singer Sewing Machine Company, one of the 500 or so they produced to show they had the capability to actually make them when they bid on the contract. . . which they did not get.

When I was managing the Olde Sacramento Armoury, the Department of Fish and Game advertised an auction of firearms confiscated from poachers over the last five years. They did NOT notify Federally licensed Firearms dealers and instead just advertised to the general public in the classified advertising in local newspapers in Sacramento, which, unfortunately for their non-FFL licensed auction company was a big NO-NO, as the state law and Federal Law at that time specified that such confiscated weapons could ONLY be sold to or through licensed dealers. I knew the law, the auctioneer but the Department of Fish and Game, and the auctioneer did not.

I saw the advertising in the Sacramento Bee for a Saturday Morning auction and showed up to examine and bid. . . and brought lots of cash with me. I approached auction company's clerk who was handing out auction paddles to the general public and asked "Where do I file my Federal Firearms Dealer's License?" "What's that?" She said

"That's what all of your bidders are going to need to have to buy any of the guns you are selling," I told her.

"What are you talking about?"

"Federal and California state law requires that only Federally licensed dealers can buy these confiscated guns from a government agencyf. I need to file my license and resale certificate with the auctioneer. Where do I file my license copy? With you?" I explained.

"This is a public auction," she said. "Anybody can bid and buy these guns. You don't need anything special to buy at a public auction."

"Not according to the Federal 1968 Gun Control Act. They have to be sold only to licensed gun dealers."

"Let me go get my boss."

I went around and around with the auctioneer . . . and then was joined by another gun dealer who backed me up with the same argument. Then a off duty police officer said the same thing. You should have seen the auctioneer's face. He left to go find a telephone. . .

The announced auction was supposed to start promptly at 9AM. But the didn't get started until 10AM as the auctioneer scrambled to try and get a hold of someone in the ATF to find out what was what about the actual state of the Federal laws on a Saturday morning when all the offices were closed, but they finally got a hold of someone and got told the low down facts after he got connected through someone at the FBI offices. . . at 9:45AM he came out and announced that the guns could ONLY be sold to Federally Licensed Gun Dealers and anyone with a Federal Firearms License could file their paper work with the Auction Clerk. Everyone else would have to turn their auction paddles back in.

Oh, were there a lot of IRATE public bidders turning in paddles. There was a lot of shouting and yelling going on! People were talking about them having to go ahead and selling to the public because they had advertised a "public auction." The auction employees were busy explaining it still is public. . . but limited by law to public firearms dealers. So sorry.

There were just THREE of us licensed dealers there. . . out of probably multiple dozens in the area that could have been notified of the auction! We three did not bid the guns up high because there were plenty to go around among us. That auctioneer was completely pissed. I don't think a gun went for more than $5. A typical auction went like this: Opening bid $1, $3, $5... if that high. . . and we took turns winning the bid.

I bout almost 1,000 guns for a bit over $6,000 that Saturday. . . and the other two dealers a bit less. The $1,000 extra was the auctioneers premium. We didn't even have to pay sales tax because we were going to resell them.

Now, Schurmann, most of them weren't worth much more than that $5 wholesale anyway. In fact, I had a barrel I put in the shop with a sign on it "Terrible Turkeys — Your Choice $20" and when the barrel got close to empty I'd go back into the back and grab an armful of rifles and shotguns. Some, of course were very good. . . and were fine hunting rifles and shotguns. . . but the State of California had not done them any good by storing them outside and they suffered from rust problems. There were some antiques in the lot. . . and some the poachers were putting their lives at risk to just shoot. One double barrel shotgun they'd confiscated had a blown chamber from a 12/20 burst but it was still being used by a poacher with the other barrel, if you can believe it! However, just ONE gun paid for the entire lot.

I had spotted it while I was browsing the tables and tables of confiscated guns while the auctioneer was finally doing his due diligence. . . there were no handguns unfortunately, even back then, the State of California required confiscated handguns to be destroyed. What I saw was an M-1 Carbine with the stock covered with electricians tape to make it less visible. . . I picked it up and looked it over because the metal looked especially good. That's when I spotted the maker. SINGER SEWING MACHINE!

Singer never had a contract to actually make M-1 Carbines. They did have a contract to make receivers for Underwood Typewriter, but those were marked Underwood. . . with a code to indicate the receiver was subbed by Singer. . . but Singer made M-1s are the holy grail of M-1 carbines for M-1 carbine collectors. Singer made some as proof guns when they also bid on a contract to manufacture carbines. . . and did not get the contract! The estimate is there are fewer than 100 Singer M-1 Carbines in existence.

I made sure I got that Singer M-1 carbine. . . we sold it for $7,500 the next day to a collector who was a good customer. The rest of the auction acquisitions were pure profit.

[schurmann]

“...They really underestimated the allure of a failed military leader like Custer, didn’t they? That was certainly out of my price range, ...”

Arms with documented provenance are rare enough; arms with documentation this solid, linked to a pivotal event in US military history, are so rare that forecast of auction results is impossible.

I will respectfully beg to differ with Swordmaker on George Armstrong Custer (USMA 1861). He was the real thing. And one of the few BTZ general officers to attain success. After 29 years in uniform, I can attest that even the best of commanders can experience a bad day.

[Swordmaker]

I will respectfully beg to differ with Swordmaker on George Armstrong Custer (USMA 1861). He was the real thing. And one of the few BTZ general officers to attain success. After 29 years in uniform, I can attest that even the best of commanders can experience a bad day.

I agree that anyone could have a bad day, and this was the epitome of bad days. . . but some of his other superior officers were of the opinion that the young Custer was a hot head (He graduated LAST in his class of 34 from West Point due to over 700 demerits garnered through playing pranks on his classmates and was always on the edge of being expelled) who tended to go off half-cocked, with minimal information and unprepared. Others claimed he was a glory hound, what today would be called a narcissist. It was these tendencies that got him and his men killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Custer ignored the data provided by his own scouts that the encampment of natives he was going to be attacking included at least 1500 to 2000 warriors when he had planned for a maximum of 800. At every opportunity, he assumed his Calvary men were superior to the warriors of the natives, even to the point of breaking his forces down into four smaller groups and still assumed that each could handle whatever they encountered. Perhaps his only tactically correct decision was to leave behind the cumbersome wheeled Gattling Guns, preferring to instead maintain mobility to be close to the nimble Natives in movement. It is unfortunate that the new camel mounted Gattlings were not yet deployed for his use.

I find it amusing that at the time the Army found it easy to credit the Natives' victory to the use of repeating Winchesters as opposed by Custer's Troops single shot Springfields, but did not take a lesson from that dichotomy of superiority in battle. They also criticized Custer's decision to not take his Gattling Guns with their 350 round per minute rate of fire with him, and still did not equate that with giving their soldiers a faster rate of fire weapon. For some reason, they still fixated on the necessity of the soldiers having long range accuracy when it was well known among line soldiers themselves that short range fighting was more important on the battlefield and that a few long range guns per group of soldiers was adequate. The soldiers knew that 95% of the rounds fired in battle never hit anything anyway until the range was so close you couldn't help but hit something. "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!" was good advice, if you want to hit someone, especially with single shot muskets.

There was a so-so argument that you do have to stop shooting from time to time and and reload the Winchesters and Henrys that does slow down the fighting, but I think that was sour grapes from the single-shooter proponents whose main argument was that the Springfield was faster to reload than the muzzle loading muskets of the past and still had the long range and stopping power of the large caliber. It's ironic that Major Reno was personally involved with the commission that made the decision that selected the Springfield as the Army's official weapon.

[M Kehoe]

Good afternoon.

Maybe this is the sidearm of Maj. Myles Keogh?

5.56mm

[Swordmaker]

Maybe this is the sidearm of Maj. Myles Keogh?

Entirely possible. It probably was an officer's weapon, and Keogh's horse, Comanche, was the lone survivor of the battle. Keogh had been reduced in rank after the Civil War from Major to Captain (apparently he had just been brevetted to Colonel as the war ended), just as Gen. Custer was reduced to Colonel.

The army did not keep too accurate records as to which weapons were issued to which soldier, just what weapon was issued, back then. Now, they record every detail.

[schurmann]

“...some of his other superior officers were of the opinion that the young Custer was a hot head (He graduated LAST in his class of 34 from West Point ...) who tended to go off half-cocked, with minimal information and unprepared. ...”

_Sacred Ties_, by Tom Carhart (Caliber, 2011. ISBN-10: 0425239101; ISBN-13: 978-0425239100)

_The Class of 1846_, by John C Waugh (Ballantine, 1999. ISBN-10: 034543403X; ISBN-13: 978-0345434036)

_Last in Their Class_, by James S Robbins (Encounter Books, 2006. ISBN-10: 159403141X; ISBN-13: 978-1594031410)

_West Point 1915: Eisenhower, Bradley, and the Class the Stars Fell On_, by Michael E Haskew (Zenith Press, 2014. ISBN-10: 0760346526; ISBN-13: 978-0760346525)

The briefest perusal of this short list will indicate that popular culture and conventional “wisdom” concerning historical memory aren’t forming terribly informed judgments - not even when it comes to well-known figures from our past.

It’s a common practice among some students of history to disparage George Armstrong Custer, pointing out his dead-last class rank. Deficient thinking on numerous levels: “last” in such a select group is still decently high. And the criteria for both entry, graduation, and success were (and are) decidedly different - in ways the average citizen rarely suspects.

There are many indications that Custer toyed with authorities, making sport of their heavy-handed approach to leadership and disciplinary measures, gaming it to rack up demerits and bring notoriety to his eventual last place. He did not graduate “early” either - another aspersion cast on his reputation. When he entered, USMA authorities had reacted to public criticism of their curriculum, expanding the course of instruction from four years to five, adding material on international relations and the like, on the theory that grads needed to be more fully versed in the dynamic changes then hitting Europe.

Often, USMA has graduated classes early, in response to national emergencies. Custer had been slated to graduate in 1862, but the American Civil War was starting, so he became a member of the Second Class of 1861, four years after entering.

His advancement from captain to brigadier (one star) general was a nakedly political act, taken by a panicked hierarchy at a time of great upheaval and after a number of reverses suffered by Union forces in the field (a couple other were given the same honor). The luck of the decisionmakers held; Custer proved an able and inspired leader, gaining a reputation for unconventional thinking and daring moves nobody anticipated. Battle is a welter of uncertainties, but indications are that his lightning moves in July 1863 at Gettysburg increased Union chances substantially.

Following the ACW, the public mood lapsed again into mulish indifference, but Custer and some colleagues returned to a career path they might have followed in the first place: reduced to “permanent” rank, they soldiered on in obscurity, combating American Indians.

In that role, Custer prospered, becoming the foremost among Indian fighters, once again displaying a tactical sixth-sense and quick grasp of essentials, many times with only the sketchiest intel data to guide him. He was known and regarded by many colleagues, if not by the public. And factionalism, with subgroups collecting around this or that senior personage, was not unknown then (as now).

Glory hound? Possibly. No one then rose to command entire divisions without a certain amount of ego: it takes more than a little self-confidence, to believe one can order 10,000 troops about, and achieve a successful result under battlefield conditions, which are never as certain as one might like.

The pursuit and engagemnt tactics he employed at Little Big Horn had worked before; he was chasing a wily adversary, who had more than once contrived to give US forces the slip, exploiting the slightest hesitation or lack of certitude by commanders.

I have walked the ground at Little Big Horn and can state clearly that the question of bringing the Gatling guns on carriages is a non-issue: the route traversed that morning by those elements of the 7th Cavalry Regiment cut cross badlands of the most severe sort, not too high in elevation differential, but as broken, as gully-creased, as wrinkled as any to be found. Had the advance force stuck with the Gatlings, battle could not have been joined that day, and the American Indians would have vanished.

I’m inclined to doubt that any Gatlings, camel-mounted or carriage-mounted, would have tipped the scales the other way. The 7th ran into vastly superior forces; they indeed got some warning, but intel did not carry as much weight then and was often unreliable. Custer went with reflex and instinct; luck was not his. The situation fell apart before anyone could react and regroup.

Custer did not “get his men killed”. The American Indians did that. The phrasing is all too common, but does not account for the nature of conflict. Leads to absurd rivalries over what is a non-issue.

Timing was inapt, as happens in may situations. On the eve of the Nation’s Centennial, a fair chunk of the most elite forces of the Regular Army were dealt a setback by a primitive rabble (or so the public looked on American Indians, then). And those Regulars had just been issued the very latest super-weapons the War Dept could devise.

I agree with Swordmaker that any downtime spent reloading the tube-magazine repeaters of the day meant nothing in the context. Leave it to the War Dept to come up with spurious reasoning. The presence of Marcus Reno on the board of officers that evaluated the rifles of the day probably meant less than we suspect: he was not much of a presence (nor much of a personality) in the post-ACW Regular Army. Stephen Vincent Benet, Head of US Ordnance from 1874-1891, was of the conviction that no one in the field forces had the technical understanding or the intellectual imagination to select a suitable issue weapon; Ordnance would tell them what to use, and determine when they would get it.

In any case, once Master Armorer Erskine Allin devised a tolerably efficient modification to convert muzzle-loaders to breechloaders, the game was over. No one else could have penetrated the bureaucracy, no matter how much better their design was. Saving money was paramount.

[Swordmaker]

Timing was inapt, as happens in may situations. On the eve of the Nation’s Centennial, a fair chunk of the most elite forces of the Regular Army were dealt a setback by a primitive rabble (or so the public looked on American Indians, then). And those Regulars had just been issued the very latest super-weapons the War Dept could devise.

I have often stated that the Native Americans, who took to their ponies as if they were born to them, were, perhaps only like the natives of the Asian steppes, the best cavalry forces in the world. They practices riding without hands to guide their horses so they could use the bow and arrow, and did it with out fancy complex saddles, guiding their horses with their knees, and it was a natural progression to shooting muskets and rifles and then repeating rifles.

In any case, once Master Armorer Erskine Allin devised a tolerably efficient modification to convert muzzle-loaders to breechloaders, the game was over. No one else could have penetrated the bureaucracy, no matter how much better their design was. Saving money was paramount.

It helped that the government owned the patents on that conversion and they did not have to pay royalties for its use. . . They literally had millions of both smooth bore and rifled guns just waiting to be converted to breech loading fairly inexpensively.

[Swordmaker]

Oh, by the way, good points on Custer. I don't disagree at all. It should also be pointed out that a good portion of his West Point Class resigned to go fight for the Confederacy. Who knows what his standing would have been had the class remained complete.

At least one of his classmates stated that Custer decided, after he was "unfairly" given demerits for a cadet prank, that if he could not be the best graduate, which with the demerit was no longer possible, he would then aspire to be the worst graduate. "Either the head or the boot, but not mediocre," were, if I recall correctly, the words quoted from Custer's mouth by the classmate. He then set about deliberately to be "the Boot" without getting, er, kicked out. Apparently he succeeded.

[schurmann]

“...It helped that the government owned the patents on that conversion and they did not have to pay royalties for its use. . . They literally had millions of both smooth bore and rifled guns just waiting to be converted to breech loading fairly inexpensively.”

Excellent point about patent royalties.

The period 1850-1900 was a time of dynamism in gun design. Many innovators sought to build bullet-proof patents; many others struggled to invent something that did not infringe patents but still functioned. Legal battles were joined.

I’d not have wished to be an ordnance officer in those times. At the beginning, US Army Ordnance official were beset daily, with entrepreneurs and their great ideas. And at the end, entrepreneurs were chasing after ordnance personnel, trying to sell their ideas for conversions.

[schurmann]

” ...’Either the head or the boot, but not mediocre,’ ...”

The beloved spouse - more a scholar of this period than I - recalls this was quoted in Jeffry D Wert’s _Custer_ (Simon & Schuster, 1996; ISBN-10: 0684810433, ISBN-13: 978-0684810430). We were unable to locate our copy to verify anything.

It wasn’t just USMA 1861 that got hit with resignations. Many cadets still at West Point resigned to return to their home states in the CSA; many grads, long on active duty in the Regular Army, did the same.