Weapons from Home, 1861

[pipthelimey]

Gentlemen,

A friend of mine (I do have them) is doing some post-doctoral research and has asked for some help finding some primary sources.

She is looking for information on what percentage of recruits brought personally owned weapons to war in 1861. According to Keri, " I am trying to put together a proposal for a legal history grant to examine gun laws/ownership in a slave society. This is a new topic for me, but I thought that that information would be really helpful. Trying to determine how widespread gun ownership is via probate records (like Clayton Cramer's research) excludes almost all poor men, and I had hoped that the personal firearm/militia connection may help not only in determining how widespread ownership was, but also in understanding the quality and age of the weapons owned."

Any help would be greatly appreciated and you'll probably get mentioned in her next book. Thanks in Advance.

[Kevin Spangler]

Re: Weapons from Home, 1861

Your friend had better be careful about this. Michael Bellesiles got in trouble from "supposedly" using Probate Records for his book Arming America that has been thouroughly discredited.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Bellesiles

Kevin Spangler

[Jboring]

Re: Weapons from Home, 1861

Not sure if this is outside of your friends scope of research but the 1st and 2nd USSS were asked to bring heavy target rifles with them to muster, and were offerred a bounty for each person rifle provided to service....which was never (or very rarely) paid. The Captain Stevens book would mention it, as would any work which touches on the mustering of those regiments.

[James Brenner]

Re: Weapons from Home, 1861

Don't forget that in 1861, friends and family often gave a revolver as a parting gift to a volunteer soldier. In Ohio, for example, there are numerous accounts in local newspapers of such presentations to the three month volunteers.

Jim

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Weapons from Home, 1861

Hallo!

Howdy Jim lad. It's been a spell, pard!!!

In brief...

I am not so sure that can be quantified or qualified.

For example, the types of firearms available to Northerners would largely be small bore target rifles and "Ohio Rifle" type half and full stock deer rifles. And would be more of a rural or "farmer' thing than say the big city dweller living in New York or Boston. Neither would suitable for the army.
The one exception I can think of is Governor Todd's September 1862 call rush to the defense of Cincinnati. Roughly 15,000 men from 65 Ohio Counties descended on Cincinnati armed with their personal antique muskets, deer rifles, and small bore squirrel rifles to earn the name "Ohio Squirrel Hunters."

Berdans in 1861 is a possible exception but there are uniquely different. Hiram Berdan had envisioned a corps of target rifle-armed "marksmen." And was highly "resistant' to the notion, and what happened with their going to made light-infantry or at best scouts and skirmishers to be arms with M1855 Rifles. But he was persuasive and got the M1855 Rifles nixed in favor of first M1855 Colt Revolving Rifles and then in May or June of 1862 Sharps NM1859 Rifles "tweaked" to ditch their sabre bayonets in favor of a socket bayonets (which Berdan initially discouraged until court martialed) and double set triggers.

The obvious exception is early war Confederates, where the shortage of martial arms was initially so severe that some militias and some men mustered in with their personal weapons- there also being a majority of antiques, hunting rifles, and shotguns. Which also plays into comparisons between a more rural South and a real or perceived view that Southerners had a greater personal firearm tradition and ownership.

And last, there is the Confederate firearm drives where just about anything 'serviceable' was collected to try to meet emergency needs at the start of the War.

"Militia" is a more complicated and much longer discussion. Initially, each colony set its own militia law specifying minimum and maximum ages and what equipment was mandatory. Typically they involved a musket and bayonet, or a firearm and tomahawk. It was common for me to meet their militia duties with a fowler (shotgun) because it would serve for hunting as well as militia duty and musters. Poor men without one could borrow one from Public Stores.
Problems during the Rev War with both organized/uniformed militia ( to counter foreign armies) and frontier Indian fighting militia saw Congress starting in 1792 (and actually lasting until 1916 s trying to work out a policy to make the state citizen soldiery an effective reserve to augment the U.S. Army in national emergencies and yet preserve the militia's prerogatives as guaranteed in the Constitution.
But that bucked the "States' Rights" side of things so the Militia Act of 1792 left the militias to the states. To help with that in 1808 Congress approved a law in 1808 providing $200,000 worth of weapons to be shared among the states. In addition, individual states also contracted for or purchased arms for their own individual uses. (The Militia Act of 1903, increased federal aid to $4 million )annually and recognized the National Guard as the “Organized Militia.” )

Anyways, good luck. I am not aware of any process, numbers, or mechanisms that captured the count of men showing up to enlist with their personal weapons whether passed through with them or being thanked with 'but no thanks."
(The side discussion being the nightmare of random calibre ammunition supply...)

Curt

[Marine Mike]

Re: Weapons from Home, 1861

This is one of those too many dangles to the angles kind of thing. Several source mention that volunteers showed up prepared for all dangers with private knives and handguns and began to lose them as the march wore on. Then there is the wreck USS Cairo where six-guns, pepperboxes and single shots were recovered. The pepperbox and single shots would be personnel protection and as the boat was doing the marching, the owners had less likely reasons for losing them. Here's link to a picture. http://www.nps.gov/vick/historyculture/weapons.htm

[colorsgt26nc]

Re: Weapons from Home, 1861

My GG-grandfather, of the 26th North Carolina, wrote home from the Camp of Instruction shortly after the regiment was issued arms asking for my GG-grandmother to send him his rifle because the unit had been issued old muskets.

[pipthelimey]

Re: Weapons from Home, 1861

I've been asked by PM to clarify what Keri's aim is with this research to clarify the question. Keri is working to try to determine gun ownership (by household) rates across different historical periods, with a focus on antebellum society. She's a gun owner too, in case anyone was worried about a slant. From what she expressed to me, with a lack of centralized manufacturers, there isn't really a way to accurately determine how many guns were manufactured in a say 50 year period, so she is hoping to get a snapshot idea of what percentage of volunteers brought a firearm to war with them which might enable her to get an idea of firearm ownership rates. Obviously there are a lot of variables, etc.