Discussion Was it worth it?

[thomas aagaard]

What if the combination of political preference and incompetent evaluation that had given early preference to Colt and Burnside had been diminished the availability of the single shot breech loader and multi shot lever action gun had progressed early and the expenditure of each had been doubled? What if policies similar to those urged by Dyer, the Virginian, who ran the Springfield armory and eventually became the head of ordnance, had been adopted earlier? Would the deployment of advanced small arms convinced the Confederates to give up at an earlier date?

If it was only the money and recourses used on the colt rifle and burnside carbines, then it would have changed nothing.

If it also was the money spend on Springfield riflemuskets then The federal government would likely lost the war because of lack of firearms and ammo. (unless even more money was spend in importing both used muskets and ammo from Europe)

 

[thomas aagaard]

Nice try. But the navy made the adjustments. And even the ordnance bureau eventually saw the advantages of the Griffen gun, which became the 3" ordnance rifle.
There was something irrational in the War Department that could not see that enclosed cartridges were already possible, and something that made them not perceive that reloading time was critical.

By 1861 rifled cannon was no longer a new technology. And their "ammo" was not something new and revolutionary.

metal cartridges for small arms where. And the US did not in any way have the industrial capacity to supply them to 300.000+ soldiers in the field. (no country did)
Just like it did not have the ability to make the guns in the first place.

 

[thomas aagaard]

What would have had more effect and could have been accomplished in 1862 was cornering the European arms market.

That would likely have been the most effective way to deal with the rebellion.
Buy every military gun in Europe. Get the producers of cartridges to make them for the federal military. And so on.

 

[wausaubob]

By 1861 rifled cannon was no longer a new technology. And their "ammo" was not something new and revolutionary.

metal cartridges for small arms where. And the US did not in any way have the industrial capacity to supply them to 300.000+ soldiers in the field. (no country did)
Just like it did not have the ability to make the guns in the first place.

How about 50,000? Don't make my post into a straw man. Double the availability and shorten the war by months.

 

[wausaubob]

By 1861 rifled cannon was no longer a new technology. And their "ammo" was not something new and revolutionary.

metal cartridges for small arms where. And the US did not in any way have the industrial capacity to supply them to 300.000+ soldiers in the field. (no country did)
Just like it did not have the ability to make the guns in the first place.

But the Griffen gun was new. The wrought iron technique was new.
The entire machine tool industry of New England and the Mid Atlantic states was progressing so rapidly that any decision maker not up to date in the testing results was an obstacle.

 

[wausaubob]

By 1861 rifled cannon was no longer a new technology. And their "ammo" was not something new and revolutionary.

metal cartridges for small arms where. And the US did not in any way have the industrial capacity to supply them to 300.000+ soldiers in the field. (no country did)
Just like it did not have the ability to make the guns in the first place.

The US army only survived these mistakes because the Confederacy was starting essentially from zero, and it had its own severe small arms problems.

 

[EHParks]

The decisions about small arms were made first by Simon Cameron, one of the most corrupt politicians in US history. Then there made by bureaucrats and not by officers who had been in combat. That type of decision making was generally abandoned with respect to livestock purchases. US officers were sent directly to the livestock towns to buy directly from the local auction yards. That was the type of decision making that was eventually applied to small arms after Grant had more complete control of the army and Dyer was promoted from Springfield to head of ordnance.

I'd love to see some Quartermaster sources re: direct livestock purchases because I am researching family (5th G-GF and brother, purchasing agent/Quartermaster respectively) in California during the war and in the Western theater after. Specifically I cannot for the life of me remember the actual term used for the civilian agents who handled the bulk of the buying of horses and mules for the Army.

I will say from study of military sciences and experience with military bureaucracy, the Civil War supply and logistics efforts of the Union were exceptional. There was far, far less inefficiency and corruption than there might have been given the remarkable circumstances. In five years the Union alone acquired and shipped some 1 million horses and mules if I recall the approximate number correctly.

 

[Don Dixon]

View attachment 462122

National Debt | HISTORY

What Is the National Debt? The national debt is the amount of money that a national government has borrowed through v...

www.history.com

Where in that cited website is there any mention of the 19th century national debt?

From the U.S. Treasury web site - https://treasurydirect.gov/government/historical-debt-outstanding/ :

"Public debt in 1860 totaled $64.8 million (the annual budget of the federal government at the time was $63.1 million). But this small debt would look completely insignificant compared to the amount of money the government would owe at the end of the Civil War.

"It is estimated that the Civil War cost the nation $5.2 billion in direct expenditures. As the war dragged on, the federal government was forced to completely overhaul its financial organization to cope with this as-yet-unheard-of amount. Enormous leaps in the methods and amount of public financing took place during the war years, including:

• Legal Tender Act (1862) authorized the Treasury to issue $150 million in United States notes and authorized the sale of $500 Million in bonds to fund the war effort.
• National Bank Act (1863) permitting the charter of national banks.

"By the end of 1865, interest-bearing public debt stood at $2.2 billion, but the union had been preserved." (emphasis added)

So says the Treasury.

Regards,
Don Dixon

 

[wausaubob]

From the U.S. Treasury web site - https://treasurydirect.gov/government/historical-debt-outstanding/ :

"Public debt in 1860 totaled $64.8 million (the annual budget of the federal government at the time was $63.1 million). But this small debt would look completely insignificant compared to the amount of money the government would owe at the end of the Civil War.

"It is estimated that the Civil War cost the nation $5.2 billion in direct expenditures. As the war dragged on, the federal government was forced to completely overhaul its financial organization to cope with this as-yet-unheard-of amount. Enormous leaps in the methods and amount of public financing took place during the war years, including:

• Legal Tender Act (1862) authorized the Treasury to issue $150 million in United States notes and authorized the sale of $500 Million in bonds to fund the war effort.
• National Bank Act (1863) permitting the charter of national banks.

"By the end of 1865, interest-bearing public debt stood at $2.2 billion, but the union had been preserved." (emphasis added)

So says the Treasury.

Regards,
Don Dixon

What you posted was $5.3 billion. That was inaccurate.
The Sharps small arms only cost about $2.4M and the Spencer's only cost about $2.0M. Doubling that expenditure would have shortened the war, saved lives and decreased the destruction in the Confederate states.

 

[wausaubob]

I'd love to see some Quartermaster sources re: direct livestock purchases because I am researching family (5th G-GF and brother, purchasing agent/Quartermaster respectively) in California during the war and in the Western theater after. Specifically I cannot for the life of me remember the actual term used for the civilian agents who handled the bulk of the buying of horses and mules for the Army.

I will say from study of military sciences and experience with military bureaucracy, the Civil War supply and logistics efforts of the Union were exceptional. There was far, far less inefficiency and corruption than there might have been given the remarkable circumstances. In five years the Union alone acquired and shipped some 1 million horses and mules if I recall the approximate number correctly.

The horses and mules, and their feed and forage seem to have been the largest category of expenditure.
Mark R. Wilson, The Business of the Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865 The John Hopkins University Press 2006, is a good starting point on that subject.

 

[wausaubob]

Google Books makes this publication available.:

Quartermaster Support of the Army

books.google.com

It provides good background on the difficulty involved.

 

[Old Soldier]

That would likely have been the most effective way to deal with the rebellion.
Buy every military gun in Europe. Get the producers of cartridges to make them for the federal military. And so on.

Isn't that what happened with NATO?

 

[Old Soldier]

Once again, you are thinking with modern thought and the lessons of history. This is the 1860s and you have an army to feed, clothe and arm to geep the enemy at bay. They have to be taught as quickly as possible. Since they were not even trained in marksmanship, how would the mass issue of repeating arms have effected the war - when they ran out of ammunition?

 

[thomas aagaard]

How about 50,000? Don't make my post into a straw man. Double the availability and shorten the war by months.

The Sharps small arms only cost about $2.4M and the Spencer's only cost about $2.0M. Doubling that expenditure would have shortened the war, saved lives and decreased the destruction in the Confederate states.

Suggest you look at the actual numbers for when the guns you mention where delivered. Way later than original promised.

Producing firearms was by 1860 a highly technical and specializes process, that plenty of arms manufactures have messed up.

The companies where making the guns as quickly, as they could. Ordering more would have changed nothing for the better.
And without ammo guns are pretty useless.

The only option that might have worked would be focusing more on the sharps rifle, since that was a lot simpler than a gun like the spencer. And covering the fewer Springfield's by more imports...
But again sharps where already being produced as quickly as possible... so this would likely also have failed to make any great difference.


Actually setting up a marksmanship program would have been a way way better use of money. And one that did not rely on the same industrial capacities as making repeaters.

 

[RodentRevolution]

What you posted was $5.3 billion. That was inaccurate.
The Sharps small arms only cost about $2.4M and the Spencer's only cost about $2.0M. Doubling that expenditure would have shortened the war, saved lives and decreased the destruction in the Confederate states.

The $5.3 billion dollars figure is for the total expenditure on war related items during the course of the Civil War. It appears that, rather impressively the US Government managed to raise something approaching $2.7 billion during the conflict and pay for another $458 million worth of stuff by issuing paper currency. The rest was raised by various securities some of which were backed by gold. It is the last that would strictly be considered the National Debt today but at the time the fiat currency (which hold value because you can pay the government in it, things like taxes and government services such as licences for hunting revolutionary squirrels out of season) was also a concern. So the National Deby was viewed politically as being around $2.6 billion at the time.

Now the issue with issue with looking solely at the dollar value of Sharps purchased or Spencers is that it ignores the fact, as Don Dixon attempted to explain above, that the bottle neck was not in the amount of money on offer. Rather it was in the machine tools, the skilled machinists to use said tools and the materials such as gun iron for the barrels to manufacture such weapons and their ammunition. It would have taken years to build the tools, at least months to bring the machinists up to speed in addition and worse it would have been competing directly with the supply of machine tools and machinists for other arms.

 

[wausaubob]

The $5.3 billion dollars figure is for the total expenditure on war related items during the course of the Civil War. It appears that, rather impressively the US Government managed to raise something approaching $2.7 billion during the conflict and pay for another $458 million worth of stuff by issuing paper currency. The rest was raised by various securities some of which were backed by gold. It is the last that would strictly be considered the National Debt today but at the time the fiat currency (which hold value because you can pay the government in it, things like taxes and government services such as licences for hunting revolutionary squirrels out of season) was also a concern. So the National Deby was viewed politically as being around $2.6 billion at the time.

Now the issue with issue with looking solely at the dollar value of Sharps purchased or Spencers is that it ignores the fact, as Don Dixon attempted to explain above, that the bottle neck was not in the amount of money on offer. Rather it was in the machine tools, the skilled machinists to use said tools and the materials such as gun iron for the barrels to manufacture such weapons and their ammunition. It would have taken years to build the tools, at least months to bring the machinists up to speed in addition and worse it would have been competing directly with the supply of machine tools and machinists for other arms.

Except the other carbines were manufactured and issued, and the Colt's revolving rifle was also manufactured and distributed.
The War Department did not standardize on the Springfield and the Sharps, instead the tendency to proliferate asserted itself.
The tooling and manpower existed, it was dedicated to other weapons.
And as @Philip Leigh https://www.essentialcivilwarcurric...t imports through the Union maritime blockade. has suggested, the Springfield program should have been controlled to allow the developmental arms to get a reasonable deployment for testing in the field.
The government restricted all the private vendors. The government's payment program was haphazard, and vendors were usually paid in something other than cash.
I will admit that the responses are historically accurate. The difficulty in getting people to recognize a change in facts which contradicted received knowledge and as @unionblue stated, the tendency of people to say "We have never done it that way before" dominated in the War Department.
I suspect that people were making decisions about these weapons that had never shot them, nor were the bureaucrats responsive to the officers in the field. That the President ended up test firing a Spencer repeater is an absurd event and a condemnation of the Ordnance Department.

 

[Jeff in Ohio]

I'd love to see some Quartermaster sources re: direct livestock purchases because I am researching family (5th G-GF and brother, purchasing agent/Quartermaster respectively) in California during the war and in the Western theater after. Specifically I cannot for the life of me remember the actual term used for the civilian agents who handled the bulk of the buying of horses and mules for the Army.

I will say from study of military sciences and experience with military bureaucracy, the Civil War supply and logistics efforts of the Union were exceptional. There was far, far less inefficiency and corruption than there might have been given the remarkable circumstances. In five years the Union alone acquired and shipped some 1 million horses and mules if I recall the approximate number correctly.

The California Column's successful journey across the desert to New Mexico to counter the Confederate westward expedition was possible because of logistics and supply. I would be interested in hearing what you learn.
The commander well knew the limited supply of water (for men and animals) and forage for animals, and so sent a party out ahead to cache subsidence and investigate the amount of water available at various points.