I was aware of Wilder (and other's) desiring thousands of Henry's and being turned down.....let's say 10,000 delivered, and 10,000 requested\sought after and not delivered....20,000 Henry Rifle's 'jonesed' after during the ACW.
This is still a far cry short of Enfield's, Enfield 2 bander rifles, Lorenz', Springfield's, Sharp's Carbines, Spencer's (Rifles and Carbines) that were requested, sought after, delivered, and used during the ACW. and I'm not talking the Belgian's, Prussian's, Tower muskets, conversions, etc. that were gobbled up at the start of the war by droves of purchasing agents looking for anything that could throw lead down range. And I'll agree that Colt's revolving rifles weren't as sought after as other weapons, including the Henry.
I'll stand by my statement that Henry's were not the most sought after long arm of the ACW (we haven't even talked about the tens of thousands of revolvers that were sought after), nor were they the weapon of choice.
You didn't address the obvious negatives of the Henry that made it less then sought after, but were cited by many of the decision makers of the time.
As to your 'demands' not met argument (like Wilder being turned down for 2,000) rifles, you didn't address my simple business problem exercise of the risk of building extra capacity (like 2-5 more production facilities) to meet the demand for 100,000.....1,000,000 Henry Rifles given a purchase order to do so....Spencer was able to do this....Henry wasn't.....Henry wasn't able to make his rifle the Weapon of choice, nor the most sought after weapon.....because if he had been able to create the buzz, excitement, marketing hype, head swivelling, that turns demand into production facility expansion purchase order's....he could have built extra capacity to handle 20,000 rifles [but not 2,000]. This kind of business exercise may not be familiar to you (I've been involved in this kind of stuff since 1975)...but we see it all of the time for vendor's approaching a Wal-Mart or Home Depot. They don't have the assembly line capacity or working capital to accept an additional 2,000 item order....but can justify building the extra capacity to handle a 50,000 item order (and receiving financing capital by going to the banks with the orders in hand, backed by say the federal government). Does that make sense to you?
In other words, if Henry could have had orders in hand for 100,000 rifles because Ripley, Lincoln, Grant, McClellan, Private Demand,State Procurement Agents, Casement, Wilder, et al truly preferred paying 44.50 for an assault rifle that spewed lead effectively and efficiently then I have no doubt that several other production facilities could have been built....in short, Henry could create demand for, and produce, small runs of weapons. But he never received the game changing purchase order that would allow him to make the business decision to expand capacity to meet supply.
i.e. The Henry Rifle was NOT the most sought after weapon during the ACW.