Target Shooting with Abe Lincoln: Spencer Repeating Rifle's Manchester Roots

Imagine this: A young Connecticut inventor, convinced of the extreme value of a gun he has invented but frustrated with bureaucratic red tape in trying to get it approved by the military bureaucracy, gets a personal meeting with the President of the United States to prove its worth; furthermore, this young Nutmegger actually strides out to the Mall in Washington with the President—near to the present-day Washington Monument—and has the President pepper a wooden target with his new gun!

Impressed with the results, the President of the United States takes personal action to cut through the bureaucratic red tape and orders the rifles for his soldiers. The rifle then plays an important role in helping to decide the outcome of a war.

Sound like the stuff of fiction? It actually happened. The young inventor was Christopher M. Spencer from Manchester. As a young man Spencer had first worked at the Cheney Brothers silk factory in Manchester. Later, he worked as a machinist for the Samuel Colt firearms factory in Hartford. Christopher Spencer dreamed of designing a breech-loading repeating rifle to replace the slow and cumbersome muzzle-loading rifle that had been standard fare for the Army for decades. By 1859, he had developed what came to be known as the Spencer Repeating Rifle. Spencer’s rifle could accurately fire up to 21 shots per minute — seven times the firepower of the traditional muzzle-loader. The problem he had was convincing the head of the Bureau of Ordnance, General James W. Ripley, to switch over to the repeating rifle.

General Ripley himself was born in Windham County, Connecticut. His conservative approach to buying a much better rifle is somewhat ironic, given the fact that he was very open to changing the Union cannon from smooth bore to the superior rifled bore type of gun early in the Civil War. Despite successful field-testing by officers as important as General Ulysses S. Grant, Ripley remained steadfast in his opposition to change. Needing help, Spencer enlisted the services of his former employer, Charles Cheney. Convinced of the rifle’s worth, Cheney contacted his friend and former neighbor, Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. The Navy then placed an order for 700 of Spencer’s rifles. More successful field trials were followed by more warm endorsements from Army personnel, including George McClellan. Still, Ripley resisted change.

Then something amazing happened: Colonel John T. Wilder of Indiana, who was an inventor himself, had personally witnessed a field trial in Tennessee of Spencer’s rifle. Wilder obtained a loan from his hometown bank in Indiana to purchase 2,000 Spencer Repeating Rifles. Each man in Wilder’s brigade signed a personal note pledging to buy his own rifle for $35!  Wilder’s ”Lightning Brigade” got its repeaters, and with their amazing firepower, soon repulsed a Confederate Army that outnumbered them five to one.

Here is what Wilder wrote about the use of the Spencer Repeating Rifle:

No line of men, who come within fifty yards of another armed with Spencer Repeating Rifles can either get away alive, or reach them with a charge, as in either case they are certain to be destroyed by the terrible fire poured into their ranks by cool men thus armed. My men feel as if it is impossible to be whipped, and the confidence inspired by these arms added to their terribly destructive capacity, fully quadruples the effectiveness of my command.

Ripley learned of Wilder’s success but still resisted the change.

Back in Manchester, Charles Cheney’s exasperation grew. He and his brother had put up nearly half a million dollars to back the production of Spencer’s rifle. Cheney went personally to Speaker of the House James G. Blaine who then helped arrange a most peculiar purchase: the Navy ordered 10,000 of Spencer’s rifles and gave them to the Army! Enough of the rifles had arrived in time for them to help the Union at Gettysburg. Still Ripley resisted. Finally, Gideon Welles arranged for Spencer to meet with Lincoln. Lincoln’s personal secretary, John Hay, wrote the following about Spencer’s meeting with the President on August 19, 1863:

This evening and yesterday evening an hour was spent by the President in shooting with Spencer’s new repeating rifle. A wonderful gun, loading with…simplicity and ease…and firing the whole, readily and deliberately in less than half a minute. The President made some pretty good shots. Spencer, the inventor, a quiet little Yankee…did some splendid shooting.

Christopher Spencer went back to Connecticut with a souvenir: the target board that Lincoln had shot with his rifle. President Lincoln promptly transferred the incorrigible Ripley out of the Bureau of Ordnance and made him the inspector of forts in New England. The Army ordered 200,000 of Spencer’s rifles. The dogged perseverance of three men from Connecticut – Charles Cheney, Gideon Welles, and Christopher Spencer – had finally paid off.

Though most valuable as a weapon in the Civil War, the postwar saw a huge decline in demand as westward expansion required a longer gun with a longer range and bigger cartridge. By the end of the 1860s, production of the repeater rifle stopped, but Christopher Spencer was far from being done in the manufacturing business. In the early 1870s, Spencer developed the first automatic screw machine in Hartford. He later produced an innovative slide-action shotgun in Windsor from 1883 until 1890. Overall, Spencer received a total of 42 patents for his innovative designs and ideas during his lifetime. He spent much of the rest of his life living in Windsor, where he died on January 14, 1922, at the age of 88.

Notes, Sources, and Links:

1.“The Spencer Repeating Rifle at Gettysburg,” by D. Alexander Warson: Gettysburg Magazine July 1, 1996.

2. The Yankees of Connecticut by W. Storrs Lee (1957).

3. windsorhistoricalsociety.org