THE AMERICAN RIFLE
Witness this sweet ancient weapon of our fathers, the American rifle,
maker of states, empire builder. Useful as its cousin, the ax, it is in
design simple as the ax; in outline severe, practicable, purposeful in
every regard. It is devoid of ornamentation. The brass that binds the
foot of the stock is there to protect the wood. The metal guard below
the lock is to preserve from injury the light set-triggers. The serrated
edges of the lock plate may show rude file marks of a certain pattern,
but they are done more in careless strength than in cunning or in
delicacy. This is no belonging of a weak or savage man. It is the weapon
of the Anglo-Saxon; that is to say, the Anglo-Saxon in America, who
invented it because he had need for it.
This arm was born of the conditions that surrounded our forefathers in
the densely covered slopes of the Appalachian Divide, in whose virgin
forests there was for the most part small opportunity for extended
vision, hence little necessity for a weapon of long range. The game or
the enemy with which the early frontiersman was concerned was apt to be
met at distances of not more than a hundred or two hundred yards, and
the early rifle was perfect for such ranges.
Moreover, it was only with great difficulty that the frontiersman
transported any weighty articles on his Western pilgrimage. Lead was
heavy, powder was precious, the paths back to the land of such
commodities long and arduous. A marvel of adaptation, the American rifle
swiftly grew to a practical perfection. Never in the history of the arms
of nations has there been produced a weapon whose results have been more
tremendous in comparison to the visible expenditure of energy; never has
there been a more economical engine, or an environment where economy was
more imperative.
The ball of the American rifle was small, forty, sixty or perhaps one
hundred of them weighing scarcely more than a pound. The little, curving
horn, filled with the precious powder grains, carried enough to furnish
many shots. The stock of the rifle itself gave housing to the little
squares of linen or fine leather with which the bullet was patched in
loading. With this tiny store of powder and lead, easily portable food
for this providentially contrived weapon, the American frontiersman
passed on silently through the forest, a master, an arbiter, ruler of
savage beast or savage foeman, and in time master of the civilized
antagonist that said him nay.
We shall observe that the state of Pennsylvania was the starting point
of the westward movement of our frontiersmen. We shall find also that
the first American small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles were made in
Pennsylvania. The principle of the rifle, the twist in the bore, is
thought to have originated in the German states of the Palatinate, but
it was left for America to improve it and to perfect its use.
At Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there was a riflemaker, probably a German by
birth, by name Decherd or Dechert, who began to outline the type of the
American squirrel-rifle or hunting-arm. This man had an apprentice, one
Mills, with ideas of his own. We see this apprentice and his improved
rifle presently in North Carolina; and soon thereafter riflemakers
spring up all over the east slope of the Alleghanies, so that as though
by magic all our hunters and frontiersmen are equipped with this long
rifle, shooting the tiny ball, and shooting it with an accuracy hitherto
deemed impossible in the achievements of firearms.
Withal we may call this a Southern arm, since New England was later in
taking up its use, clinging to the Queen Anne musket when the men of
North Carolina and Virginia scorned to shoot a squirrel anywhere except
in the head. The first riflemen of the Revolutionary War were
Pennsylvanians, Virginians and Marylanders, all Southerners; and deadly
enough was their skill with what the English officers called their
“cursed widow and orphan makers.”
The barrel of the typical rifle of those days was about four feet in
length, the stock slender, short and strongly curved, so that the sights
came easily and directly up to the level of the eye in aiming. The
sights were low and close to the barrel, some pieces being provided with
two hind sights, a foot or so apart, so that the marksman might not draw
either too fine or too coarse a bead with the low silver or bone
crescent of the fore sight. Usually the rear sight was a simple, flat
bar, finely notched, and placed a foot or fifteen inches in front of the
breech of the barrel, so that the eye should focus easily and sharply at
the notch of the rear sight. Such was the care with which the sights
were adjusted that the rifleman sometimes put the finishing touches on
the notch with so soft a cutting tool as a common pin, working away
patiently, a little at a time, lest he should by too great haste go too
deep into the rear sight, and so cause the piece to shoot otherwise than
“true.”
The delicately arranged set-triggers made possible an instantaneous
discharge without any appreciable disturbance of the aim when once
obtained; and the long distance between the hind sight and fore sight,
the steadiness of the piece, owing to its length and weight, the
closeness of the line of sight to the line of the trajectory of a ball
driven with a relatively heavy powder charge, all conspired to render
extreme accuracy possible with this arm, and this accuracy became so
general throughout the American frontier that to be a poor rifle shot
was to be an object of contempt.
Each rifle was provided with its own bullet mold, which cast a round
ball of such size that when properly “patched” it fitted the bore of the
piece tightly, so tightly that in some cases a “starter” or section of
false barrel was used, into which the ball was forced, sometimes being
swaged in with a mallet and a short starting rod. The ramrod proper was
carried in pipes attached to the long wooden stock, which extended to
the muzzle of the barrel underneath the piece. One end of this rod was
protected with a brass ferrule, and the other was provided with a screw,
into which was twisted the “worm” used in cleaning the arm.
The pouch of the hunter always carried some flax or tow for use in
cleaning the piece. The rifleman would wind a wisp of this tow about the
end of the “worm,” moisten it by passing it between his lips, and then
pass the tightly fitting wad of tow up and down the barrel until the
latter was perfectly free from powder residue. Then the little ball,
nicely patched, was forced down on the powder charge by the slender
ramrod, made with great care from the toughest straight-grained hickory
wood.
Powder and ball were precious in those early days, and though strong men
ever love the sports of weapons, waste could not be tolerated even in
sport. Sometimes at night the frontiersmen would gather for the pastime
of “snuffing the candle,” and he was considered a clumsy rifleman who
but fanned the flame with his bullet, or cut too deeply into the base of
the candle-wick, and so extinguished the light. Again the riflemen would
engage in “driving the nail” with the rifle ball, or would shoot at a
tiny spot of black on a board or a blazed tree-trunk, firing a number of
balls into the same mark. In nearly all such cases the balls were dug
out of the tree or plank into which they had been fired, and were run
over again into fresh bullets for use at another time. Thus grew the
skill of the American rifleman, with whose weapon most of the feats of
latter day short-range marksmanship could be duplicated.[1]
The early American depended upon his rifle in supporting and defending
his family. Without it he had not dared to move across the Alleghanies.
With it he dared to go anywhere, knowing that it would furnish him food
and fending. When the deer and turkey became less numerous near him, he
moved his home farther westward, where game was more abundant.
His progress was bitterly contested by the Indian savages all the way
cross the American continent, but they perished before this engine of
civilization, which served its purpose across the timbered Appalachians,
down the watershed to the Mississippi, up the long and winding streams
of the western lands, over the Rockies, and down the slopes of the
Sierras to the farther sea. Had it never known change it had not been
American. An ax is an ax, because a tree is a tree, whether in the
Alleghanies or the Rockies; but the rifle met in time different
conditions. The great plains furnished larger game animals, and demanded
longer range in arms, so that in time the rifle shot a heavier ball.
When the feverish intensity of American life had asked yet more haste,
there came the repeating rifle, firing rapidly a number of shots, an
invention now used all over the earth. In time there came also the
revolving pistol, rapid, destructive, American. These things had not to
do with the early west-bound man, this wilderness traveler, himself
perforce almost savage, shod with moccasins, wearing the fringed hide
tunic that was never in the designs of Providence intended for any
unmanly man, and that fits ill to-day the figure of any round-paunched
city dweller. Feather or plume he did not wear in his hat, for such
things pertained rather to the hired voyager than to the independent
home builder. Ornamentation was foreign to his garb and to his weaponry.
He had much to do. The way was hard. No matter how he must travel, this
long rifle was with him. At his belt, in the little bag of buckskin,
were the bullets in their stoppered pouch, the cleaning worm, the extra
flint or two, the awl for mending shoon or clothing.
So were equipped the early Americans, gaunt, keen, tireless, that
marched to meet the invading forces at the battle of New Orleans; and
when the officers of the British army, on the day after that stricken
field, found half their dead shot between the eyes, they knew they could
lead their troops no more against such weaponry and such weapon bearers.
The rifle had won the West, and it would hold it fast.
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Footnote 1:
In a careful test an old squirrel-rifle, for three generations in the
author’s family, and now nearly one hundred years old, was fired five
times, at a distance of 60 yards, and the point of the finger would
cover all five of the balls, which made practically but one ragged
hole. The author’s father handled the old weapon on this occasion.
Again, in the author’s hands, it shot out in succession the spots or
pips of a playing card, the ten of clubs, at such distance as left the
spots only clearly distinguishable. This piece was altered from flint
lock to pill-percussion lock, and later to the percussion cap lock.