About this ebook
Lincoln was determined to win the war, yet his generals seemed unable to give him a victory, so he reasoned that a more efficient weapon would have to be invented. However, his main opponent, General James W. Ripley, who sat in charge of army ordnance, believed the war would be short and didn’t want a vast supply of expensive arms left over. Standardized guns and ammunition made supplying the troops in the field easier.
Lincoln was in the thick of it. He wanted mortar boats to help open the upper Mississippi as they had helped Porter take New Orleans. When he discovered a big snafu had delayed production, one J. D. Mills came to Washington with a crude machine gun that was soon christened the coffee-mill gun.
Probably the biggest and longest controversy involved muzzle-loading rifles—favoured by Ripley—and breech-loading rifles—the Soldier’s choice, as he could lie down and load a breechloader at least five times as fast as a muzzle-loader. In addition to these and other standard arms, the inventors offered a wide catalogue of innovations: rockets, steam guns, liquid fire, a submarine, explosive bullets, a proposed poison gas, and so on down to the fantastic.
This book is a big American story of Washington in wartime, and it will appeal to everybody who ever had any contact with the armed services. For the specialist, it offers quite a quantity of previously unpublished material. Its biggest merit is, however, that it is just plain fascinating reading, the kind of book no one should start late in the evening if he wants any sleep.
About the author
ROBERT VANCE BRUCE (December 19, 1923 - January 15, 2008) was an award-winning American historian specializing in the American Civil War. He won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 (1987).
Born in Malden, Massachusetts, he served in the Army during World War II and thereafter graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering. He received his Master of Arts in history and his Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University, where he was later a professor. He also taught at the University of Bridgeport, Lawrence Academy at Groton, and the University of Wisconsin.
Additionally, he was Guggenheim Fellow (1957), Huntington Library Fellow (1966), President of the Lincoln Group of Boston (1969-1974), Fellow of the Society of American Historians (1974), R. Gerald McMurtry Lecturer on Abraham Lincoln (1981) and Fortenbaugh Lecturer at Gettysburg College (1989).
He is the author of multiple works, including: 1877: Year of Violence (1959); Two Roads to Plenty: An Analysis of American History (1964); Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (1973); Lincoln and the Riddle of Death (1981); and The Shadow of a Coming War (1989).
Bruce died in 2008 in Olympia, Washington at the age of 84.
