Spencer repeating rifle

Spencer Repeating Rifle
Spencer repeating Rifle
Type	Manually cocked Lever Action Rifle
Place of origin	United States
Service history
Used by	United States Army United States Navy Confederate States of America Japan Empire of Brazil
Wars	American Civil War Indian Wars Boshin War Paraguayan War Franco-Prussian War
Production history
Designer	Christopher Spencer
Designed	1860
Manufacturer	Spencer company, Burnside Rifle Co, Winchester
Produced	1860–1869
Number built	200,000 approx.
Specifications
Length	rifle with 30 inch barrel carbine with 22 inch barrel
Barrel length
Cartridge	.56-56 Spencer rimfire
Caliber
Action	Manually cocked hammer, lever action
Rate of fire	14 or 20 rounds per minute
Muzzle velocity	931 to 1,033 ft/s (284 to 315 m/s)
Effective firing range	500 yards
Feed system	7 round tube magazine

The Spencer repeating rifle was a manually operated lever-action, seven shot repeating rifle produced in the United States by three manufacturers between 1860 and 1869. Designed by Christopher Spencer, it was fed with cartridges from a tube magazine in the rifle's buttstock.

The Spencer repeating rifle was adopted by the Union Army, especially by the cavalry, during the American Civil War, but did not replace the standard issue muzzle-loading rifled muskets in use at the time. The Spencer carbine was a shorter and lighter version.

Overview

Diagram of the Spencer rifle showing the magazine in the butt

The design for a magazine-fed, lever-operated rifle chambered for the .56-56 Spencer rimfire cartridge was completed by Christopher Spencer in 1860. Called the Spencer Repeating Rifle, it was fired by cocking a lever to extract a used case and feed a new cartridge from a tube in the buttstock. Like most firearms of the time, the hammer had to be manually cocked in a separate action before the weapon could be fired. The weapon used copper rimfire cartridges based on the 1854 Smith & Wesson patent stored in a seven-round tube magazine. A spring in the tube enabled the rounds to be fired one after another. When empty, the spring had to be released and removed before dropping in fresh cartridges, then replaced before resuming firing. Rounds could be loaded individually or from a device called the Blakeslee Cartridge Box, which contained up to thirteen (also six and ten) tubes with seven cartridges each, which could be emptied into the magazine tube in the buttstock.

Unlike later cartridge designations, the .56-56 Spencer's first number referred to the diameter of the case just ahead of the rim, the second number the case diameter at the mouth; the actual bullet diameter was .52 inches. Cartridges were loaded with 45 grains (2.9 g) of black powder, and were also available as .56-52, .56-50, and a wildcat .56-46, a necked down version of the original .56-56. Cartridge length was limited by the action size to about 1.75 inches; later calibers used a smaller diameter, lighter bullet and larger powder charge to increase power and range over the original .56-56 cartridge, which was almost as powerful as the .58 caliber rifled musket of the time but underpowered by the standards of other early cartridges such as the .50–70 and .45-70.

History

At first, the view by the Department of War Ordnance Department was that soldiers would waste ammunition by firing too rapidly with breechloading weapons, and thus denied a government contract for all breechloading weapons. More accurately, they feared that the armies logistics train would be unable to provide enough ammunition for the soldiers in the field, as they already had grave difficulty bringing up enough ammunition to sustain armies of tens of thousands of men over distances of hundreds of miles. A weapon able to fire several times as fast would require a vastly expanded logistics train and place great strain on the already overburdened railroads and tens of thousands of more mules, wagons, and wagon train guard detachments. The fact that several Springfield rifle-muskets could be purchased for the cost of a single Spencer carbine also influenced thinking. However, Christopher Spencer was eventually able to gain an audience with President Abraham Lincoln, who subsequently invited him to a shooting match and demonstration of the weapon. Lincoln was impressed with the weapon, and ordered that it be adopted for production.

The Spencer repeating rifle was first adopted by the United States Navy, and subsequently adopted by the United States Army and used during the American Civil War where it was a popular weapon. The South occasionally captured some of these weapons and ammunition, but, as they were unable to manufacture the cartridges because of shortages of copper, their ability to take advantage of the weapons was limited. Notable early instances of use included the Battle of Hoover's Gap (where Col. John T. Wilder's "Lightning Brigade" of mounted infantry effectively demonstrated the firepower of repeaters), and the Gettysburg Campaign, where two regiments of the Michigan Brigade (under Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer) carried them at the Battle of Hanover and at East Cavalry Field. As the war progressed, Spencers were carried by a number of Union cavalry and mounted infantry regiments and provided the Union army with a firepower advantage over their Confederate adversaries. At the battle of Nashville, 9,000 mounted infantrymen armed with the Spencer, under the command of Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson, chief of cavalry for the Military Division of the Mississippi, rode around Gen. Hood's left flank and attacked from the rear. President Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth was armed with a Spencer carbine at the time he was captured and killed.

Spencer 1865 Carbine .50 caliber

The Spencer showed itself to be very reliable under combat conditions, with a sustainable rate-of-fire in excess of 20 rounds per minute. Compared to standard muzzle-loaders, with a rate of fire of 2–3 rounds per minute, this represented a significant tactical advantage. However, effective tactics had yet to be developed to take advantage of the higher rate of fire. Similarly, the supply chain was not equipped to carry the extra ammunition. Detractors would also complain that the amount of smoke produced was such that it was hard to see the enemy, unsurprising, since even the smoke produced by muzzleloaders would quickly blind whole regiments, and even divisions as if they were standing in thick fog, especially on still days.

One of the advantages of the Spencer was that its ammunition was waterproof and hardy, and could stand the constant jostling of long storage on the march, such as Wilson's Raid. The story goes that every round of paper and linen Sharps ammunition carried in the supply wagons was found useless after long storage in supply wagons. Spencer ammunition had no such problem.

In the late 1860s, the Spencer company was sold to the Fogerty Rifle Company and ultimately to Winchester. Many Spencer carbines were later sold as surplus to France where they were used during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

Even though the Spencer company went out of business in 1869, ammunition was manufactured in the United States into the 1920s. Later, many rifles and carbines were converted to centerfire, which could fire cartridges made from the centerfire .50-70 brass. Production ammunition can still be obtained on the specialty market.

See also

• M1819 Hall rifle
• Cimarron Firearms
• Henry rifle
• Sharps rifle
• Volcanic rifle
• List of individual weapons of the U.S. Armed Forces

Further reading

• Chris Kyle and William Doyle, "American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms".
• Earl J. Coates and Dean S. Thomas, An Introduction to Civil War Small Arms.
• Ian V. Hogg, Weapons of the Civil War.
• Barnes, Cartridges of the World.
• Marcot, Roy A. Spencer Repeating Firearms 1995.
• Sherman, William T. Memoirs Volume 2 - contains an account of the success of the Spencer on combat (pp. 187–8) and reflections on the role of the repeating rifle in warfare (pp. 394–5).

External links

• The patent drawing for the Spencer action
• Description and photos of Spencer rifle, serial number 3981
• Production information on the Spencer carbine
• The Spencer repeater and other breechloaders used in the Civil War