 |
| Ladies and officers in the interior court, Washington arsenal These leisurely ladies and unhurried officers do not betray the feverish activity which existed in the Union Ordnance Department throughout the war. By the latter part of 1860 there were thirteen arsenals, two armories and one depot for the manufacturing and safe-keeping of ordnance and ordnance stores in the United States. There were stored in arsenals in the South about 61,000 small arms of all patterns which fell into the hands of the Confederates. About April 23, 1861, the Chief of Ordnance suggested that, in view of the limited capacity of the arsenals, there should be purchased from abroad from 50,000 to 100,000 small arms and eight batteries of rifled cannon. There was no immediate action on this request. Early in 1861 the State of New York purchased 20,000 Enfield rifles from England, with an initial purchase of 100,000 rounds of ammunition. Efforts were made to encourage the private manufacturers in the Northern States to increase the capacity of their plants, and to provide a uniform pattern. The Springfield model of United States rifle was then the standard. The arsenal was kept in model condition throughout the war. In the yard were stored thousands of heavy and light cannon, with hundreds of thousands of projectiles of every description. Hundreds of extra wheels, besides promiscuous material piled in order, were kept there always ready for issue. |
This text is part of:
[129]
Review of Reviews. New York. 1912.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.