The Report of the Secretary of War on 10 June 1848 showed that on 30 June 1847 the United States possessed 707, 011 small arms, of which 586, 513 had been made at the Harper's Ferry and Springfield national armories; 118, 113 had been made by private armories and contractors; and only 2365 had been imported. All foreign made arms were classified as fourth-class arms, but within just twenty years, were to become more important than at any time since the First War for Independence.

This volume includes topics such as: breech-loading carbines; inspection; costs; pre-Civil War arms; carbines whose production and first models were produced before the Civil War; and Civil War percussion carbines.

This volume covers Confederate arms and armories.

Throughout his life, Atlanta resident George W. Wray Jr. (1936–2004) built a collection of more than six hundred of the rarest Confederate artifacts including not just firearms and edged weapons but also flags, uniforms, and accoutrements. Today, Wray’s collection forms an integral part of the Atlanta History Center’s holdings of some eleven thousand Civil War artifacts. Confederate Odyssey tells the story of the Civil War through the Wray Collection. Analyzing the collection as material evidence, Gordon L. Jones demonstrates how a slave-based economy on the cusp of industrialization attempted to fight an industrial war. The broad range of the collection includes many rare or one-of-a-kind objects, such as a patent model and early inventions by gun maker George W. Morse, the bloodstained coat of a seventeen-year-old South Carolina soldier, battle flags made of cloth imported from England, and arms made in Georgia, the heart of the Confederacy’s burgeoning military-industrial complex. As Civil War history, Confederate Odyssey benefits from the study of material remains as it bridges the domains of professional scholars and amateur collectors such as Wray. The book tells of the stories, significance, and context of these artifacts to general readers and Civil War buffs alike. The Wray Collection is more than a gathering of relics; it is a tale of historical truths revealed in small details.

A thoroughly researched account of weapons innovation and industrialization in South Carolina during the Civil War and the man who made it happen. A year after seceding from the Union, South Carolina and the Confederate States government faced the daunting challenge of equipping soldiers with weapons, ammunition, and other military implements during the American Civil War. In The Best Gun in the World, Robert S. Seigler explains how South Carolina created its own armory and then enlisted the help of a weapons technology inventor to meet the demand. Seigler mined state and federal factory records, national and state archives, and US patents for detailed information on weapons production, the salaries and status of free and enslaved employees, and other financial records to reveal an interesting, distinctive story of technological innovation and industrialization in South Carolina. George Woodward Morse, originally from New Hampshire, was a machinist and firearms innovator, who settled in Louisiana in the 1840s. He invented a reliable breechloading firearm in the mid-1850s to replace muzzleloaders that were ubiquitous throughout the world. Essential to the successful operation of any breechloader was its ammunition, and Morse perfected the first metallic, center-fire, pre-primed cartridge, his most notable contribution to the development of modern firearms. The US War Department tested Morse rifles and cartridges prior to the beginning of the Civil War and contracted with the inventor to produce the weapons at Harpers Ferry Armory. However, when the war began, Morse, a slave-holding plantation owner, determined that he could sell more of his guns in the South. The South Carolina State Military Works originally designed to cast cannon, produced Morse’s carbine and modified muskets, brass cartridges, cartridge boxes, and other military accoutrements. The armory ultimately produced only about 1,350 Morse firearms. For the next twenty years, Morse sought to regain his legacy as the inventor of the center-fire brass cartridges that are today standard ammunition for military and sporting firearms. “Does justice to one of the greatest stories in American firearms history. If George Woodward Morse had not sided with the Confederacy, his name might be as famous today as Colt or Winchester.” —Gordon L. Jones, Atlanta History Center “Excellent and well-researched.” —Patrick McCawley, South Carolina Department of Archives and History “For connoisseurs and scholars of military history (especially Civil War), history of technology, or Southern/South Carolina history, this is a must-read and reference volume pertaining to a previously little-known aspect of the nineteenth century that had a far-reaching impact in the manner wars would be fought by soldiers decades later.” —Barry L. Stiefel, College of Charleston