With all of the trials and tribulations experienced during the life of the Gibbs Carbine, it is a story might best be entitled The Carbine That Was Never Meant To Be. The Gibbs carbine was contracted for no fewer than four times before it finally went into production, experienced major delays in manufacturing, and was eventually killed by a factory fire. All these events combined to make the Gibbs one of the scarcest U.S. contract Civil War carbines to see issue and use, and one of the harder U.S. military carbines to find for sale on the market.
The Gibbs Carbine had its genesis as the invention of Lucius H. Gibbs, an inventor and gunsmith living in Oberlin, Ohio. Gibbs had previously received U.S. Patent #5316 on Oct. 2, 1847, for a percussion-repeating rifle. The revolving rifle shown in the patent drawings bears a vague resemblance to Colt’s Patterson revolving rifles but is truly unique. Gibbs’ patent specification describing the unique action reads in part:
The nature of my invention consists in making the breechstock of the gun tubular, the tube communicating with the breech of the gun barrel for the purpose of receiving a number of shot-charged cylinders in such a manner that as soon as one is discharged of all its loads it may be easily and quickly taken from the gun, as here-in set forth, and another cylinder made to take its place by simply dropping the muzzle of the gun.
However, in my research I could find no records of Gibbs’ patent repeating, revolving, percussion rifle having ever been produced.
Gibbs’ patent that applied to his Civil War carbine was #14057, issued on Jan. 8, 1856. The patent was for a single shot, percussion, breech loading arm. At that time, Gibbs listed his residence as New York City. It appears that Gibbs may have produced a few single shot pistols using the same patented breech design, but these are so scarce that Flayderman’s Guide to Antique American Arms does not asses a value for them. Gibbs’ design was not particularly revolutionary, in the greater sense of “invention,” but was more of an “improvement” upon existing designs and was patented as such.
The Gibbs system used a lever under the breech to push the barrel away from the breech face of the carbine and tilt it down for loading. The system is in fact very similar to the Gallager Carbine (patented in 1860), and the Gallager was likely heavily influenced by the existing Gibbs design. The Gibbs patent was probably influenced by Edward Maynard’s carbine (patented May 1851), where an under lever pushed the barrel away from the breech face and tilted it down for loading and unloading. The Maynard system relied upon a brass cartridge case to seal the rear of the barrel against the breech face to prevent the escape of gasses when the gun was fired. This meant that the brass case had to be manually extracted after each shot. Gibbs’ system used a small button shaped projection on the face of the breech to fill the rear of the barrel’s chamber and seal it against gas leaks. This allowed the use of combustible paper or linen cartridges, like those in the Sharps designs, and eliminated the need to extract spent cartridge cases.
From a purely economic point of view, the ammunition was cheaper and easier to produce, as no metal case was required for the Gibbs cartridge. As Gibbs described in his patent application:
…my said invention also consists in combining with a sliding barrel made with the rear or breech end open, a fixed breech pin which fits the bore of the rear end of the barrel, in combination with an annular recess surrounding the said pin to receive the rounded edge of the rear end of the barrel, to prevent as much as possible the escape of gases and in case of any escape to deflect them toward the muzzle.
Sometime during 1857, Gibbs managed to have approximately twenty sample carbines produced, most likely by W.W. Marston of New York. At least one of these carbines was tested by a U.S. Army Ordnance Board at West Point during 1858, and was considered to be a generally good design, but no orders were forthcoming. The carbine was a simple, single shot, percussion breechloader whose action was opened by lowering a lever that was an extension of the triggerguard. The lever resembles a miniaturized version of the classic Winchester lever, with a much smaller loop for the hand and an extension between the loop and triggerguard.