In the years following the Civil War, a lot of folklore regarding small arms became part of the American story. One of these tales, regarding the Henry rifle, provided the information that President Abraham Lincoln had test fired the Henry in the summer of 1861. The origin of the story was apparently the faulty memory of one William A. Stoddard, a secretary in the White House given to latter day self-promotion. It was probably inspired by Lincoln’s actual test firing of the Spencer rifle. That event was also misinterpreted after the war, but testing the Henry never happened.
The lever action, fifteen shot (sixteen if one counts a round in the chamber) Henry, a perfected version of the Volcanic repeating arms of the 1850s, was invented by B. Tyler Henry, works superintendent of Oliver Winchester’s New Haven Arms Company, that purchased the patent from Henry. The Henry, patented in 1860, was a major advance in firearms design, essentially due to its use of a .44 caliber self-contained rimfire cartridge with powder, projectile, and primer all in one package.
Oliver Winchester, more of a marketing than a technical expert, had promoted the troubled Volcanic arms as providing “every quality requisite in such a weapon” in an 1858 story he planted in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. In an alleged testimonial, he included quotes by a purchaser of a Volcanic handgun, quotes that claimed the gun was “the ne plus ultra of Repeating or Revolving Arms and far superior in many respects to Colt’s much extolled revolver.” Another bit of hyperbolic advertising referred to the Volcanic as “the most powerful and effective weapon of defense ever invented.”
Winchester was well aware of the Henry’s significance and its superiority in a number of ways to any other rifle on the market in 1860. The onset of the Civil War seemed to provide a ready market for the Henry, and Winchester tried to interest the Chief of Ordnance, General James W. Ripley, in the gun. The spring and summer of 1861, however, was not the right time frame to adopt innovative but essentially unproven arms and Ripley, condemned by many for his conservative view of new products, was actually being reasonably astute.
Winchester did not hesitate to go over Ripley’s head, however, and sent presentation grade Henrys to administration officials, including Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, a fellow Connecticut man. A naval officer tested the Henry in May 1862, and found it performed well in accuracy and endurance tests. There were other favorable tests, but orders were
by Joe Bilby
Had those orders come, however, Winchester would not have been able to fill them. Who actually manufactured the first 500 Henrys, with an iron rather than the familiar bronze frame, is murky. One historian believes Colt manufactured them, but there is no conclusive evidence for that, although Winchester did have a contract with Colt during that period, mostly for machinery,
The first Henry rifles were not on the market until the summer of 1862. The guns were shipped to dealers in the Midwest and Kentucky, a state in considerable internal strife. Secretary of War William Stanton personally sent one to pro-Union Louisville Journal editor George D. Prentice. Prentice praised the gun to the skies, writing that his Henry was “the most efficient and beautiful rifle we ever saw,” adding that a shooter with one was the equivalent of “fifteen men armed with regular guns.” Although it is not widely known, there were Henrys, privately purchased from dealers in Kentucky, that ended up in the hands of Confederate guerillas and the first Henry shots fired in the Civil War were probably fired by Rebels in Kentucky,
Henry production was never extensive, By October 1862, only 900 Henrys had been manufactured. By late 1864, Henry production peaked at 290 rifles per month, and a total of 13,000 were produced through 1866. Most were scattered throughout the Union armies by 1865.
The vast majority of Henry rifles used in combat during the Civil War were privately purchased, or captured.
The only Henrys bought by government contract were those purchased for Colonel Lafayette Baker’s 1st DC cavalry. Baker, whose special unit was intended to be used in counter-guerilla and military police duties in addition to secret service operations, wanted the very best small arms available. He initially ordered 300 Henrys, but General Ripley arbitrarily cut the order to 240 and then 120 rifles. Through some back door negotiations, the number was raised back to 241 although many of them were kept in the government arsenal in Washington. As Baker’s unit, mostly recruited in Maine, grew, he petitioned for more Henrys and, fortunately for him, Ripley had been replaced by General Ramsey. In the end, Winchester shipped an additional 800 rifles to Washington by the summer of 1864.
Ironically, some of these guns, captured from the 1st DC in fighting around Richmond, ended up in the hands of Confederate cavalrymen in the Shenandoah Valley during the 1864 campaign and some were reportedly later carried by Jefferson Davis’ bodyguards when the Confederate president fled Richmond in April 1865. Many remained in the Washington Arsenal as the war wound down and were offered to “Veteran Volunteers,” soldiers who reenlisted after having served three years.
The Spencer repeating rifle, rather than the Henry, was purchased in great numbers by the government during the Civil War, but in the end, the Henry’s descendants, from the Winchester Model 1866 on down, secured a dominant share of the civilian market.
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