The Bullet Fell Short from Wesson’s Ungainly Rifle

The Wesson carbine must definitely rank among the most esthetically challenged and ergonomically flawed weapons to emerge from the nineteenth century New England arms industry. While it was an awkward arm to behold, the historical record documents that in its own time, the ungainly breechloader was a mystifyingly popular choice for soldiers and frontiersmen. Homely as it was, this saddle gun claimed partisans from Omaha to the Great Salt Lake at the height of the nation’s westward expansion.

The youngest of a trio of noted gunsmiths, Franklin Wesson was a Worcester, Massachusetts, native who learned his craft while working in elder brother Edwin’s rifle manufactory in Hartford, Connecticut. At the age of 23 in 1851, he migrated to California, where he prospered for six years as a gunsmith in the mining settlement of Shasta.

By 1858, Franklin was back home in Worcester, where he joined his brother-in-law and business partner, Nathan Harrington, in obtaining a patent for a breech-loading firearm system on October 25, 1859. Initial manufacture of the design involved a .22 caliber single-shot breech-loading pistol fitted with a tipping barrel. Three years later the breech-loading system was modified to apply to long arms as well and a second patent was issued on November 11, 1862, as the Civil War generated a seemingly insatiable demand by the Union War Department for improved firearms of all types.

Franklin Wesson

The new Wesson arm was marketed through the Kittredge Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, a firm with an excellent sales record with a variety of imported foreign and domestically manufactured guns. Even during a booming sales period, the new carbine based upon the Wesson patent proved difficult to sell to the public. Its patently peculiar appearance may have generated a large part of the sales resistance it encountered. Available in calibers .32, .38, .41 and .44 rimfire, the saddle gun was a shade over 39 inches in length and weighed five pounds, twelve ounces. It sported a black walnut buttstock, but its 24-inch blued octagonal barrel was devoid of any wooden forearm. The single-leaf folding rear sight framing the simple iron blade front sight was optimistically graduated in range increments up to 500 yards. The piece lacked the receiver-mounted “bar and ring” common to most cavalry arms, featuring instead sling swivels mounted on the barrel and buttstock.

The Wesson’s most unconventional feature was its double bowed guard with twin triggers. The front “trigger” was depressed to release the hinged barrel from the receiver so that a cartridge could be inserted in the breech, while the rear trigger dropped the hammer on the firing pin to detonate the rimfire cartridge. After placing the hammer at the half-cock position the shooter next squeezed the front trigger to unlock the breech and allow the barrel to swing breech upward and muzzle downward on a forward pivot screw until its movement was arrested by a pivot lug attached to the gun’s frame. A cartridge could then be loaded in the breech. Despite its reliance upon the copper-hulled rimfire cartridge, the Wesson lacked any provision for mechanically extracting the cartridge case once it had been fired. 

The Wesson did not prove to be popular with Union Army ordnance mavens, for it claimed the distinction of registering the smallest order for carbines ever placed by them during the entire course of the war: 151 weapons. The state of Indiana purchased another 760 of the .44 caliber arms, with Kentucky ordering another 1,366, while Kansas and Missouri also placed sizeable orders as well. The Wesson carbine eventually marked a production run of between 4,000 to 5,000 guns. Government purchases of the cartridges totaled 254,000 rounds. Each carbine cost the taxpayers $23, with the rimfire rounds selling for $14.50 per 1,000.

The Wesson earned a mixed reputation among the few soldiers who carried it in action, and “were not well received by the troops to whom they were issued,” noted a modern arms historian. Lacking an extractor for removing the fired cartridges, it was necessary many times to use a ramrod to remove the cartridge from the chamber. The Wesson must have posed a challenge to keep functional under the stress of prolonged rapid fire with no inherent means of extraction built into it.

The carbine’s hinged barrel was secured to the frame and the breech sealed by a single longitudinally sliding latch. Finger pressure on the forward “trigger” drew back this latch, permitting the breech to swing upward and open for loading. An underlug on the barrel slipped into a snug recess in the frame when the barrel was elevated to lock the breech. The lug’s engagement of the frame absorbed most of the shock of firing, thus sparing the barrel hinge from strain.

Under the stress of combat, a soldier might well become distracted and depress the forward release instead of the trigger, with the result that the weapon’s barrel would slant ground-ward at the least opportune moment. Worse still, an addled trooper could conceivable depress both triggers at once, thereby unlocking the breech at the moment of firing with potentially devastating results. The harsh demands of field usage could easily render a Wesson inoperable if it was not kept scrupulously clean. The presence of dust, grit or any particulate matter in the frame recess could prevent the barrel from being locked into place for firing, while dried grease or verdigris (tarnish) deposits on the copper-hulled cartridges could play havoc with both their chambering and extraction once fired.

As was often the case, less desirable weapons and equipment were shunted off for issue to units striving to police the wartime western frontier. Trooper Morse H. Coffin and a number of his comrades in the 3rd Colorado Volunteer Cavalry used Wessons as their regiment and the 1st Colorado followed Colonel John M. Chivington in his massacre of a Cheyenne village on the banks of Sand Creek in November 1864. Coffin and his bunkies found their carbines prone to jamming in action. “My gun . . . became so foul that an empty shell stuck fast in it . . . I hadn’t yet learned that by wetting the shells in the mouth immediately before firing they could be easily removed with the thumb and finger.”

Even so, a surprising number of seasoned plainsmen chose to carry a Wesson in their saddle boots. Captain Eugene F. Ware was a rabid admirer of the piece. An officer of the 7th Iowa Cavalry, Ware served from 1863 through the spring of 1866, on the frontier from Fort Kearney, Nebraska, to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. The 7th Iowa was issued Gallagher carbines, which were described as “an exceedingly inefficient weapon,” and so the captain chose to carry his own .44 Wesson.

Captain Ware related the story of how a November, 1864 blizzard kept his detachment snowbound in camp while on the trail southeast of Fort Laramie. Critically short of rations, Ware loaned his weapon to one of the company’s best marksmen, who managed to drop a deer at long range with the rimfire after an exhausting stalk afoot through the white drifts.

The young officer took confidence in his possession of the breechloader. During one tension-fraught night he confronted a group of drunken mutineers and faced them down with his Wesson on the trail near Julesburg, Colorado. Ware recalled later that, “I knew the men could make a rush, but they could not keep me from shooting at least one of them.” The Wesson also proved to be a source of comfort when an inebriated stage driver passed out at the reins, leaving solitary passenger Ware stranded on the plains west of Fort Rankin, Colorado, with only his carbine and a brace of .44 Colts for company until the sodden reinsman slept off his binge.

On several occasions Ware’s eagerness to “raise dust” on the hostiles with his Wesson nearly led him into harm’s way. On February 2, 1865, he led 14 soldiers in escorting a stage westward on its run from the relay station at Cleve’s Ranch to Julesburg via the north bank of the South Platte River. The yellowlegs were not far west of the station when Ware saw a dozen or more Indians observing them from the far bank of the river. “Having a very fine Smith & Wesson (sic) target rifle, I thought I would go down towards the river, and give them a trial shot.” Leaving his companions, Ware spurred his mount down to the water’s edge and fired a shot at the distant braves. The moment his gun was empty a renegade white man clad in tribal garb rose from the concealment of the willows lining the far bank and quickly emptied his rifle and two revolvers at the startled officer. None of the shots scored a hit on Ware, and the frustrated squaw-man “began to fire a lot of good American words at me,” as Ware chastely phrased it. The stage and escort later had to fight their way into the sanctuary of Fort Rankin through a horde of warriors. Unable to overrun the post because of its artillery, the hostiles descended upon neighboring Julesburg to pillage and burn the settlement, whose residents had already fled to the shelter of the fort.

The whites mounted watch from the sod walls of the post as the looting and vandalism proceeded. They were far too badly outnumbered to attempt to intervene with any hope of success. Ware noticed a lone brave keeping vigil on the post from a vantage point on the far bank of the South Platte. As his men observed, the brash young officer strode down to the riverbank with his Wesson in hand. The brave noted his approach, dismounted, and began walking toward the river as well. When the warrior halted in his approach Ware trimmed the sights of his weapon for long-range fire and “pulled on him, but the bullet fell short, as I could see by the dust which rose where it struck.” The .44 rimfire round lacked the reach to threaten the Cheyenne, and it was now his turn.

Ware was unpleasantly surprised “when the Indian fired and a bullet went whizzing over my head in a way so familiar that I knew it to be a Belgian rifle-musket. I had heard them often down South.” While the Indian rammed another charge home the soldier took another quick three shots, “but my rifle would not carry to him.” Bravado yielded to prudence and Ware began to retreat back toward the fort, moving at an angle to make himself a harder mark to strike, “but he got in two shots at me before I was through with him, and I had to thank my stars that it was no worse.”

It must have been embarrassing for the soldier, setting such store by his Wesson’s accuracy, to have the red marksman compel him to retreat, especially since his enemy was armed with an obsolescent muzzleloading rifle whose stout recoil and often indifferent accuracy had made it unpopular among Union and Confederate troops alike. The Wesson did come in handy that night, however, when Ware used its buttstock to knock a fire-tipped arrow from a massive haystack, which adjoined the fort’s walls.

Despite the Wesson’s ballistically marginal cartridge, it continued to find favor among other army officers in the West. Lieutenants Wilson and Hancock were both carrying Wessons when they boarded a coach at Fort Kearney and headed westward for the posts sited farther up the Platte. The driver and guard both carried Sharps rifles and used them to good effect when the rig rolled into a moonlit ambush that night. A flurry of shots dropped the stage’s team lifeless in their harness, bringing the coach to a halt as bullets and arrows splintered the coach side panels. The four whites took cover beneath the vehicle and among the slain horses to keep the Indians at bay with their breechloaders, “and when morning came they had fired off a greater part of their ammunition and had succeeded in getting two or three Indians, but were themselves unharmed.” A relief column arrived with the dawn and the frustrated braves sullenly withdrew. The swift-loading Sharps and their linen-cased cartridges had held their own with the Wessons’ copper-hulled cases in maintaining a steady volume of fire to hold off the raiders.

As the Civil War ended in the spring of 1865, additional volunteer cavalry units were transferred westward to meet the rising threat on the frontier. The 7th Michigan Cavalry answered the call, armed with Spencer carbines, the premier cavalry weapon of the conflict. The repeaters made them the envy of many other soldiers and civilians on the plains as the veterans took station in the vast Dakota Territory.

Captain James B. Loomis of the 7th Michigan was another Wesson adherent, calling it “the best little rifle in the territory,” and boasting in a letter to his family that he had “arrived at that state of proficiency that at least I can bring down an antelope or elk or deer at 560 yards about every time.” If Loomis could indeed manage to score a killing hit upon a deer at that range he must have been a marksman of rare skill. He had already seen another Wesson perform well in combat, and he added the tale to the remarks praising the weapon in his letter home.

During the march westward, the regiment had come to the rescue of several parties of emigrants who were besieged by Indians, and had seen the mutilated remains of less fortunate pilgrims littering the trail. Loomis related one incident, which had transpired east of Fort Halleck in late July, 1865. Emigrant George Ray had ridden out for two miles from the wagon train one day in search of game. He had just downed an antelope when the hostiles attacked the caravan, capturing three wagons and killing five people before the travelers could rally and hold their ground with gunfire.

A second party of 19 warriors attempted to cut Ray off from the train and score an easy kill, but the braves hung back when his first shot spilled an Indian dead from his saddle. For two and a half hours Ray held the raiders off with his Henry rifle, all the while moving closer to the embattled circle of wagons as he whittled down the odds with the brass-framed, lever-action repeater. As he neared the train his wife gave him covering fire with a Wesson, lashing his attackers with 13 rounds fired in slower counterpoint to her mate’s measured fire. The cool-nerved woman later told Captain Loomis that she did not fear for her husband, “ . . . she knew George was good for twenty Indians any day in the week.” The cavalryman viewed the incident as proof of the Wesson’s value in combat, but gave little consideration to what likely would have happened had 19 braves assailed a lone rider armed with a Wesson in lieu of a Henry repeater under such circumstances. 

At least one senior officer also preferred the Wesson rifle. Colonel Philippe Regis de Trobriand relied upon the little breechloader for both hunting and personal protection while serving in Dakota Territory at Fort Stevenson in 1867-1869. Although the colonel never had to use his carbine in defense of his life, he never hesitated to carry it with him in preference to the Sharps, Spencers and Springfields available in the garrison.

 Dealers in St. Louis and St. Joseph, Missouri, as well as Leavenworth, Kansas, continued to sell the arm to westering travelers. One anxious pilgrim bound for Virginia City in Montana Territory purchased three Wesson rifles and a 1,000 rounds of ammunition in the summer of 1863, while a year later a single Kansan bought a dozen of the breechloaders and a large stock of cartridges before heading west from Leavenworth. A Salt Lake City-bound freighter acquired a brace of Wessons that year, and after securing a government contract to haul supplies overland from Fort Union to Fort Benton in Montana, wagon boss Alexander Toponce issued 60 Wesson rifles to his teamsters.

Flawed in design or not, the Wesson kept winning admirers. The freighter who trekked overland to Salt Lake City may have started a trend among the Saints, for surviving ordnance records for the Mormon militia units document that the “Sharps, Ballard, Henry, Spencer, Wesson, and Joslyn” were the most common rifles among them at that time. By August, 1866, one unit typically fielded a mix of 22 Spencer/Joslyns, one Henry, 10 Wesson/Ballards, 19 Sharps, 12 “yaugers” (U.S. Model 1841 “Mississippi” rifles) and 60 revolvers for a company of 67men.

Although the Sharps may have been the weapon of choice among many expressmen whose coaches plied the plains, at least one highly prominent member of the profession preferred the little rimfire carbine to the heftier percussion breechloader. Frank Root, an express agent for the U.S Post Office Department, spent several years detailed to monitor the service provided by the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company in 1863-1865. Root spent as long as five weeks at a time on the road with the mail coaches, which covered the route between Atchison, Kansas and Placerville, California via Salt Lake City.

Throughout his tour of duty with the overland mail carriers, Root relied upon “a Wesson breech-loading rifle, a Colt’s Navy revolver, with belt and scabbard and plenty of ammunition.” He fondly dubbed the Colt as “my hip howitzer,” but the shoulder arm won his greatest affection. Nearly 40 years later Root noted that, “I still have the same little breech-loading rifle that I carried with me on the plains during all my trips . . . I prize the little gun very highly. I was a number of times offered $50 in greenbacks for it in 1864-’65, during the period of the Indian troubles, and would not at the time disposed of it for $500 or even $5,000.”

Plainsmen with more experience at hunting and Indian-fighting than Root could have mixed feelings about the Wesson. During the autumn of 1879, the celebrated William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was touring the northeastern portion of the United States with his Wild West troupe. In Portland, Maine, W.F. Cody was challenged to a shooting match by Yank Addams, the self-described champion rifle shot of the state. On the day of the contest Frank Wesson appeared in the crowd of spectators and offered one of his rifles as a prize to the victor.

Cody won the match and claimed the Wesson rifle but was apparently not very impressed by the lightweight arm after having made his reputation with a hefty 50-70 Springfield and the 44-40 Winchester. He gave the Wesson to Luther North, who had distinguished himself during the 1860s and ‘70s by leading a battalion of Pawnee Indian scouts for the U.S. Army in company with his brother, Frank. Luther North had used both the Spencer and Ballard breechloaders extensively, but he later declared the gifted Wesson rifle to have been “the best gun that I ever had, and I won many matches with it.”

The Wesson may have proved accurate in match shooting, but North himself subsequently had an experience with it on the plains which demonstrated the lack of killing power possessed by its .44 rimfire cartridge. While hunting deer on his Nebraska ranch he encountered an extremely aggressive buck. It was a bitterly cold day and he had stalked a herd of deer on foot until the heavy-racked buck turned and charged him with lowered antlers. North let the animal come to within 50 yards and then fired. “He never slackened his speed, and I thought I had missed him. I tried to get a cartridge out of my belt, but my hands were so cold and numb that I was slow, and before I could load he had gotten to me. I jumped to one side and he went past me, striking me on the arm with his antler so hard that I thought he had broken it.” The enraged buck wheeled around and charged the hunter again, only to stumble and fall dead to the earth midway through his attack. “I had hit him in the breast,” North determined, “and the bullet had gone through him lengthwise, but he never slacked his speed at all.”

The encounter with the crazed buck served to expose the Wesson’s deficiencies when used on dangerous game. A repeating arm would have afforded North rapid follow-up shots to stop the animal before it could get close enough to use its antlers, while a harder-hitting cartridge in a single-shot like the Sharps or Ballard would have assuredly dropped the attacker in its tracks with the first hit.

The Wesson was a weapon of mixed repute, but it appeared at the time when the single shot muzzleloading percussion rifle was yielding prominence of use to the breech-loading single-shot and repeaters utilizing the newly perfected metallic cartridge. If the technology that it represented was yet imperfect, it still marked an undeniable advance over the days of patched balls, ramrods and powder measures. Flawed as it may have been, in the hands of men like Ware, Loomis, Root and North its muzzle-flash illuminated the path of empire to the West. 

Sources:

1 Louis A. Garavaglia and Charles G. Worman, Firearms of The American West 1803-1865 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).

2 Louis A. Garavaglia and Charles G. Worman, Firearms of The American West 1866-1894 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985).

3 Lucille M. Kane, editor and translator, Military Life In Dakota: The Journal Of Phillippe Regis De Trobriand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).

4 Robert M. Reilly, United States Military Small Arms 1816-1865 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: The Eagle Press, Incorporated, 1970).

5 Frank A. Root and William E. Connelley, The Overland Stage To California (Topeka, Kansas: Authors, 1901).

6 James E. Serven, ‘Wesson & Wesson & Wesson,” The American Rifleman (June 1982), 26-27, 79-80.

7 Eugene F. Ware, The Indian War Of 1864 (Topeka, Kansas: Crane and Company, 1911).