View the H-OIEAHC Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-OIEAHC's October 2000 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-OIEAHC's October 2000 logs by: [date] [author] [thread]
Bcc: Organization: Academics With Deadly Weapons X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en]C-CCK-MCD (Win98; U) Delivered-to: H-OIEAHC@h-net.msu.edu X-Accept-Language: en Original-recipient: rfc822;john.saillant@vmh.cc.wmich.edu A little context: I am working on refuting Michael Bellesiles's claims about guns being scarce in colonial America and the early Republic. (Existing drafts on this: http://www.ggnra.org/cramer/GunScarcity.pdf and http://www.ggnra.org/cramer/ArmingAmericaLong.pdf.) My current areas of interest are evidence of large scale gun manufacturing--especially for the non-military market--and gunsmithing in America before 1840. My digging into the Pennsylvania Council of Safety records has been quite interesting: a June 30, 1775 resolution directs the various counties to "provide a proper number of good, new Firelocks, with Bayonets fitted to them..." Note that "new" is specified. The same resolution indicates that "Patterns of the said Firelocks, Rammers and Bayonets, be immediately made in the city of Philadelphia, and sent to the different Counties." Apparently there was sufficient firearms manufacturing capacity to simply send out patterns, and have each county make their own. There is certainly a large number of documents related to purchases of firearms and manufacture of them in 1775 and early 1776. Gunpowder, while manufactured before the war in Pennsylvania, was clearly a pressing matter for the Council of Safety, and much energy is spent trying to encourage new gunpowder mills, as well as shipping fairly sizable quantities of saltpeter to be made into gunpowder--including a reference to a 50 ton shipment! An interesting note on the words used: many of the sources that I am reading use "fire arm" in a much narrower sense than we use the word today. It appears that a "fire arm" excluded all pistols and rifles, as well as blunderbusses and other non-military "fowling pieces." It almost appears to have been used interchangeably with "military musket." Examples of use of the term "fire arm" in colonial or early Republic sources are of interest to me. The count of firearms (in the modern sense of the word) confiscated by General Gage after the Battle of Lexington in exchange for passes to leave the town has been used variously as evidence that guns were common or evidence that guns were scarce. I have long been skeptical that the count (about 2500) reflects the actual number of guns in Boston at the time, and I now have some evidence to justify that belief. I am reading Richard Frothingham's _History of the Siege of Boston_ 6th ed. (Boston: 1903), and there are a few interesting points about this subject. The population of Boston was 17,000 before the Port Acts were passed, but according to Frothingham (pp. 54-55), many people left before the Battle of Lexington, in anticipation of war, and even though General Gage made efforts to prevent the removal of weapons and ammunition, Frothingham (p. 15-17) indicates that muskets, ammunition, and even cannon were successfully smuggled through the British lines, and out of Boston. I find in Frothingham on p. 208 that that the count of 2500 firearms commonly cited is clearly an undercount of firearms in Boston before the war, and perhaps a dramatic undercount of even those arms left in Boston once hostilities had commenced: General Gage issued (June 19) an ill-natured proclamation. He stated that the selectmen and others had repeatedly assured him that all the inhabitants had delivered up their fire-arms, though he had at the same advices to the contrary; and that he had since full proof that many had been perfidious in this respect, and had secreted great numbers. -- Clayton E. Cramer clayton.cramer@callatg.com http://www.ggnra.org/cramer to see excerpts from my five published books and full text of a number of scholarly and popular articles.
|