Military lever actions?
Not all lever actions have tubular magazines, but as far as I can remember all center fire lever actions had tubular magazines up until the Winchester Model 1895. I'd suppose a tubular magazine could be made pretty strong if you were willing to put up with the weight, something that never seemed to give the military pause unti lafter WWII. But in the era of Custer and Little Big Horn the military supposedly did not like the tubular magazines. The indians seem to have had nothing against it though. The lever action would have lent itself to the light calvary techniques the plains indians specialized in.
Another strike against the lever action from the military viewpoint at the time was that the available lever actions were short actions and could not handle longer more powerful cartridges. John Browning came to the rescue once again and developed the compound lever action to handle longer cartridges.
I am thinking there was one model before it, but the 1894 is a long action. The locking lugs at the rear of the breech block meant it would compress and allow the cartridge case to stretch, limiting it to cartridges in the 30-30 class.
In the 1895 the locking lugs moved forward, making a more rigid assembly and allowing use of the 30-40, 405, 7.63x54R, etc.