bad memory?
Vern Humphrey,Bart Noir,
back in the discussion a few days late..
posting on previous page was from memory of a story about gatlin, read many moons ago:
~i recalled~ it telling about him becoming a doctor at his father's wishes, because a sister of his died of fever, waiting many days for a doctor to come. they lived on a rural plantation. after getting his PHD, he only practiced medicine on his own immediate family.
gatlin's sympathy lied with the north, so he tried selling them his weapon first. union intellegence told him it was a scam to waste union resources, and that he was working for the south. enraged, he went to the and sold several units to a southern officer in command of a fort in new orleans...
i scoured the net for this story about gatlin, to no avail. but i did find a union general, one "Benjamin Franklin Butler", who bought some guns from gatlin, also out of his own pocket. he was also in charge of occupied new orleans, for a time. also someone called, "porter" had one, and another called "hancock" bought twelve. the same number attributed to gen franklin in another article.
"A dozen of the weapons were purchased privately and used by General Benjamin "Butcher" Butler during the siege of St Petersburg towards the tail end of the Civil War to great effect and this led to formal adoption in limited numbers by the US Army."
i assume the system worked, as the article goes on saying,
"Foreign observers reported on the weapon and orders were placed by the French, British and Japanese militaries in the 1870s."
http://www.civilwarhome.com/gatlinggun.htm
the two articles with differing #'s are both at this address, one titled, "The Gatling Gun 1862- Present First Machine Gun and Herald of Modern Warfare", and the other a link from the civil war weapons page.
still, NO info about a southern officer purchasing any of these for fortress protection. bad memory, or poor search skills. any body else with further input about the gatlin story? can't find article....
gunnie
