One of the most revolutionary shoulder arms of the American Civil War, the Model 1860 Spencer carbine went from being an experimental design at the war’s beginning to ultimately becoming the official issue arm of the U.S. Cavalry by war’s end. Watch our “American Rifleman Television” I Have This Old Gun segment above to hear the story of the Spencer carbine and its inventor.
“Christopher Miner Spencer is a really interesting guy. He had a highly inventive mind, and this was something that was evident very early on. There’s an anecdote of him working on his grandfather’s farm,” American Rifleman Executive Editor Evan Brune said. “The anecdote goes that when Christopher Spencer looked at his grandfather’s musket, he decided that it needed to be improved upon. And so he took it upon himself to cut down the barrel to make it shorter and handier. And that presaged some of the later thinking that went into his Model 1860 Spencer carbine.”
The Model 1860 Spencer carbine is, in essence, an early lever-action design. The self-contained metallic cartridge ammunition was held inside of a tubular magazine that ran through the buttstock. Operating the lever rotated the breechblock to the rear, allowing a single cartridge to advance from the magazine into the open action, and closing the breechblock would advance the cartridge into the chamber. The Spencer still used an external hammer and fired from the single-action mode, so the hammer would have to be brought to half-cock to operate the action, then pulled back to full-cock to fire the gun.
“You fired it, it extracted [the cartridge], popped it out. You cocked it. Half-cocked again, loaded it again,” American Rifleman Field Editor Garry James said. “You could do this seven times. It was an amazing, amazing achievement for a gun of that period.”
Despite its novel design, it took time for the Spencer to gain ground with U.S. Ordnance Dept. officials. Spencer himself had issues with U.S. Navy officials and reached out to President Abraham Lincoln and offered to demonstrate the design. The offer resulted in a now-famous interaction between Spencer and Lincoln, where the two men met on what is now the National Mall. Lincoln fired the carbine at a target about 40 yards away and was impressed with the design, which led him to direct ordnance officials to commit it to production.
“ The Spencer is one of the cleanest-looking and efficient carbines that was used during the War Between the States or the American Civil War, depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon you’re on,” NRA Museum Director Philip Schreier said. “It’s a gun that’s got a lot of character to it, and has a number of firsts under its moniker to be proud of.”
To watch complete segments of past episodes of American Rifleman TV, go to americanrifleman.org/videos/artv. For all-new episodes of ARTV, tune in Wednesday nights to Outdoor Channel 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. EST.
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