Postbellum American Entrepreneurs and the Settling of the American West.



    I was born in the 1960s in Dekalb, IL. One may wonder what connection my birth would have with postbellum American entrepreneurs, but being born and spending portions of my youth in Dekalb, during that period, one learned two important facts about Dekalb. Dekalb is known for two things, the foremost being corn, and the second being an invention in 1873 by the man pictured above, Joseph Glidden. The portrait of Joseph Glidden was downloaded from the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian and was taken in 1858 by an unknown artist, the details of which can be found here.: https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.98.88

   This blog is not simply about Joseph Glidden however, but rather how the work in one year, 1873, of entrepreneurs from two distinctly different endeavors and how their combined ingenuity changed the American West. The first of these was of course Joseph Glidden, who designed two strand barbed wire, frequently referred to as the first modern barbed wire and applied for a patent in 1873, being granted the patent November 24th, 1874. The proceeds of his patent would bring in over a million dollars, making him one of the richest men in America at the time and allowing him to land for the Northern Illinois State Normal School in DeKalb, Illinois, which in 1957 would be renamed Northern Illinois University and from which I would receive a BA in History in 1995. The entrepreneurial spirit for the other two 1873 inventions that would support American Western settlement came from firearms companies Winchester and Colt.

   Oliver Winchester had formed New Haven Arms Company 8n 1857 and employed Benjamin Tyler Henry. Henry would develop the Henry rifle which would see service during the American Civil War with tales being told of Confederate soldiers referring to it as “that damned Yankee rifle you can load on Sunday and shoot all week.” After the war Winchester retained the rights to manufacture the Henry rifle and improved them having renamed his company the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and began selling these improved rifles as the Winchester 1866. In 1873, Winchester would combine additional improvements with the new centerfire cartridge to create the 1873 Winchester. Winchester produced these 1873 Rifles, Carbines and Muskets in a variety of chamberings including several developed in house and marketed as Winchester Center Fire cartridges but would never produce them in the .45 Long Colt clambering developed by Colt for the Army. 720,000 model 1873s would be produced between 1873 and 1923.

   Colt manufacturing designed a new handgun in 1871 employing the grip and action of earlier Samuel Colt designs with a frame including a topstrap and designed for centerline cartridges which would be marketed in 1873 when the first 200 were sold. Samuel Colt had died of rheumatic fever during the Civil War on January 10th, 1862 and the actual design of the 1873 “Peacemaker" as it became known as was largely the work of Colt Engineer William Mason with the assistance of Colt Superintendent of Engineering, Charles Richards. The first order of 8000 Colt Single Action Army revolvers was delivered in the Summer of 1873. The first generation of Single Action Army revolvers would run from 1873 to 1940 and 357,859 revolvers would be produced during this period, many of them in Winchester Center Fire offerings to allow the use of the same cartridge in a man’s sidearm and long rifle or carbine.

   The advantage the Winchester and Colt models of 1873 could provide the Western settler was not only the ability, but the economy of being able to supply both a handgun and long gun in the same caliber thus avoiding the need to both purchase, stock, and carry multiple calibers. These provided both the settlers and their livestock security from predators of bot the animal and two legged variety, but adequate hunting arms as well. The availability of Glidden's barbed wire gave the settler additional security keeping herds in or out of certain locations much better than previous options while making property lines more readily identifiable.

   While the individual commercial success of these three designs is undeniable, it is the impact they had on the westward expansion, settlement and civilization where they earn their greatest significance. Both the Winchester and Colt model 1873s share the title “The Gun that Won the West.” Glidden's barbed wire would mark property lines keeping herds on graze land and out of cultivated acreage allowing for more efficient land use and livestock management. One must keep in mind that despite settlements having spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific, that area referred to as the Western Frontier was still a very dangerous place even beyond the turn of the Twentieth Century with the Battle of Little Bighorn taking place on June 25th and 26th of 1876, three years after these developments and the Mexican Border War which saw Pancho Villa raiding American border towns taking place from 1910 to 1919.

   Both the Winchester and Colt Models 1873 are produced to this day, not only by Colt and Winchester but by numerous other manufacturers as well and they remain practical tools to this day. While these were the originals, pistol caliber carbines and matching pistols,, many semi-automatic options even employing the same magazines are available and popular today and still provide effective options for ranchers and farmers. Barbed wire, of course,, continues to be useful not only in its original agricultural context but has found numerous security and military uses as well. These three inventions and the men who devised, built, and marketed them did much to assist postbellum America to tame its Western Frontier.


Bibliography:

Bennett, Lyn Ellen, and Scott Abbott. "Barbed and Dangerous: Constructing the Meaning of Barbed Wire in Late Nineteenth-Century America." Agricultural History 88, no. 4 (2014): 566-90. Accessed July 08, 2021. doi:10.3098/ah.2014.088.4.566.

McCallum, Henry D. "Barbed Wire in Texas." The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 61, no. 2 (1957): 207-19. Accessed July 08, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30241926.

Moss, Matthew, “The Story of the Legendary Winchester Rifle: The Gun That Won the West and a Lot More.” Popular Mechanics Magazine, SEP 30, 2016.

Peeler, Martin, Firearms in the American West 1700-1900, Wiltshire, GB, Crowood Press LTD, 2002.

Rose, Alexander, American Rifle: A Biography, New York, Random House Inc., 2008.

Walter, John, The Guns that Won the West: Firearms on the American Frontier, 1848-1898, St. Paul, MN, MBI Publishing CO., 1999.

Walter, John. The Rifle Story: An Illustrated History from 1756 to the Present Day, St. Paul, MN, MBI Publishing Co., 2006.


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