Customer Reviews

Spencer Repeating Firearms

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the BEST book ever written on the subject of Spencers. I have 4 Military Rifles, one of which is the model 1870, and I have always wanted to know more about the man and his weapon, and this book answered every question I ever had. Easily worth the price!!!

This is a review of SPENCER REPEATING FIREARMS by Roy M. Marcot. My copy was published in 1990 by Rowe Publications of Rochester, New York.

Michael Kalashnikov wasn't the only tinkerer to invent an advanced firearm which had an impact on Military History. As Roy M. Marcot demonstrates in his excellent book, there was Christopher Miner Spencer (1833-1922) and his revolutionary repeating rifle.

All that is well documented and illustrated in SPENCER REPEATING FIREARMS. If you're interested in the Civil War or the expansion of the American frontier west of Mississippi River, you need this book.

Marcot, for example, explains the various models and how they eventually overcame military doubts about another new, untried system. One of the innovative, young officers who saw its virtues and figured out how to use it was George Armstrong Custer.

He commanded the Michigan Volunteers during the momentous battle at Gettysburg. The cannon fire from that battlefield shook the ground where Custer carefully deployed his raw recruits armed with their new Spencers against none other than Wade Hampden's "Invincibles", part of J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate Cavalry.

The seven shot repeaters broke up several Confederate charges and delayed their offensive long enough to keep them out of the Union rear, which could have been catastrophic for Meade and his blue-clad Union soldiers.

Custer's subsequent career seemed to coincide with the adoption of the Spencer by such Regular Army formations as the Seventh Cavalry, which used it until 1873 when it was replaced by the single shot Springfield carbine, which Custer's men carried with them to the Little Big Horn in 1876.

There, he was confronted by Sioux, Cheyenne and other warriors many of whom had Spencers issued to them as surplus by the Department of the Interior (for hunting.) There, he fell to the very firearms which had been such an important building block in his military career.

This is a great book. I gave it a five star rating.

After all the Civil War Firearms books I've ever bought trying to learn more about this fascinating weapon, this latest purchase puts all the rest to shame. Page after page, picture after picture, fact after fact this book explores all facets of Spencer firearms and does so in an interesting , chronological order. No unanswered questions will remain- you have arrived!