My orders were to purchase 12,000 rifles and a battery of field artillery, and to procure one or two guns of larger calibre as models. A short time before the beginning of the war, the London Armory Company had purchased a plant of gun-stocking machinery from the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Mass. Knowing this, I went to the office of the Armory Company the day after my arrival in London, with the intention of securing, if possible, their entire output.
On entering the Superintendent's office, I found there the American engineer who superintended the erection of the plant. I had known him in Chicopee. Suspecting he might be an agent for the purchase of arms for the United States Government, I asked him, bluntly, if he was, and added, "I am buying for the Confederate Government." Such a disclosure of my business may seem to have been indiscreet, but at that time I thought it my best plan, and the result proved that I was right. He made no reply to my inquiry, but I was satisfied my suspicion was correct and resolved on the spot, to flank his movement if possible.
As he had entered the office first, it was in order for me to outstay him, which I did. On his leaving, I asked for a price for all the small arms the Company could manufacture.
The Superintendent said he could not answer me, but would refer me to the Chairman of the Company,—President, we should call him—and would accompany me to his office. There I repeated my inquiry for a price for all the arms the Company could make for a year, with the privilege of renewing the order. The President was not prepared to give me a price, but would do so the next day. On calling at his office the following day, he told me that the Company was under contract for all the arms it could turn out, and considering all the circumstances, the Directors felt they ought to give their present customer the preference over all others.
Confirmed in my belief that my competitor was no other than the man whom I had encountered the day before, I was now more determined than ever to secure the London Armory as a Confederate States arms factory. The Atlantic cable was not then laid, and correspondence by mail required nearly a month—an unreasonable time for a commercial company to hold in abeyance a desirable opportunity for profit. Within a few days I succeeded in closing a contract under which I was to have all the arms the Company could manufacture, after filling a comparatively small order for the United States agent. This Company, during the remainder of the war, turned all its output of arms over to me for the Confederate army.
Baring Brothers were, at that time, the London financial agents for the United States Government, and they would unquestionably have been supported and gratefully thanked, had they assumed the responsibility of contracting for all the arms in sight in England. Any army officer, fit for such a mission as that of buying arms for a great Government at the outbreak of a war, would have acted, if necessary, without instructions, and secured everything that he could find in the line of essentials, especially arms, of which there were very few in the market. There were muskets enough to be had for almost any reasonable offer, but of modern Enfield or Springfield rifles—which were practically the same—there were only a few thousand in England, and none elsewhere except in Austria, where all were owned by the Government. And, according to Mr. Cushing, these would be available by the United States but impossible of purchase by "the South." Yet even so high an authority as Ex-Attorney General Cushing proved to be wrong in his assumption, as will be shown below.
Any young, intelligent West Point graduate holding an army commission and as fearless in assuming responsibility as the average "graduate," would not only have prevented my making this important contract, but would have blocked my efforts in every direction; for in all Europe the supply of arms ready for use or possible of manufacture was very limited. Such an officer would have secured everything worth having—in other words, all the best—and only inferior arms of antiquated model would have been left for the Confederacy. The effect would have been not only to give the United States good arms in profusion, but utterly to discourage their opponents by the inferiority of their weapons.
Mr. Davis did not make the great mistake of sending a civil agent to purchase supplies—a duty as thoroughly military as any that could be named—nor the still greater blunder of setting several men to do what one man, with uncontrolled authority, could do so much better. Doubtless he could have found men who would have performed the duty as well as did the young officer whom he selected, and some who would have done their part better; but, during the whole war, no change was made, although not to remove him often required that firmness—not to say obstinacy—which was a prominent trait of Mr. Davis's character, and which, right or wrong, but especially when he was right, he exercised to a remarkable degree.
When I arrived in England, the Confederate States Government was already represented by Hon. William L. Yancey, Commissioner to England; his secretary, Mr. Walker Fearn, afterwards United States Minister to Greece; Judge Rost, of New Orleans, Commissioner to France, with his son as secretary; and Mr. Dudley Mann, commonly known as Col. Mann, who held an appointment as Commissioner, but to what country I do not know. Later, Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, afterwards United States Secretary of the Interior, and later still Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was appointed Commissioner to Russia, but he went no further than Paris, and returned to Richmond before the end of the war. Commander James D. Bulloch, previously of the United States Navy, whose sister was the mother of President Roosevelt, was in charge of all naval matters. Messrs. Fraser, Trenholm & Co., of Liverpool, were the fiscal agents.
All these representatives worked in complete harmony, without jealousy or clashing of opinion; each was ready to assist the others in every way possible. They were all cultured men, of agreeable personality, and as far removed from the genus homo which has been designated as "hot-headed Southerner," as can well be imagined. They lived unostentatiously, in modest, but entirely respectable lodgings in the West End, London, except Judge Rost, who resided in Paris, and Commander Bulloch, who made his headquarters in Liverpool. None of the representatives of the Confederate Government required much money in the discharge of his duties, except Commander Bulloch and myself. We were both to look to Fraser, Trenholm & Co., for all the money we were to expend, as indeed were all the diplomatic agents.