Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel: An Interview with Julia Keller

Donald A. Yerxa:

Who was Richard Gatling, and how did he come to invent his rapid-fire gun?

Julia Keller:

Richard Jordan Gatling was a 19th-century American inventor. Famous in his own time, he is nearly forgotten in ours. Yet the invention to which he gave his name, the Gatling gun, continues to be well known; in fact, it now serves as a metaphor for any rapid-firing spew of anything. To this day, fast-talking fictional characters are often described as indulging in “Gatling gun dialogue.” A nickname for a gangster’s gun is a “gat.”

Gatling was born in 1818 in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. His father was a farmer and a slaveholder. Despite a lack of formal education, Richard Gatling rose to become an accomplished inventor and successful entrepreneur. He invented the world’s first working machine gun—the Gatling gun—during the Civil War, hoping that an automatic machine that reduced the number of soldiers needed to fight would consequently reduce the lethality of warfare. Although he was born in the South, Gatling would sell his gun only to President Lincoln and the Union side. He opposed slavery.

Yerxa:

What prompted you to write the book?

Keller:

The more I learned about Richard Gatling, the more it seemed to me that his life had much to teach us about the American story in the 19th and 20th centuries, as the nation rose to become a world superpower. I also came to believe that Gatling had been unjustly neglected by general histories of this period. Why do we all know Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell and not Richard Jordan Gatling? The latter was an inventive genius of great imagination and vigor, holder of almost fifty patents for devices such as seed planters and hemp brakes and bicycles and dry-cleaning machines—but because his most famous invention is a gun, a weapon of death, he has been well-nigh ignored by historians.

There was, I discovered to my dismay, no major biography of Gatling. Most people assume the gun was named after Gatlinburg, Tennessee—a city with no connection to the gun or to Richard Gatling.

Gatling guns trained on Filipinos, near Manila, Philippine Islands. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-136148].

I wrote Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel to remind Americans of his pivotal work, and of the astonishing period of American inventiveness in the 19th century, when the patent system transformed the world.

Yerxa:

Why has Gatling become a forgotten man?

Keller:

I think it’s because Americans are not quite comfortable with the idea of guns as creative inventions, as products. We are, to our credit, peace-loving; we regard warfare as an unfortunate necessity. We are a superpower, but we don’t like the idea that we have achieved that status as much or more through our military might as through the righteous force and originality of our ideas. British historian Niall Ferguson calls us “an empire in denial,” which strikes me as correct—and as a plausible an explanation as any for why we’ve not celebrated the achievements of Richard Jordan Gatling. His invention forces us to come to terms with the primacy of military supremacy as a motivating factor in world history.

Yerxa:

I understand that you have fired a Gatling gun. What was that like?

Keller:

I did indeed, and it was thrilling. I didn’t grow up with guns, but have always admired the sportsmen and sportswomen in this country who obey gun laws, respect firearms, and enjoy the outdoors. Sportsmen are among our most ardent and effective conservationists. It was the vast legion of responsible and nature-loving hunters, led by President Theodore Roosevelt, who worked to create our national park system and numerous forest preserves.

As I was researching the book in quiet libraries and even quieter cemeteries, I knew that I had another area—a much louder one—to explore in order to make the book as lively as its subject: firing a Gatling gun. In its original incarnation...