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Lindner-Altered Model 1819 Rifle  193. Edward Lindner was born in one of the Germanic states, perhaps Austria, in 1815. He had emigrated to New York by 1850. During the ensuing nine years, he obtained four patents on his improvements in firearms. These related primarily to a breechloading system he had invented. Beginning in 1856, he submitted muskets equipped with his breechloading system for Navy trials and for three Ordnance Department trials. Between each of the Ordnance Department trials, Lindner would apply some improvement to his system, the last of which were to limit the leakage of gases when the arm was fired. On March 22, 1861, Lindner wrote Chief of Ordnance Colonel Craig in an attempt to obtain an Ordnance Department contract, but his effort was in vain. Colonel Craig retired shortly thereafter and the new chief of ordnance was Colonel Ripley. On May 21, Lindner wrote to the secretary of war asking for a contract to alter the thousands of then-obsolete Hall rifles that the Ordnance Department had in storage. On June 3, Chief of Ordnance Colonel Ripley wrote Secretary of War Simon Cameron regarding what he describes as the application of Mr. Lindner’s “breechloading principle to the old Halls arms.” He also stated, “I consider it for the interest of the public service that all these old arms should be sold for what they are worth rather than that they should be altered to a new principle, which however ingenious & meritorious it may appear to be, has never been tried in actual service.” Secretary of War Simon Cameron wrote Lindner on June 8, “I concur in the opinions expressed by Lieutenant Col. Ripley in charge of the Ordnance Bureau on the subject, 1st, that the old Hall’s arms should be sold for whatever they will bring rather than altered.” That same month, Arthur M. Eastman, a businessman from Manchester, New Hampshire, took advantage of this decision by purchasing 6,000 Hall percussion carbines; they were subsequently rifled and many resold by others to the federal government in August at a great profit. These transactions, known as “The Hall Carbine Affair,” resulted in a congressional investigation in the form of the Holt-Owens Commission that examined all of the Ordnance Department’s procurement of arms during the early years of the Civil War. Events show that Edward Lindner, Arthur Eastman, and Ezekiel Straw of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, all of Manchester, New Hampshire, knew each other before the end of June 1861. They had established a business relationship whereby Eastman would promote the sale of Lindner’s breechloading system, the alteration work to be accomplished by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company. Prior to the Civil War, Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, of Manchester, New Hampshire, was one of the largest cotton and worsted fabric manufacturers in the country. In addition, it had a large machine shop that produced steam Part I 92 boilers, steam fire engines, textile machinery, and shoe-making machinery for other Northern industries. Following the Civil War’s outbreak, Ezekiel Straw used Amoskeag’s machine shop to accomplish breechloading alterations to a variety of arms. These included the alteration of Hall rifles, Model 1841 rifles, and Austrian Jaeger rifles to Lindner’s breechloading system. These facilities would later manufacture Special Model 1861 contract rifled muskets and Lindner breechloading carbines. The state of New Hampshire had received more than 1,000 Model 1819 Hall flintlock rifles as part of its annual 1808 Militia Act allocations from the federal government. National Archives records show the state received 693 Hall rifles on July 12, 1838, 220 Hall rifles on August 17, 1840, and 180 Hall rifles on August 27, 1841, for a total of 1,093 Hall flintlock rifles. These Hall rifles had two undesirable features: they were flintlock and, when fired, they leaked gases between the face of the breech block and the barrel’s breech. The Ordnance Department had declared them obsolete in 1857. The Northern states experienced a great shortage of rifled percussion arms in the months following the Civil War’s outbreak in April 1861. Arthur Eastman contacted the New Hampshire state authorities and showed them Lindner’s alteration that promised to return the state’s obsolete Hall rifles to serviceability. The Lindner alteration included altering them to percussion and eliminated the escape of gases by both the action of an internally threaded rotating sleeve that forced the breech...

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