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CHAPTER I
THE GUN CLUB
During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was
established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland.
It is well known with what energy the taste for military matters
became developed among that nation of ship-owners, shopkeepers,
and mechanics. Simple tradesmen jumped their counters to become
extemporized captains, colonels, and generals, without having
ever passed the School of Instruction at West Point;
nevertheless; they quickly rivaled their compeers of the old
continent, and, like them, carried off victories by dint of
lavish expenditure in ammunition, money, and men.
But the point in which the Americans singularly distanced the
Europeans was in the science of gunnery. Not, indeed, that
their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than
theirs, but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions, and
consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of
grazing, plunging, oblique, or enfilading, or point-blank
firing, the English, French, and Prussians have nothing to
learn; but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere
pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the
American artillery.
This fact need surprise no one. The Yankees, the first
mechanicians in the world, are engineers-- just as the Italians
are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians-- by right of birth.
Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them
applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.
Witness the marvels of Parrott, Dahlgren, and Rodman.
The Armstrong, Palliser, and Beaulieu guns were compelled to bow
before their transatlantic rivals.
Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second
American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president
and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records,
and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general
meeting, and the club is fully constituted. So things were
managed in Baltimore. The inventor of a new cannon associated
himself with the caster and the borer. Thus was formed the
nucleus of the "Gun Club." In a single month after its formation
it numbered 1,833 effective members and 30,565 corresponding members.
One condition was imposed as a _sine qua non_ upon every
candidate for admission into the association, and that was the
condition of having designed, or (more or less) perfected a
cannon; or, in default of a cannon, at least a firearm of
some description. It may, however, be mentioned that mere
inventors of revolvers, fire-shooting carbines, and similar
small arms, met with little consideration. Artillerists always
commanded the chief place of favor.
The estimation in which these gentlemen were held, according to
one of the most scientific exponents of the Gun Club, was
"proportional to the masses of their guns, and in the direct
ratio of the square of the distances attained by their projectiles."
