Killer Colt (47 page)
Authors: Harold Schechter
11.
Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 38; Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, pp. 19–20.
1.
According to his biographer, Charles Powell, John had come across “a Navy Department Order in a newspaper to prepare the Frigate Constitution for a Mediterranean cruise” (p. 32). While “Old Ironsides” did, in fact, serve as the flagship of the navy’s Mediterranean Squadron between 1821 and 1828, she was laid up in
Boston Harbor, undergoing extensive repairs, at the time of John’s enlistment and did not return to active service until 1835. If John intended to embark on a Mediterranean cruise, it would have been on a different vessel.
2.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, pp. 32–33.
3.
Ibid., pp. 35–36; Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, p. 40.
4.
Rywell,
Man and Epoch
, p. 74.
1.
I am referring here to the 1961 best-seller
African Genesis
(New York: Atheneum, 1961), by Robert Ardrey, a highly successful Hollywood screenwriter turned amateur anthropologist. Though Ardrey’s work has not completely stood the test of time, it offers profoundly important insights into the savage springs of human behavior and culture.
2.
For the development of repeating handguns, see W. Y. Carman,
A History of Firearms: From Earliest Times to 1914
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955), pp. 131–48; Roger Pauly,
Firearms: The Life Story of a Technology
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), pp. 39–58; Charles T. Haven and Frank A. Belden,
A History of the Colt Revolver: And Other Arms Made by Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company from 1836 to 1940
(New York: Bonanza Books, 1940), pp. 3–13; Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, pp. 22–36. Samuel Colt himself provided a useful survey of the subject in a lecture delivered to the Institution of Civil Engineers in London in 1851. It is reprinted in Haven and Belden, pp. 312–26.
3.
Quoted in Rywell,
Man and Epoch
, p. 45.
4.
For example, see Ellsworth S. Grant,
The Colt Legacy: The Colt Armory in Hartford, 1855–1980
(Providence, RI: Mowbray Company, 1982), pp. 2–4.
5.
Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 38. In other versions, Sam derived his inspiration not from watching the
C
orvo
’s wheel but from observing either the windlass used to load and unload the hold or the capstan for raising and lowering the anchor. See Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 23; Harold Evans,
They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2004), p. 62.
6.
Beecher’s Illustrated Magazine
, May 1871, pp. 343–47.
7.
The precise date of Sam’s return is unknown. However, “based upon Olivia Colt’s remark in her letter of 23 June 1830 telling Samuel that the
Corvo
would be at sea for ‘about ten months,’ ” it “most likely occurred either in May or June of 1831.” See Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 38; Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, pp. 23–24.
1.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, pp. 36–37.
2.
The seal is divided into two halves. The upper portion depicts the sun rising over a mountain behind the university building. The lower half consists of three
emblems: a quadrant, a globe, and an ideogram of two small squares balanced atop a much larger third. This latter is meant to signify “the Pythagorean proposition that, in a right-handed triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the two other sides.” See Julian Ira Lindsay,
Tradition Looks Forward: The University of Vermont: A History, 1791–1904
(Burlington, VT: University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, 1954), p. 88.
3.
John’s precise movements during these years and the exact locations of his various enterprises are difficult to sort out. This summary is extrapolated from information in Powell,
Authentic Life
, pp. 40–43, as well as from a letter on file at the Connecticut Historical Society, dated 1833, in which James Colt writes to Sam: “John has returned to New York … He has got a notion in his head that he thinks will pay him 20 thousand dollars, it is making oil sope [
sic
] and I think it is a foolish one.”
4.
Ibid., p. 41.
5.
John C. Colt,
The Science of Double Entry Book-Keeping: Simplified, Arranged and Methodized
, 10th ed. (New York: Nafis & Cornish, 1844), p. 191.
6.
Cary John Previts and Barbara Dubis Merino,
A History of Accounting in the United States: The Cultural Significance of Accounting
(Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1998), p. 21.
7.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, p. 43.
8.
Ibid., p. 44.
9.
Daniel Aaron,
Cincinnati, Queen City of the West: 1819–1938
(Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1992), pp. 7, 17.
10.
Scott, “Popular Lecture,” p. 792.
11.
Four of Colt’s talks—three given to “public meeting[s]” in Cincinnati, Dayton, and Boston and one prepared for Cincinnati’s College of Professional Teachers but never delivered—are appended to the tenth edition of his textbook,
The Science of Double Entry Book-Keeping
. All quotes come from pp. 191–253 of that volume.
1.
According to his own account, Sam Colt’s original conception was a gun with multiple barrels that rotated when the hammer was cocked. He soon abandoned this pepperbox design, however, for the far less unwieldy one of a single-barrel firearm with a revolving six-chambered cylinder. See Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, pp. 38–39, and Barnard,
Armsmear
, p. 162.
2.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 24. Edwards describes Bassett as the captain of a whaler but a congressional document identifies him as “a merchantman, principally in the European trade.” See
Executive Documents of the House of Representatives at the Second Session of the Twenty-first Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 6, 1830
, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1831), document No. 104, p. 123.
3.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 24; Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, p. 25; Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 45.
4.
Evans,
They Made America
, pp. 62–63.
5.
Ibid., p. 63.
6.
Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 41.
7.
See Ellen Hickey Grayson, “Social Order and Psychological Disorder: Laughing Gas Demonstrations, 1800–1850,” in
Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body
, ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson (New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 108–20.
8.
William Hosley, “Guns, Gun Culture, and the Peddling of Dreams,” in
Guns in America: A Reader
, ed. Jan E. Dizard, Robert Merrill Muth, and Stephen P. Andrews, Jr. (New York: New York University Press, 1999), p. 54.
9.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 18.
10.
Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, pp. 36–37. Colt’s standard introductory speech at his performances was much the same as his newspaper advertisements. Sometime in 1832 or 1833, he committed this speech to paper. This document (reprinted in Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 40) conveys not only the learned tone of “Dr. Coult’s” spiel but the inimitably wretched spelling of its author:
Ladies & Gentlemen
If you will give me your attention for a few minuits, I wil commence the evenings entertainment with a few intraductary remarks.
Nitrous Oxide, or the Prot Oxide of Azot. which is more generally known by the name Exhilarating Gas, was discovered by Dr. Priestley in 1772 but it was first acurateley investigated by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1799 …
Sir Humphrey Davy first shode that by breathing a few quarts of it containd in a Silk bag for too or three minuets effects analagus to those occasioned by drinking formented liquors were produced. Individuals who differ in temperament, are however, as one might expect differantly effected.
It effects uppon some people are truly ludicrus, producing involuntary muscular motion, & a propensity for leaping & Running. In others involuntary fits of laughter & in all high spirrits & the most exquisately pleashourable sensations, without any subsequent feelings of debility …
Agreable to my usual custum, I wil enhale the first dose of Gas myself, in order to show you that it is purfectly pure & that there need be no fear of enhaling it—I would observe to all pursuns who inten taking the Gas, this evening, to dispose of their nives, or other weppins, preaveous to there taking it, in order to gard against an accident, altho I do not apprehend any danger for I have never had an accident hapin.
11.
Haven and Belden,
History of Colt
, pp. 17–18.
12.
Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, p. 38; Rywell,
Man and Epoch
, p. 27.
1.
Theophilus E. Padnos, “Here Is a Cabinet of Curiosities: Collecting the Past on the American Frontier” (PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, 2000), pp. 23–27; Louis Leonard Tucker, “ ‘Ohio Show-Shop’: The Western Museum of Cincinnati, 1820–1867,” in
A Cabinet of Curiosities: Five Episodes in the Evolution of American Museums
, eds. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., et al., (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1967): pp. 73–105.
2.
Aaron,
Cincinnati
, p. 276.
3.
Edward P. Hingston,
The Genial Showman, vol. 1, Being Reminiscences of the Life of Artemus Ward and Pictures of a Showman’s Career in the Western World
(London: John Camden Hotten, 1870), pp. 11–12, quoted by Tucker, “ ‘Ohio Show-Stop,’ ” p. 74.
4.
Padnos, “Cabinet of Curiosities,” pp. 61–64, 117; Tucker, “ ‘Ohio Show-Stop,’ ” p. 85.
5.
Richard P. Wunder,
Hiram Powers: Vermont Sculptor
(Taftsville, VT: Country Press, 1974), p. 11.
6.
Frances Trollope,
Domestic Manners of the Americans
(London: Whitaker, Treacher & Co., 1832), p. 53.
7.
Padnos, “Cabinet of Curiosities,” p. 48.
8.
Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 40; Rywell,
Man and Epoch
, p. 28.
9.
Rywell,
Man and Epoch
, p. 27; Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, pp. 38–50.
10.
See John Colt,
Double Entry Book-Keeping
, pp. 29, 30, 34, 40; Powell,
Authentic Life
, p. 8.
11.
Colt,
Double Entry Book-Keeping
, p. 40.
12.
For example, see Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 61.
13.
Charles Theodore Greve,
Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens
, vol. 1 (Chicago: Biographical Publishing Company, 1904), pp. 643–44. Also see the Cincinnati
Public Ledger
, February 20, 1841, p. 3.
14.
Aaron,
Cincinnati
, p. 278.
15.
All information about Frances Anne Frank and her tragic relationship with John Colt comes from Powell,
Authentic Life
, pp. 44–52.
16.
Powell—whose biography was clearly composed with John’s cooperation and represents him in the best possible light—insists that his subject nobly resisted Frances Anne’s seductive advances: “deep as was his interest in her, he saw that it would be ruinous to give way to it” (p. 46). His repeated assertions of Colt’s purity and restraint, however, have a distinct air of protesting too much. Everything that Powell reports about the relationship suggests that John and Frances were lovers.
17.
Claudia D. Johnson, “Enter the Harlot,” in
Women in American Theatre
, ed. Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins (New York: Crown Publishing, 1980), pp. 57–66.
18.
The account of Frances Anne Frank’s final twenty-four hours is based on a letter from Joseph Adams to John Colt, printed verbatim in the appendix to Powell,
Authentic Life
, pp. 69–70.
1.
Charles Varle,
A Complete View of Baltimore
(Baltimore: Samuel Young, 1833), p. 41.
2.
Hosley,
American Legend
, p. 16; Evans,
They Made America
, p. 63; Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 35.
3.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 32; Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, p. 13.
4.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 42.
5.
Ibid., p. 182. Also see Andie Tucher,
Froth & Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 173–75.
1.
The story of the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company is told most fully in Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, pp. 43ff., and Haven and Belden,
History of Colt
, pp. 20–43. Also see Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, pp. 72–116, and Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, pp. 1–49.
2.
Nathaniel C. Fowler,
Getting a Start: First Aids to Success
(New York: Sully and Kleintech, 1915), p. 43.
3.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 44.
4.
Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, p. 19.