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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2020
During the 1810s and 1820, officials in the War Department engaged in military state building, which transcended partisanship and contributed to the development of executive autonomy. The process revealed the ability of the executive to shape national security, while also foreshadowing Progressive Era trends toward expertise-based bureaucratic autonomy. The activities of the Ordnance Department suggest that the connection between war and early American state building was forged in the efforts to bolster the armaments industry. Ordnance officers established autonomy partly through arms expertise, and they were not necessarily coalition builders like the late nineteenth-century Post Office and Department of Agriculture bureaucrats, especially because they generated more hostility. Thus, there were different routes by which autonomy was and is established, but in the first decades of the nineteenth century, this autonomy depended on national security and war preparations. This article uses War Department papers, armory records, and congressional debates to show how certain bureaucrats developed the ability to work against congressional limits to their functionality. Ordnance ultimately succeeded because its leaders executed a nonpartisan military agenda and demonstrated an ability to effectively manage the nation's security apparatus, especially in times of peace.
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48. Alfred Chandler argues that the Springfield Armory pioneered rational bookkeeping and management. Chandler, The Visible Hand. For the rise of bookkeeping as an ideology in the nineteenth century, see Zakim, Michael, Accounting for Capitalism: The Business Clerk as Social Revolutionary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Rosenthal, Caitlin C., “From Memory to Mastery: Accounting for Control in America, 1750–1850,” Enterprise & Society 14 (2013): 732–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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50. “An Act for the Better Regulation of the Ordnance Department,” 203–204; Decius Wadsworth to Roswell Lee, July 25, 1818, Letters Received from Officials and Officers of the War and Treasury Departments, box 1, Target 2, Records of the Springfield Armory; “Decius Wadsworth to John C. Calhoun, September 28, 1818,” in United States Senate, Documents Presented to the Committee on Finance in Relation to Sundry Estimates of Money Required for the Expenses of the War Department, and Military Service of the United States, for the Year 1819 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1819), 58; Smith, Military Enterprise and Technological Change, 57; John Morton to Roswell Lee, August 30, 1817, folder 9, box 3, Letters Received Miscellaneous, Records of the Springfield Armory.
51. Act of March 3, 1825 (4 Stat. 127), “An Act to Authorize the Sale of Unserviceable Ordnance, Arms, and Military Stores,” in Thian, Legislative History of the General Staff, 582.
52. Henry W. Huntington, Natchez, to Roswell Lee, Superintendent, September 20, 1818, folder 1, box 4, Letters Received Miscellaneous, Records of the Springfield Armory, MA, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA. Elton Atwater describes the law of neutrality as a working set of agreements between nations regarding behavior toward belligerents, in Elton Atwater, American Regulation of Arms Exports (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1941), 7, n.2; John Missall and Mary Lou Missall, The Seminole Wars: America's Longest Indian Conflict (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida 2004), 52; Winfield Scott to Daniel Parker, November 19, 1815, folder 11, box 4, Daniel Parker Papers (Collection 466), Historical Society of Pennsylvania; William Cramond to Roswell Lee, Superintendent, Springfield Armory, July 15, 1815, folder 4, box 1, Letters Received Miscellaneous, Records of the Springfield Armory, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA; “Memorial on Behalf of the Owners of the Schooner Highflier, Having a Claim on the Mexican Government Addressed to the Board of Commissioners under the Convention of the 11th of April, 1839 between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic,” Case No. 24, Thomas Tenant, Case Files for Cases Heard, August 25, 1850–1851, Records of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations, 1716–1994, RG 76, National Archives, College Park, MD; John Morton to William Cramond, February, 1816, William Cramond Correspondence, Mercantile Miscellany (1140), The Hagley Museum and Library.
53. Mark B. Wilson counters Ira Katznelson's argument about Congressional checks on U.S. military power in Mark B. Wilson, “The Politics of Procurement: Military Origins of Bureaucratic Autonomy,” Journal of Policy History, 18 (2006): 45–75; “Jesse Slocumb (NC), February 22, 1819,” in Circular Letters of Congressmen to Their Constituents, 1789–1829, ed. Noble E. Cunningham Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 1055–56. John C. Calhoun to Edmund Gaines, December 24, 1819, Records of the Office of the Secretary of War, Confidential and Unofficial Letters Sent, RG 107, National Archives, Washington, DC.
54. Heidler, “The Politics of National Aggression,” 529.
55. Annals of Congress, May 6, 1821, 16th Congress, 2nd Sess., p. 1864.
56. Niven, John C. Calhoun, 79.
57. Decius Wadsworth to Roswell Lee, July 13, 1817, folder 8, box 2, Letters Received Miscellaneous, Records of the Springfield Armory, MA; ASP, “Reduction of the Army Considered,” 779.
58. Belko, “John C. Calhoun and the Creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” 184.
59. ASP, “Statement of the Expenditures of the United States’ Armory at Springfield, Mass., and of the Arms Made and Repaired Therein, from Its Establishment to the Close of the Year 1821,” and “Statement of the Expenditures of the United States’ Armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. and of the Arms Made and Repaired Therein, from Its Establishment to the Close of the Year 1821,” November 30, 1822, House of Representatives, 17th Congress, 2nd Sess., no. 111, 84.
60. Nathan Starr Sr. to Nathan Starr Jr., March 24, 1818, folder 1, box 1, Arms Correspondence, Starr Family Collection, Middlesex County Historical Society.
61. ASP, “Ordnance Department,” 905–906.
62. Ibid., 906–908.
63. Congress appropriated $44,600 for arsenals in 1824, up from $20,715 spent in 1822. ASP, “Register of Debates,” December 6, 1824, 18th Congress, 2nd Sess., 85; ASP, “Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting the Information in Relation to Expenditures on the Ordnance Department,” February 17, 1823, 17th Congress, 2nd Sess.
64. Congress, “Military Peace Establishments,” December 29, 1829, in Register of Debates in Congress (Washington, DC: Gales & Seaton, 1829).
65. George Bomford to Roswell Lee, March 12, 1824, box 2, Letters Received from Officials and Officers of War and Treasury Departments, Records of the Springfield Armory, MA, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA.
66. George Bomford to Roswell Lee, August 18, 1825, box 2, Letters Received from Officials and Officers of War and Treasury Departments, Records of the Springfield Armory, MA, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA.
67. William Wade to Roswell Lee, [n.d.], box 2, Letters Received from Officials and Officers of War and Treasury Departments, Records of the Springfield Armory, MA, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA.
68. George Bomford to Roswell Lee, August 18, 1825; William Wade to Roswell Lee, November 30, 1828, Letterbook, vol. 1, Letters Received from Officials and Officers of War and Treasury Departments, Records of the Springfield Armory, MA, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA.
69. ASP, “Statement of the Expenditures of the United States Armory at Springfield, Mass.,” 84.
70. Roswell Lee to Adonijah Foot, August 6, 1823, folder 5, box 9, Letters Received Miscellaneous, Records of the Springfield Armory, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA.
71. William Wade to Roswell Lee November 30, 1828.
72. Ingersoll, A History of the War Department.
73. ASP, “Report of the Committee of Ways and Means,” January 16, 1822, 17th Congress, 1st. Sess., no. 15, 8.
74. ASP, “Register of Debates,” December 17, 1828, House of Representatives, 20th Congress, 2nd Sess., 112; ASP, “Ordnance Department,” 905–906; Journal of the Senate 13 (December 2, 1823), 18th Congress, 1st Sess., 14; Ingersoll, A History of the War Department.
75. ASP, Register of Debates, February 1, 1827, 19th Congress, 2nd Sess., 901–902; Register of Debates, “The Army,” April 14, 1830, 21st Congress, 1st Sess., 788.
76. Register of Debates, “Message of the President at the Opening of the Session,” July 16, 1832, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 9.
77. ASP, “Ordnance Department,” 905–906; Journal of the Senate 13 (December 2, 1823), 18th Congress, 1st Sess., 14; ASP, “Ordnance Bill,” March 22, 1832, Register of Debates, House of Representatives, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 2239; Register of Debates, House of Representatives, December 17, 1828, 20th Congress, 2nd Sess., 112; “An Act to Reduce and Fix the Military Peace Establishment of the United States,” March 2, 1821, in Cross, Trueman T., Military Laws of the United States (Washington, DC: Templeton, 1838), 213Google Scholar; “An Act Providing for the Organization of the Ordnance Department,” Stat. I, April 5, 1832, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., ch. 67, 504. ASP, “Ordnance Bill,” 2237–38.
78. U.S. Congress, Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973), 125–26.
79. New York Daily Advertiser, January 20, 1825; Deyrup, Felicia Johnson, Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley: A Regional Study of the Economic Development of the Small Arms Industry, 1798–1870 (Northampton, MA: Smith College Studies in History, 1948), 58Google Scholar; William Cramond, Philadelphia, to Roswell Lee, Superintendent, Springfield Armory, November 6, 1816, folder 9, box 1; Nixon Walker and George McCallmint to Roswell Lee, Springfield Armory, September 20, 1816, folder 8, box 1, Letters Received Miscellaneous, Records of the Springfield Armory, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA; William Cramond to Roswell Lee, Springfield Armory, April 11, 1817, folder 6, box 2, Letters Received Miscellaneous, Records of the Springfield Armory, RG 156, National Archives, Waltham, MA. For the link between military and civilian arms production, see Regele, Lindsay Schakenbach, “Industrial Manifest Destiny: American Firearms Manufacturing and Antebellum Expansion,” Business History Review 92 (Spring 2018): 57–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waters, Asa H., Biographical Sketch of Thomas Blanchard and his Inventions (Worcester, MA: L.P. Goddard, 1878), 13Google Scholar.
80. U.S. Congress, Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973), 125.
81. Taylor, Alan, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 (New York: Norton, 2013), 91, 150Google Scholar.
82. ASP, “Ordnance Bill,” 2238; ASP, “Annual Report of the Secretary of War, Showing the Condition of That Department in 1831,” November 21, 1831, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., no. 485, 718; Congressional Record Bound, Register of Debates, February 5, 1833, 1627.
83. ASP, “Message from the President of the United States,” January 25, 1831, 21st Congress, 2nd Sess., no. 39, 2.
84. Annals of Congress, “Indian Fur Trade,” March 29, 1824; ASP, “Message from the President of the United States,” December 6, 1831, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess.; ASP, “Report from the Indian Bureau,” November 19, 1831, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 18.
85. “Letter from General Ashley to the Secretary of War,” March 1829, 21st Congress, 2nd Sess., xcii–xciii, in “Appendix to the Register of Debates,” Congressional Record Bound, March 3, 1831.
86. ASP, “Annual Report of the Secretary of War, Showing the Condition of That Department in 1831,” 711.
87. ASP, “Ordnance Bill,” 2237–38.
88. “Memorandum,” April 19, 1832, folder: Ordnance Officers Qualifications of, box 25, Thomas Sidney Jesup Papers, 1780–1907, MMC 0318C, Library of Congress.
89. ASP, “Report of the President of a Board of Officers on Improvements in Fire-Arms by Hall, Colt, Cochran, Leavitt, and Baron Hackett, as Compared with the United States Musket,” October 3, 1837, 25th Congress, 1st Sess., no. 743, 525–29.
90. “Memorandum,” April 19, 1832.
91. ASP, “Ordnance Bill,” 2239.
92. Ingersoll, A History of the War Department, 309; Stearns, Charles, The National Armories: A Review of the Systems of Superintendency, Civil and Military, Particularly with Reference to Economy and General Management at the Springfield Armory (Springfield, MA: George Wilson's Steam Power Presses, 1853), 7–8Google Scholar, 309.
93. Stearns, The National Armories, 7.
94. ASP, “Documents from War Department,” November 14, 1842, 27th Congress, 3rd Sess., no. 2, 208; Stearns, The National Armories, 13, 74; Brown, M. L., “Notes on U.S. Arsenals, Depots, and Martial Firearms of the Second Seminole War,” Florida Historical Quarterly 61 (1983): 453Google Scholar.
95. ASP, “To Restore Civil Superintendencies in National Armories at Harper's Ferry and Springfield, with Appendix and Minority Report,” June 13, 1854, 33rd Congress, 1st Sess.
96. Ibid., 18.
97. Stearns, The National Armories, 9–12.
98. For scholarship on these wars, see Ellisor, John T., The Second Creek War: Interethnic Conflict and Collusion on a Collapsing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monaco, C. S., The Second Seminole War and the Limits of American Aggression (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.
99. Ingersoll, A History of the War Department of the United States, 309–11.
100. Abraham Eustis to Joel Roberts Poinsett, September 17, 1837, folder 5, vol. 9, Joel Roberts Poinsett Papers (Collection 0512), Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
101. J. Paulding to Joel Roberts Poinsett, June 8, 1838, folder 12, vol. 10, Joel Roberts Poinsett Papers (Collection 0512), Historical Society of Pennsylvania.