Artifact of the Quarter | September 2017

Contributed by Shelby R. Shrader

Invented by Christopher M. Spencer, the Spencer rifle was unlike any other firearm—save the Henry—used during the Civil War. With a magazine located in the rifle’s butt-stock, the Spencer held seven metallic rim-fire cartridges. The federal government purchased more than 95,000 Spencers during the conflict.  

The rifle, so famously tested by President Abraham Lincoln, played critical roles on many battlefields of the Civil War, including Cool Spring on the night of July 18, 1864, and into the following morning.

When Captain Elisha Hunt Rhodes received orders to picket the eastern bank of the Shenandoah River on the night of July 18 with a contingent of forty men, he borrowed Spencer rifles from soldiers in the 37th Massachusetts. Rhodes reflected in his diary: “I have forty of my men armed with Spencer Repeating rifles that will hold seven cartridges at one loading. I borrowed these guns from the 37th Massachusetts, who are armed with them and have used them for some time.” Rhodes hoped that the Spencer’s firepower would deter Confederates on the opposite shore from shooting at wounded Union soldiers trying to escape to the river’s eastern side—property currently owned by Shenandoah University. “At daylight this morning [July 19, 1864] four wounded soldiers who had remained on the Rebel side of the river all night attempted to cross to our lines,” Rhodes confided to his journal. He continued: “A Rebel officer ordered his men to fire upon them, which they did, but the men reached us in safety. I had forbidden my men to fire when on picket as it is murderous business, but when I heard this officer order his men to shoot wounded men I ordered my line to open fire which they did with much spirit.”  

Today, visitors to Shenandoah University’s Shenandoah River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield can view artifacts—cartridge cases and bullets—that stand as testament to the Spencer’s use at Cool Spring. These artifacts, housed in a special exhibition in “The Lodge” at Cool Spring, provide a tangible connection to the efforts of Rhodes’ forty men, who, with their Spencer rifles, did the work, as Rhodes estimated, of “perhaps five times as many” soldiers.