Some friends of ours have one of these black powder beasts (a modern replica), and although I haven’t fired it, I have eyed it and handled it with one overbearing question:
Why would anyone, ever, think this is a good damn idea?
Seriously, a 5″ barrel in 16 ga isn’t going to get great velocity. Sure, with grapeshot, you could fuck someone’s day up at close range, but the 9 rounds of .42 Ball probably did a hell of a better job than that one shotgun load. History apparently validates my suspicions – The Confederates tried to use this ugly brute of a gun, and hated it.
If anyone thinks I’m being gung-ho for either side of the war, lemme tell ya a little bit of info I’m gathered that makes many people hate me (because I figured you need more reasons):
Growing up in Cali for the first 19 years of my life, all I learned of the Civil War was that the North hated slavery, and the South loved it. So they went to war, and the good guys won. Yay, no more slavery! Wheeeee!
…and then I moved to the South and got their side of the story.
And then I started reading up on it.
In reality, the Civil War wasn’t based solely on slavery. It was a linchpin issue, yes, and no, I am not for slavery (some people have accused me of this – good lord, nothing could be farther from the truth).
But for the majority of the southern rebs, it wasn’t about slavery at all. It was about the fact that the Union Army was coming through and blasting the shit out of their property. Jack Smith of Georgia, with a small farm and no slaves, didn’t have any stake in the slavery issue. What he did have a problem with was the Union Army stomping in, a bunch of Northern strangers, burning his crops down, eating his food, and pillaging what little he had. That’s it. That’s the entirety of the issue, for poor Jack Smith and his family, and when the Confederacy told him he needed to defend his lands, he didn’t pick up a rifle because he wanted to rape and enslave black people. He did it because he didn’t want to lose his damn farm.
This doesn’t absolve the major movers and shakers of the Confederacy of using the populace to better their personal gains. (Fuck Jefferson Davis, seriously. Dying in bed of an illness was too good for the fucker.) The Civil war was ugly on both sides, and although much of the nation doesn’t feel it anymore, Southern states still feel the scars of the war from time to time. Mostly faded, but the scars are there. The lesson learned: don’t try to fucking secede. Go against the Federal Govt, and you will get your ass beat. Kids in Southern states learn this all the time when they research their family history. Many of them still wear the Confederate Flag as an ornament, not as a show of racism, but in honor of their dead kin from that war. Not because they wanted to have the right to buy slaves – but because that war was a lesson in the lack of State’s Rights. They lost family in that war. Family who only wanted to keep their little farms and had no head for politics.
I’m not espousing any bullshit about how The South Will Rise Again. I’m not saying that some people who wear the the confederate flag aren’t doing it because they ARE racists. Racism is still alive and well, down here in the south, and some of the fading scars of that war are the scars felt by the black community – many of them are still pissed about it, and I can’t blame them one iota. But I am saying that until you get both sides of the story, you don’t understand what that war was about. The main thing I picked up, in my reading is: human beings do awful shit to each other. Politicians drive the lower classes to kill each other. Upper classes make money off their blood. I’m glad that my family had no part in that war (to my knowledge), because that makes it easy for me to claim innocence. (Although my lineage makes Pearl Harbor a bit less of an easy topic.)
*WHEW* That got preachy and longer than I expected. HEY! LET’S LAUGH ABOUT GUN JOKES!
American Civil War was a rich man’s war and poor man’s fight, just like pretty much every war before.
I beg to differ on that.
It was habitual for a Rich man in the North to buy out of their Enlistment…around 300.00$ in 1860 (about 109k USD of 2012 dollars).
It also occurred in the South, but it was not as common as in the North as most of the “Rich Southern Gentry” were plantation owners and their wealth was measured in Slaves and Acreage and Crop output. But as an example, at the Height of the Cotton and Tobacco Harvest of 1860 in Texas and North Carolina, a “quality” slave could sell upwards of 2500 in cash (8.3 times more than buying out your enlistment.)
To help put it in perspective, 1 months rent for a single Man was around 2.79 USD. And 1.79 USD for a single Woman. With the average DAILY wage at 90 cents for a free white man.
When you succeed from the Union, don’t be outraged when “Union” troops come onto your land to take your land by force.
Except the poor men didn’t do that. There was no vote on the move, it was a decision by men who had rigged the political system to ensure that the candidate pool for every government position was small and from the upper ((mostly slaveholding)) class. Essentially, those leaders traded the safety and peace of their own states for an attempt to keep their system going when the federal government started to be hostile to it.
blame the slaveholders who decided to secede then.
Secede.
Sorry. Do a lot of proofreading. 🙂
Native NYer who portrays a southern soldier in Civil War living history… and an actual vet… politicians are dickbites. End of line.
The Lemat was designed with a similar idea to the modern 203 it seems. A little extra firepower added to the package. Add to the thought that the thing was designed as a cavalry sidearm in a time when people were still charging with the sabre, and the buckshot makes a bit more sense. Roll on up, spend your nine rounds, let loose with the buck and ball, draw the frog-sticker and go. Considering that the war saw mostly six-shot revolvers in the Federal side, and a GREAT many single shot (and even flintlock) pistols in the south, the Lemat would have been a force to be reckoned with.
That and they’re fucking SEXY. I mean, slap my ass and call me Sally, if they didn’t cost more than my first car I’d buy one and modernize it.
Isn’t there at least one company currently making Lemat replicas?
I have one of the Colt Walker replicas, from a little earlier in history than the Lemat. Biggest handgun Colt has ever made, and the most powerful repeating factory revolver until 1935, when the .357 Magnum came out.
There are several, but you’re still looking at 750 for a used black powder revolver. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a LOT of iron, but still. While I do own rifles which cost more than my first car (I love you, Springfield M1A, even if you DID eat my entire tax refund), but those are for reaching out and TOUCHING things, not for tinkering with.
“Why would anyone, ever, think this is a good damn idea?”
Perhaps it was a bunch of drunk gunsmiths saying “Hey! Wouldn’t it be cool if-“?
On a similar tangent, drunk gunsmiths had to be the cause of the Nock volley gun. Seven pistol cartridges that fire at once (flintlock, designed primarily for navy use – too much recoil was knocking the users out of the shrouds…) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nock_gun
Nate?
Mrrrreg…
Did you make this last night?
Mmmmmryeah
The night after your son’s OPEN BAR wedding?
Oh God… the sun…
Nate, WHY does this thing have seven barrels?
Because FUCK YOU, THAT’S why!
Don’t forget, a lot of us up north lost family in the war too. And for the branch of mine that was wiped out (all three sons of my great-great-grandfather’s brother), who were read out of their Meeting for joining, it WAS about slavery.
And while I sympathize with the idea that for many of the soldiers it wasn’t about slavery but being invaded, just remember that for much of Saddam’s army and the later insurgency, it wasn’t that they hated America or loved Saddam, but that we were invading them and breaking their stuff.
Both good points, and well made.
The problem is that “what a war is about” and “why people are fighting in that war” can be two very, very different things. They aren’t always; Owen’s example of family who joined up to fight slavery is a good one. I’d venture to guess, however, that the majority of combatants on both sides of every war fought for much more personal reasons than their leaders started the war for. As jlgrant suggested, “there are people coming towards me carrying guns and burning things” is generally good motivation to pick up a gun and join a military unit to fight them, no matter why THEY are there. Patriotism is another common one; plenty of people have gone to war solely because their country’s government said it was necessary and they wanted to support their country.
Of course, one of the things political leaders have long been skilled at is “spinning” a war to motivate their people to support it. There have been plenty of examples of “you need to protect your family and your way of life, therefore you need to invade this country far away that most of your family couldn’t even find on a map”.
LeMat is one of my dream guns to own. Always liked the intrinsically different. If only my county didn’t make it inherently difficult to obtain a pistol permit.
But to be honest, I can go to Cabela’s or gander mountain today. Buy a replica, go home with it, and end of story. I have to go through all the hoops and at least a 6 month process for a Kimber, but a LeMat I don’t have to even think about unless I have two of the three components to make it fire lol.
Welcome to the world of grownups, James.
Seriously, no insult intended.
Except that I’d trade any three of my collection –barring the Superposed– for an original LeMat.
I think that learning the Civil War wasn’t just about slavery was one of my first moments of “hey, history isn’t as simple as they made it sound when you were eight”. Though I do find it amusing just how bitterly some southerners can still gripe about it. Especially given that had the south successfully separated from the North and economic growth continued in the manner it has today, there’d be a lot more starvation and poverty in the south than there already is. Imagine what the welfare system in a predominantly conservative/republican nation would be like.
No offense, but the economic portion of your argument is as bad as the whole “North good, South bad” Civil War nonsense. The reason the “red” states appear to take more is that the financial trading occurs in the “blue” states. Oh, and Texas happens to be doing pretty well.
TO be honest the economy was one of the things that they were fighting about! The north wanted to transition the national economy into an industrial one, where the people who made the most money were the factory owners. They were changing laws that made it unprofitable to grow cotton, and the southern gentry had an obvious problem with that. Eliminating slavery was certainly a large part of that (and i find it despicable) but there were tariffs, taxes and trade agreements that were changed too.
Who knows… The south may have ended up richer than the north had the separation worked. They certainly had (and have) a lot of the raw materials that the north still depends on.
May I suggest you look into C/W music for the answer? I suggest “Accidental Racist”. It’s a song written after a white boy got caught by a black. Seems the white boy only wanted to emulate his favorite rock group. Good song, too.
As a native American…all of you can go back on the boat and go back to England…especially the deluded Democrats who want “free*” healthcare and the people that voted for good ol Barry Soetoro.
I lol at this as a Native Cherokee.
And, speaking as another “Native American,” you’re welcome to queue up in AK and wait for the land bridge to open up so you can get your own miserable tush home.
Well put.
I find myself tickled and sickened by the irony of the resource driving the current military exploits in which the average Joe (and Jane) who have few options for a gainful trade and turn to military service are exploited by the ruling corporate class. The logo AND name of one of the major corporations involved in the procurement and sale of said resource is EXACTLY the same as the insignia worn by all of the boots on the ground in the various exploits, the Chevron. You just can’t make this Shit up.
I’ve fired a replica LeMat, and I own a prop version (dressed up just like Boo, Jayne’s gun from Firefly 😀 )… and my opinion is that it’s a piece of crap. While I love me some 1860 Army and I want to get a pair of Colt Dragoons (ie., I’m fine with big, heavy coal burners); the LeMat blows.
IMHO. heh….
In other news, does anyone know why I can no longer leave comments through my default browser, FIrefox? I have to use IE in order to do so… if I try with Firefox, I get an error screen that says “Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /wp-comments-post.php on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.”
Note that I used to be able to do so without issue…
Just tested both logged in and logged out with Firefox 21.0 – what version are you using? Are you logged in when this happens?
Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s the reason the people who aren’t going to die send people to war (just about always money) and the reasons the people who do the actual dying go (things like freedom, protecting their land, making the world safe). I suspect those noble reasons are most often the result of the people with money telling the people without money why they should go kill and die for the people with money.
I’ve used Lamats reenacting mounted cavalry, both originals and good grade repops. They suck out loud. Too heavy, the mainsprings are too light and cause as many misfires as good shots, it’s near impossible to switch from revolver to shotgun mode while on top of a moving meat sack, and they’re nowhere NEAR ergonomic. I’d rather lug around a third model Dragoon any day, and those things are horrible pigs in their own right. Give me a Colt 1860 Army any day (Remington fanboys can go suck it).
I’ve lusted after a LeMat for years, but when I got the opportunity to buy one in ’88, got a Rogers & Spencer instead. At the time, LeMats weren’t competition-legal in the North-South Skirmish Association, so I got one I could shoot in matches.
I find it interesting that for as obscure as the LeMat is it seems to pop up all the time in movies and tv shows. I half jumped out of my chair when I saw Bruce Willis carrying one in 12 monkeys.
If Robert E Lee was a pronghorn antelope, why is he depicted here as a muley stag?
*sigh* And thus, another historical inaccuracy is perpetuated.
Two sides to the story, yeah, I’m a Californian originally and now in Northern Alabama.
BUT.
Ever seen a copy of a really old “slaves for sale” poster? Esp. one from late in the slave period…say, 1850s or so?
Slaves were graded in price by skin tone, which was dependent on what percentage white they were. Specific names now (thankfully) lost to history like “mulatto” or the like defined the exact percentages. Whiter were more expensive – seen as “genetically better” and “better suited for indoor work like butlers and maids”.
To get these high-value slaves, slave owners raped their female slaves so they could sell their own children.
Sorry but…NO. Hell Fucking No it was worth 500,000 dead to put a stop to that sick – fucking – shit. “Nasty” doesn’t even begin. There’s a limit and that is so far past it as to necessitate mass-deadly measures to stop it.
What if I told you that, back then, white people really didn’t give THAT MUCH of a fuck about slavery? We do today – but they were against slavery the same way we, today, are against McDonalds and Walmart. They thought it was a moral evil, but it wasn’t the MAIN reason the Civil War was fought.
Don’t believe me? Read up on it.
Why didn’t they just go for broke and sell white people then? Since the paler the skin tone, the better the price..
Abolitionists were seen as Greenpeace is seen today – they were not a mainstream movement, but their ideas were bleeding into mainstream politics. Lincoln was willing to give slaveholdig states full legal protection of slavery in order to prevent the secession. He didn’t care about the slaves, he cared about preserving the Union. The cause of abolition was lionized in the years after the war to give the terrible carnage the air of righteous crusade.
After all, was the slavery in Union states abolished during the war?
Wait… if the LeMat was a confederate arm, that can’t be the reason it was invented. ,:/
History is written by the winner.
The closest I have to any Western replica guns is an old JP Sauer & Son/Hawes Firearms SAA clone in 357, blue finish, but lo have I these many years lusted after a working replica of something like a Schofield, old time Remington, and such, Even one of these beastly Lemats
(quote)
It was habitual for a Rich man in the North to buy out of their Enlistment…around 300.00$ in 1860 (about 109k USD of 2012 dollars).
It also occurred in the South, but it was not as common as in the North as most of the “Rich Southern Gentry” were plantation owners and their wealth was measured in Slaves and Acreage and Crop output. But as an example, at the Height of the Cotton and Tobacco Harvest of 1860 in Texas and North Carolina, a “quality” slave could sell upwards of 2500 in cash (8.3 times more than buying out your enlistment.)
(end quote)
Ownershipof 20 slaves exempted 1 white male per plantation from the draft.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Negro_Law