Agent of the Cotton War

By Ron Maness, with images and artifacts from the author’s collection 

The root causes of the Civil War have been a topic of debate since the conflict unfolded. Editorials, scholarly articles, books and other media have scrutinized social, political, economic and military factors that culminated in America’s bloodiest chapter. These narratives range from plausible explanations to conspiracy theories.

The focus of this story is military and economic. It revolves around a man unknown to the general public though familiar to collectors of Civil War weapons. He is James Tyler Ames, who headed the Ames Manufacturing Company, a global weapons firm. His factory produced an enormous volume and variety of swords, guns and other military items from 1832 through 1865.

Ames’ involvement in events before and during the war has been largely overlooked. This investigation connects his company to abolitionist John Brown, and the governments and military branches of the United States, Confederate States and Great Britain. His connection to the Confederacy is especially notable. Evidence suggests that Ames’s company may have been implicated in efforts that antagonized the seceding states to the point of war, to arm these states as they prepared for war, and to continue to arm them for much of the ensuing conflict. 

Origins of the Ames Company

A chance encounter during an 1829 stagecoach ride in Massachusetts set the business in motion. Two men inside the vehicle—Nathan Peabody Ames, and Edmund Dwight—discussed a business venture. Together, they made a dream team.

Nathan was the talent. About 26 years old, he grew up with a basic education in Chelmsford, Mass. His father, a mechanic and blacksmith, taught him everything he knew about these trades. And he had a brother, James, the main subject of this investigation. Then about 19, he enjoyed the same advantages as his older brother.

Edmund Dwight, about 49, was the money. Educated at Yale, he had read law for Fisher Ames, a distant relative of the Ames brothers. The boys likely needed no introduction to Dwight, a wealthy local entrepreneur with several business interests along the Chicopee River.

Dwight came away from the stagecoach trip impressed with the young man. He offered Nathan a rent-free opportunity to launch a commercial enterprise at his factory complex in Chicopee Falls. And so the foundation of the Ames Manufacturing Company was established. James became an agent. Dwight appointed himself President and his business associate, James K. Mills, took on the job of Treasurer.

Some 15 years later, in 1845, Dwight and Mills expanded the Ames business. They invested more capital and increased the number of stockholders to include an elite group of eastern Massachusetts entrepreneurs who owned significant percentages of the state’s cotton, railroad, banking and insurance industries. These empire builders came to be known in the 20th century by the moniker “The Boston Associates.” These associates included Ignatius Sargent, Thomas H. Perkins, Samuel and Henry Cabot, Theodore and George W. Lyman, and William Appleton. A total of 23 men ultimately became members.

The roots of their power spread throughout New England and in Washington, D.C. They defined themselves as Puritans and followed the business philosophy of Fisher Ames, who taught law to Edmund Dwight. An influential member of the Federalist Party, Fisher Ames served his state as a member of Congress during the early days of the republic. He died in 1808. His papers include a passage that remains a foundational pillar of America. It also served as something of a credo to The Boston Associates: “The essence, and almost quintessence, of a good government is, to protect property and its rights. When these are protected, there is scarcely any booty left for oppression to seize; the objects and the motives to usurpation and tyranny are removed. By securing property, life and liberty can scarcely fail of being secured; where property is safe by rules and principles, there is liberty.”

The Ames Company played a part in securing liberty, despite two consequential deaths that impacted the business in the late 1840s. In 1847, Nathan unexpectedly died, leaving James the sole Ames member of the company. Two years later, Dwight passed away, leaving his only son, Edmund, to oversee commercial concerns. Timothy W. Carter, one of Dwight’s trusted employees and neighbor in Chicopee Falls, also became associated with the Ames business as a minor stockholder in 1845. Four years later, he became the agent of the Massachusetts Arms Company. This firm is often viewed as distinct from the Ames Company. But James T. Ames served as its primary director. In essence, the Massachusetts Arms Company was an adjunct operation to the Ames factory.

From 1845 through 1860, the association of Ames, Carter, Dwight, and Mills, and their stockholder ownership, had far-reaching effects on the Ames operations.

John Brown’s pikes, 1859

John Brown moved to Springfield, Mass., in 1846 to raise sheep and start a business to produce better-quality wool. He brought abolitionist fervor and a militant attitude toward slave owners. At some point, he connected with the Ames Company. Though the exact circumstances are unknown, surviving letters contain noteworthy evidence.

One letter was written by Brown to Carter in February 1856 from Osawatomie, Kan. It confirms that Brown received arms from Carter. The weapons were produced by the Massachusetts Arms Company and other sources in the Bay State.

Three months after writing the letter, Brown led a party of men, including four of his sons, on a raid against pro-slavery settlers, which became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. Brown’s raiders hacked five men to death with broad swords—Model 1832 artillery swords produced by Ames.

A cache of letters from Carter to Brown, part of the Kansas University collections, confirm that the Massachusetts Arms Company furnished weapons to Brown as late as May 1857. One of Carter’s letters, dated 1857 references company director Edmund Dwight. Some historians have labeled Carter an abolitionist based on these letters.

Another letter, written six weeks after Brown led armed abolitionists on a failed raid at Harpers Ferry, Va., references the maker of the pikes used in the attack. On Nov. 30, 1859, an official at the Gosport Navy Yard in Virginia wrote to Ames. In it, he described the reaction of Virginians to the raid. “It was understood that the Chicopee Arms Co. had furnished John Brown with them pikes.”

Chicopee Arms Company was a pseudonym for Ames’ manufactory.

The suggestion that the Ames Company made pikes for Brown runs counter to the well-documented and established fact that Charles Blair, an employee of the Collins Company in Hartford, Conn., produced them. Any relationship between Blair and Ames, at this time, is unknown. One connection they shared was a business associate of Ames, Emerson Gaylord, who worked with the Collins Company during the war.

Upon receiving the letter from the Gosport official, Ames addressed the origin of the pikes in a letter to William Maynadier, a captain in the U.S. Ordnance department with Southern sympathies. Ames’ letter is lost, but Maynadier’s Dec. 16, 1859, reply survives. His response indicates Ames shared portions of the Gosport letter. Maynadier commented “…that he, at least, as well as responsible officials of the State of Virginia, was not overly concerned about the origin of them pikes.”

Maynadier’s use of “them pikes” may suggest that Ames was concerned about being somehow associated with Brown. Moreover, that he feared the suggestion that Virginia officials might be connecting the Ames business to the origin of the pikes. This correspondence about the John Brown pikes might otherwise be casually dismissed as an unexplained curiosity. No record or surviving example of an Ames-made pike was known to exist—until now. The pike pictured here, stamped “N.P. Ames / Cabotville” dates its manufacture between 1846 and 1849, the same period Brown resided in Springfield.

Maynadier’s comments and the surviving pike suggest a business relationship existed between Ames and Brown. Whether this relationship involved them directly or only through a third party, such as Carter, is not currently known. Also unknown is whether or not Ames and Brown were acquaintances. If this pike and others were involved in the Harpers Ferry Raid, the Ames Company—and by association Ames himself—participated in an event widely regarded as a tipping point in the decades-long fracturing of the United States that erupted in civil war.

Supplying secessionists, 1860-1861

In the wake of John Brown’s Raid, and following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860, Southern states seceded from the Union and prepared for war.

Nearly every state that left the Union began to expand its militias and acquire weapons prior to issuing ordinances of secession.

One of the earliest Southern military units, the Alabama Volunteer Corps, formed in February 1860. In a legislative session that followed, Gov. Andrew B. Moore reported on the many weapons purchased to arm the Corps and noted all were furnished by Ames.

Meanwhile, Carter’s Massachusetts Arms Company, with whom Ames was affiliated, sold thousands of its first model Maynard carbines to the states of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and perhaps others. When the Confederacy formed in early 1861, the Maynard carbine was designated a primary weapon.

The Ames Company also furnished swords, revolvers (made by the Massachusetts Arms Company), accouterments, and even cannon, to the Southern states prior to and after secession. Southern purchasing agents negotiating for the purchase of Ames products encountered new competition in early 1861 when officials of the fledgling Confederacy entered the arms race. One of the first deals by the Confederates resulted in Ames shipping a percussion cap production machine to Harpers Ferry just prior to the destruction of its arsenal on April 18, 1861. The machine survived and became integral to the Confederate war effort.

Leather products connected to Ames were also bought and sold. Emerson Gaylord, who had taken over the Ames leather works in 1856 and maintained its operation within the Ames factory complex, supplied military leather goods in untold numbers to nearly all the Southern states. Gaylord belts and cartridge boxes were adorned with brass plates and buckles featuring state emblems or organizational letters, including AVC for the Alabama Volunteer Corps. The buckles and plates were produced in the Ames factory.

In Virginia, officials launched an effort to manufacture rifled muskets at its former armory in Richmond and sought necessary machinery. William Maynadier, the ordnance officer sympathetic to the Southern cause, recommended Ames “as the man from whom the material could be obtained, and as being thoroughly reliable.” In early 1860, the officials formed a Board of Commissioners to investigate the acquisition of arms and the means by which to manufacture them. They kept a meticulous record of their activity, which occurred primarily between February and August.

An examination of state records reveals numerous mentions of Ames, documenting sword purchases from the Ames Company and a contract to modify existing sabers in its arsenal made by the Virginia Manufactory. Also noted is Ames’ facilitation of the purchase of Adams patent revolvers manufactured by the Massachusetts Arms Company.

The Commissioners traveled from Virginia to Chicopee to meet Ames during the summer of 1860. The visit is documented in an upbeat report dated August 15. The men learned firsthand about Ames’ international connections, including Ames gun machinery purchased by the British government-operated Royal Small Arms Factory and machinery furnished to the privately-owned London Armoury Company. They also learned that the governments of Russia and Spain had also placed orders for gun-making machines produced by Ames.

The Commissioners also visited Harpers Ferry, where they inspected Ames-made machines and learned that the armory Superintendent “entertained the most exalted opinion of Mr. Ames.”

The Commissioners left Chicopee with a positive impression of Ames. They seriously considered Ames’ proposal to furnish Virginia with rifle musket manufacturing equipment. The contract, however, went to Virginian Joseph Anderson—at an $80,000 premium. ($2.5 million in today’s dollars). The Commissioners conceded to a “Buy Virginian” concept, but yet hoped that Ames could somehow still be involved in the direction and execution of the contract.

A British connection

The report by the Virginia Commissioners presents Ames as a global leader in weapons manufacture, a fact rarely noted and little emphasized in history books. The British portion being the largest part of Ames’ international business. An examination of documents reveals a complex and tightly-knit connection between Ames’ Company, the Royal Small Arms Factory and the London Armoury Company. These business relationships fueled the production of a huge number of weapons. England may have sourced approximately 500,000 Enfield weapons, all made with Ames machinery, between August 1858 and the start of the Civil War.

The buildup of weapon production during this period is notable. In 1860, the British Army comprised 103 infantry regiments, or 120,000 soldiers. Additionally, the British East India Company maintained, as reported in 1857, a private army of 357,000 men. A significant number of these combined forces would have been armed with weapons produced earlier in the decade as a result of the 1853-1856 Crimean War. Therefore, the domestic necessity for two British-based weapons manufacturers is debatable.

One possible explanation for the rapid and voluminous arms production by the two factory complexes is that Britain anticipated sales beyond the needs of its military. Its position as a colonial power transitioning from restrictive to free trade opened new markets across the globe.

An important marketplace ripe for sales included the rapidly expanding former colonies on the other side of the Atlantic. Producing a stockpile of arms to sell to Americans who drifted closer and closer to civil war supported British business interests. It may be inferred that the establishment of the London Armoury was strategically targeted at fueling the arms race in the States, as evidenced by the closure of the company after the Civil War ended.

A convenient family defection

Caleb Huse of Newburyport, Mass., graduated from West Point in 1851. Attached to the artillery, he lobbied in 1853 for a transfer to the Ordnance branch, noting such a move would be “more congenial to my taste.” Though his exact motivation is unclear, it is easy to imagine his Uncle James T. Ames played a role. The West Pointer was his nephew by Ames’ marriage to Eleanor “Ellen” Huse.