OPENING ROUND
The Spencer repeating rifle was the most sought-after firearm of the Civil War, and little wonder: It was deadly accurate out to about 300 yards, could unleash up to 20 shots a minute, and loaded seven metallic cartridges from a spring-action tubular magazine in the buttstock. Named for its inventor, Christopher Miner Spencer of Manchester, Connecticut, the lever-operated rifle would terrorize Confederate troops during the Civil War and give the Union army an important edge on battlefield after battlefield. (See “A New Kind of Firepower,” page 26.) President Abraham Lincoln, on test-firing the rifle with its inventor in 1863, immediately recommended it to the War Department. But the U.S. Army’s chief of ordnance, Brevet Brigadier General W. James Ripley, basically ignored his commander in chief, believing all breechloaders to be “newfangled…