A Spencer repeating rifle found on Missionary Ridge returned to the scene of what could have been its last battle during rededication ceremonies Saturday at Chickamauga Park.
Dr. Paul Shaw presented the weapon for display to Park Superintendent Cathy Cook and attendees at ceremonies for the official reopening of Alexander's bridge.
Union mounted infantry troops with Wilder’s brigade held back Confederate forces trying to cross the bridge on Sept. 18, 1863. The Spencer gave them the edge in repelling Rebel forces during the skirmish.
Roughly one-thousand Union troops of Wilder’s brigade faced off with eight thousand Confederate troops, according to Lee White, park guide and re-enactor.
“Wilder told his men to wait until they could see the Rebel’s eyes,” Mr. White told the crowd. “Then they cut loose.”
Walthall’s brigade, from Mississippi and Alabama, suffered more than one hundred men dead or wounded, along with roughly the same losses to Wilder’s brigade.
Although Confederate troops eventually took the bridge, the skirmish was the “most important battle in the world at that moment,” said Mr. White.
The holding action held Confederate forces in check long enough for a retreat that very well may have saved the Union army. “It bought time,” Mr. White said.
According to Wikipedia, Christopher Spencer personally convinced then-president Abraham Lincoln to produce the new weapon, capable of firing a then-unheard of 20 rounds per minute.
The standard load-and-fire rate before the Spencer was two to three rounds per minute.
In a bitter note of irony, President Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was armed with a Spencer carbine when found and killed in a Virginia barn.
The Spencer carbine was escorted by Park Rangers upon its arrival to the park.
The owner of the gun, Dr. Shaw, is a retired family practice physician from LaFayette, Georgia. He served in the United States Army as a Major with the 377th Combat Hospital during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, as a combat physician in Iraq, Kuwait.
The lifelong Walker County resident now hopes to serve his fellow citizens as the last elected sole commissioner, following the July 31 republican primary.
For more information, contact Dr. Paul Shaw at 423 488-2544, or volunteer communications director Mike Chambers at 423 653-5948.