Everybody felt "mean"
and was eager for a change. Nobody wanted to listen to any new
schemes. The highest ambition seemed to be to get out of it to
somewhere with just as little delay and exertion as possible. It was
at this juncture that the plan of organizing a Gatling gun battery was
conceived, and the attempt to obtain authority began.
The Gatling gun is one of the two machine guns adopted in the land
service of the United States. Not to enter into a technical
description, but merely to convey a general idea of its working and
uses, it may be described as follows:
The gun is a cluster of rifle barrels, without stocks, arranged around
a rod, and parallel to it. Each barrel has its own lock or bolt, and
the whole cluster can be made to revolve by turning a crank. The bolts
are all covered in a brass case at the breech, and the machine is
loaded by means of a vertical groove in which cartridges are placed,
twenty at a time, and from which they fall into the receivers one at a
time. As the cluster of barrels revolves each one is fired at the
lowest point, and reloaded as it completes the revolution. The gun is
mounted on a wye-shaped trunnion; the lower end of the wye passes down
into a socket in the axle.
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