DR. GATLING’S WONDER WEAPON

The Gatling gun, precursor to the fearsome modern machine guns that have wrought gruesome havoc on global battlefields since World War I, was invented by Richard Gatling in 1861. The introduction of a rapid-firing marvel like the Gatling early in the war should have given Union officials plenty of time to acquire and deploy it in combat. But, despite the lethal potential of what Gatling called his “Revolving Battery-Gun,” it is possible only a handful were ever used during the conflict. To his credit, Gatling energetically promoted his revolutionary weapon, even appealing directly to President Abraham Lincoln, but he was largely ignored. Union armies would continue to fight without this groundbreaking device—what may well have become the Civil War’s deadliest weapon.

Richard Jordan Gatling was born September 12, 1818, in Hertford County in northeastern North Carolina, near the Virginia line. Although he received a medical degree in 1850, Gatling never practiced medicine. Instead, he worked at a variety of jobs, including schoolteacher, county clerk’s assistant, dry goods store merchant and self-employed businessman. Yet Gatling’s consuming, lifelong passion was inventing, and he proved to be prodigious. From his first known