Arms Production Quotes
The Factory had been established by the State of Virginia in 1775 to make guns. America filled with armed Americans in the Colonial era was a myth. Early America was not a gun culture. Guns were expensive, needed maintenance, took too long to reload, and were not as effective for most purposes as other weapons like hatchets and knives. American Colonial war was mostly hand to hand combat with relatively little shooting. Less than one fourth of the men joining Washington’s army owned guns. Gun factories could not survive for want of customers and gunsmiths went into other occupations. See {613052}. With the rebellion, it was critical to manufacture guns to arm the soldiers who had not their own. But the efforts like this were relatively feeble. The factory director who made not a single gun in over a year was then promoted to Commissary General of Munitions in the Continental Army. He was married to George Washington’s sister. He did however finance much of the munitions he procured with his own personal funds so made up in wealth and patriotism what he lacked in manufacturing skill.
Planting tobacco was a much more lucrative endeavour, so many of the few gunsmiths abandned that trade for tobacco farming.
