Sharps rifle

History

Christian Sharps received his first rifle patent on September 12, 1848, and the initial batch was produced in 1850 by A. S. Nippes at Mill Creek in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The second version incorporated the Maynard tape primer, and existing specimens carry the marking "Edward Maynard - Patentee 1845." In 1851, this second model was taken to the Robbins & Lawrence Company in Windsor, Vermont, where the Model 1851 was designed for mass production. Rollin White, an employee at Robbins & Lawrence, created the knife-edge breech block and self-cocking mechanism for the box-lock Model 1851. This first contract called for 10,000 Model 1851 carbines, but only about 1,650 were actually built in Windsor. Later in 1851, a second contract for 15,000 rifles was signed, leading to the formation of the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company as a holding company with $1,000 in capital. John C. Palmer served as president, Christian Sharps as engineer, and Richard S. Lawrence as master armorer and superintendent of manufacturing. Sharps received a royalty of one dollar per firearm, and the factory was erected on Robbins & Lawrence property in Hartford, Connecticut. The Model 1851 was eventually succeeded by the Model 1853. Christian Sharps left the company in 1855 to establish his own firm, C. Sharps & Company, in Philadelphia. Lawrence remained as chief armorer until 1872, developing the various Sharps models and improvements that brought the rifle its fame. In 1874, the business was reorganized and renamed the Sharps Rifle Company, staying in Hartford until 1876, when it moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Sharps rifle saw significant use during the Bleeding Kansas conflict of the 1850s, especially among anti-slavery fighters. Rifles supplied to these factions became known as "Beecher's Bibles," after abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher. The Model 1874, which had been in production since 1871, proved especially popular and spawned several quick derivatives. It accommodated a wide range of .40 to .50 caliber cartridges with various loadings and barrel lengths. Hugo Borchardt designed the Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878, the final rifle produced by the Sharps Rifle Company before it closed in 1881.

Military use

The Sharps rifle, a falling-block firearm made by the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company, saw use during and after the American Civil War in several versions. In addition to accepting a standard percussion cap, it featured a unique pellet primer feed. This mechanism held a stack of pelleted primers and automatically flipped one onto the nipple each time the hammer fell and the trigger was pulled, making the rifle significantly easier to fire from horseback compared to weapons requiring individually loaded percussion caps. The saber bayonets mounted on the Sharps M-1859 were distinctive attachments.

During the Civil War, multiple Union units carried the Sharps, most famously the U.S. Army marksmen known as "Berdan's Sharpshooters," named after their leader Hiram Berdan. The rifle proved to be a superior sniper weapon, more accurate than the common muzzle-loading rifled muskets. This advantage came from its breech-loading mechanism, which allowed a higher rate of fire, its superior manufacturing quality, and the ease of reloading from a kneeling or prone position. However, many officers at the time distrusted breech-loading weapons, fearing they would encourage soldiers to waste ammunition. The Sharps was also expensive to produce, costing three times as much as a muzzle-loading Springfield rifle. Consequently, only 11,000 Model 1859s were manufactured. Most were either not issued or given to sharpshooters, though the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves, a unit still called a "rifle regiment," carried them until they were mustered out in 1864.

The carbine version of the Sharps was highly popular with cavalry on both sides of the conflict. It was issued in larger numbers than other Civil War carbines, leading production ahead of the Spencer or Burnside carbine. The falling-block action was easily adapted to the new metallic cartridges developed in the late 1860s. Many of these converted carbines, chambered in .50-70 Government, were later used during the Indian Wars in the decades after the Civil War.

Sporting rifles

From the late 1840s through the early 1880s, Sharps produced hunting models. Following the Civil War, surplus military rifles were converted into custom pieces, and the company itself issued the Models 1869 and 1874 in great quantities for frontier hunters and buffalo hunters. These big-bore firearms used some of the strongest black powder cartridges ever created. Sharps also made specialized long-range target rifles for the Creedmoor style of 1,000-yard shooting. Today, many black powder cartridge silhouette competitors use both original and replica Sharps rifles to hit metal animal targets out to 500 meters. Since 1983, Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing Company and C Sharps Arms, both of Big Timber, Montana, have produced Sharps reproductions.

In popular culture

The Sharps rifle gained renewed fame through its role in the 1990 film Quigley Down Under, where Tom Selleck’s character uses a .45-110 model, also called the 45-27/8" Sharps. Theater Crafts Industry noted that the rifle “practically co-stars” with Selleck, a sentiment echoed by gunwriters John Taffin in Guns and Lionel Atwill in Field & Stream, who compared the film’s impact on the Sharps to that of Dirty Harry on the Smith & Wesson Model 29 in .44 Remington Magnum. Earlier, in the 1971 western Valdez Is Coming, Burt Lancaster’s character Valdez uses a Sharps to deadly effect at nearly 1,000 yards. In Billy Two Hats (1974), David Huddleston’s character Copeland wounds Gregory Peck’s Archie Deans from a great distance. The 1986 film Young Guns features Kiefer Sutherland’s Doc Scurlock carrying a Sharps 1874 Cavalry Carbine as his main weapon. The character LaBoeuf uses a Sharps in film adaptations of Charles Portis’s 1968 novel True Grit. In the 2010 Coen brothers version, Matt Damon’s LaBoeuf carries a Pedersoli-made 1874 Sharps Cavalry Carbine in .45-70 Government, praising it as “an instrument of uncanny balance and precision.” The 1969 film True Grit also includes a Sharps buffalo rifle, used by Glen Campbell’s character.

Firearm makers Davide Pedersoli and Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing Company have credited these movies with boosting demand for their rifles. The popularity of Quigley Down Under led to an annual Sharps match in Forsyth, Montana, called the “Matthew Quigley Buffalo Rifle Match.” It originally featured a 44-inch target at 1,000 yards for each shooter, echoing a scene from the film. The match is promoted as the “biggest rifle event shooting in Eastern Montana since the Custer Massacre” and has grown into a two-day competition where shooters fire eight shots for score at six steel silhouette targets ranging from 350 to 805 yards.

In the 2019 semi-biographical novel Miss Chisum by Russ Brown, the Sharps M1851 Boxlock appears as the prize in a shooting contest in Paris, Texas. It is won by the notorious Texas Ranger William “Bigfoot” Wallace, who later becomes a mentor to young cattle baron John Chisum. Wallace later uses the Sharps to rescue Chisum in a San Antonio gunfight, settling the matter.