DDMTHE MAGNIFICENT HENRY RIFLE BELOW, WITH its engraved gold-plated frame (detail above) and polished rosewood stock, was presented to President Lincoln in 1862 by armsmaker Oliver Winchester. An innovative repeating rifle, the Henry had a magazine holding fifteen rounds that could be fired in rapid succession with a flick of the lever, which ejected the spent case and cocked the weapon. Based on a design patented by Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson and obtained by Winchester when he bought them out in 1855, the rifle and its metallic cartridges were refined by Benjamin T. Henry for Winchester’s company. Despite efforts to promote the weapon by presenting engraved rifles to Lincoln and others in office, the Union purchased only 1,700 during the war. Yet Federals who obtained the weapons cherished them, and Confederates quipped that one could load the rifle “on Sunday and shoot all week.” Enhanced in 1866 with an improved loading system, the Winchester repeating rifle became legendary as the gun that won the West. DDM
PRESIDENTIAL MODEL This Henry rifle, serial number 6, was made for Abraham Lincoln by Oliver Winchester’s New Haven Firearms Company and engraved with the words “Lincoln / President / U.S.A.” His great-grandson, Robert Lincoln Beckwith, donated this treasure to the Smithsonian in 1963.