Apr 25, 2004
More Evidence Against Bellesiles
Clayton Cramer offers more evidence against Michael Bellesiles's threadbare claim (still widely cited in some circles) that guns were in short supply during the eighteenth century.
Cramer quotes the records of the meeting of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety on May 18, 1776 which resolved that"Mr. Robert Towers make up as soon as possible five hundred thousand Musket-Cartridges and three hundred rounds for each heavy Cannon now in use; that he fill up three hundred thousand of the former and one hundred of each of the latter." American Archives, 4th series, 6:659.
Cramer comments:"Guns are in short supply, so they decide to actually load 300,000 musket cartridges--for guns that could, at best, fire three rounds a minute. How did any historian familiar with the Revolutionary War get taken in by Bellesiles's claims about severe shortages of guns?"