Posted April 6, 2017 10:00 am by Comments

By Jon Frazier

A replica 1847 Walker by Uberti, Italy. (Photo: Jon Frazier)
By the New Year of 1847, the United States and Mexico had been entangled in a war for nine months. Visions of Manifest Destiny were pushing the American Empire closer and closer to the Pacific Ocean, and the new conflict had provided the opportunity for the final push.  It also opened the door of opportunity for a young and charismatic inventor, Samuel Colt.
Background
At the time of the Mexican-American War, Samuel Colt had been out of the firearms business for several years.  His innovative design of a repeating firearm, called the Paterson, was capable of delivering multiple shots without reloading in both long arms and belt-sized pistols.  This design was brilliant.
However the Paterson’s complexity due to the number of parts along with some of these parts being small made the firearm fragile.  Early versions of the pistol required the gun to be field stripped in order to load — a time consuming process.  It’s small caliber and relatively small size also made the gun rather anemic compared to larger, single shot pistols of the era.  These things taken into consideration, the gun was unpopular.  Despite its general unpopularity, there was one group

Source: Guns.com

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