Tom,

You may wish to look at the archives of the "Civil War Arms and Equipment Message Board" in this series regarding the trouble some of the Union cavalry (specifically the 2nd Colorado Cavalry) in Missouri had with Starr carbines. This detailed discussion you should find between 4 and 7 July 2008 in that message board.

I see that this includes in part Ellen Williams' 1888 history of the 2nd Colorado Cavalry on pages 45-6 that Starr carbines had to be properly adjusted in order to avoid misfires; an article in the National Archives and Records Administration periodical "Prologue" in the article "War in an Age of Wonders" Part 2 "Civil War Arms and Equipment" by Michael P. Musick, volume 27, issue #4 (winter 1995) citing a number of officers of that Colorado regiment specifically regarding the locks breaking off of Starr carbines, and other faults of the Starr carbines.

Also mentioned in that discussion was the tendency of the Union Quartermaster Corps to send along to the western departments cavalry firearms that other departments in higher priority rejected for their troopers as too complicated or otherwise unsuited to combat conditions. The departments "out west" tended to accept these "tinkerers' delights" of firearms because of their great need and the fact that their end of the supply pipeline in some instances had to take what they could get. Firearms development during the "Great Industrial Revolution" advanced so quickly wherein the single-shot, muzzle-loading rifle-muskets of 1861 were outdated by 1864 and 1865 with the new technology involving mass production of metallic cartridges, breechloaders, and magazine repeaters. Such engineering advances led the government to be practically give away those weapons of 1861 a few years later, suitable only for hunting. I know of an ancestor of General John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee who brought back his rifle-musket, but family oral history says the veteran only used his trusty wartime rifle-musket for hunting squirrels since more modern firearms took over the role of defense of family and farm (except, of course, against squirrels).

Bruce Nichols