MEMOIR OF BANIEL TREAD WELL. 453 



to permit me to do it, and I had already led others to spend more, from their confidence in my 

 representations, than I chose to do again. No other conrsc seemed open to mc hut to secure the 

 invention by patent, publish an account of it with an exposition of its princii)les, ask the govern- 

 ment to adopt it, and wait the event. Early in the year 1855 I determined to adopt this course, 

 and in June of that year I completed my specification and drawings for a patent. In September 

 I commenced writing an account of its structure and a demonstration of its strength. This 

 account, although finished in November, was not, owing to several unforeseen hindrances, pub- 

 lished until the beginning of 1856. As soon as it was printed, I sent copies of it to all the 

 military and naval posts and stations, and especially to the ordnance officers at Washington. 

 I likewise wrote a letter to the chief of the Ordnance Bureau, calling his attention to it, stating, 

 amongst other things, that it must soon come up and be adopted in Europe, — that it must be 

 taken up here in the end ; — why not, then, commence now, and have the credit, if any credit 

 should come of it, of leading the way in it, rather than be driven by others to the use of it ? To 

 this letter no answer or acknowledgment was ever returned. 



"Again, two years after this, the rifled cannon made its appearance in England. To carry 

 this out, Armstrong, as I liave said before, constructed his gun after the method used by mc 

 eigliteen years before. It now seemed to me that it would give us a great superiority over all 

 the European forms of rifled cannon to apply the principle of the rifle-ball to cannon con- 

 structed after the method last proposed by me. So strongly was I impressed with this idea, 

 that in February, 1860, notwithstanding my age and feeble health, I made the journey to 

 Washington to urge it upon the authorities. I found them all as torpid as to any of the improve- 

 ments of Europe, in rifled cannon, as they were to improvements in naval matters in the Sandwich 

 Islands. 1 obtained, after a long and I'm-patient waiting, an interview with the Secretary of War, 

 Floyd. He treated me courteously, though I saw at once that he knew nothing, and cared noth- 

 ing, about rifled cannon. But as he requested me, on taking my leave, to put the substance 

 of the statement which I had made to him in writing, I did so on my return home, and for- 

 warded it to him. This completed my intercourse with him, though I afterwards printed my 

 letter, a copy of which is herewith enclosed. Here, the matter has rested, so far as applications 

 from me are concerned." 



The letter to the chief of the Ordnance Bureau above referred to was as 

 follows : — 



To Geneual Joseph G. Totten, Chief of the Bureau of Engineering. 



Cambridge, 1856. 



Dear Sir, — Something more than ten years ago I had the favor of an interview and conver- 

 sation with you under an introduction from Colonel Thayer upon the subject of cannon. 1 being 

 then engaged in making a small number of wrought-iron and steel for tlie government. You 

 were then extremely desirous of carrying the manufacture to cannon of very large size, instan- 

 cing the celebrated guns at the Dardanelles as worthy of imitation, and lamenting that our Ord- 

 nance Department would not attempt with all our arts to produce guns c(|ual to those of the 

 Turks. My project, owing to the opposition of the old commodores, was not encoin'aged, and I 

 was oliliged to leave it in abeyance, although the guns made by me possessed a strength never 

 before attained or approached. 



The great attention given by the engineers and cannon-makers of Europe for the last two or 

 three years to discover some way of making guns of great size, and the uniform failure of all 

 their attempts, is not unknown to you. These failures have led me to re-examine the subject, and 



