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He said that he had enough of the Dahlgreens, Columbiads, and Raphael repeaters and that this was an American institution, which, "I guess, I understand better than all other weapons!" In 1833, when Abraham was just over twenty, he fell in love with Anne, or Annie Rutledge, at New Salem. Her father kept the tavern where Lincoln boarded.
Showers of balls from ten-inch columbiads and forty-two-pounders, and shells from thirteen-inch mortars poured into the fort in one incessant stream, causing great flakes of masonry to fall in all directions.
We were absolutely in doubt whether a seemingly inoffensive knot of rustics, on a mound without the inclosure, might not, at tap of drum, unmask a battery of giant columbiads, and belch blazes at us, raking our line. Nothing so entertaining happened. It was a parade, not a battle. At sunset our band played strains sweet enough to pacify all Secession, if Secession had music in its soul.
The land in the rear of Vicksburg is about two hundred feet high, on which are placed some eight and ten inch columbiads, which are perfectly secure from our fire.... I determined to get the heavy ships up there if possible, which I did a day or two after.
Although the fire of our columbiads, under ordinary circumstances, could not quite reach the city, we had arranged one of them to point upward at the maximum angle. As the carriage would not admit of this, the gun was taken off, and made to rest on a bed of masonry.
To the contrary of all this, the Poughkeepsie had but one armed deck, and on that only twenty guns. These pieces, however, were of unusually heavy calibre, throwing thirty-two pound shot, with the exception of the Paixhans, or Columbiads, which throw shot of even twice that weight.
According to a French historian, under Louis XI. a mortar hurled a bomb of 500 lbs. only; but that bomb, fired at the Bastille, a place where mad men imprisoned wise ones, fell at Charenton, where wise men imprison mad ones." "Very well," said J.T. Maston. "Since, what have we seen, after all? The Armstrong cannons hurl projectiles of 500 lbs., and the Rodman Columbiads projectiles of half a ton!
"Your Columbiads would not do great execution there," observed M'Nicholl; "your bullet would be hardly out of the barrel when it would drop to the surface like a heavy stone pushed off the wall of a house." "Oh! I like that!" laughed the incredulous Ardan. "A little calculation, however, shows the Captain's remark to be perfectly just," said Barbican.
Some could not sight it at all, confounded the instrument, and fell back on their natural vision. Others, more lucky, or better versed in telescopic observations, got a view of the fortress, and perhaps burst out swearing at the evident massiveness of the walls and the size of the columbiads. "Good Lord, what a gun!" exclaimed one man. "D'ye see that gun? What an almighty thing!
"Mille tonnerres!" cried Ardan, "I should be there like Ulysses among the Cyclops! I'll tell you what it is, Barbican; if we ever decide on going to the Sun, we must provide ourselves before hand with a few of your Rodman's Columbiads to frighten off the Solarians!"
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