[INDIAN WARS / WESTERN AMERICANA / OHIO VALLEY]. Letter of Col. Bomford on Ordnance Duty, to The Secretary of War, Relative to the Number of Arms Required Annually to Supply the Militia of the West

Bomford, George

Published by Printed by Order of the House of Representatives by Gales & Seaton, Washington DC, 1823

About this Item

8vo. 6 pp. Offprint (NOT extracted from a larger volume), with running numeral "83" crossed out and renumbered "42" in ink, usual age toning on account of the paper stock. Recent sympathetic wrappers, front cover lettered in manuscript. IN THIS SLENDER CONGRESSIONAL PAMPHLET IS RECORDED THE EXACT AMOUNT OF U.S. GOVERNMENT ORDNANCE REQUIRED YEARLY FOR "ARMING THE AMERICAN WEST" FOR PEACE -- A EUPHEMISM FOR THE CONTINUING GENOCIDE OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN. Now exactly 200 years old, this unsettlingly innocuous Congressional document presents the U.S. War Department's desideratum of instruments of death in the West (i.e. the Ohio Valley). In the blueprint of the building of the U.S. fiscal-military state, here are the tools. While federal law barred state treaty making, and provided exclusive federal power over western territories, the expansionist states won concessions guaranteeing federal "protection" (i.e. weapons and soldiers to use them). Native Americans are not explicitly mentioned in the present document, the implication is clear; by order of Congress, the strengthening of the fiscal-military state continued. L.S. Regele explains that during the so-called Indian Wars (another innocuous term), "officials in the War Department engaged in military state building, which transcended partisanship and contributed to the development of executive autonomy. [.] The activities of the Ordnance Department suggest that the connection between war and early American state building was forged in the efforts to bolster the armaments industry." Includes figures for muskets, rifles, pistols, cavalry swords, artillery swords, carbines, and armories, with references to incidental expenses of inspecting, packing boxes, carriage to the arsenals, and transportation to the respective states and territories. The author of the report, Col. George Bomford, stated that "The total number of arms, in good order for service, now deposited in the several depots of the United States" was 357,262. Of these, the number of arms deposited in the depots of the West, "including at Pittsburgh" was 65,854. REFERENCE: American Imprints 14624. LITERATURE: Regele, "Guns for the Government: Ordnance, the Military 'Peacetime Establishment,' and Executive Governance in the Early Republic" in: Studies in American Political Development, 34:1 (April 2020), pp. 132-147. See also Gregory Ablavsky, "The Savage Constitution" in: Duke Law Journal, 63:5 (February 2014), pp. 999 et seq.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: [INDIAN WARS / WESTERN AMERICANA / OHIO VALLEY]. Letter of Col. Bomford on Ordnance Duty, to The Secretary of War, Relative to the Number of Arms Required Annually to Supply the Militia of the West
• Publisher: Printed by Order of the House of Representatives by Gales & Seaton, Washington DC
• Publication Date: 1823
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Western Americana