The Iconic Lever-Action

was still lagging too far behind and turned to the revolver, Winchester parlayed the under-barrel tube magazine and reciprocating lever-actuated bolt repeating rifle concept into the foundation of a firearms empire with a name that became as well-known as Colt in the industry. Winchester owed that empire largely to Benjamin Tyler Henry, who both advanced rimfire ammunition to practical levels and the primitive lever-action itself to make a functional rifle that could use it. The result was the 1860 Henry, and one of the first successful long gun repeaters. At the time, its only real competition was the relatively short-lived Spencer that also saw use in the Civil War, but the Spencer design was quite different in operation and only lasted from 1860-1869. The 1860 Henry spawned the 1866 and 1873 Winchesters based on the same action, and the basic configuration of a lever-operated repeating rifle lives on with two domestic makers and a handful of foreign manufacturers selling to the U.S. under various branding.

Early Days

Mod 60 Henry rifle, magazine open for loading 3 Henry rounds, one round 44-40 to compare.

Of the two early patterns, the Henry and the Spencer, the Henry’s attached underbarrel magazine system was much simpler to use than the Spencer’s 7-round magazine located inside the buttstock. Spencer shooters had a more complicated action and magazine to deal with, where a spring tube providing forward pressure had to be pulled out the back of the stock, rounds slid in with the muzzle down, the spring tube replaced, the lever cycled to chamber a round, and the hammer cocked independent of the lever. Each time the lever was cycled for ejection and feeding, the hammer had to be cocked manually. The Spencer’s primary weakness was a very “lose-able” magazine spring tube that had to be completely removed from the gun for loading, aggravated by the relatively slow shooting process. Its primary advantage over the Henry was a more powerful rimfire round, with a larger-caliber bullet.

Henry shooters, with over twice the Spencer’s payload in the Henry’s 16-round magazine, slid the follower fully forward in its open channel cut to allow the muzzle collar to rotate out of the way for loading by inserting rounds into the magazine’s open end (muzzle up here), swiveled the collar back in line, let the follower drop to provide backward pressure, and cycled the lever to feed, cock, and extract/eject. The Henry’s primary weakness was the open follower slit along the magazine tube that tended to pick up battlefield gunk and grit, and also prohibited a practical wooden fore-end to avoid charring hands during long strings of fire. Magazine-wise, its primary construction advantage

over the Spencer was that there was nothing that had to detach from the rifle to load it, and no part that could be lost to render it into a single-shot.

The reasons why the Henry succeeded and the Spencer didn’t could be argued, but today the Henry’s overall superiority is obvious, and once Nelson King brainstormed the side loading port and entirely enclosed magazine for Winchester in the 1866 Winchester (AKA Improved Henry) model, the levergun was off and running.

While the sun was setting on paper cartridges and percussion caps with all of their weaknesses, and rising on the development of self-contained metallic cartridges with all of their benefits, dependable repeaters to use that new ammunition technology were quickly demanding attention among those who immediately got the basic mathematical equation of More Rounds On Board = More Shooting Time/Less Loading Time + Increased Save-My-Life Odds, both on the battlefield and on their own during the violent expansion of an often hostile Westward Ho exploration and settlement. In uniform, one man with a Henry repeater could put out the same volume of aimed fire in one minute that an entire infantry squad could with 1863 Springfield rifles. A hunter, prospector, homesteader, peace officer, or cattle rancher had infinitely better chances of bringing home the bacon, fending off marauders of all sorts, and backing down belligerent owlhoots, with a long gun that held one up the spout ready to go, backed by up to 15 more right in line and ready for action.

America’s Rifle

While our country was only a hundred years old, and still expanding, gun ownership across the pond in Europe was largely restricted to either military or gentry. Military use was… military use. Ownership outside the military was more a matter of wealthy land owners hunting on long-owned

H001 Henry Lever Action .22 S/L/LR

private lands, in settled circumstances and established (known) areas. Self-defense was not a priority, and the idea of regular everyday people hunting with firearms for either sport or subsistence took a while to develop.

Here, from 1850 to 1900, times and places west of the Ol’ Mississippi were still unsettled, lands were wide open, new territory needed exploring, law enforcement was not a 911 call away, and those who lived or ventured far from the dusty streets of civilization depended on themselves and reliable tools for their daily existence.

The lever-action evolved steadily during the last half of the 19th Century from the relatively anemic .44 Henry Rimfire into more powerful centerfire rounds like the .44-40 Winchester, and on through the immensely popular Model 1894 .30-30 Winchester into the mighty Model 1895