Lincoln concerned himself with a wide variety of weapons: small arms, artillery, flame throwers, rockets, submarines, mines, iron-clad ships, and explosives. Often he tested new-fangled rifles himself. An inventor with a patent of his own, he encouraged all sorts of innovations, most notably the breechloading rifle and the machine gun. His interest in the latter began in June 1861, when he observed tests of “the Union Repeating Gun,” modestly described by its salesman as “an army in six feet square.” Lincoln dubbed it the “coffee-mill gun” because its hopper, into which bullets were poured, resembled that culinary apparatus. Impressed by what he saw, Lincoln in October ordered all of the ten guns then available at $1,300 apiece. On October 26, the president called on McClellan and “began to talk about his wonderful new repeating battery of rifled gun, shooting 50 balls a minute.” Lincoln was “delighted with it” and asked the general to “go down and see it, and if proper, detail a corps of men to work it.” Characteristically, Little Mac hesitated to act, asking Cameron if fifty could be purchased at the rather steep price. Lincoln then demanded that the general back his decision to buy them. Impatiently, the president told a salesman promoting the weapon that McClellan “knows whether the guns will be serviceable. I do not. It avails nothing for him that he has no objection to my purchasing them.” McClellan ultimately agreed, and on December 19 Lincoln ordered the purchase of fifty coffee-mill guns.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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