This Model 1853 Sharps Carbine has the serial number 12095, with an inscription on the patchbox reading “J. W. Midhire, Oct 13, 1855,” “Free State Total Exclusion.” The carbine may have belonged to the Wakarusa Military Company of Douglas County, Kansas.
Model 1853 Sharps Carbines were breech-loading weapons, commonly referred to as “Beecher’s Bibles.” The name came from the New England minister Henry Ward Beecher, of the New England Emigrant Society, who supplied the weapons to antislavery immigrants in Kansas for use in the fighting along the Kansas/Missouri border. The arms were often shipped in wooden crates marked “Bibles” or “books” in order to pass through hostile territory unmolested.
The Beecher family was among the foremost abolitionists in the country; Henry Ward’s sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote the classic abolitionist novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852.
Image Courtesy Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 30005
