Colt found a market in Texas and among the
frontiersmen who were fighting the Seminole War in Florida, but
the sales were insufficient, and in 1842 the company was obliged
to confess insolvency and close down the plant. Colt bought from
the company the patent of the revolver, which was supposed to be
worthless.
Nothing more happened until after the outbreak of the Mexican War
in 1846. Then came a loud call from General Zachary Taylor for a
supply of Colt's revolvers. Colt had none. He had sold the last
one to a Texas ranger. He had not even a model. Yet he took an
order from the Government for a thousand and proceeded to
construct a model. For the manufacture of the revolvers he
arranged with the Whitney plant at Whitneyville. There he saw and
scrutinized every detail of the factory system that Eli Whitney
had established forty years earlier. He resolved to have a plant
of his own on the same system and one that would far surpass
Whitney's. Next year (1848) he rented premises in Hartford. His
business prospered and increased. At last the Government demanded
his revolvers. Within five years he had procured a site of two
hundred and fifty acres fronting the Connecticut River at
Hartford, and had there begun the erection of the greatest arms
factory in the world.
Colt was a captain of captains.
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