The years leading up to the Civil War saw the US War Dept. trying various different breechloaders. Samuel Colt was a marketing genius, and assiduously tried to get his revolving guns adopted . In 1837 a board of officers looked into the Paterson revolvers and decided they were very complicated ( at a time when soldiers would regularly completely take apart their guns for cleaning and oiling) . They also had a dangerous tendency to chain-fire: when the charge lined up with the barrel went off, it would ignite the other charges in the cylinder, resulting in intense recoil, sometimes injury. Some of the rifles were adopted by militias- around 5,000-6,000- but it's quite possible few actually saw service, being quite disliked for the same reasons the Board had voiced in 1837. The fact that gas escaped between the cylinder and barrel also made it somewhat more tricky to hold the rifles, and they were a pain to reload after the six shots. In 1837, they seemed to be at least an improvement on flintlock musketoons. By 1857, as other , better designs came forward, like the Sharps and the Spencer, they were easily seen as obsolete.

Hey there,

Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.

If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!