By May 1861, after North Carolina became the 11th state to join the Confederacy, the South was already engaged in the task of assessing its armaments. By prioritizing the war, all revolvers and long-barreled guns used by American troops, including those in the South, were divided equally among the states, and soldiers in the newly created Confederacy had a proportionate number of guns compared to the North.
As for guns, almost all were of older designs dating back to the 1850s, and therefore many Confederates were armed with Colt Navy 1851, Navy and Remington c.1858 revolvers. Others simply carried whatever weapons they owned, and before long it became a looming problem for the Richmond government to purchase and produce as many weapons as possible.
There were a number of manufacturers in the South who took up the cause, but the Confederacy also had to rely on the import of arms and ammunition from England, France, and Belgium. The North followed a similar course of action as the war continued to drag on and manufacturers such as Colt, Remington, Starr, and a handful of other gunmakers located in the New England states began to reach their limits.
The state of business in 1861
While the southern states had their own militias, along with former federal troops who offered their alliance to the South, fortune was not in the Confederacy’s favor. Formed mostly of agricultural states, many of which were accessible by sea (either from the Gulf of Mexico or via the Atlantic coast) Jefferson Davis’s newly formed government was up against a force twice its size.
One could retort that the 13 colonies stood up to an entire nation in 1776 and won, but in this case it was the true heart of those same colonies, who had taken up arms and turned against themselves. The biggest problem in 1861 was that there simply were not enough guns or soldiers in the South.
In 1862, the Confederacy appealed for patriotism from anyone who could contribute to the production of arms. Among the handful of Southern manufacturers who answered the call was J.H. Dance & Bros., located east of Columbia (first capital of Texas) and just 10 miles from Angleton, with its factory near the Brazos River and Gulf of Mexico ports.
James Henry Dance and his family moved to Texas in 1853. Originally from North Carolina, J.H. and his brothers George and Davis founded J.H. Dance & Co. (later J.H. Dance & Bros.) to make drills and cotton gins, but when the Civil War began they decided to try making guns.
In the winter of 1861-62 they began developing their first model with the prototype presented on April 22, 1862. A few months later a .44 caliber Dance revolver was put into production. This weapon closely resembled a Colt Dragoon third model.
A second design, based on the Colt 1851 Navy, became significantly more popular and was further simplified for production by eliminating the recoil shield so as to create a flat castle on the side. Although based on Colt’s design, the fully octagonal barrel of the Navy model was replaced with a simpler, half-octagonal, half-round design similar to that of the Colt Dragoon 1848. The Dance also had a rounded underguard as in the last style (third model) of the Colt 1851 Navy.
Initially, Colt used a square back underguard on the first and second models of the 1851 Navy. The round underguard was introduced in 1855 (the same year the 1851 Navy was adopted by the United States as a military sidearm), followed in 1858 by a wider ovoid underguard. The Dance design was something in between the two round styles in size and shape. Slab-sided revolvers were made in 44- and 36-caliber, the 44-caliber with an 8-inch barrel and the 36-caliber with a 7-3/8-inch barrel.
Originally, Dance had anticipated that they would come out with 50 weapons per week, but they quickly realized that that estimate was unrealistic. Despite slower than budgeted production, their .44 and .36 caliber revolvers were all made. The Houston Tri Weekly Telegraph in its September 5, 1862 edition announced that Dance revolvers were “superior to the best Colts.”
The Last Dance
With the dissolution of the Confederacy, in 1863 following the Battle of Velasco the Dance brothers’ factory near the Gulf Coast was within range of Union gunboats. The Union attack breached the fortifications at Fort Velasco that guarded the Texas coast, allowing gunboats to sail up the Brazos River to Columbia and raze the factory and its contents.
During Dance’s short existence about 500 weapons were produced, making models that are very rare today. Dance moved to Anderson, Texas, but weapons production did not resume, thus ending a brief but promising chapter in the history of Civil War weapons production.
The Dance brothers returned to East Columbia after the Civil War and began manufacturing drills and cotton gin again. Their factory remained operational until the buildings were destroyed in September 1900 by a hurricane that swept up the Texas coast at Galveston.
Among the handful of models produced in the South during the Civil War, the Dance was considered one of the best and remained popular for many years to follow. Famous owners include Geronimo (at least, he was immortalized with one, but it may very well have been a prop), and notorious highwayman Bill Longley is said to have first killed a man with a Dance 1862.
