Government inspectors fell over themselves in their praise for the new breechloaders.

Exhaustive trials affirmed "the superiority of this arm over every other kind of small arm now in use." Its celerity of fire was incredible – with no concordant loss in accuracy. After 38 men fired at a target 100 yards away for 10 minutes at their own speed, the testers found that regular muzzleloading rifles had discharged 494 times (with 164 rounds, or 33 percent, hitting the target) and Army-issue muskets 845 (with just 208, or 25 percent, in the target), but the Halls toted up 1,198 shots, of which 430, or 36 percent, were in the target. The Hall breechloader, in other words, was as accurate as a long-range rifle but faster to reload than even a musket (which was smoothbored to hasten charging).

Only adding to Hall's joy was the news of the imminent departure of Stubblefield, a victim of Andrew Jackson's election to the presidency and the revelations of his own lackluster performance as superintendent in the light of Hall's success.

At that moment, Hall reached the pinnacle of his career. Henceforth his victories would be tempered by failures and beset by aggravations. The most pressing problem confronting him was time. In the beginning, his rifle had been the most advanced firearm in the world, but here it was, 17 long, hard years after he had first approached the War Department, and the world was inexorably catching up. Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse in Prussia was working on the still more futuristic needle-gun and a Scot, the Reverend John Forsyth, had invented the precursor of the percussion cap – the mechanism that broke the centuries-long dominance of the flintlock.

A younger man would have relished the challenge, but Hall, carbuncled now by age and irascibility, was no longer that man. Redesigning his gun to accommodate percussion caps would add years to the development process and Hall was reluctant to make the necessary changes anyway. By 1834, the War Department was hoping he would soon retire – he didn't – but three years later, Hall met his match in Edward Lucas, the ruthless new superintendent of Harpers Ferry and a Jacksonian appointee.

Between 1837 and 1840, Lucas fired 34 highly skilled employees (of whom 28 were enemy Whigs dating from Stubblefield's reign) and replaced them with Democrats. Despite the rapid deterioration of his health, Hall proved harder to budge, so Lucas instead slowly strangled his breechloader project. The tactic succeeded when Hall departed Harpers Ferry in 1840, but strategically it didn't matter as by then Springfield's ascendancy was assured. During the Civil War, the South would pay dearly in blood and treasure for the industrialized North's proficiency in armsmaking.

As for Hall, a depressed and sick man, he died on February 26, 1841. His great gun dead, his legacy nevertheless lived on, providing Hall with a posthumous last laugh. At the Rifle Works, Hall had trained scores of handpicked employees in the necromantic ways of interchangeability.

Eventually, they went forth into the world, multiplying and prospering. In their vast diaspora, they applied the teachings of their high priest to every sector of American business enterprise. In so doing, they pollinated their specialist knowledge of how to make machines that make machines to a rapidly enlarging circle of firms.

By the mid 1840s and 1850s, America was home to an entire generation of talented, armory-nurtured mechanics, engineers, managers, artificers and inventors. These individuals' expertise boosted the nascent mass-production of shoes, watches, clocks, bicycles, typewriters, ready-to-wear clothing, elastic and rubber goods, and later, automobiles. John Hall, in short, transformed America from an almost medieval, workshop-based economy of craftsmen into the modern economic powerhouse it remains.

As such, instead of languishing in obscurity, Hall rightfully deserves a parade, a day off work, a monument and some fireworks.

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