For the first time, Hall was proposing the mass-production of a good on the principle of what would become known as interchangeability. Interchangeable parts were not similar but identical, meaning that they could be slotted together quickly by a semi-skilled workman following a set procedure.

Now, achieving interchangeability was regarded as the Holy Grail by a few mad geniuses, like Hall – and a fool's errand by everybody else. Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, gamely attempted the feat in the later 1790s but experienced only humiliating, and expensive, failure. If even Whitney couldn't do it, then nobody could, skeptics agreed. Hall's proposal, then, might well have been ignored except that, either by luck or by shrewdness, his timing was pitch-perfect.

Owing to the Army's logistical chaos and administrative incompetence, rendered embarrassingly apparent during the War of 1812, the Ordnance Department was shaken from top to bottom by Wadsworth and Bomford to rationalize arms procurement and manufacture.

In 1815, they began a major reorganization of the American military-industrial complex. Henceforth the two federal armories at Harpers Ferry (Virginia) and Springfield (Massachusetts) would pursue conformity in all things, from using precision gauges and standardized accounting to constructing pattern weapons (i.e., perfect specimens issued to private makers that they would copy precisely) before production even began.

Easier said than done, for Harpers Ferry had been cursed from its founding. Whereas Springfield benefited from its New England geography and a pool of local gunsmithing talent, Harpers Ferry, far away from roads and lacking natural resources, was created as a pork-barrel project subject to intense political pressure from Washington. On the broadest level, the rivalry between the two armories exemplified the growing divergence between North and South.

In Massachusetts, the superintendent was the no-nonsense Roswell Lee, who was intent on making Springfield the most efficient and economical arms manufacturer on the continent, whereas from 1807 Harpers Ferry was controlled by James Stubblefield, a man in whom patronage and paternalism were inextricably entwined. Stubblefield ran the armory as a personal fiefdom, his industrial version of a courtly Southern plantation. In true aristocratic style, he rarely bothered keeping accounts, disliked Lee's vulgar Northern habit of timekeeping, and appointed so many relatives to sinecures at the armory that his regime was known as the Junto. Still, the armorers at Harpers Ferry were fond of their feudal master: Unlike the hyper-efficient Lee, Stubblefield allowed them to work when they wished, to drink and carouse on the job, and take days off as the mood struck them.

Wadsworth and Bomford, who naturally found Lee's approach by far the more congenial, were displeased to discover that while at Harpers Ferry 140-odd men were needed to make 4,000 muskets, half that number at Springfield sufficed to produce the same number. Yet, owing to his friends in Congress, Stubblefield's position was secure. With the arrival of Hall's letter in June 1816, however, Wadsworth and Bomford finally saw their opportunity. By establishing an autonomous Rifle Works at Harpers Ferry under Hall, they planned to undermine the Junto from within.

Hall was happy to serve as a Trojan horse so long as he was left in peace by Stubblefield, who, well aware of the intrigue afoot, sought to destroy the Rifle Works. The latter need not have overly troubled himself, for by early 1823 Hall was close to resigning, citing the "intense application, excessive mental exertion, and great length of time necessary" to build his factory. He had vastly underestimated how arduous and daunting a task it was to achieve machine-powered interchangeability. Bomford nevertheless persuaded him to stay the course, and just two months into 1825 Hall fulfilled his contract. Best of all, he observed jauntily, he had brought "every thing relating to my arms to its utmost point of perfection." For the first time, anywhere, Hall had achieved interchangeability.

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