Great question.
I recently had the question of how the Civil War weapons would have developed differently if the Rollin White patent wouldn't have existed.
The South could NOT have competed with an all Union Army armed with cartidge rifles and revolvers. That terrible wasteful war might have come to a quicker end, if it happened at all. Both armies went into the conflict with essentially the same weapons. Perhaps the South would have realized they would be too far outgunned, but probably not. It certainly wasn't logic that started that mess.
We also don't know how fast cartridge development would have happened if there wasn't a Rollin White patent, but we certainly know it couldn't have been any slower.
I saw we blame the Civil War on them.
