en who were fighting the
Seminole War in Florida, but the sales were insufficient, and in 1842
the company was obliged to confess insolvency and close down the plant.
Colt bought from the company the patent of the revolver, which was
supposed to be worthless.

Nothing more happened until after the outbreak of the Mexican War in
1846. Then came a loud call from General Zachary Taylor for a supply
of Colt's revolvers. Colt had none. He had sold the last one to a
Texas ranger. He had not even a model. Yet he took an order from the
Government for a thousand and proceeded to construct a model. For the
manufacture of the revolvers he arranged with the Whitney plant at
Whitneyville. There he saw and scrutinized every detail of the factory
system that Eli Whitney had established forty years earlier. He resolved
to have a plant of his own on the same system and one that would far
surpass Whitney's. Next year (1848) he rented premises in Hartford. His
business prospered and increased. At last the Government demanded his
revolvers. Within five years he had procured a site of two hundred and
fifty acres fronting the Connecticut River at Hartford, and had there
begun the erection of the greatest arms factory in the world.

Colt was a captain of captains. The ablest mechanic and industrial
organizer in New England at that time was Elisha K. Root. Colt went
after him, outbidding every other bidder for his services, and brought
him to Hartford to supervise the erection of the new factory and set
up its machinery. Root was a great superintendent, and the phenomenal
success of the Colt factory was due in a marked degree to him. He became
president of the company after Colt's death in 1862, and under him were
trained a large number of mechanics and inventors of new machine tools,
who afterwards became celebrated leaders and officers in the industrial
armies of the country.

The spectacular rise of the Colt factory at Hartford drew the attention
of the British Government, and in 1854 Colt was invited to appear in
London before a Parliamentary Committee on Small Arms. He lectured the
members of the committee as if they had been school boys, telling them
that the regular British gun was so bad that he would be ashamed to have
it come from his shop. Speaking of a plant which he had opened in London
the year before he criticized the supposedly skilled British mechanic,
saying: "I began here by employing the highest-priced men that I could
f