Adelbert Rinaldo Buffington was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, on 22 November 1837. When he entered the
United States Military Academy at West Point in 1856, the standard course was five years in length. Buffington graduated seventh in the Class of May 1861. He was assigned to Ordnance and immediately placed on duty in Washington, where he trained volunteer soldiers for several weeks. His predecessor as Chief of Ordnance, General
Daniel W. Flagler who graduated in the Class of June 1861 performed similar responsibilities when he arrived in Washington several weeks later. In June 1861, Buffington was assigned to the
St. Louis Arsenal and by April 1862, was commanding that facility. While organizing the employees of the Arsenal for its defense, Buffington, then a
first lieutenant, was commissioned a
Colonel of
Volunteers, and he briefly aided in the defense of
Pilot Knob, Missouri. On October 25, 1862, he was given command of the ordnance depot at
Wheeling, West Virginia, his old home, while he concurrently held the post of Chief Ordnance Officer for the
District of West Virginia. Following an assignment as Inspector of Rifling Seacoast Cannon in 1863, he took command of the
New York Arsenal in 1864. For several years following the war, he had charge of breaking up Confederate ordnance establishments in Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, and Galveston, and in 1867, he began a series of assignments at
Watertown,
Watervliet, and
Detroit Arsenals, the latter as commander from 1870 until 1872. During a tour as Assistant Superintendent of Arsenals of Forts on the seacoast from Charleston, South Carolina, to Mobile, Alabama, in the first part of 1872, Buffington came up with the first of his many ordnance inventions, a depressing carriage for a smoothbore seacoast cannon. This design would be the forerunner of a later invention, the
disappearing seacoast carriages which he would develop with
William Crozier, later to succeed him as Chief of Ordnance. These carriages became standard for
coast artillery emplaced in the United States 1890–1925. A succession of further arsenal assignments occupied him during the 1870s, although he also took a leave of absence in the years 1875 and 1876 to inspect arms for the Egyptian Government. ==See also==