[2] Agar advertised the gun as "an army in six feet square", due to its high rate of fire.

[3] In 1861, the Agar machine gun was demonstrated to President Abraham Lincoln, who was very impressed by the weapon.

In January 1862 the 28th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were said to have used the Agar Guns in a skirmish by Harpers Ferry.

In another skirmish at Middleburg, Virginia, on March 29, 1862, a captain by the name of Bartlett recalled Union soldiers firing an Agar Gun at attacking Confederate cavalry at a distance of 800 yards, inflicting many casualties and causing the Rebels to flee.

In September 1862, Confederates obtained seventeen of the machine guns when they captured Harpers Ferry, and used them sparingly in 1864.

This cooling air also tended to blow away any pieces of unburned paper from the cartridge that happened to be near the barrel.

The Agar gun's hopper is in fact the only multiple-chamber configuration other than the ubiquitous revolver to have been used in practice.

This gave the Agar a much more modern appearance, since single barrel machine guns with similar shields became common in World War I.

In 1861, the Agar machine gun was demonstrated to President Abraham Lincoln at Washington Arsenal.

[6] He was so impressed that he ordered all ten available weapons to be purchased immediately, at a cost of $1,300 each, which was a very high price at the time.

The special steel tubes used to hold the cartridges were heavy and expensive, and tended to get lost.