This is a high quality wartime badge for the Third Division of the Second Army Corps. Officers and some enlisted men quickly went to commercial or privately made badges after the adoption of Corps insignia in March 1863 in preference to the crude, die-cut issue cloth badges. We have seen more than one officer’s letter home with a drawing of the newly adopted badge and a request to have one made and forwarded as soon as possible. This has a dark blue velvet face with jacqueron wire border and cloth back. The stitching is solid and the wire border is securely in place. At center is an embroidered bullion circle. While this may indicate the wearer had prior service in the First Corps, it is perhaps more likely that the maker was thinking of embroidered officer’s hat insignia whose branch of service device often had a small circle at center for placement of a regimental numeral.

The Third Division, like the rest of the corps, had a strong combat record in the Army of the Potomac from 1862 right through to the end of the war and saw action in nearly every major engagement of the army. We are pretty partial to it since, fighting alongside the First Division, it bore the brunt of Pickett’s Charge on July 3, 1863.

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