This excavated two-piece interlocking Confederate belt buckle has a nice green and gray patina and was recovered at Antietam. The tongue with the CS is well defined. The oak-leaves on the wreath are a little softer, which is not unusual since these were cast in sand molds and the master used may not have been in high-relief to begin with. The face shows slightly greener than the reverse. On both the face and reverse, the tongue and wreath match.

The plate was obviously struck from the wearer’s right, pushing in the outer bar of the tongue’s belt loop, fracturing the upper join of the belt loop to the tongue and slightly bending the side bar of the tongue was well. It was of sufficient force to also slightly bend the other belt loop where it joins the side bar of the wreath. There is some crustiness in the reverse channel of the wreath that extends onto the bar of the belt loop, but nothing unsightly.

These plates were made widely throughout the south and usually associated with sword belts for officers and enlistedmen, but a few have provenances to infantry enlisted men who would not have been carrying swords, such as on illustrated in Collecting the Confederacy, pages 20-21, with a provenance to a private and later corporal of the 1^st Va. Battalion. This is a nice example of a classic Confederate plate from one of the most famous battle of the war.  [sr]

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