This altered bayonet comes with a letter from respected dealer Tom Gordon indicating it was found at an Antietam campsite in the mid-1970s. The bayonet is wide-bladed early pattern with short, straight bottom mortise for a bayonet stud, likely for Revolutionary War or Federal period French import musket or one of the early Charleville-pattern U.S. muskets. The point was blunted and the edges folded back over it on top, likely to strengthen it and the lower portion then bent back, or downwards, to form a hook.

These are usually taken to be body hooks: i.e. bayonets fashioned into hooks so as to be mounted on a musket or rifle to aid soldiers assigned to battlefield clean up details in moving bodies for burial. Others take them to be more prosaic hooks for removing camp kettles, pots or even mess cups from campfires. The design would serve either function. Given the likely date of the bayonet, though, we would hazard the guess it was from a percussion conversion of an early musket, more likely used by a Confederate than a Federal, making it an interesting relic of the battle regardless. [sr][PH:L]

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