These plates replaced the earlier S-linked double-disk belt plates of 1832. They were more robust, substituted a general service “US” for different branch of service designations, and were intended to be worn only by the artillery, with both the 1832 short sword, then being relegated to heavy or foot artillery, and the Model 1840 light artillery saber, though infantry NCOs also wore them until they turned in their 1832 short swords for the new 1840 pattern NCO swords, carried on a shoulder belt. Engineers were authorized them in 1847 to wear with the sword bayonets of their musketoons and a slightly bigger version was issued to the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen to support a wider belt for the rifleman’s knife. For the most part these were replaced by the 1851 sword belt plates, though the engineers kept them for a time and the US ordered them for some states into 1854. They were robust enough to have a long service life in state hands and they are seen in early Civil War photos of some units.

This is a very attractive version of the plate, with an untouched patina to the brass and nicely contoured letters, smoothly finished and set off against a slightly pebbled background. See O’Donnell and Campbell Plate 253 for a parallel example.  [sr] [ph:L]

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