This is a good example of the regulation small size US oval belt plate, excavated at the site of the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh, where Grant fought off attacks by Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, who was mortally wounded in the fighting.

The oval US pattern plate was proposed in 1837 and finally adopted in 1839. The plate was produced in two sizes: the larger version in theory being for dragoon saber belts and waist belts for riflemen, and the smaller one use for the waist belts of line infantry, who carried their cartridge boxes and also their bayonets on shoulder slings at the time, though the bayonet shifted to the waist belt in the early 1840s and the infantry did not officially change to the larger plate until 1857. These were originally produced with wire hooks on the reverse, but shifted to brass studs and the arrowhead (“snakehead” or “anchor”) form with belt hook in 1844. The Mexican War dramatically increased demand for these plates and they were produced right up to 1857 in substantial numbers, many or most by Pittman and Dingee, separate suppliers who cooperated with one another, with Pittman making many of Dingee’s plates, with the plates marked by one or the other of the firms or unmarked, as this one is, but looking like a Pittman die strike. (See Campbell and O’Donnell for the history of these plates.)

This is a good excavated example showing brown with olive tones on the face mixed with grayish brown, but good definition of the “US” and the rim. There are some dings to the edge. One at top center seems to have been a sharp cut that slid down to the top right of the “U,” producing a scratch but not cracking it. The hook and stud are in place on the reverse. The surface shows as a mottled light brown with some of the gray of the lead solder fill showing through. There are some shallow losses to the fill around the edge, but we see only one slight nick to the rim. When viewed on edge from the top, the rim appears just a little uneven from the strike at top center.

This is a good slightly pre-war plate perfectly in keeping with its recovery at an April 1862 western battle site, and one of the best-known battles of the Civil War to boot.    [SR] [PH:L]

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