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TAGGED BATTLEFIELD PICK-UP COLT ARMY: FRACTURED BARREL & BLOWN CYLINDER WITH A BULLET STILL IN IT - CONFEDERATE RETREAT ROUTE FROM RICHMOND 1865

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This Colt Army .44 revolver has matching serial number 81634 on all but the cylinder, giving it a late 1862 date of production. The cylinder has been with it forever and is numbered [.]9439, probably swapped inadvertently at a campfire cleaning with another trooper. The barrel shows a fracture on the right, with a short line along the side of the barrel a couple of inches to the rear of the front sight, and two chambers of the cylinder are blown out. It looks very much like a bullet stuck in the barrel causing the fracture and a second shot likely dislodged it and blew out the chambers of the cylinder at the same, or perhaps fractured the barrel at the same time as well. Whatever the exact sequence, it must have come as rather a surprise to the shooter. One bullet is still left in a chamber. We suppose he decided by that time to look for another pistol.

This has a wonderful brown-ink period note glued to the side of barrel just forward of the blown-out chambers reading, “Tomahawk Church, Va, site of / 1^st night’s camp of Lee’s army / on the retreat from / Richmond.” Given the condition of the grips and the metal it lay outside, but not for long. The metal is a relatively smooth brown overall, showing some pitting on buttstrap and some thin crustiness elsewhere, but good markings, and even some silver gray with some hints of mottled blue on the frame from case hardening and a legible Colts/Patent stamp on the left. The barrel address is good, though partially hidden by the tag. The cylinder patent stamping is clear. The cylinder number is a bit light, but legible. (There is no scene to speak of.) The serial numbers on the underside of the barrel assembly and frame are legible but show dings and pitting. The serial number on the butt is not legible. The wood is good, showing dings and handling marks, but some decent color and surface with the faint hint of a cartouche, and has just a narrow gap along the brown gripstrap, though with a chip at the left toe with a short crack behind it on the side and bottom.

We have not tried the mechanism and see no need to- this is a wonderful battlefield pick-up. When Lee ordered Ewell to evacuate Richmond on April 2, after Grant had breached the Petersburg lines, Confederate infantry, artillery and cavalry headed west from the city intending to cross the Appomattox River at the Genito Bridge, while a substantial wagon train moved on a parallel road just to the north, both columns intending to unite with other Confederate forces at Amelia Courthouse to the southwest. The march was plagued by delays, some harassment by Union scouting parties, and several friendly-fire incidents. Marylander McHenry Howard chronicled his part in the march of G.W.C. Lee’s division, and noted that he caught up with the troops about half a mile beyond Tomahawk Church on the Genito Road where the column had halted for the night, only to find the next morning that an expected pontoon bridge had not been laid at the Genito Bridge and the column had to divert some three miles south to cross a railroad bridge, incurring further delays while planks were laid on the trestle and the artillery was crossed first. Once across the Appomattox they also found out that Union cavalry under Henry Davies had bagged the  wagon train carrying rations and supplies after it had crossed the Clementown bridge near Meadeville.

Whether this was fired and dropped by Confederate or Union cavalryman is unknown. McHenry Howard mentions one of the friendly-fire incidents being set off by a Union scouting party and mentions Confederate cavalry among other troops on the retreat. Custis Lee’s April 25, 1865, report of the retreat (in the 1874 Transactions of the Southern Historical Society) says in particular: “detachments of troops in Richmond and Kershaw’s divisions, followed by Gary’s cavalry, or a portion of it, crossed the James River at Richmond and followed my division to Tomahawk Church.” Martin Gary’s cavalry brigade had been part of Department of Richmond until January 1865, when it was made part of the Army of Northern Virginia. It was active right up to the end at Appomattox, with Gary himself and some of his troopers slipping away after the ceasefire, but before the surrender, to join Jefferson Davis and his party.

There was a thriving trade in war relics and souvenirs in the ruins of Richmond as federal troops took over and secured the city and hard-pressed civilians were likely scouring the retreat route gathering up anything useful or interesting left behind or cast aside by the retreating columns anxious to get away from federal pursuers. Years later McHenry Howard even obtained some of his inscribed books that had been picked up somewhere by a local sold to a Union surgeon as curiosities.

This revolver was, and still is, a telling symbol of the last desperate hours of the Confederacy.  [sr][ph:L]

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