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LOT 1131
Historic Reconstruction Era Arkansas Militia Leader and U.S. Marshal D.P. Upham 1878 Dated Purchase Request Letter to Colt Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company - Presented on Marshal’s Office,
Fort Smith, Arkansas letterhead and dated June 18, 1878, this letter is handwritten and signed by noted Civil War veteran and Arkansas politician, militia commander and lawman Daniel Phillips Upham (1832-1882) and
is addressed to Colt Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company. The letter is essentially a purchase request by a lawman determined to acquire state of the art weaponry offered by Colt. The letter only states that the sidearm was to be a .45 caliber revolver with the “latest improvements.” Although most likely a Single Action Army, the letter is dated 1878 which is the same year that marked the debut of the Model 1878 with the first examples
in .45 caliber shipped in June/July. The Model 1878 was Colt’s first heavy frame double action revolver capable of handling the large calibers fired
in the SAA that had the potent stopping power a lawman would want and was a great leap forward in Colt revolver design. The letter reads:
Sir,
Please send me by express one revolver 45 caliber, central fire, latest
improvements nickel plated, & 200 cartridges. Send also three separate reloaders complete, one for this and two for revolvers which we already have same kind. We want cap extractor and setter, moulds, in fact everything complete 3 sets and one thousand caps for reloading cartridges.
Send C.O.D.
Very Respy. & Truly
D.P. Upham
Colts Fire Arms Mfg. Co.
Hartford
Conn.
Please send by mail itemized bill, as the articles are for different parties
U.
Perhaps no other man brought more fear to the Ku Klux Klan during the era of Reconstruction than Daniel Phillips Upham. He is best remembered
as a Reconstruction leader who led a successful but brutal militia campaign against the Klan in Arkansas, and he is often vilified or at best reluctantly admired for his violent tactics that left many Klan members dead. Born
in Massachusetts, Upham was a certified Unionist who served in the
Union Army from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865 and attained the
rank of sergeant. Dissatisfied with his post-war economic prospects in the Northeast, Upham decided to uproot his family and move to Arkansas where he purchased and grew a thriving cotton plantation in Augusta.
His success in cotton only made him a target with the ex-Confederate populace who perceived him as a carpetbagger profiting off the defeated South. The target on his back only grew bigger when he won a seat in the Arkansas House of Representative in 1867 and became a powerful ally in Governor Powell Clayton’s fight in the expansion of black voting rights and the ratification of the 14th Amendment. In response to Governor Clayton’s reshaping of the state’s political landscape, the Klan terrorized free blacks and Republicans. Over the next three months, the Klan’s terror campaign resulted in the killing of twelve people and numerous attacks against Republican officials and freedman.