Page 151 - 87-BOOK3

LOT 3211
Exceptional Factory Cased Three-Digit Serial Number Fluted Cylinder Colt Model 1860
Army Percussion Revolver - Serial no. 928, 44 cal., 7 1/2 inch round bbl., blue/casehardened finish, varnished walnut grips. This extraordinary, early Colt Model 1860 Army revolver was manufactured
in 1860, the first year of production, and is one of only 4,000 of this model manufactured with the
full fluted cylinder within the first 8,000 serial numbers. Many early production Colt Model 1860 revolvers with fluted cylinders were sold to southern dealers before the outbreak of the Civil War
and were used by Confederate soldiers making them particularly sought after by Civil War collectors, and there are several photographs of Confederate soldiers armed with these early Model 1860 Army revolvers. Given their use in the war, they are very hard to find in high condition. This revolver falls between serial numbers 923 and 959 which have been identified as part of a 500 gun order shipped to “Peter Williams & Co.” in the future Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, on April 15, 1861. The Richmond “Daily Dispatch” on April 23, 1861, records: “The State Authorities seized 500 Army revolvers, belonging to Williams, Peter & Co., on Sunday. They were found at the Adams Express Company’s office, in this city. The State pays for them, of course.” These revolvers were shipped three days after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter and on the same day that President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 men from the state militias to suppress the rebellion (with optimistic three-month enlistments) and called Congress into an emergency session to address the crisis. Shipments of arms to the South only remained legal for a few more days until Lincoln proclaimed a blockade on April 19. Virginia
had voted to remain in the Union earlier the same month and was still part of the Union when the revolvers shipped, but the authorities had moved rapidly towards secession by April 17.
149