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“I personally know Mr. Parsons & have no doubt he would make a good Paymaster, Qr Master, or Commissary.”
- President Abraham Lincoln, from letter written to Secretary of War James Cameron, September 17, 1861
Parsons did not have a simple task before him. While the advent of steam engines and the railroads greatly enhanced the ability to move material at rapid paces, the American Civil War was a logistician’s nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of men needed to be supplied and moved across great distances. For comparison, during the Mexican- American War, only around 100,000 U.S. troops were involved. The Union armies at their peak contained seven times as many men. While Parsons had railroads and steamboats available, there were not large organized networks to work with but a wide variety of competing smaller businesses, and the actual railroad lines themselves did not run on standardized gauges complicating matters. No U.S. officer
had ever faced such a daunting task. Parsons didn’t just take control of the logistics of rail and river transport during the middle of a war, he overhauled it and enabled the Union’s armies to quickly move large quantities of men and supplies by both rail and water at speeds unimaginable when the Confederates fired the first shots on Fort Sumter.
“Were trains to be employed in carrying troops to a distant point, Lewis B. Parsons provided them; were the great rivers to be used for the needs of the army, Lewis B. Parsons assembled flotillas and fitted them for their purposes; were food or clothing or forage or arms to be supplied, Lewis B. Parsons gave the orders that carried them to their destination; were Grant or McPherson or Sherman to be fitted out in the midst of great enterprises, they rested with absolute reliance upon the work of Parsons, and he never failed them.” – From “In Memoriam: Lewis Baldwin Parsons” (1908).
It is noted that “His greatest single achievement, the most picturesque and startling in the annals of the war, was in the movement of Schofield’s army from the neighborhood of Nashville to the Coast near Wilmington, North Carolina, passing over the Ohio River, eastward over the Alleghenies, and down by the way of the Atlantic Coast
to its destination; and the men who had stood fighting splendidly with Thomas at Nashville appeared in front of their astounded and bewildered foremen at a new and far distant point in the theater of war.” This was but just one of his great accomplishments.
Two full binders of documentation about the set and its original recipient are included along with five related books, a case with portraits of Philo and L.B. Parsons, and two additional portraits of L.B. Parsons. The factory letters state that these revolvers were factory engraved per inventory records on November 13, 1862, and that the two revolvers were bracketed together in the records indicating they were made as a true consecutive pair. Given this date, it is possible
the pair were intended as a gift the following month by Philo Parsons to his brother Colonel Lewis B. Parsons for Christmas. The cased set
has been featured in several publications, including: “Colt Engraving” by R.L. Wilson on pages 103 and 104, “The Colt Engraving Book, Vol.
1” by R.L. Wilson on pages 165 and 166, and more recently in “The
Colt 1860 Army Revolver” by Charles Pate on page 390. A photograph of George S. Lewis Jr. and his family displaying the set at a show in Kansas City, Missouri, c. 1973 is included in the extensive document file for this incredible pair. They were part of the collection of Parsons College from the early 20th century until they were sold to Bill Sisney who quickly resold them to Lewis who sold them to Greg Lampe more than four decades later. The best comparable pair of revolvers are the revolvers inscribed to General W.S. Rosecrans shown on pages 105-107 of “Colt Engraving,” along with the pair presented to Parsons friend General George B. McClellan. While all of these revolvers are incredible and valuable, this pair is superior as it remains in exceptional condition and remains together in its original case. The other pairs were split
up. One of the surviving McClellan revolvers was sold at Rock Island Auction Co. for $299,000 in 2019, and the other and the case for that pair have been out of private circulation collection since 1870 when they were made part of the national collection at the Smithsonian.
Aside from the pair’s incredible historical connections which we will discuss more below, it is an incredibly rare example of a matched, consecutive pair of Colt Model 1860 Army revolvers with nearly the highest level of engraving available. The engraving begins at the muzzles, around the front sights, along the sides of the barrels and around the front of the barrel addresses, the flats of the loading levers, the rebated portions of the cylinders, all of the frames, and onto the grip frames and hammers. The latter feature stunning patriotic eagle motifs rather than the more common wolf/dog head designs. The
bulk of the engraving is classic Germanic scroll and floral patterns with punched backgrounds. The engraving patterns are very similar but vary in some of the details. The scrollwork is inhabited by several animal masks, including different eagle masks on the right side of
the barrels and frames as well as the recoil shield on the left of the first revolver and variety of dog head designs on the recoil shield on the left of the second revolver and the left side of the barrels of both revolvers above the wedges. Both revolvers also feature the rare hand engraved enhancement of the cylinder scenes and “COLT’S/PATENT” hand inscribed on the left side of the frames. The back straps have the historical presentation inscriptions: “Col. L.B. Parsons/From his brother P. Parsons.” The barrels have the roll-marked “-ADDRESS COL. SAML COLT NEW-YORK U.S. AMERICA-” addresses, German silver blade front sights, and “S” on the bottoms at the breech ends.
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