Three Rules For the Collector

1. Beware of any “unknown” Confederate revolver, for though aspirations and contracts or offers of arms to be delivered in the future were many, the actual number of going gunmakers who fulfilled their responsibilities were few.
2. The modem home handyman with more junk pistol parts and an equal helping of junk ethics is turning out Confederate pistols in quantity quite equal to the wistful cupidity of the collectors. There is more money around for Confederate sidearms than there are C.S.-made revolvers to buy. A typical Confederate revolver that in 1957 was referred to in awe as worth $300-$500, today cannot be bought for $1,500. One gun not even considered by many authorities to be “Confederate” (though it will be seen that we differ in this point of view) is the St. Louis-made Shawk & McLanahan. In 1958 we were queried as to the value of one; refused to say more than it is worth “several hundreds of dollars.” When we checked into the status of the gun a year later, we were informed that “It is still for sale and the price is $6,000.” Though of a limited production run, certain things did set it apart from the others of the same make. For a unique Confederate arm of importance, there is almost no limit to the prices asked. The destitute South has arisen again, not with money having 12-pounder Napoleons printed on the backs, but with good old United States Notes and Silver Certificates. Major market for the Confederate revolver is in the South, particularly among the better heeled Texans. To the buyer, caveat emptor is the maxim.
3. Unfortunately for the historian, the South had a demand for revolvers almost as pressing as the financial demand today to fake something up. Second-hand parts, components sold off as non-standard by a big factory, limited production runs of Northern arms unmarked or with Southern issue-markings, all serve to confuse the serious researcher. Mingled with fakes of 40 or 50 years ago, now thoroughly aged, or refinished arms of two generations past now russetted into a semblance of “originality,” are the genuine individual pieces made as prototypes, shop or promotion models, or as a gun to defend Ol’ Massa when he went off to the War.

The skills of the Southern manor blacksmiths should not be underrated. Negro gunsmiths in the Carolinas, slave and free, worked before the War and their products recognized as such today are creditable pieces of workmanship. It was the black man at the forges in the Tredegar who shaped the sinews of War for Colonel Burton’s rifle factory. The owner of a slave who was a skillful mechanic was a prosperous man, for the hire of the Negro to the local factory was a good source of income. Hence, among the fakes from the early days of gun collecting, and the confusion of the current crop of “Palmetto Armory” pistol handimen, exist genuine rarities. The still-unrecognized Confederate pistol is rare, because nearly all Confederate pistols have characteristics in common; they are copies of the Colt or the Whitney. But just as the fake “unique” piece should not be gobbled up too eagerly, so the collector should not be too quick to condemn a specimen of a hitherto unknown pattern reputed to be “Confederate.” The bad habits of most collectors in failing to record, in the form of affidavits that would stand up in court, the known facts, and the relevant hearsay, when they kick up such a gun from “out of the bushes,” is a serious loss to gun collecting, history of the South, and their own pocket books in that order.

Shawk & McLanahan brass-framed revolver resembled the Whitney but had more support to barrel threads like later Southern Spiller & Burr, and was stronger on frame angle below barrel. Gun shown, No. 2, is marked WILLIAM TEGETHOFF, name of firm’s backer.