BATTLEFIELD RELIC CONFEDERATE SPILLER & BURR REVOLVER WITH “C.S.” INSPECTION

Barrel: 6 in., overall 13 in. Serial number 418. 

A rare Confederate Spiller & Burr revolver, this example survives as an authentic wartime relic of one of the South’s most ambitious and historically important attempts at domestic revolver manufacture. Patterned after the Whitney Navy and produced first near Atlanta and later under Confederate government control at Macon, the Spiller & Burr is among the classic revolvers of the Confederacy, with total production generally estimated at roughly 1,250 to 1,450 arms before manufacture ceased amid the dislocations of late 1864. Contemporary and modern scholarship alike have noted both the revolver’s close relationship to the Whitney design and the chronic manufacturing difficulties that plagued the enterprise from its earliest stages.

The revolver offered here is a stabilized field recovery, with its grips and trigger guard replaced from a Civil War-period Whitney Navy revolver, and with additional restoration reportedly undertaken circa 2000. Significant original features remain. Most important among them is the frame, which retains the coveted “C.S.” inspection stamp associated with Confederate government acceptance on surviving Spiller & Burr revolvers, a marking present on only a portion of known examples. The barrel markings are now no longer discernible, while the loading arm and cylinder pin bear the serial number “418.” The cylinder is steel, consistent with the known late-war evolution of the model.

Comparable examples have been tied by serial number as being produced in November, 1864. That late dating is especially compelling, because Spiller & Burr manufacture was nearing its end as Confederate industry collapsed under wartime pressure and its machinery at Macon was packed up in the face of Sherman’s advance.