peashooter85:Confederate Colt Copies of the Civil War, Griswold and Gunnison RevolverDuring the Amer
peashooter85:Confederate Colt Copies of the Civil War, Griswold and Gunnison RevolverDuring the American Civil War the Union, with its mighty industrial infrastructure, had a wealth of small arms and ordnance to fight the war. The Confederate south based on agriculture always suffered from shortages of weapons and almost every important war material. Needless to say the Confederacy had to make due with what they had and obtain weapons from any source. It was not uncommon for many small workshops, factories, and even individual gunsmiths to produce their own copies of popular Colt, Remington, and Smith & Wesson revolvers. Being that the south was not very industrialized most southern producers did not have the technical know how to produce their own designs, so naturally they just copied other designs from the north, especially the popular Colt revolver. This makes sense, while Colt may hold the patents to a certain model of revolver, what are they going to do to stop Confederate producers from infringing on their patents in a time of rebellion? Sue them? Take them to court?Often Confederate Colt copies, while functional, were of lesser quality than real Colt revolvers. This was due to inferior machining, lesser quality manufacturing techniques, and use of cheaper materials. Due to lack of resources many Colt copies have a brass frame and trigger guard. This was due to shortages of graded steel in the south during the war. Often the metal of copy Colts was also not blued or finished to protect it from rust.The largest Confederate producer of pistols was a firm called Griswold and Gunnison out of Griswoldville, Georgia. The pictures above show an example of a Griswold and Gunnison copy of a Colt 1851 Navy revolver. They also made copies of the famous Remington 1858 as well. While the largest pistol producer in the Confederacy, their production numbers really illustrate the differences between northern and southern industry, and why the Union won the war. During the entire Civil War Griswold and Gunnison were able to produce around 3,700 pistols. Contrast that to Colt, the Union’s largest pistol producer, who delivered 127,000 Colt Model 1860 revolvers to the Union Army during the war. -- source link