Item:
ONJR22HGF057

Original U.S. Civil War Confederate P1853 Enfield Buttstock Relic From G.A.R Post

Item Description

Original Item: Only One Available. Now this is a fantastic relic from the Civil War Era. This wood block is a removed section of the buttstock from a “Confederate Gun”. After careful examination of the shape, chisel marks and the angles of the screw placement for the now missing butt plate, we believe this to be a piece of a P1853 Enfield.

The Enfield 1853 rifle-musket was also used by both the North and the South in the American Civil War, and was the second most widely used infantry weapon in the war, surpassed only by the Springfield Model 1861 Rifled Musket. The Confederates imported more Enfields during the course of the war than any other small arm, buying from private contractors and gun runners. It has been estimated that over 900,000 P53 Enfields were imported into America and saw service in every major engagement from the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862) and the Siege of Vicksburg (May 1863), to the final battles of 1865. The gun was highly sought after in the Confederate ranks. According to a survey taken by British officials during the early stages of war on the arms of the Western Confederate Forces, nearly 70% were armed with smoothbore arms, such as the Model 1842 Springfield. Later in the war the same survey was taken, they found that more than 75% had acquired a rifle, mainly the Pattern 1853 Enfield.

The condition is excellent, even though it does appear as being broken, this was more than likely recovered from the battlefield soon after the war ended. The wood itself was preserve quite nicely and still holds the appearance of having been recently removed. There is a small paper label present that dates to at least the turn of the century. The label still retains its original identifier information and reads as “CONFEDERATE GUN STOCK”. Now there is no way of proving this was in fact Confederate used, but we are fairly confident that the identification was correct. We believe this relic was from an old Grand Army of the Republic post, as they often had displays and small museums inside of their buildings.

This wonderful relic comes more than ready to display!

Grand Army of the Republic
The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army (United States Army), Union Navy (U.S. Navy), and the Marines who served in the American Civil War. It was founded in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, and grew to include hundreds of "posts" (local community units) across the North and West. It was dissolved in 1956 at the death of its last member.

According to Stuart McConnell:

The Grand Army of the Republic, the largest of all Union Army veterans' organizations, was the most powerful single-issue political lobby of the late nineteenth century, securing massive pensions for veterans and helping to elect five postwar presidents from its own membership. To its members, it was also a secret fraternal order, a source of local charity, a provider of entertainment in small municipalities, and a patriotic organization.

Linking men through their experience of the war, the G.A.R. became among the first organized advocacy groups in American politics, supporting voting rights for black veterans, promoting patriotic education, helping to make Memorial Day a national holiday, lobbying Congress to establish regular veterans' pensions, and supporting Republican political candidates. Its peak membership, at 410,000, was in 1890, a high point of various Civil War commemorative and monument dedication ceremonies.

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