Samuel Colt’s twice-signed personal copy of Regulations for the Army of the United States, 1861. First edition. NY: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1861. Hardcover, 5 x 7.75, 457 pages. Signed prominently on opening page in bold black ink, "Sam'l Colt," and then again at the top of the title page, "Col. Sam'l Colt." On pages 338-340, the Regulations state the price of Colt revolvers part by part. The prices stated refer to the Colt 1851 Navy and the Colt Dragoon. But by the time it was published, the manual was already behind the curve: the Ordnance Department had selected Colt’s newly introduced .44 caliber 1860 Army revolver as its standard sidearm—a weapon not yet included in the government’s own regulations. It’s a telling detail that underscores how rapidly wartime innovation outpaced bureaucracy. Autographic condition: very good to fine, with light toning and creasing to the first signed page, and heavy ink erosion to the title page signature, which has resulted in areas of paper loss. Book condition: VG-/None, with rubbing to boards, bumped corners, and slightly worn spine ends.
In the years leading up to the American Civil War, Colt supplied both the North and South with firearms, a practice in keeping with his history of selling weapons to opposing sides in European conflicts. In 1859, he considered establishing an armory in the South, and as late as 1861, he sold thousands of revolvers to Confederate agents like John Forsyth and Benjamin McCulloch. Although trade with the South was still legal at the time, newspapers such as the New York Daily Tribune, The New York Times, and the Hartford Daily Courant accused Colt of being a Southern sympathizer and a traitor to the Union. Colt was steadfast in his defense, maintaining that shipments to the Southern states ceased once a state of war had been officially declared. In response, Colt made a pact with the Union and was commissioned as a colonel in Connecticut's 1st Regiment of Colt’s Revolving Rifles on May 16, 1861. He envisioned the unit consisting of soldiers over six feet tall, armed with his revolving rifles. However, the regiment was never deployed, and Colt was discharged a month later, on June 20th. A compelling artifact linking the inventor, his weapons, and the fast-moving storm of Civil War—a volume where the rules of war were literally being rewritten.
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