Dug Leech and Rigdon Style CS Tongue and Wreath Belt Plate

Dug Leech and Rigdon Style CS Tongue and Wreath Belt Plate – This rare, Confederate plate is the exact plate pictured on page 290, in Mike O’Donnell and Howard Crouch’s book “The Hammond Civil War Collection; Fifty Years Searching the Virginia Woods”, published in 2020. In operation at the onset of the war as Memphis Novelty Works, shortly thereafter changing to the firm of Leech & Rigdon, the company would fulfill numerous Confederate government contracts for cavalry swords and belts with two-piece plates. The company’s initial plates had plain or blank tongues; by the end of 1861, the tongues exhibited the letters “CS” on the face of the disk. Other southern manufacturers would use this pattern of plate, with less success in duplicating the quality of the earlier produced Leech & Rigdon plates. Indicative of this decline in quality is the “blurred” shape of the “S” on this plate, perhaps due to problems with the sand mold utilized in casting the plate. O’Donnell and Crouch suggest that this plate was likely a second or third generation copy of the original Leech & Rigdon 1861 plate. They also suggest that this plate was probably one of some 10,000 cavalry plates cast in late 1862, by the sword and arms manufacturer Marshall & Co. (H. Marshall & Co. was a sword manufacturer in Atlanta, Georgia that worked with carbine inventor, George W. Morse) for distribution by the Atlanta Arsenal. This plate retains Richard Hammond’s catalog number “61”, as seen in the photograph of the back of the tongue in the O’Donnell and Crouch book about his collection. The plate remains in excellent condition, retaining an overall, pleasing olive-green patina.