Dug Confederate Breckinridge Style Belt Plate

Dug Confederate Breckinridge Style Belt Plate – This brass, die-struck belt plate remains in excellent, dug condition. It has been suggested, by the location of most of the excavations of these plates, that production occurred in Deep South areas, perhaps during the 1862-1863 period; research has also suggested that these plates were issued to accompany accoutrements furnished by an Alabama or Mississippi arsenal. Most examples of this style plate were comparable to the one offered here; they had, as this plate once had, three brass belt hooks. These plates have been found in several mid-war sites in Georgia and Tennessee. The moniker “Breckinridge”, after Confederate Major General John C. Breckinridge, was given to these plates by early relic hunters after finding some of these plates in Virginia, in sites occupied by Breckinridge’s troops. This plate is the exact same plate (Plate #1) depicted on p. 279, in Mike O’Donnell and Howard Crouch’s book “The Hammond Civil War Collection; Fifty Years Searching the Virginia Woods”, published in 2020. The plate retains Richard Hammond’s catalog number “CS 32”, as seen in the photograph of the back of the plate, in the O’Donnell and Crouch book about his collection. The plate remains in excellent condition, retaining an overall chocolate-brown patina.