American Military Insignia 1800-1851 Part 15

Struck in copper and silvered, this piece is a die variant of the preceding plate. A floral border replaces the plain border, and the overhead arc has 5-pointed rather than 6-pointed stars. The floral border marks it as probably an officer's device.

CAP PLATE, 1814-1825(?)

_USNM 60313-M (S-K 69). Figure 104._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 104]

A die variant of the preceding plate, this device has an unusually wide floral border. As in so many of the common pieces of this period, the center device was purposely designed small so that the die could be used to strike matching waist-belt plates. Examples of waist-belt plates struck from dies of this particular design are known. Struck in copper, there is a plume socket soldered to the reverse along with two looped-wire fasteners. The fasteners are not contemporary.

CAP PLATE, 1814-1825(?)

_USNM 60314-M (S-K 70). Figure 105._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 105]

This is a die variant of the three plates immediately preceding.

However, the center device lacks the fineness of detail of the others, a fact that suggests that several makers working with different die sinkers produced this basic pattern. The plate is struck in copper, and originally it had a plume socket attached to the reverse. The present looped-wire fasteners are not original.

CAP PLATE, 1814-1825(?)

_USNM 60299-M (S-K 57). Figure 106._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 106]

This plate, which is of bra.s.s, is of a less common design than its predecessors. However, since there is another such plate, but of silver-on-copper, in the national collections, it can be surmised that pieces of this same pattern were made for use by several different units.

A floral-bordered shield is topped by an out-sized sunburst with 13 stars, clouds, and the motto "Unity is Strength." In the center of the shield is the eagle, with wings widely outspread and with lightning bolts in the right talon and an olive branch in the left talon. The lightning bolt device, obvious sign of belligerency, first appeared about 1800 and is not seen in plates designed after 1821. The motto and the date 1776 are far more typical of Militia than Regular Army usage.

-- In 1821 the Regular Army discarded all its large cap plates and adopted the bell-crown leather cap. Militia organizations lost no time in adopting a similar cap and, conversely, placing on it--and on the tall beaver which followed in the 1830's--the largest plates it could accommodate, using variations of discarded Regular Army patterns as well as original designs.

From 1821 until well into the 1840's large cap plates were ma.s.s-produced by manufacturers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and perhaps other cities of the New England metal manufacturing area. The few early platemakers, such as Crumpton and Armitage of Philadelphia and Peasley of Boston, were joined by a number of others. Prominent among these were Charles John Joullain, who made plates in New York during the 1820's, and William Pinchin of Philadelphia. Joullain is first listed in New York directories, in 1817, as a "gilder," and so continues through 1828. Sometimes his given name is listed as Charles, sometimes as James, and finally as Charles James. From 1820 to 1828 his address is the same, 32 Spring Street. There is a William Pinchin (Pinchon) listed in the Philadelphia directories as a silverplater or silversmith almost continuously from 1785 through 1863, indicating the possibility of a family occupation.

It is believed that some of the New England makers of uniform b.u.t.tons also manufactured plates. Among such b.u.t.tonmakers of the 1820's and 1830's were R. and W. Robinson, D. Evans and Co., Leavenworth and Co., Benedict and Coe, and others in Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts.

b.u.t.tonmakers often stamped their names or easily recognizable hallmarks on the back of their products.

In most cases it is virtually impossible to ascertain the precise units for which these different plates were first designed, and the problem is further complicated because the maker would sell a specific plate design to several different units. Those designs that incorporate all or part of a state's seal were originally made for Militia organizations of the particular state, but in several instances these plates were sold--altered or not--to units in other parts of the country. Militia organizations that were widely separated geographically purchased cap plates from distant manufacturers who had perhaps a dozen or more stock patterns to offer at a cost much lower than that involved in making a new die from which to strike custom-made ornaments. It made no difference to the Savannah Greys, in Georgia, that their new cap plates were the same as those worn by organizations in Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts. Toward the end of this period of large cap plates, manufacturers came out with two-piece ornaments. After 1833, when the Regiment of United States Dragoons was authorized its large sunburst plate with separate eagle ornament in the center, insignia makers introduced a veritable rash of full sunburst, three-quarter sunburst, and half-sunburst cap plates with interchangeable centers. And for the first time small Militia units could afford their own distinctive devices at little extra cost.

Shoulder-belt and waist-belt plates underwent the same evolution, and by the late 1830's such plates had become a mixture of either single die stampings or composite plates made of several parts soldered or otherwise held onto a rectangular or oval background.

Study of cap plates and other insignia in the Huddy and Duval prints in _U.S. Military Magazine_ points to the years between 1833 and perhaps 1837 or 1838 as the transition period from single to composite ornaments, years during which there was also tremendous growth in the popularity and number of independent Militia units. In contrast to the 1820's when the Militia often waited until the Regulars discarded a device before adopting it, in 1840 there were no less than five organizations, mounted and dismounted, wearing the 1833 dragoon plate in full form while it was still in use by the Regulars. _U.S. Military Magazine_ ill.u.s.trates such plates for the Richmond Light Infantry Blues, the Georgia Hussars, the Macon Volunteers, the Jackson Rifle Corps of Lancaster, Pa., the Montgomery Light Guard, and the Harrison Guards of Allentown, Pa. The plate of the Harrison Guards is an example of the license sometimes practiced by Huddy and Duval in the preparation of their military prints. The color bearer in this print is depicted wearing a full sunburst plate, while the description of the uniform called for "a semi-circular plate or _gloria_."[104]

[Footnote 104: _U.S. Military Magazine_ (March 1839), p. 4.]

In the following descriptions of plates, the term "stock pattern" is used because the insignia are known to have been worn by more than one organization, because their basic designs are so elementary that it appears obvious that they were made for wide distribution, or because they are known to have been made both in silver and in gilt metals.

CAP PLATE, ARTILLERY, C. 1825

_USNM 60307-M (S-K 64). Figure 107._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 107]

On the raised center of this shield-shaped plate is the eagle-on-cannon device within an oval floral border; the Federal shield is below. The whole is superimposed on a trophy of arms and colors with portions of a modified sunburst appearing on the sides.

The plate is struck in bra.s.s. The eagle-on-cannon first appeared on Regular artillery b.u.t.tons in 1802. About 1808 it was used as an embossed device on the leather fan c.o.c.kade, and in 1814 it became the princ.i.p.al design element of the cap plate for Regulars. This plate is thought to be one of the earliest of the post-1821 series of Militia cap plates incorporating the discarded design of the Regular artillery.

UNIDENTIFIED ORNAMENT, PROBABLY CAP PLATE, C. 1821

_USNM 60331-M (S-K 87). Figure 108._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 108]

This silver-on-copper plate is unique in size, shape, and over-all design. It is one of the most unusual Militia insignia in the national collections. The standing eagle of the 1807 mint design with Federal shield, the panoply of arms and colors, and the rayed background all suggest that this plate was made not later than the early 1820's.

Quite possibly it is a cap plate of the War of 1812 period, but positive dating is impossible. Three simple wire fasteners are affixed to the reverse.

CAP PLATE, ARTILLERY, C. 1825

_USNM 60255-M (S-K 13). Figure 109._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 109]

Although the Regular riflemen wore a diamond-shaped plate from 1812 to 1814, this shape does not appear on Militia caps until the mid-1820's.

It was a common form through the 1830's, but since it was always made as a one-piece die-struck plate it became out-dated in the late 1830's when the composite plates came into vogue.

This plate, struck in bra.s.s and bearing the eagle-on-cannon device, must be considered a stock pattern available to many organizations.

Insignia struck from the same die could have been easily made into shoulder-belt plates as well.

CAP PLATE AND PLUME HOLDER, C. 1825

_USNM 604748 (S-K 893). Figure 110._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 110]

This bra.s.s plate is similar in many respects to the regular infantry cap plate, type I, 1814-1821. It is attached to a bell-crowned shako of distinctly Militia origin and is cut in the diamond shape popular with the Militia in the 1820's and 1830's. The design lies within a raised oval dominated by an eagle similar to ones used on War of 1812 insignia. Below the eagle is a Federal shield and a trophy of stacked muskets, a drum surmounted by a dragoon helmet, a gun on a truck carriage, and colors--one the National Colors with 16 stars in the canton.

The plume holder attached to the cap above the plate is an unusually interesting and distinctive device. It is a hemisphere of thin bra.s.s with a round plume socket at the top. The hemisphere has an eagle on a shield and a superimposed wreath device in silver. The blazonry of the shield cannot be identified with any particular state or locality.

CAP PLATE, C. 1821

_USNM 60262 (S-K 20). Figure 111._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 111]