LeMat Second Model Percussion Revolver

The "grapeshot" LeMat was a versatile handgun that was capable of firing shot loads or regular projectiles. Although produced in Paris, Belgium, and London, these pistols were invented by Dr. Francois Alexandre LeMat of New Orleans, Louisiana. About 1,500 were imported by the Confederacy, and they were used by such notables as General J.E.B. Stuart, famed Army of Northern Virginia cavalry commander, and by General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, Confederate hero of Fort Sumter, former business partner of Dr. LeMat, and a cousin to LeMat's wife, Justin Sophie LePretre. SN 2162

One of the most colorful - certainly the most unusual - of Confederate arms is the Le Mat revolver, produced in France under contract for the Confederacy. They were smuggled into the South by blockade-running ships. Few arms carried a more lethal potential than did this 9-shot revolver, with its extra shotgun barrel. On Oct. 21, 1856, Dr. Jean Alexandre Francois Le Mat, a physician of French extraction living in New Orleans, secured U. S. patent #15925. Reduced to a few words, his application provided for "A revolver having an upper and an under barrel, the lower one going back to the recoil shield and serving as an axle upon which the cylinder revolves. The chambers of the cylinder fire through the top barrel. The nose of the hammer being adjustable, the one hammer fires both bullets of the chambers through the top barrel and also the charge of shot or buckshot from the lower gun barrel." 

Dr. Le Mat, with Col P.G.T. Beauregard as partner, endeavored to get the "Grapeshot Revolver" (a name given to it at the time) adopted by the U. S. Army. Gen Sterling Price appointed a Board of Officers, and in 1859 the Le Mat revolver was highly recommended, but it was never adopted. Beauregard sold his interest in the C. Girard, and when the South seceded he resigned from U. S. Army and became a general in the Confederate Army. It was he who led the firing on Fort Sumpter on Apr. 12, 1861. 

After the outbreak of hostilities, Le Mat, concerned with questionable wartime production in this country and with a signed contract in his pocket, went to France aboard the English mail ship Trent. He narrowly escaped capture when the vessel was stopped and searched by officers of a Federal gun boat. Once in France Col. Le Mat - he had been an honorary colonel on staff of the Governor of Louisiana - lost no time in arranging with the firm of C. Girard & Co. of Paris for the production of his unique revolver. His first contract with the Confederacy called for 5,000 arms. The actual production of his percussion arms, however, is believed to have been slightly more than half that number.