Confederate Fort Huger VA on the James River Civil War Relic Tin Trouser Button

Description

We are working as partners in conjunction with Gettysburg Relics to offer some very nice American Civil War relics for sale. The owner of Gettysburg Relics was the proprietor of Artifact at 777 on Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg for a number of years, and we are now selling exclusively on eBay.
FORT HUGER / RECOVERED AT THE CONFEDERATE FORT ON THE JAMES RIVER - DUG BY THE SELLER, ANDY KEYSER - Civil War Soldier's Tin 17mm 4-Hole Trouser Button. A nice artifact, recovered by Andy Keyser in the early 1990s from the site of Fort Huger, Virginia, a Confederate Fort on the James River.
This Civil War Soldier's Tin 4-Hole Trouser Button
, was recovered by Andy Keyser in the early 1990s from the site of Fort Huger, Virginia, a Confederate Fort on the James River.
'A friend of mine from the Fort Huger area got permission to hunt the area around the fort (long before it was a park / historical site) and took me along.'
Andy and another relic hunter from the Fort Huger
area hunted the area around the fort (long before it was a park and historical site). Fort Huger is a historic archaeological site located near Smithfield, Isle of Wight County, Virginia. The site is the location of an abandoned American Civil War fort on the south side of the James River across from Fort Eustis/Mulberry Point.
'Fort Huger is a strategic Civil War fort located on a bluff overlooking the James River. This fort, along with Fort Boykin, was established to block the approach by land and river to the Confederate capital in Richmond. Self-guided tours of the fort provide a view of the James River Reserve Fleet.
In 1861, Confederate engineer Col. Andrew Talcott surveyed several defensive sites on the James River to protect Richmond, including Harden’s Bluff and nearby Fort Boykin. The site at Harden’s Bluff was named Fort Huger for Gen. Benjamin Huger, who commanded the Department of Norfolk. Slaves and free blacks constructed the fort under direction of the Confederate Engineer Bureau, and detachments of Lt. Col. Fletcher Archer’s 5th Virginia Infantry Battalion were posted here.
Benjamin Huger, the career U.S. Army ordnance officer who fought with distinction during the Mexican-American War and served as a Confederate general during the Civil War.
Isle of Wight County restored and interpreted this fort and
in 2007.
Fort Huger's site on Harden's Bluff (or Hardin's/Hardy's Point) was selected by Virginia's state engineer Colonel Andrew Talcott in August 1861 to supplement Fort Boykin, also on the south bank of the James, and the Mulberry Point battery on the north bank. The fort was also designed by him. Construction began immediately under Capt. E.T.D. Myers and Capt. John Clarke. The fort was completed in March 1862 with positions for 15 guns, 13 of which were occupied. A Confederate Engineer Bureau report of March 12, 1862 lists one 10-inch columbiad, four 9-inch Dahlgren shell guns, two 8-inch columbiads (all on barbette carriages) and six hot-shot 32-pounders on ship carriages. All of these weapons were smoothbores. The fort included a hot-shot furnace and was enclosed at the back by an earthen wall facing a swamp. The garrison was Lt. Col. Fletch Archer's 5th Virginia Infantry Battalion.[3] This included two companies as artillery in the fort and three companies as infantry outside the fort. There was confusion of command at the fort between Archer and CSA Capt. De Lagnel, a former naval officer who commanded the fort's artillery companies. Generals John B. Magruder and Robert E. Lee wrote letters to address this confusion, essentially placing Archer in overall command and De Lagnel in charge of the artillery. Correspondence between Lt. Col. Henry Cabell and Brigadier General Lafayette McLaws indicated other deficiencies at the fort. There was no "clear zone" in the woods behind it that attackers would have to cross under fire, wooden structures in the fort might catch fire under bombardment, and there were no bomb-proof shelters. The lack of proper fortress carriages for the 32-pounders was also a deficiency, and the gun crews were not being drilled in reloading their weapons. In April 1862 Capt. J. M. Maury took command of the fort's artillery.
On May 8, 1862 Fort Huger was attacked by a Union Navy squadron that also attacked Fort Boykin. The warships included USS Galena, Aroostook, and Port Royal under Commander John Rodgers as part of the Peninsula campaign, an unsuccessful Union offensive from Fort Monroe to Richmond. Fort Boykin was soon silenced and abandoned, as its guns lacked the range to reply to the bombardment.The Union ran low on ammunition firing against Fort Huger and withdrew, but returned on the 16th reinforced by the ironclads USS Monitor and USRC Naugatuck. This bombardment resulted in the Confederates spiking their guns and abandoning Fort Huger. A report by Union Navy Lt. John Waters after examining the fort showed that many of the concerns noted in mid-March were addressed, including clearing the woods behind the fort and building bomb-proofs.
Present
The site was acquired by Isle of Wight County Parks and Recreation in 2005 and opened to the public as a park in 2007. Archaeological investigations are ongoing. Five replicas of Civil War-era cannons are at the fort.'
A provenance letter will be included. The maps show the area where this artifact was found.
We include as much documentation with the relics as we possess. This includes copies of tags if there are original identification tags or maps, as well as a signed letter of provenance with the specific recovery information.
All of the collections that we are offering for sale are guaranteed to be authentic and are either older recoveries, found before the 1960s when it was still legal to metal detect battlefields, or were recovered on private property with permission. Some land on Battlefields that are now Federally owned, or owned by the Trust, were acquired after the items were recovered. We will not sell any items that were recovered illegally, nor will we sell any items that we suspect were recovered illegally.
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