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D-Guard Bowies

I was looking through Newman's book "Civil War Knives" and came across his section on Confederate D-Guard Bowies. Now. I've always associated the D-Guard as a knife of the south but was it actually just a confederate thing? The impression I'm left with from the book is the ones that were used by Union soldiers were Southern made contraband/souvenirs. Was the D-Guard ignored by Northern Knife makers at the time of the Civil War?

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hanner on October 1, 2011 at 20:10

Toby, I am a huge Civil War fan and live only miles away from a both a Union and a Confederate encampment. Not too far from a battle of the civil war in Missouri called the battle of Pilot Knob.

To the best of my knowledge The confederacy carried the D guard, although they were in short supply. The only D guards carried by Union were taken off a confederate soldier. It does bear further study though because I really don't know who might have made those D guard Bowies. I'll see if I can come across info on it.

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Permalink Reply by Tobias Gibson on October 1, 2011 at 21:03

I believe you are probably right but I'm also digging around. From what Ican tell, there was really no rhyme or reason to how the D-guards were made. Most seem to have been made from cut down sword blades or files. Most seem to have had brass or iron guards with a multitude of materials used for handles but primarily wood, of almost any type.

In comparison, while with the esception of a few navy claps knives, swords and bayonets, most union knives were privately purchased by union soldiers or ons some occasions, commanders bought them for their unit, but there was no real standard issue, Union wide.

From what I can tell, most of the Union knives were made in Sheffield England, or in Northern factories making knives based on Sheffield designs. Sheffield, was in turn making a lot of knives based on the traditional Bowie knife (no d-guard)

The north also had some strick regulations on "personal weapons such as knives (, according to Newman's book) whereas the Southern solider was encouraged to find alternative means to fight and thus the use of large non-regulation knives was actually encouraged.

Obviously there is much more to all of this and I'm speaking in broad generalizations but ut does lead me to think if D-Guards were made up north, they weren't made in large numbers by any factory nor carried in large numbers by any unit. If they were, we would know about it.

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Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on October 2, 2011 at 19:35

Tobias,

Donnie is also a civil was "nut". Thanks for the article, I think he may find this book in his stocking this christmas as it sounds very interesting. Being in the south for many years and living here when my interest in knives began, I always thought the reason we only saw this design from confederate soldiers was just that, being in the south. It is very interesting to find that the union soldiers did not receive them as "issued"

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hanner on October 3, 2011 at 15:47

Interesting, so far I've only found a reference to the fact the majority may have been 'short swords" or should I say swords made short! Have you come across a knifemaker by the name of Black? He was at least making Bowies in that time frame.