For collectors and students of antique arms, these items are not simply interesting weapons, they are vehicles to the past and enduring reminders of our rich and complex history. Aside from the American Revolution, no period in American history has arguably has been as dramatic nor has had as lasting of an impression on our country as the American Civil War. The country was torn in two by political, moral, and economic differences and then reunited and liberated through intensely bloody conflict during which family members engaged each other in mortal combat on battlefields not in some far away land or off on the western frontier but amongst our homes and farms, often within short distances from the capital, in massive armies that dwarfed the armies of the Revolution. The amount of suffering during the Civil War was immense, including among many of the civilians, and, as a nation, we still grapple with the complex history and the legacy of the “War Between the States” to this very day. Firearms from the Civil War, especially those with documented history, remain among the most sought after and valuable antique arms due to their intimate connection to that history. This incredible cased revolver is certainly among the highest condition of all presentation Model 1860 Army revolvers and has a significant factory presentation inscription from Colt Vice President Richard H.W. Jarvis to influential Union surgeon Dr. John J. Milhau. With its condition and inscription alone, this cased set is incredibly valuable, but its history makes it truly remarkable. It serves as a lasting reminder of the Colt Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company whose workmen armed our soldiers in their fight to preserve the Union, the soldiers who put themselves in harm's way for our country and never returned home whole, and the patriotic men and women who worked tirelessly and put their own lives on the line to care for the sick and wounded of both sides after the battles while thousands of lives hung in the balance. The stunning revolver was manufactured in 1862 and is largely a classic Civil War production Colt Model 1860 Army aside from the special silver plated brass trigger guard and the historic presentation inscription in neatly cut script: "Dr. Milhau/From R.W.H. Jarvis” in two lines at the center of the back strap. The trigger guard also has a "C" on the left below the "44 CAL" marking, and an additional "2" marking is stamped above or below the serial numbers on the barrel, frame, trigger guard, and back strap used by the factory to note special finishing. All of the visible serial numbers match. The frame is cut for a shoulder stock and has the short screws for mounting a shoulder stock. The revolver comes within its factory presentation rosewood case with red lining, an unopened Eley Bros. cap tin, two cartridge packs "MADE OF HAZARD'S POWDER/EXPRESSLY FOR/ COL. COLT'S PATENT/NEW MODEL/REVOLVING HOLSTER PISTOL," L-shaped combination screwdriver and nipple wrench, case key, blued ball/bullet mold, and brown lacquered powder flask with sloped charger. This incredible cased set is illustrated in the "Arms Gazette" in July 1979 on p. 24 in the article "Newly Discovered Colt Presentations" by Ronald Ogan and in "The Colt 1860 Army Revolver" by Charles Pate on p. 380 where the author states it was "one of 33 'plated' NMA pistols added to inventory on September 6, 1862. Its serial number was found in a box of 20 NMA revolvers shipped to a Colt dealer on September 8, 1862, but the serial number and eleven others were lined out, indicating they were either not included in the shipment or were shipped and subsequently returned. The former was probably the case. The author could not find later shipping information, but the pistol does [exist], is in an excellent case, and has a back strap inscription reading, 'Dr. Milhau From R.W.H. Jarvis.'...Major/Surgeon John Jefferson Milhau was placed in charge of all the Army hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area in September 1862, which might have precipitated this presentation. Milhau had been appointed Captain/Assistant Surgeon in 1852 and was promoted to Major/Surgeon in April of 1862." The lack of shipping date is likely due to it being removed from company inventory for presentation rather than sale. It is possibly the revolver referenced in the Colt records for Tuesday September 16, 1862, for "1 N.M. Army Pistol & Apps per [Day Book]" for $19 noted on page 45 of "Colt Presentations from the Factory Ledgers, 1856-1869" by Houze in the section for arms listed in the ledgers under the name of Captain Robert H.K. Whiteley. Houze theorizes that Whiteley was a "straw man" for the company discreetly transferring presentation arms to other officers. The set is also accompanied by an extensive research file from collector Greg Lampe which has provided much of the information discussed below. The inscription clearly indicates this revolver was inscribed for presentation from Colt Vice President Richard William Hart Jarvis (1829-1904) to Dr. John Jefferson Milhau (1828-1891). Jarvis was Samuel Colt's brother-in-law and was a prominent lawyer in New York City before becoming vice president at Colt in 1856. After the Civil War, he was the company president from 1865 to 1901, the longest president in the company’s history. On January 10, 1862, Samuel Colt had died leaving Jarvis as a key representative for both the company and Colt’s family. As the head of the company, he oversaw incredible shifts in firearms technology as the Colt factory shifted from the classic percussion revolvers invented by his brother-in-law such as this historic Model 1860 Army to new metallic cartridge revolvers including the iconic Colt Single Action Army and on to rapid fire firearms such as the Gatling guns first debuted during the Civil War and later manufactured by Colt and the early machine guns. Dr. John J. Milhau was a career U.S. Army surgeon. He came from a wealthy French-American family with ties to the French aristocracy. His parents moved to New York City in 1830. His father, John Tiburce Gregoire de Milhau, was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The family’s pharmacy business, J. Milhau & Sons, was located at No. 183 on Broadway just a few doors down from Colt's important New York sales office at 155 Broadway. Officials from the company, likely including Jarvis, would have visited the pharmacy. His father was also an incorporator of the New York College of Pharmacy, the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, and other institutions in New York. The family home was at 41 Lafayette Place in a fashionable upper class neighborhood. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City in 1850 and became an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army on August 30, 1851, and served in the multiple expeditions and at various posts in the American West during the antebellum era and also pursued his interests in anthropology and ethnology and published reports on some of the native peoples of the West. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Dr. Milhau was an Assistant Surgeon at Fort Churchill in Nevada and soon after was stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco in California, but his experience was required east of the Continental Divide where the massive Union and Confederate armies were clashing, and he left California with the first troop detachment headed to the East on October 20, 1861, and reached Washington, D.C., in November, and Dr. Milhau was made a Medical Inspector of the Army of the Potomac. On March 17, 1862, he became Medical Director of the III Army Corps. He was on the field at Yorktown, Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Seven Days, and Second Bull Run. On September 19, 1862, two days after the Battle of Antietam, Dr. Milhau became the Medical Director of the hospitals in Frederick, Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C. We do not have documentation detailing precisely when this revolver was inscribed and delivered, but the existing records do indicate that it was originally meant to be in a shipment in September 1862, and there would be little reason for it not to be sent out shortly after that time given the demand for Colt revolvers during the war. Pate and Lampe theorized that it was presented when Dr. Milhau was appointed as Medical Director in Frederick. Lampe added that given Dr. Milhau’s family business location near Colt's sales officer, his father likely knew Jarvis personally. Samuel Colt had long made presentations of revolvers to influential officers, business partners, and acquaintances part of his advertising and sales campaigns, and that tradition continued on after his death although presentation inscriptions from Jarvis are notably much, much scarcer than those from Samuel Colt. The inclusion of his name with no reference to the business itself suggests a personal connection. The timing here is also significant. September 1862 marked Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of the North and led to intense fighting and tremendous losses, including the single bloodiest day in American military history at Sharpsburg, Maryland, where the fighting at the Battle of Antietam led to 22,717 casualties, including 2,108 Union soldiers killed and 9,540 wounded and a further 1,546 killed and 7,752 wounded among Lee’s men. The losses sustained in the battle forced Lee to pull back into Virginia and gave President Abraham Lincoln the confidence to release the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd ultimately propelling the country forward to the abolition of slavery by the end of 1865 and opening the door to an increasing number of African-American soldiers fighting for the Union cause. In Lee’s wake, there were thousands of wounded and sick soldiers to be cared for, and into this wake, Dr. Milhau stepped in to save lives. The situation in Frederick during and following the bloody Maryland Campaign in 1862 was truly horrifying and desperate. The town had been occupied by the Confederates in early September, and the Union evacuated those patients that could be moved before they arrived but was forced to leave those too wounded or ill behind. After the Confederate retreat, the Union retook control of Frederick, and Dr. Milhau worked to setup hospital facilities for the immense number of sick and wounded men. He oversaw the setting up of hospital sites in twenty-seven buildings and two camps within a matter of days and had them running by September 21 just four days after Antietam as detailed in “One Vast Hospital: The Civil War Hospital Sites in Frederick, Maryland after Antietam” by Terry Reimer (printed copy included in the file). The hospitals tended to thousands of men with horrific wounds. The Minie balls used in Civil War rifle-muskets lever more devastating wounds than the round balls of earlier conflicts, often shattering bones leading to amputations. Dr. Milhau was made Medical Director of Frederick, Maryland, which also covered Hagerstown. The office was abolished in January of 1863 as the need was reduced, and he later served as Medical Director of the V Army Corps and was relieved from the field due to illness from exposure on November 20, 1864. He returned to New York City where he examined new recruits and was also one of the surgeons in charge of the Central Park Hospital. After the assassination of President Lincoln, Dr. Milhau was a guard of honor and protected the president's body. He remained with the Army after the war and was stationed in the South during Reconstruction as the Medical Director of the Third Military District in the Department of the South. He is noted as having been the only surgeon who remained to care for the inmates during the cholera outbreak at Hart's Island, New York, and received a brevet promotion to brigadier general in recognition of his service. He resigned on October 1, 1876, after his father’s death and took over the family estate and married in 1878 and had one son. Like his father, Dr. Milhau was involved in numerous civic organizations, including as a member the County Medical Society of the New York Academy of Medicine and the Society for the Relief of Widows and Orphans of Medical Men, as one of the State Commissioners of Charity, and as secretary of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. He was a member of multiple military orders, including as Treasurer in Chief of the Loyal Legion, and marched directly behind the hearse during President Ulysses S. Grant’s funeral precession in 1885. After he died on May 8, 1891, at the family home at No. 41 Lafayette Place, he was remembered as a man who gave up his birthright as a French count to serve in the U.S. Military. His funeral included a battalion from the U.S. Army stationed at Governor’s Island as well as numerous generals and officers, and he was buried in his family’s plot in the Calvary Cemetery alongside his wife. The Medical Record's obituary closed: "Dr. Milhau ranked as one of the best surgeons of the war, was a judicious operator, a keen diagnostician, and an officer of great executive ability. He was singularly approachable, as affable as he was firm, and during the whole term of his military service never lost the confidence of his superiors in rank or the devotion of his subordinates. He always did his whole duty quietly, unostentatiously, and effectively." After Dr. Milhau's death, Greg Lampe indicates the revolver was inherited by the doctor's only child, his now orphaned son Louis John de Grenon Milhau (1884-1967) who was only seven years old. He was also survived by his elderly mother and his brother who continued to run the family drug business at 183 Broadway. Lampe writes, "I believe that it was kept in a bank safety deposit box for most of the time after the death of his father. Louis spent most of his youth in a boarding school, then college, and then various travels around the U.S. and overseas, then World War I. This would explain the exceptional condition of the set and the reason that the one area on the cylinder flaked from sitting in the case for decades." He indicates the cased set was purchased by Raymond Petry in early 1979 from an unknown source and was later owned by Harry Durand and Vincent Caponi Sr. "who owned it for several years and considered it the cornerstone of his vast collection" before it was purchased by Lampe in 2004 after Caponi's death. Provenance: Dr. John J. Milhau from Colt Vice President Richard H.W. Jarvis; The Milhau Family; The Raymond Petry Collection; The Harry Durand Collection; The Vincent Caponi Sr. Collection; The Greg Lampe Collection

Excellent with 90% plus original blue finish on the barrel and cylinder, 60% original blue finish on the back strap with the rear mainly a smooth gray patina from contact with the case and a crisp factory presentation inscription, 98% plus of the original age darkened silver plating on the trigger guard, and 98% plus original vibrant case colors on the loading lever, hammer, and frame. The revolver generally only exhibits very minor wear associated with age, storage, and light handling such as the patches of flaked blue. The grip is in the same extremely fine condition and retains 98% of the original high gloss "piano" varnish finish and has only some minor handling and storage marks. Mechanically excellent. The case is exceptionally fine and has minor storage wear on the exterior and some fading and contact wear on the interior. The accessories are in excellent condition with nearly all of their original finish remaining. This revolver was the cornerstone of Vincent Caponi Sr.'s collection and a key component of Greg Lampe's extraordinary collection of high end American firearms for good reason: it is an absolutely spectacular set with extremely high condition and extraordinary history. Any Colt Model 1860 Army revolver in this condition would already be a valuable addition to any advanced collection. With a factory presentation case, high condition accessories, and a factory presentation inscription from Colt Vice President Richard H.W. Jarvis to Dr. John J. Milhau in 1862 while he was overseeing the care of Union veterans who had placed themselves in harms way to protect the nation's capital and the Union as a whole, this set must certainly be regarded as among the most significant Colt artifacts.