With War looming on the horizon, the Mississippi legislature authorized the raising of State troops and designated $150,000.00 to arm and equip the new troops. Mississippi was able to purchase 900 waist belt plates and matching cartridge box plates from Emerson Gaylord of Chicopee, Massachusetts in late 1860 or early in 1861. Gaylord also supplied plates for Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Maryland and Virginia.

The excavated Mississippi cartridge box plate shown here looks as if it could be a be a battlefield pickup, meaning that it could have been found before the advent of metal detectors. It is obvious that it has been on the ground, but does not appear to have been in the ground. This is the finest Mississippi box plate that I have ever seen. The plate’s face detail remains crisp more than one hundred and fifty years after it was lost; both the lines and the stippling are virtually perfect. It is a perfect face and a perfect back; so crisp and clean is the face, that from the front it appears non-excavated.