Interesting video, tks.
I had read tho that incidents of Rebs and Yanks actually bayoneting each other an are hard to find, much less fighting with knives. A situation where even revolvers were discarded as excess weight by infantry on long, hard marches.
I believe many of those Bowie’s in photos of soldiers were studio props.
I could be wrong.
A good point he makes about British marketing defining what today we say a Bowie “has” to have. Early on it seems most ANY big knife was called a Bowie until British marketing kicked in. I have read of the exact same British bade design being sold as a Bowie knife here, a Buffalo knife in Canada, and a Gaucho knife in South America.
Meanwhile the Brits were quietly exporting to here many plain ol utilitarian 5-7” blades, far outnumbering Bowies, referred to as “trade knives” or sometimes “scalping knives” when traded to Indians. I wish there were stats on killings with them vs Bowies.
Sheffield mass produced high quality steel so good and so cheap that it wasn’t until the 1840’s that an American manufacturer could compete; Green River (contrary to pop history, the Rocky Mt fur trade was fading fast by then).
