Original Item. Only One Available. This is a gorgeous service-worn example of one of the scarcest yet most iconic naval weapons designed for the United States Navy, the Model 1841 Naval Cutlass. The M1841 was patterned after the M1832 Artillery Short Sword, featuring the gorgeous eagle feather grip. This example was manufactured by Ames in 1846, making it a perfect example for the Mexican-American War.

The Naval cutlass was intended for general use as ship defense; the sword is relatively short to allow for fighting in close quarters. The wide brass guard was designed to protect the sailor’s hand.

The M1841 naval cutlass was heavy and cumbersome and therefore not very popular with the enlisted sailors who needed to wield it on pitching and rolling decks. Only 6600 of these were manufactured between 1841 through 1847. It was replaced just prior to the Civil War with the M1860 naval cutlass for which over 24,000 were produced. However, model 1841 Naval Cutlasses were used extensively during the Civil War by both the North and the South.

This example is marked on the ricasso:

N.P. AMES
CABOTVILLE
R

And on the other side:

U.S.
1846

The initials "RC" and "JL" are stamped on the left and right hand side of the brass quintillion on the M1841 naval cutlass. These were the two inspectors located at the N.P. Ames manufacturing facility in Cabotville, Mass.

The model 1841 US Naval Cutlass features a solid brass hilt with fish scale grip held by three steel rivets with a D-style knuckleguard. The pommel has the Federal Eagle cast into both sides. The blade is double edged, slightly diamond shaped with a raised center line on both sides. The blade on this example is at full length and has some heavy oxidation, with rust chipping in the edge near the top of the blade. The cutlass overall has a tremendous patina. There are a few small dents in the handguard. The underside of the crossguard is stamped 5C, a rack number or inventory number that many of these cutlasses had stamped on by the Navy post-production. These stamps identified where each cutlass should be located on the ship.

A wonderful example of what has become one of the most sought after naval weapons, ready for further research and display.

Specifications:
Blade Length: 20 ¼”
Hilt Length: 5 ¼”
Total Length: 25 ⅜”

Mexican-American War
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the Intervención Estadounidense en México (American intervention in Mexico), was an invasion of Mexico by the United States Army from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory. Mexico refused to recognize the Treaties of Velasco, because they were signed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna while he was captured by the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its Anglo-American citizens wanted to be annexed by the United States.

Sectional politics over slavery in the United States were preventing annexation because Texas, formerly a slavery-free territory under Mexican rule, would have been admitted as a slave state, upsetting the balance of power between Northern free states and Southern slave states. In the 1844 United States presidential election, Democrat James K. Polk was elected on a platform of expanding U.S. territory to Oregon, California (also a Mexican territory), and Texas by any means, with the 1845 annexation of Texas furthering that goal. However, the boundary between Texas and Mexico was disputed, with the Republic of Texas and the U.S. asserting it to be the Rio Grande and Mexico claiming it to be the more-northern Nueces River. Polk sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico in an attempt to buy the disputed territory, together with California and everything in-between for $25 million (equal to $727,053,571 today), an offer the Mexican government refused. The U.S. sent troops to the disputed Rio Grande, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw. Mexico responded by attacking the soldiers on April 25, 1846, a move which Polk used to convince the Congress of the United States to declare war.

Beyond the disputed area of Texas, U.S. forces quickly occupied the regional capital of Santa Fe de Nuevo México along the upper Rio Grande. U.S. forces also moved against the province of Alta California and then turned south. The Pacific Squadron of the U.S. Navy blockaded the Pacific coast in the lower Baja California Territory. The U.S. Army, under Major General Winfield Scott, invaded the Mexican heartland and captured the capital, Mexico City, in September 1847.

Although Mexico was defeated on the battlefield, negotiating peace was a politically fraught issue. Some Mexican factions refused to consider any recognition of its loss of territory. Although Polk formally relieved his peace envoy, Nicholas Trist, of his post as negotiator, Trist ignored the order and successfully concluded the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It ended the war, and Mexico recognized the cession of present-day Texas, California, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of present-day Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The U.S. agreed to pay $15 million for the physical damage of the war and assumed $3.25 million of debt already owed by the Mexican government to U.S. citizens. Mexico relinquished its claims on Texas and accepted the Rio Grande as its northern border with the United States, a loss of 55% of its territory.

The victory and territorial expansion Polk envisioned inspired patriotism among some sections of the United States, but the war and treaty drew fierce criticism for the casualties, monetary cost, and heavy-handedness. The question of how to treat the new acquisitions intensified the debate over slavery in the United States. Although the Wilmot Proviso that explicitly forbade the extension of slavery into conquered Mexican territory was not adopted by Congress, debates about it heightened sectional tensions. Some scholars see the Mexican–American War as leading to the American Civil War. Many officers who had trained at West Point gained experience in the war in Mexico and later played prominent leadership roles during the Civil War.

In Mexico, the war worsened domestic political turmoil. Since the war was fought on home ground, Mexico suffered large losses of life from both the military and civilian population. The nation's financial foundations were undermined, and more than half of its territory was lost. Mexico felt a loss of national prestige, leaving it in what a group of Mexican writers, including Ramón Alcaraz and José María del Castillo Velasco, called a "state of degradation and ruin...". This group did not acknowledge Mexico's refusal to admit the independence of Texas as a cause of the war, instead proclaiming: "[As for] the true origin of the war, it is sufficient to say that the insatiable ambition of the United States, favored by our weakness, caused it." Americans often justified the war based on the idea of Manifest Destiny, the idea that Americans were destined to expand across North America to the West Coast.