Hawg Haggen: Most Southern guns were built on Colt navy patterns and almost all were .36.
I have had several Southern revolvers and some are .36 cal. but many are larger cal. and not all of Colt design. Of the 400 antique gun collection we sold in 1995 there where a dozen plus Southern CW revolvers. To see a few of that collection go to http://hrd7.tripod.com/collect/connershortarms.htm
Johan Steele wrote:
The LeMat wasn't terribly popular because it was quite heavy (4 lbs compared to 2.5 on average for most others revolvers) and a touch uncomfortable to fire apparently. THe CS govt didn't care for them because they were quite expensive and only about 1500 made it to North America & into CS service and of those only about 400 saw service prior to 64.
Caleb Huse, the CS purchasing agent in Europe thought they were too expensive at $30 a piece. All in all Huse preffered to purchase Kerr revolvers which IIRC he managed to buy about 6000. And about 3,800 Colt (captured arms) approx. 2,200 Colt copies made by the CS and add the 1400 or so Spiller & Rurr's, 1000 or so Adams and another additional 10-15000 revolvers in arsenals & captured from Union garrisons at the begining of the War and you can see the CS was desperately short of pistols for their Cav. Only about 1/4 of CS Cav were armed w/ pistols, another half w/ 2 & 3 band rifles, carbines or shotguns and perhaps as many as 25% carried only sabres, in particular in the East under Hampton. The CS Cav made due w/ what they had... and by God they gave good service.
It's important to realize that many CS Cav Regiments were wholly armed w/ pistols, or sabres or rifles but rarely armed as US Cav were suposed to be w/all three. Though even many US Cav units were short of arms w/ some issued only sabres.