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In 1963 the North Carolina Civil War Centennial Commission purchased this LeMat pistol for the Civil War centennial exhibit in the Hall of History (now the North Carolina Museum of History). The LeMat went on display, and among the thousands of visitors who saw it was a young boy from the North Carolina Mountains named Charles Frazier. The size and formidability of the weapon so impressed Frazier that years later, while writing the best-selling novel Cold Mountain, he remembered it and included a LeMat in the story—as the pistol carried by Inman, the main character. Although only high-ranking officers normally had LeMats, it was not uncommon for an enlisted soldier such as Inman to take one off the battlefield for his own use.
Jean Alexandre François LeMat, a French physician living in New Orleans, patented the LeMat revolver in the United States on October 21, 1856. The fearsome weapon fired nine shots from a top barrel, plus a shotgun like blast from a lower barrel. To protect his invention, LeMat took out patents in a number of European countries, including France. At the outbreak of the Civil War, LeMat secured a contract from the Confederate Ordnance Department to provide 5,000 of the pistols, and he traveled to the safety of Paris to begin manufacturing them. The first shipments of these pistols passed through the Union blockade into the Confederacy during the summer of 1862. Although these LeMats were originally intended for Confederate naval officers, many ended up in the hands of cavalry officers and other high-ranking Confederates. Generals J. E. B. Stuart and P. G. T. Beauregard both carried LeMat pistols. When Andersonville Prison commander Henry Wirz surrendered to Union officers, he turned over a LeMat to his captors.
The name of the person who carried this LeMat pistol during the Civil War is not known. However, because of a visit to the museum four decades ago by a young Charles Frazier, millions of people have either read about Inman's LeMat in Cold Mountain or seen it in the motion picture.
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