Swords are just big knives. I am intrigued by the pistol. It looks very similar to the 1842 Navy pistol carried by my great grandfather at Shiloh. He wasn't in the military then, but his father was a farmer and itinerant preacher in the area. One of his stops, every third Sunday, was the little country chapel of Shiloh. After the battle, he and the family, ardent abolitionists, had to leave western Tennessee, a strong pro-slavery area, via the underground railroad, which fortunately for his descendants, practiced EEO principles. The family wound up in Illinois, becoming dam'Yankees.

My mother, Southern belle, always referred to that pistol as "the Yankee cannon."