The LeMat Grape Shot Revolver is one of the most remarkable firearms ever produced at any time. It featured a cylinder with not six, but nine .42-caliber bullets, and a separate 18-gauge barrel made to fire buckshot. This put tremendous firepower into the hand of cavalry leader J.E.B. Stuart and others who carried it through the Civil War. In this video, Curator of Education Joe Long talks about the two LeMats the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum has in its collections, one example each from the first and second generations of the weapon.

Everyone has heard that the Confederacy was at a disadvantage when it came to producing its own war materiel, but there were some exceptions to this rule. The Morse breech-loading carbine was an ingenious weapon manufactured in Greenville, SC, late in the war. Here, Joe Long, curator of education, displays a Morse carbine and explains what made it special.

Curator of Education Joe Long talks about the regimental flag of the 1st South Carolina Rifle Regiment, also known as Orr's Rifles. It was formed by James Lawrence Orr in July 1861, and the next year became a part of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Its distinctive interpretation of a Palmetto tree helped inspire the Relic Room's new logo.

A movie about Harriet Tubman and her heroic fight against slavery is in the theaters. Meanwhile we have a Tubman-related artifact, perhaps the only one in South Carolina, at the Relic Room. It's a tattered regimental flag of the unit that she guided on the Combahee River Raid, which freed about 800 slaves. Here, our own Joe Long tells the story.