SC Museum Buys Confederate Weapons Smuggled In From Britain

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)– South Carolina’s military history museum has bought the bulk of what’s believed to be the largest collection of British-imported Confederate weapons that were smuggled through the Union blockade.

The Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum paid $620,800 last month for artifacts collected over four decades by the late Cleveland Adger Huey of Columbia.

Museum director Allen Roberson calls it a “groundbreaking collection of one of the last unexplored areas of Civil War history.”

Roberson says the museum bought four-fifths of Huey’s collection.

An exhibit set to open in 2019 will tell how the Confederacy armed its soldiers.

It’s a tale of international financing, privateers and profiteers. Charleston was both a major receiving port and home to financiers who may have inspired the fictional Rhett Butler in “Gone With The Wind.”