Knife History

NEW ORLEANS – Today, archeologists with the University of Louisiana announced they’ve recovered the knife wielded by James Bowie during the infamous 1827 Sandbar Fight. The bloody encounter, which took place on the banks of the Mississippi River near Vidalia, cemented said knife’s design into what is now known as the Bowie knife. Researchers have attempted to locate the knife Bowie used ever since.

As surprising as this discovery is, it’s nothing to compared to the shocking truth hidden beneath nearly 200 years of history.

“We came across this discovery during a dig for a separate project to study Mississippi flooding patterns as expressed in pre-colonial pottery dispersal, in concert with our partners at [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration],” said Dr. Edward D. Wood, Jr. “I don’t often use the word ‘excited,’ but that accurately reflects the dig team’s feelings.”

“The World Of Knives Will Never Be The Same”

Wood immediately contacted BLADE for confirmation following the discovery before going public with the find.

“The lore around the Sandbar Fight is so deep, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. However, I feel confident that what Wood’s team discovered is, in fact, the exact weapon brandished by James Bowie at the Sandbar Fight,” said Steve Shackleford, BLADE editor-in-chief. “As such, it redefines our understanding of knife history and of James Bowie completely. Earth-shattering is an understatement.”

Other BLADE staffers echoed Shackleford’s sentiments. 

“This is, hands down, the most important piece of knife history to come around in generations. There’s no going back after this. The world of knives will never be the same,” said Ben Sobieck, BLADE online editor.

The Bowie Knife: Not What Most People Picture

As it turns out, the knife James Bowie used during the brawl isn’t actually the Bowie knife people know today (example above). Because the original knife was never photographed, it could only be described in written reports. This may have led to some confusion as word spread.

“It’s like a game of telephone, 19th century style,” Wood said. “Now that we know the truth, it’s easy to see how the original description morphed into something completely different throughout the decades.”

Only BLADE Has The Photo Of The Original Bowie Knife

BLADE is the first and only outlet authorized to share the photo of the original Bowie knife. Wood snapped the picture before recovering the artifact.

“Only now can we share this image with our audience,” Shackleford said. “It’s going to burst a lot of bubbles, but we feel it’s important.”

“This calls into question the entire Sandbar Fight. What really happened on the banks of the Mississippi River all those years ago?” Sobieck said. “Was there really a brawl? Or did the aggrieved parties resolve their disputes through non-violent means?

“Perhaps there was, dare I say it, a pie-making contest?”

The evidence certainly points that way.

“I can’t come to any other conclusion,” Wood said.

EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: The Original Bowie Knife Wasn’t A Knife At All

James Bowie’s “knife” was, in fact, a can opener. 

“The can opener’s proximity to the canned pumpkin points to a pie-making contest, in which James Bowie was clearly the victor. How this simple fact distorted into a bloody brawl is beyond me,” Wood said. “We carbon dated the dirt and everything checks out.”

“One more note I’d like to add is that it’s April 1, which is April Fools’ Day, and that I feel that the BLADE staff did a great job with this year’s prank,” Shackleford said.

“Definitely. And now I’m hungry for some pie. Pumpkin, apple, strawberry, it doesn’t really matter. I’ll put a pot on, too,” Sobieck said.

Happy April Fools’ Day

Switchblades: A “Barbaric and Sadistic” Knife?

“Vicious fantasies of omnipotence, idolatry… barbaric and sadistic atrocities, and monstrous violations of the accepted values spring from the cult of the weapon, and the switchblade knife is included in this. Minus switchblade knives and distorted feeling of power they beget – power that is swaggering, reckless, and itching to express itself in violence – our delinquent adolescents would be shorn of one of their most potent means of incitement to crime.” –Representative Sidney R. Yates of Illinois, 1958

The quote above is not from a Hollywood movie or dime novel. A politician in support of the 1958 Federal Switchblade Act said those words more than 50 years ago. To understand why, we need to look at history, society in the 1950’s and a popular magazine from that time period.

History of Switchblades in the United States

While the word “switchblade” might conjure up imagery of tough guys in the 1950s with leather jackets and stiletto knives, it’s just another term for “automatic knife.” Automatic knives range from the iconic Italian stiletto to the modern OTF (out the front). The defining features are always the same: the blade, biased to open and kept under tension in the handle, deploys at the press of a button or lever on the handle.

The United States led production and distribution of automatic knives for most of the early 20^th century, boosted by George Schrade and the onset of mass production. Schrade set up shops all over the country as well as abroad. Schrade produced and advertised automatic knives mostly to and for ranchers, outdoorsman, hunters, and farmers as quick, one-handed utility tools. Business was good, and people liked their snappy, modern Presto pocketknives. Then World War II happened.

During the war, many U.S. soldiers carried and used Schrade’s automatic knife, but they found something even more attractive while deployed in Europe: the Italian stiletto.

Demand stateside grew as American GIs returned home with these exotic knives, and that led to large imports from Italy. It may have been the sabre-ground bayonet blade, the highspeed look, the undeniably foreign influence or a combination of all three, but it did not take long for the stiletto and, by association, all automatic knives to get noticed by up and coming politicians trying to make a name for themselves as peacemakers and protectors.

Why Switchblades are Illegal: The Toy that Kills

Fast-forward to November, 1950. Subscribers all over the U.S. received their new copy of Woman’s Home Companion. It contained one of the most lurid examples of anti-knife muckraking to ever be written, an article titled, The Toy That Kills. Jack Harrison Pollack, a freelance writer and ghostwriter for then-Senator Harry S. Truman, wrote the article. He filled it with a number of quotes and statistics without ever referencing a single citation. Even in today’s digital world, we have a hard time finding many facts to back up Pollack’s claims.

What exactly was he claiming, you ask? In short, Pollack alerted the mothers of America that the switchblade and the switchblade alone was the sole cause for juvenile delinquency, gang violence and ruined lives. In his own words, “Designed for violence, deadly as a revolver – that’s the switchblade, the ‘toy’ youngsters all over the country are taking up as a fad. Press the button on this new version of the pocketknife and the blade darts out like a snake’s tongue. Action against this killer should be taken now.” The article asserts a handful of shaky anecdotal experiences and dubious statistics.

Pollack offered five tips for the concerned mother, condensed into the following:

1. Make sure your kid is not carrying a switchblade.
2. Make sure to “de-glamorize knife-carrying” in general.
3. Use all your power as a mom and wife to get knives out of stores. (He even included verbiage for signs to hang up in stores.)
4. Help police round up “dangerous knives,” even though there were no significant bans or laws in place at the time.
5. Work on a state and national level for switchblade bans that are to be “strictly enforced.”

The end of Mr. Pollack’s article also marked the end for easy automatic knife use and possession in the United States.

Pop Culture Origins of Switchblade Ban

The Toy That Kills was the match that started a switchblade wildfire throughout the country. Newspapers ran embellished stories about gang violence and switchblade use. State legislatures started looking into the “issue,” and New York became the first state to ban automatic knives in 1954.

Even Hollywood jumped in on the frenzy. Movie studios released no less than six major titles in just as many years that included Rebel Without A Cause, 12 Angry Men and West Side Story. Every one of these blockbusters placed the switchblade front and center as a tool for violence and delinquency.

The 1958 Federal Switchblade Act Arrives

It only took eight short years from the publishing of The Toy That Kills for the issue to make its way to Washington, D.C., in what would become known as the 1958 Federal Switchblade Act. Hearings fielded reports from law enforcement and concerned citizens. However, a lack of hard data pervaded the inquiries.

One well-sourced report came from the police chief of Kansas City, Missouri, which had a population of more than 400,000 people at the time. In the calendar year of 1956, this city reported around three dozen switchblade-related misdemeanors, crimes and juvenile goofing off.

Testimonies also came from the two federal entities that would ultimately oversee enforcing the Act if it passed: the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice. From William P. Rogers, the deputy attorney general:

“The Department of Justice is unable to recommend enactment of this legislation. The Committee may wish to consider whether the problem to which this legislation is addressed is one properly within the police posers of the various States…Switchblade knives in the hands of criminals are, of course, potentially dangerous weapons. However, since they serve useful and even essential purposes in the hands of persons such as sportsmen, shipping clerks, and others engaged in lawful pursuits, the committee may deem it preferable that they be regulated at the State rather than the Federal level.”

From Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks:

“The intent of these legislative proposals appears to be to improve crime prevention by control of the use of the switchblade knife as a weapon of assault. This approach gives rise to certain objections. One is that, at best, it is an indirect approach which addresses itself to only one of the many implements useable by an assailant. This casts doubt upon the resulting effectiveness in the reduction of crime in relation to its enforcement problems. To us, this ignores the needs of those who derive and augment their livelihood from the ‘outdoor’ pursuits of hunting, fishing, trapping, and of the country’s sportsmen, and many others. In our opinion there are sufficient of these that their needs must be considered.”

At the time (and in retrospect), many of the lawmakers agreed with the quotes above but said they were acting symbolically against crime. In other words, they made themselves look good to their constituents while doing little concerning the issues they claimed to care so much about. And so, on August 12, 1958, congress enacted Public Law 85-623, more commonly known as the Federal Switchblade Act.

The Act itself dealt with banning certain transportation and sales of automatic knives, as well as outright banning automatic knives in certain areas and places nationally. It also defined by law what a switchblade was:

“The term ‘switchblade knife’ means any knife having a blade which opens automatically-by hand pressure applied to a button or other device in the handle of the knife, or (2) by operation of inertia, gravity, or both.”

All in all, the Federal Switchblade Act is a hard read with more than a handful of seeming contradictions. If you want to dive deeper into what exactly the Act says and how it’s parts work together, we recommend you check out Knife Rights page on the document (https://kniferights.org/resources/federal-switchblade-act/).

Just as the United States had led the way in automatic knife production at the beginning of the 20^th century, it led the way for knife legislation in the mid-20^th century. As soon as the Federal Switchblade Act was passed, many other countries around the world followed suit and banned switchblade knives. This led to a domino effect in many countries, where owning anything short slip joint with a blade under 2 inches is now illegal.

The Rise of Knife Advocacy Groups

Knife Rights and AKTI are both organizations doing a lot to amend and repeal a law that seems to have been put in place without proper foresight and consideration. With their efforts, they successfully rolled back automatic knife restrictions in 40 states and counting.

One of the biggest wins for the knife world came in 2009 when the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tried to reverse prior ruling on assisted opening/spring-assisted knives. Essentially, the CBP tried to define any one-handed opening knife as a switchblade. The revision would have dealt primarily with the importation of these assisted knives. The real concern came from the confusing nature of the Act. If CBP got their way, it would have been easy to extend the restriction broadly on both a national and state level. Luckily, many groups, including Knife Rights and AKTI, stepped up and prevented this from happening.

For knife enthusiasts, supporting Knife Rights and AKTI are the best ways to help revise and repeal the national and state restrictions on what, at the end of the day, is just another knife. Until that day, know your local laws and stay sharp!

Learn More About Knife Laws

Continue exploring the laws that govern knives in attorney Evan Nappen’s book, Knife Laws of the U.S.: Loopholes, Pitfalls & Secrets.

Editor’s note: A long-time vintage knife enthusiast originally from England, Jim Taylor wrote a number of stories on antique knives for BLADE®, including this one on a knife that belonged to Abraham Lincoln and fetched almost $100,000 at auction in 1989. Help us celebrate BLADE’s 45th anniversary with his story from the July/August 1989 issue.

by Jim Taylor

The hammer fell. The auctioneer at Sotheby’s January 1989 auction in New York couldn’t get another cent. The buyer, an anonymous American collector, had bought a 4.25-inch pearl-handled pocketknife.

The facts reported above are true. The sums of money mentioned are certifiable. Add the 10 percent buyer’s premium and the knife’s new owner got back $175 change out of 100 grand! Yep, the net price was $99,825.

The knife in question was not one you’re likely to find on a dealer’s table. This one was special!

An “Historic” Knife for President Lincoln

On June 16, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln spoke at the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia. To mark the occasion, prominent Philadelphians presented him with what Sotheby’s catalog described as an “historic mother of pearl presentation ‘American Army’ multi-bladed pocketknife of slightly serpentine outline. Paneled with mother of pearl and inlaid with a gold plaque engraved ‘Abraham Lincoln,’ the pocketknife is fitted with polished steel scissors, nail file and five various blades, two of which are damascened (decorated with inlaid patterns of gold or silver) with foliated inscriptions.”

Accompanying the historic knife is the original presentation box, made of fitted oak and lined with velvet and satin. The inscription inside the lid states that the wood and iron used in the box’s construction came from the “Old Liberty Bell.” The lid is inlaid on the outside with a spread-winged eagle surrounded by 13 stars. The sale also included a handwritten letter of thanks from Lincoln. The letter, dated Oct. 17, 1864, states:

“I have received at the hands of the Hon. Wm. D. Kelley a very beautiful and ingeniously constructed pocketknife accompanied by your kind letter of presentation. The gift is gratefully accepted and will be highly valued, not only as an extremely creditable specimen of American workmanship, but as a manifestation of your regard and esteem which I most cordially appreciate.

Your ob’t serv,t
A. Lincoln

The inscription on the clip blade reads, “LIBERTY, July 4th, 1776. Abraham Lincoln, Jan. 1st, 1863 EQUALITY.” The blades all carry the tang stamps “J. Ward & Co., Bronxville, New York.” It also is apparent from the photograph—kindly supplied by Sotheby’s—that various implements are fitted behind the pearl handle, such as a tweezers, pick and more.

Ward originally made the knife to the order of Albert B. Justice, a Philadelphia hardware merchant. Justice presented the knife to the fair’s board of directors, of which he was a member. He then solicited some 130 wealthy Philadelphians to endorse its subsequent presentation to the president. When presented, the knife was accompanied by a document containing the 130 Philadelphians’ signatures.

The document is currently in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Other items sold with the knife include a bronze medal commemorating the fair, as well as photographs of the presentation document, photocopies of a publication called Our Daily Fair that described the fair, and the text of Lincoln’s address.

The Bronxville factory in New York was originally a grist and saw mill prior to the Revolutionary War, and the four-story building housing the factory came into the hands of James Swain circa 1849. Swain utilized the building for the manufacture of axles, among other things.

In 1880, James Ward bought the property solely for the manufacture of cutlery.
Ward, like so many of his countrymen of the day, sought the aid of qualified and experienced Sheffield cutlers, and he even advertised for them. One tiny fragment of a prospectus survives. It reads:

“Dear Sir,

The undersigned, Manufacturers of PEN AND POCKET CUTLERY, are now prepared to sell to the trade, a first class article, manufactured on the English system…”

Knives made by Ward in Bronxville are certainly not plentiful, nor are the records clear about how long the company lasted. The factory later became the police headquarters for the Bronx River Parkway before its eventual demolition circa 1959.

Editor’s note: The current location of the Lincoln pocketknife was unknown at press time.

More Articles About Abraham Lincoln’s Knives

• Abraham Lincoln’s Fruit Knife
• Is This Abraham Lincoln’s Pocketknife?