What1cand0 wrote:Original Civil War Union Eagle Coat Size Button Non-Excavated 1861-1865 Certified By The Gettysburg Museum Of History
https://www.gettysburgmuseumofhistory.c ... history-2/
I've no doubt that image of an eagle was used in the Civil War. I'm just skeptical that it would have been stamped on whistles sold to civil war soldiers. As far as I know the Union wasn't issuing whistles to soldiers. I suppose a maker of tin whistles could have machined up a die for stamping whistles fairly quickly and gotten it into production, but it's not a trivial or inexpensive undertaking. At the start of the war nobody thinks it's going to last anywhere near as long as it does, so it would be a while before someone realized it was going to last for years, and a while before someone wants to ramp up production.
If somebody plays the whistle they likely already had one. Would they buy one as they marched off? Maybe. Would a peddler have come through camp selling union branded tin whistles? Possibly. But everything happens more slowly then. It takes more time to ramp up production, more time to get objects into the supply chain. As mentioned civil war iconography showed up a lot on on children's toys marketed well after the Civil War, and whistles would have been close to the "toy" end of the instrument spectrum. It could be from the Civil War, I'm just skeptical. It feels wrong to me. I'm a US historian for a living, specializing in the period from 1865-1920, for what that's worth, but I certainly could be wrong and would happily defer to a Civil War specialist