Aside from the Naval grenades used by Union troops along the Mississippi, primary source references to specific purpose-built hand grenades are relatively rare. One intriguing November 1864 intelligence report on the Rebel defense of the ruins of Fort Sumter relates that Confederates stationed there were issued “hand-grenades of the improved pattern” when on night guard duty. These grenades were most likely some of the 1,100 grenades shipped to Charleston from Augusta Arsenal in the fourth quarter of 1863. The body of the “improved pattern” grenade was a Ketchumlike double tapered cylinder fitted with a “sensitive tube” percussion-type detonator. Like the Ketchum, it was attached to a “guide stick” fitted with paper fins wrapped in protective cloth that was removed immediately before throwing. The Augusta Arsenal made almost 13,000 of these grenades during the last 11⁄2 years of the conflict.

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It may have been these “improved” grenades that Rebel artillery chief Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton speculated on using in an offensive mode at Petersburg in June 1864. According to Pendleton, “hand-grenades might do important service in driving off the enemy as we approach his breast-works.” He went on to ask: Have we any made? If so, of what pattern, weight, &c., and how are they put up for transportation? If none are on hand would it not be well to have some prepared very soon?” Yankees were apparently using grenades in the Richmond-Petersburg lines as well, and a month later Rebel Brig. Gen. Archibald Gracie reported that “the enemy attempted to throw hand-grenades…which fell fifteen yards short.”

In addition to the traditional lit fuse, Ketchum-style and improvised shell hand grenades, several other types of Union grenades were designed during the war, although they seem to have been used little, if at all. One was the Hanes “Excelsior” grenade, an 1862 invention of Kentuckian W. W. Hanes. The Excelsior was composed of two spheres, one set inside the other. The operator armed the grenade by unscrewing the exterior sphere, exposing the gunpowder-filled nipple-studded interior one, capping the nipples, and reassembling the weapon. A cushion between the nipples and exterior sphere was supposed to prevent the Hanes grenade from detonating unless it was forcibly thrown against a hard object, but the inherent danger of handling it seems to have limited its actual military use.

Some Hanes grenades apparently got into civilian hands, however, since a device that appears to have been an Excelsior grenade was mentioned during a September 1864 treason trial in Indianapolis of alleged Southern-sympathizing saboteurs of the Knights of the Golden Circle. According to a witness, one of the participants in the failed conspiracy “unscrewed the hand grenade and showed me the nipples on the inner shell.” The grenade was supposed to be used in conjunction with “Greek fire,” a highly flammable liquid mixture, to destroy government property.

The Adams grenade, an advanced and innovative time-fuse device developed by John S. Adams in January 1865, was also patented. It was similar in design to those the French were experimenting with at the time and a true precursor of the modern hand grenade. The Adams was spherical in shape and armed when a strap looped around the thrower’s wrist set off a friction primer that ignited a five-second fuse as the grenade left his hand. There is little information available on the extent to which Adams grenades were actually used, but some apparently made it to the field.

A rusted example was discovered by Colin Dreyden, an 11-year-old boy playing in a crawl space under an old house in Beaufort, S.C., in May 2007. The grenade, which weighed 6 pounds, was removed by U.S. Marine Corps demolition experts, who hoped to disarm and restore it for subsequent display. It proved to be inert, preventing the possibility of a Civil War hand grenade claiming one last casualty.

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