A museum of military artifacts put on display Thursday a rare 1851 artillery gun that was used to train U.S. soldiers in an Arkansas military school and later seized by Confederate soldiers who fought at Harpers Ferry, Chickamauga and Gettysburg.

Five men were needed to hoist the 570-pound cast bronze Alger Cadet Gun onto a display table at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History inside the Little Rock Arsenal.

Built by Cyrus Alger & Co. of Boston, the artillery piece was built to help train cadets at the Arkansas Military Institute at Tulip, 50 miles south of Little Rock. It is currently owned by the Petersburg National Battlefield in Virginia, which is loaning the piece to the MacArthur Museum for three years.

The gun was taken from Arkansas during the Civil War after cadets formed a Confederate infantry company.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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