Good grief! Sam Colt died in 1862, and the SAA wasn't introduced until 1873!
Just hold the gun and reflect how it should feel and heft, and note that the loading gate is on the right side of the frame...for a right-handed person.
Actually that doesn't track. What's the first thing most people do when reloading an SAA? Shift it to the left hand, so the right can punch out the spent cartridges with the ejector rod, and then push fresh cartridges through the loading gate on the right side of the frame. If you hold it in your right hand (the same hand most people shoot it with), you have to reach over the top strap and around to the other side of the gun to do these things. It was the same for the 1860 army and 1851 navy. The caps went on the right side, and the cut out to put the bullets in front of the lowest chamber for the rammer to force them in were also on the right side of the gun, making it easiest to hold the revolver in the left hand while performing these actions.
Cavalry holsters were used with "reverse" draw to get the gun in the right hand, while allowing for left-hand access, too.
Most soldiers are right-handed. The Army knew that in the 1870's. Colt knew that in addressing the commercial appeal of the new gun, too.
Frankly, it is almost inconceivable that Colt would make the gun mainly for left-handed people! It may have been hoped that persons with a master hand on either side would find the gun easily useable.
Colt’s didn't make it for left handed
people, they made it made it for a military requirement that saw the revolver as a secondary weapon to the
arme blanche, and was meant to be accessible mainly to the secondary hand.
This idea that the Colt SAA was meant for left-handed users was probably conceived by a now-deceased manufacturer of similar revolvers that he said were set up "right" for right-handed men. Personally, I thought that was a sales tool. And I have never read or heard anywhere else that the Colt was a "left-handed gun." That doesn't even apply to Billy the Kid. A famous photo of him was supposedly reversed when printed, leading people to think that he was left-handed. So much for the movie, "The Left-handed Gun."
I think the issue is unworthy of further attention., Just regard it as a bonus if you're left-handed and the gun works well for you. If you're right-handed, it'll work for you, too, as it has for such a long time, for primarily right-handed users. If the matter seriously bothers anyone today, there are many modern guns that are much more practical, anyway.
At this rate, someone will probably point out that the cavalry was also the primary intended user of the Colt M-1911 pistol, or the Colt DA revolvers. But none of the official holsters for the M-1911 was ever built for left-handed access. And cavalry was still a very real force going into WW II, and the Patton saber of 1913 was meant to be a fully serviceable weapon! The M-1903 Springfield rifle was deliberately designed to be a compromise length for both infantry and for cavalry.
There’s a reason the design of the holsters changed. Think about it. When the left-handed holsters for the cap and ball revolvers were designed, the revolver had only been on the scene a very short time. Just a few short years earlier, the only pistol available to the army was single-shot muzzle loader. The sword was still regarded as the primary weapon. The pistol was still regarded as secondary. And back when the only pistols available were single shots, that made sense. Then revolvers came along, but it took some time for military officers to adjust to the capabilities of the new handguns, and what that meant for cavalry tactics, and for the use of the saber. By the time the Colt DA revolver and the M1911 were adopted, it was decades later, during which time tactics had changed, a new generation of soldiers had grown up, and the gear reflected the change in orientation away from the saber and toward the pistol. Think about what the army had been doing between 1865, and 1890. During this period, the army’s primary job was Indian fighting, and in that job the saber was seldom if ever used, and in fact was frequently left in the fort when the troopers went out on patrol. It was cumbersome, and made noise, and the troops almost never used it anyway. A generation of practical experience had taught the soldiers by then that, tradition or not, in any practical sense, the sword
wasn’t the primary weapon anymore. The pistol holsters now reflected this, and were meant to be accessed primarily by the dominant hand.
Sure the Patton saber was adopted, and meant to be issued. But as I said, the military is a very, very conservative, tradition bound, organization. It always takes them a while to adjust to new realities. Just look at how long it’s always taken to adjust tactics to changes in battlefield reality brought about by new weaponry. In the Civil War, they still occasionally tried mass formations and frontal assaults straight out of the Napoleonic Wars, even though those were suicidal now that soldiers were shooting rifles with an effective range of 500 yards, instead of muskets with an effective range of 80 (q.v Fredericksburg, Pickett’s Charge, et al.). And in that same war, conservative, backward-looking ordnance chiefs blocked the widespread adoption of available breech loaders and repeaters in favor of muzzle loaders (q.v. Col. James Ripley, AKA “Ripley Van Winkle”). And all militaries seem to be like this. At the start of WWI, the French cavalry was still wearing bright red pants and blue coats, that only high casualties forced them to abandon, and even then not all the officers wanted to give them up! So just because the sword was issued, and even meant to be used by officers who hadn’t yet come to terms with the fact that it’s day was over, doesn’t mean it got any actual, practical use by that time.
If anyone can actually prove that either Colt or the War Department intended the SAA to be mainly for left-handed use, I'd be very interested to see his documentation.
Lone Star
I refer you to Cooke’s Cavalry Tactics of 1862.
http://members.cox.net/ltclee/Cooke.htm#ManPist
SCHOOL OF THE
Draw—PISTOL.
1 time.
62.—At the command, PISTOL, with the right hand un¬button the flap of the belt-hoister, draw the pistol, and, holding it at the stock, with the point of the forefinger reaching above the trigger guard, carry it vertically, with the hand as high as the right shoulder, and six inches in front of it.
63.—The instructor commands:
READY.
1 time.
At this command, place the pistol in the left hand, as the height of the breast, the muzzle elevated and directed to the left front, cock and raise pistol, (position No. 62.)
AIM.
1 time.
64.—At this command, lower the pistol to the front, the arm about three-fourths extended, the forefinger upon the trigger; aim with the right eye, the left eye closed.
FIRE.
1 time.
65.—At this command, fire and raise pistol.
66.—At the position of AIM, the instructor may command, raise—PISTOL, at which command the men raise the pistols to the position No. 62; and if the pistol is not fired, at the command, return—P15T0L, first let down the hammer.
This is describing formal drill, but what it interesting is that even though the pistol is being drawn with the right hand, it is then being transferred to, and shot in the left. Now why would the army teach its cavalry troopers, who would be predominantly right-handed, to shoot their revolvers in the left hand? As I’ve been saying all along: because at this period in time, the sword was considered the dominant weapon, and the pistol the secondary one.
