Louis Froelich was born in Bavaria in 1817 and immigrated with his family to the United States in June of 1860.  By the spring of 1861, Froelich and his family were living in Wilmington, North Carolina.  Froelich was making firearms, swords and knifes by early early August, 1861.  In September of 1861, Froelich established a weapons manufacturing frim initially called the Wilmington Sword Factory, in partnership with a Hungarian immigrant named Bela Estvan.  Later the name of the business was changed to the Confederate States Arms Factory.    The factory rapidly hired skilled craftsmen to produce swords, sabers, cutlasses, bayonets and lances and as many 70 were employed by the spring of 1862.   Orders were received from both the Confederate and North Carolina Ordnance Departments.  The earliest Froelich and Estvan voucher for weapons manufactured for the Confederate government is dated November 16, 1861.  On December 13, a load of 232 steel-bladed saber bayonets with brass grips and sheathed in leather scabbards, costing $10.50 per unit for a total of $2,436.00, was invoiced to Captain A.W. Lawrence of the North Carolina's Ordnance Department.  Froelich officially terminated his partnership with Estvan on March 12, 1862 and in the summer of 1862, renamed the business to the Confederate States Armory.  On February 20, 1863, a suspicious fire destroyed the industrial complex in Wilmington and the armory was relocated to Kenansville, sixty miles north of Wilmington.  By March 24, 1863, the armory was back to full production.  In July of 1863, the armory was destroyed  again, this time by Union cavalry.  To some extent, Froelich did rebuild his business in Kenansville and continued to supply North Carolina and the Confederacy until the Union army occupied southeastern North Carolina by March 1865.

Froelich produced approximately 7,000 saber bayonets during the war for various rifles and muskets manufactured by mostly small, privately owned and operated North Carolina factories under state contract.  The diameter of the bore on Froelich's saber bayonets came in three caliber sizes, .50, .54 and .577 as North Carolina had no standard caliber muskets and rifles early in the war.

The steel blades had unstopped fullers on both sides and varied from 19.5 to 20.75 inches in length and 1 to 1.25 inches in width.  The construction of the cast brass hilts was consistent at 4.5 inches long, 1 inch thick at the middle, and the distance from the bore to the stud guide was 3 to 3.25 inches.  The scabbards were made of leather with tin or brass throat and tip mounts.  

John W. McAden, Jr. and Chris E. Fonvielle, Jr., Louis Froelich Arms-Maker to the Confederacy.