The owner of this buckle says that he has owned it since the 1950's and believes the wire on the back was an attempted restoration from the 1940's. Any way to tell from two pics if this is a real buckle with a poor restoration job or a fake/copy/reenactor's buckle, or
The type of attachment-hooks on the back (and the extremely crude lettering on its front) prove that it is what buckle-collectors call a "Fantasy" buckle, because there never was a genuine 1861-65 Confederate buckle like it.