Basics about Confederate Uniforms: Part I

Over the years, I have collected data about the origins and characteristics of the Confederate uniform, and I finally decided to sum this information up in a concise article. While many seasoned Confederate buffs might find this very simplistic, I have been asked questions regarding these topics so often that I think this information will be useful for beginners as well as experienced uniformologists.

The Confederate uniform origins trace a diverse lineage. The basic color for the coat, gray, comes from the standard American state militia color cadet gray (which itself was derived from the earlier, medium gray fatigue uniform). Cadet gray came to embody the color of the “sovereign state” uniform color versus the dark blue of the “national government.” This association was key to cadet gray’s adoption by the South, given its connotations of state sovereignty. This light shade of bluish-gray was not any darker than the American army sky blue. But American cadet gray was not to become “Confederate” gray. It was too difficult to make in the South in large quantities, given limitations in resources, such as color fast dyes, mordants and manufacturing capacity. Instead, the standard British army, darker blue-gray became Confederate gray due to its availability through the blockade. The dark blue-gray kersey was still referred to as cadet gray (also frequently spelled “grey”). Contemporaries also called it Confederate gray, English army cloth, “gray cloth,” kersey, or any combination of these terms to distinguish it from domestic weaves and other shades of gray. Therefore, the Confederate uniform quickly acquired British roots, in addition to its American antecedents.

The uniform also had a French lineage. This is reflected in regulation cap, officially described as a kepi, but cut in the chasseur pattern with its hallmark countersunk crown, and low side pieces. Aside from the regulations, contemporaries seldom used the term “kepi,” instead calling the regulation headgear a cap. The word “kepi,” however, has gained currency since the war’s end and become an iconic feature of the Confederate uniform. The official double-breasted frock coat was also similar to both the French army frock of the time, and to the Austrian army tunic. This feature can be attributed to the South’s respect for France as the preeminent military power of the day, as well as to the uniform’s Prussian designer, Nicola Marschall, who incorporated Austrian characteristics into the Confederate tunic. In fact, Marschall copied both the design and color of the Austrian sharpshooter’s tunic, it being gray with green-colored facings. British Lieutenant Colonel James Fremantle noted this during his travels through the Confederacy, remarking, “Most of the officers were dressed in uniform that is neat and serviceable - a bluish-gray frock coat of a color similar to Austrian yagers.” The Confederate tunic was to have a relatively short skirt, similar to the French and Austrian tunics, but this stipulation was at odds with the prevailing fashion that dictated a knee-length skirt. As such, Confederate frocks almost always had long skirts, despite what was prescribed in the regulations. The officer’s elaborate sleeve and cap braid also followed the French style, as did the that lack of shoulder straps. The officer collar rank closely matched the Austrian rank insignia, while the enlisted chevrons copied the American pattern.

Two other American traits influenced the Confederate uniform: the branch-of-service colors, and the light blue pants. The Confederate regulations specified light blue as the pants color, probably intending the same “sky blue” shade as the Federal uniform had. This proved troublesome to make, however, given a lack of resources, so usually pants were made of the same color cloth as the tunic. Quartermasters did make limited quantities of light blue pants, however, when they had access to imported light blue cloth. The imported light blue cloth was different in color from the pre-war American sky blue cloth, just as the imported cadet gray was different from peacetime cadet gray. The Confederates imported a shade called “light French blue” that was darker and brighter than the Yankee sky blue. In any case, some Confederate commanders found the combination of Confederate blue-gray jackets and light blue pants too similar to the Yankee uniform, and thus confusing on the battlefield, and asked quartermasters to stop procuring the light French blue cloth.

The Confederate jacket was often referred to as a “shell” jacket, a term with nautical roots. The shell jacket was the universal sailor’s garb, and the name comes from the British term “shell back,” which was a nickname for British sailors. The other term used for the Confederate jacket, “roundabout,” referred to the fatigue jackets made in the early nineteenth century, cut all the way around the waist, instead of being made with tails as coatees were. Confederate jacket patterns conformed only in the broadest sense: they had standing collars and wide sleeves. Many of the surviving jackets are also of a distinct color, known today as butternut, which become a Confederate icon.

The butternut icon deserves some explanation. When people think of butternut today, they are apt to describe it as a light, yellowish-brown. The origins of the term butternut are more complex, because it originally encompassed a color, a type of homespun cloth, and a people. The term originated in North. As numerous Southerners moved to southern Illinois and southern Indiana in the mid-nineteenth century, the native Northerners called them “butternuts” for the butternut-dyed, rough homespun cloth they wore. Later, during the Civil War, they called Confederate soldiers “butternuts” using the same criteria: Southerners wearing rough-textured cloth of the characteristic light brown color. The nickname applied regardless of whether the color had originally been brown from walnut hull dye, or had been dyed gray at the mill and faded to brown. Equally so, it would have been applicable to homemade citizens garb, or to factory made uniforms, as long as the fabric’s texture resembled “homespun.” Southern-made cassinets, jeans and satinets might all have resembled homespun to a Northerner.

When considering butternut as a color, which the term eventually morphed into by the end of the war, it was a light tan to a light brown color, depending on how the fabric had been dyed. The original butternut color was derived from Northern home dying using walnut hulls of the white walnut tree, commonly known also as the butternut tree. The white walnut, or butternut tree’s botanical name is Juglans cinerea, and its range includes eastern North America from Canada, southwards to northern Alabama, and westwards to Minnesota and northern Arkansas. It is absent from most of the Southland. Northerners used butternut bark and nut rinds (hulls) to dye cloth to colors between light yellow and dark brown. The more concentrated the dye, the darker the resulting color. None used butternut dye used commercially; they used it exclusively for homespun cloth (hence its association with homespun). This white walnut, butternut dye rendered fabrics a light to medium, yellowish brown color.

Likewise, the eastern black walnut, Juglans nigra, was more prevalent in the South. It is native to eastern North America, ranging from southern Ontario, westwards to southeast South Dakota, southwards to northern Florida and westwards from the east coast to central Texas. Southerners commonly used the black walnut tree, or “butternut” by extension, to dye their homespun clothing at the time of the Civil War. The black walnut drupes (hulls) contain juglone, and produce brownish-black dye. The tannins present in walnut hulls act as a mordant, aiding in the dyeing process, and making the resulting color extremely resistant to fading. Despite the black walnut dye’s potential to yield a dark, brownish-black color, rural folk generally obtained from it a light to medium, warm brown color for their homespun fabrics. Homemade, citizen clothes that were sent to Confederate soldiers from their families have this distinctive colorfast, warm, light brown shade.

By contrast, factory dyed fabrics, which generally ended up as army-cut uniforms, had its own distinctive brown shade: a color ranging from oatmeal to light tan to grayish tan or dark tan. This was because the fabric’s woolen yarn had been dyed with an unstable vegetable dye and mordant, and had faded after exposure to sunlight. Typically, factories used logwood and indigo as dyes, and copperas and blue vitriol as mordants. The targeted colors were either “steel” gray (the most common domestically produced shade, being a medium gray, midway between white and black), domestic “cadet” grey (produced much less than steel gray, being a light blue-gray), or light to medium brown (rarely produced). Most such dyed yarns, observed on surviving garments, have faded to a tan or oatmeal color. Some retain traces of the gray nap in protected surface areas, and those that were dyed with especially good mordants retain their steel gray or sometimes brownish gray color. Some even faded to a natural white shade. Chemist and dye specialist Ben Tart of North Carolina has estimated that it took no more than a month of exposure to outdoor sunlight to fade a domestically dyed steel or cadet gray garment to a tan color.

While discussing the basic colors of Confederate uniforms, one must not forget the last two of these: sheep’s gray and natural white. These colors were sometimes referred to as “drab.” Numerous surviving uniforms indicate widespread usage of these colors in all parts of the Confederacy. Sheep’s gray was easy to manufacture because it required no dyestuffs, yet rendered the fabric a colorfast light gray. Natural white was easier to produce than colored cloth because its yarns required no dying. The wool still had to be cleaned, however, which added to the fabric’s comfort by removing excess lanolin. It carried a stigma, however, since white woolens had traditionally been purchased for of slave clothing. Many Confederate troops deeply resented drawing uniforms of white woolens, which they derisively called “nigger cloth.” As such, the final source of origin for the white Confederate uniforms might be attributed to the American slave culture, as well as the time-honored practice of American practicality trumping all other considerations.

A final remark is appropriate regarding Confederate uniform colors: butternut preceded the use of cadet gray by far. Many have the misguided notion that the high quality, imported British kersey, in cadet “grey” (as the British spelled it), was an early war product, and that as the South was blockaded, its quartermasters were reduced to using inferior “homespun” jeans, dyed with butternut juice. This idea is incorrect. The fact is that domestic fabrics that had been dyed domestically predominated early in the war. As foreign contracts came into play, cadet gray and light blue kerseys increasingly replaced these domestic fabrics in many Confederate armies. As the Confederate industrial base developed towards the end of the war, domestic fabrics were making strong “come-back.” By early 1865, however, the average Confederate soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia, the Mobile Garrison or the Trans-Mississippi was more likely to have been clad in imported, cadet gray kersey than in domestic, butternut jeans.

Having touched upon the origins of the Confederate uniform and its basic colors, some explanation of quartermaster clothing production and issue is necessary.

The first uniforms were produced in a haphazard manner by local volunteer groups, or on small contracts, because nobody thought the war would last very long, and the authorities did not want to invest public funds in permanent clothing manufactories. As the war drew out, the government had to establish a system for clothing its army, and it settled on a stopgap measure, the commutation system, that reimbursed soldiers or commanders for clothing themselves or their commands. The government also paid contractors to manufacture clothing at considerable short-term expense that avoided a long-term investment. By the middle of 1862, Southerners recognized that the war would last for a long while, and leadership assumed full responsibility for clothing the troops and establishing regular, government manufacturing facilities and fully operational clothing bureaus. As the war dragged on, the government weaned itself off of domestic contracting, to a large degree, by building its own factories, and supplemented its own production with foreign bought finished goods. By the end of the war, the South had a well-functioning manufacturing base, a reliable supply of foreign imported materiel, and domestic contracts that made up for the shortfalls in production that the former sources could not fulfill.

This was a gradual process, however, with overlap throughout the war in how the various methods of clothing procurement was accomplished. To start with, both the Confederate and the various state governments stepped in to mass produce clothing long before the Confederate government officially ended the commutation system in October 1862. In fact, by that time, numerous government “depots” had come into being and were in full production throughout the South, even though many used contractors as their source of supply instead of government-owned shops. To start with, the states took the initiative to manufacture clothing for their own troops serving in the Confederate army. Many of the states produced clothing from the very beginning to the end of the war. North Carolina is the best known among uniformologists, having produced vast quantities of uniforms and imported more besides. Less well known, however, were the clothing bureaus of Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia. Prior to its fall to the enemy, Tennessee supplied the needs of the Confederate army in the state. Alabama produced prodigious quantities of clothing for Alabama troops, and the other two aforementioned states provided modest quantities of clothing to their own soldiers. The State of Arkansas established a very successful clothing bureau that provided for troops until the Confederate authorities were able to take responsibility for quartermaster functions. Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi established modest clothing operations for their troops, as well. The important fact to keep in mind is that most of these state operations had been in operation from the beginning of the war, and all were functioning long before the Confederate quartermaster clothing bureaus started functioning.

The Confederate clothing bureaus began somewhat haphazardly. They began as need arose and there was no one there to meet it. The Army of Mississippi managed organize a system of supply for its troops by the Battle of Shiloh. The San Antonio and Houston quartermasters opened government shops early in 1862, and had fully functioning operations by the time commutation officially ended. Judging from the plethora of images of Army of Northern Virginia troops wearing Richmond Depot jackets and caps early in the war, it would appear that the Confederate quartermaster in Richmond also had a well-functioning clothing bureau long before October 1862. Other Confederate quartermasters operated similar manufactories.
The first government depots were relatively small or dispersed. Those of Mississippi reflect this well. During the early part of the war, the Confederate clothing bureau there relied on the production of several small factories to furnish the soldier suits that it issued. Each individual contractor, or factory, produced a limited, but steady quantity of uniforms each week. The aggregate production of several small factories sufficed to meet the demand of the army in that area. For instance, on March 21, 1863, the Daily Southern Crisis newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi reported that five Mississippi factories, in Bankston, Columbus, Enterprise, Natchez and Woodville, together produced 5,000 garments weekly. Furthermore, each factory may have used its own patterns, which meant that there were subtle differences in the soldier suits produced at factory. This practice was fostered by the overall leniency in Confederate uniform specifications. As long as a manufacturer made jackets with standing collars, for instance, he was allowed considerable latitude for the rest of the pattern. The sleeves might be one- or two-piece; the jacket might have anywhere between five and nine buttons; it might have had an inside or an outside pockets; it might have had trim or been plain; it might have been made from cassinet, jeans or satinet; and, it might have been natural white, sheep’s gray or steel gray. Considering the large number of small factories, the varying durations of their operations, and probability that each factory changed its patterns and materials ever so often, the variety of jackets emerging from the Confederate quartermaster bureau must have seemed endless.

Applying this aforementioned model described by the Daily Southern Crisis, the quartermaster in Jackson would receive five types of jackets, in varying proportions, that he issued out indiscriminately, i.e. with little regard to any typology as we uniformologists view it today. In 1863, a jacket was simply a jacket regardless, and when a brigade quartermaster received 2,000 suits of jackets and pants in Mississippi, they included whatever was in the depot store house on the day he picked up his clothing. The 2,000 suits might have been the products of five different factories, and all of the jackets may have varied slightly. The following array of “Deep South” factory jackets illustrates this diversity in construction and materials, yet all are plain shell jackets with standing collars.

Confederate uniformologists have come to associate specific jacket characteristics with certain depots, but this ignores many actual circumstances. For instance, depots seldom concerned themselves with following stringent patterns: the broad criteria of furnishing short jackets with standing collars generally sufficed. These relaxed standards also fostered ease of production, as well, especially considering that shortages of materials often led to improvisation. Uniformologists should also bear in mind that Confederate jackets were not sacred garments, they were clothing: nothing more, and nothing less. Few would have thought much about the different number of buttons on their government-furnished jackets in 1863.

-By Fred Adolphus