Any chaps worn in the Civil War?

major bill

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Aug 25, 2012
Chaps seem to have became vey popular in the 1870s in areas were cattle were raised. I know that they existed before the Civil War, but do not see much evidence of the use of chaps during the Civil War. They would have possibly been useful by mounted troops in some areas. Why no chaps during the war.
 
Chaps are used when working cattle through heave brush and thorns. There would be little use for them during the war. In spite of what Hollywood shows, cowboys do not wear chaps except when working cattle or when dressing up, parades, rodeos, etc. BTW the same is true for most spurs.
 
Good question. One sees leather pants in Currier & Ives prints and such, but they're leather all the way around--you can tell. They're also not soldiers, but it might apply to soldiers who wanted to protect their uniforms.

Oops. Just saw zburketts' answer. I was picturing the wearing of chaps in the far far west. I was assuming there were some outposts by the regular army even then in Indian country. But where are we talking about? Indian country where soldiers would go out patrolling in brushy areas, or maybe killing a buffalo for rations (Did they do that? Or was it all salted meat shipped from the east?)

How far west and how isolated were US Army posts at the time of the Civil War? That might be a start toward the answer. They'd wear whatever civilians were wearing, as an adaptation to their uniforms.
 
Most of the cavalry were issued high top boots. Not exactly the same protection but it would suffice for most regions.

What do you call the coverings worn by the Kansas "Red Legs"?? Gaiters?
slideshow_1306_cw_redlegs_ss.jpg
 
If I had to bet, I would suspect "chaps," however defined, would have been purchased by the individual, or made by the individual. I can't see the Union or the Confederacy expending money on "chaps."
 
Although not chaps, I couldn't help but think of the famous jaguar skin pants when I saw this thread.

Such trousers must have served the same purpose . . . while at the same time making a cutting edge fashion statement. :smoke:

Here's our Texas friend again:

1351970986-0.jpg

The stylin' Captain Samuel J. Richardson of the Second Texas Cavalry wore a standard issue hat and shirt. But his pants and his holsters were made of jaguar skin!

http://www.neatorama.com/2012/11/03/Confederate-Army-Officer-Wearing-Jaguar-Skin-Pants/
 
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There would have been limited use, such as the chaps blacksmith used. I have also seen old photos of Montana cowboys in sheepskin chaps because of the cold and soldiers might have as well. Just as a bit of information they are properly pronounced with a "sh" sound not "cha" no matter how the perfume company says it. They come from chaparral which is the Vaquero's word for brush. Some of you may remember the TV western "High Chaparral".
 
Most of the cavalry were issued high top boots. Not exactly the same protection but it would suffice for most regions.

What do you call the coverings worn by the Kansas "Red Legs"?? Gaiters?
slideshow_1306_cw_redlegs_ss.jpg
High top boots were not a standard issue item, but a private purchase. One could also purchase a false boot that would cover the leg from the knee to the shoe. Most cavalry were issued a Wellington style boot with inside pulls, or the standard brogan. Many would sew extra material into the bottoms of the trousers, cotton duck, canvas or other to reinforce high wear areas.
 
Although not chaps, I couldn't help but think of the famous jaguar skin pants when I saw this thread.

Such trousers must have served the same purpose . . . while at the same time making a cutting edge fashion statement. :smoke:

Here's our Texas Friend again:

View attachment 121989
The stylin' Captain Samuel J. Richardson of the Second Texas Cavalry wore a standard issue hat and shirt. But his pants and his holsters were made of jaguar skin!

http://www.neatorama.com/2012/11/03/Confederate-Army-Officer-Wearing-Jaguar-Skin-Pants/
By coincidence I just saw a pic on ESPN of Cam Newton arriving for Super Bowl practice last year. Zebra was his choice of hide.
IMG_1705.JPG
 
Most of the cavalry were issued high top boots. Not exactly the same protection but it would suffice for most regions.

What do you call the coverings worn by the Kansas "Red Legs"?? Gaiters?
slideshow_1306_cw_redlegs_ss.jpg

I have in modern terms seen these, in leather, call half chaps.
 
What do you call the coverings worn by the Kansas "Red Legs"?? Gaiters?
Burlap leggings? Sorry I don't have a source on hand, but I recall reading that the practice of wrapping burlap around your legs was often done in place of boots at the time. They could also be soaked in kerosene to ward off ticks and chiggers. Not sure if that was the case with the Red Legs though.

As far as chaps go, in all my reading on Texas cavalry I don't believe I've ever come across any chaps being worn. Perhaps @7th Texas Mounted Rifles would know of some examples.
 
What do you call the coverings worn by the Kansas "Red Legs"?? Gaiters?
slideshow_1306_cw_redlegs_ss.jpg

If my memory serves me, they got the red leather from one of their raids in Missouri. i don't know if they called them leggings or gaiters. We from Missouri do have a special name for those who worm them. However, this being a public forum, and me being an gentleman, I will not repeat it.
 
The United States Army never wore/issued chaps. Not prewar, wartime or postwar.

Here is an interesting article on the Kansas Red Legs.

http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/red-legs


Red Legs
Encyclopedia entry by
Tony O’ Bryan
,
University of Missouri – Kansas City


Charles%20R.%20Jennison.jpg

Portrait of Charles R. Jennison, a founding commander of the Red Legs. Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society.

Although the name “Red Legs” is commonly conflated with the term “jayhawkers” to describe Kansas guerilla units that fought for the Free-State side during the Bleeding Kansas era or the Union side in the Civil War, Red Legs originally referred to a specific paramilitary outfit that organized in Kansas at the height of the Civil War. Union Generals Thomas Ewing, James Blunt, and Senator James H. Lane were all supporters of the group, and Kansas Governor Thomas Carney personally financed it for service. The Red Legs first joined together near Atchison, Kansas, under the command of Charles R. “Doc” Jennison and Captain George H. Hoyt, a Massachusetts lawyer who defended John Brown at his trial after the Harpers Ferry Raid. The men who joined the group called themselves the Red Legged Scouts and their stated purpose was to serve as scouts and spies for the Union Army. The Red Legs were never officially mustered into the Union Army and there are no formal unit histories; however, their deeds along the border became notorious among Missourians and notable among Kansans.

The Red Legs were a somewhat secretive organization of about 50 to 100 ardent abolitionists who were hand selected for harsh duties along the border. Membership in the group was fluid and some of the men went on to serve in the 7th Kansas Cavalry or other regular army commands and state militias. They are associated with a lesser-known group that called themselves the “buckskin scouts,” and they served as an auxiliary arm to regular troops, such as the 6th Kansas Cavalry on punitive expeditions into Missouri. The legendary James “Wild Bill” Hickok, then still just a teenager, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, and fellow Pony Express rider William S. Tough are among the few individuals known to have served with the Red Legs. Buffalo Bill Cody admitted that as a member of the Red Legs, “We were the biggest thieves on record.”

There are several versions of the story of how they earned the name and their reputations along the Missouri-Kansas border. One account of the legend claims that the men chose to wear tan or red colored yarn leggings to both distinguish themselves as a unit and to protect their legs while riding and marching through thick brush. Two stories from the Missouri side of the state line claim that in 1861, when Jennison and Hoyt led these men into Independence, Missouri, declared martial law, and forced the citizens to swear loyalty oaths, they also raided a local store and stole rolls of red carpet that they cut into strips to make a covering for their legs. Some Missourians claim the Red Legs stole red draperies and bolts of cloth from people’s homes and used that material to make their distinctive red leggings. In another tale, the men stole from a cobbler’s shop a supply of sheep hides that had been dyed red and precut to make boot tops. There is likely a grain of truth in all of these origination tales. Over the course of the war other groups of anonymous brigands from Kansas also wore red leggings on their raids into Missouri, much to the chagrin of a succession of Union Army commanders, who were charged with keeping peace and order along the border.

The Red Legs accompanied Jim Lane and the jayhawkers on a raid through Butler, Harrisonville, Clinton, and Osceola, Missouri, in September 1861, which left those towns and the farms along the way in a smoldering swath of ruin. When not raiding into Missouri, they patrolled for bushwhackers who made raids into Kansas. They held headquarters inLawrence, Fort Scott, and at Six-Mile House on the road to Fort Leavenworth from Quindaro, Kansas. When a band of Missourians rode into Kansas to track down their stolen livestock, the Red Legs rounded them up and several Missourians were hanged. Illegal raids by the Red Legs eventually led Blunt to disavow them and all other paramilitary groups that defied legal authority. When Kansas Governor Charles Robinson—himself an ardent Unionist and supporter of the Free-State cause—tried to have the disruptive forces of the Red Legs removed from the region, they attempted to assassinate him in retaliation. These events prompted both Governor Robinson and Missouri Governor Hamilton R. Gamble to complain about the anarchy and cruelty caused by the actions of the Red Legs in letters to PresidentLincoln.

In the late winter and spring of 1862, the Red Legs raided across southern Jackson County, Missouri, burning homes, slave cabins, and stealing livestock. They reached as far east as Columbus, Missouri, in Johnson County, where they burned the town to the ground and encouraged untold numbers of slaves to follow them back to Kansas along their way. In March 1863, they and the 1st Colored Infantry drove across Jackson County and into Lafayette County, Missouri, areas that held the largest slave population in the state on the eve of the war. They burned the college town of Chapel Hill, Lafayette County, and again emancipated a number of slaves who followed the Red Legs and the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry back to Kansas. Because the Red Legs were avowed abolitionists and suspected all Missourians of supporting slavery, as well as harboring the bushwhackers, they killed several local men despite the fact that these men had previously sworn loyalty oaths to the Union.

When Quantrill and his gathered bands of bushwhackers attacked Lawrence, Kansas, on August 16, 1863, they cited the deeds of the Red Legs as their motive for their attack on the town. One of the first targets of the bushwhackers was the headquarters of the Red Legs, the Johnson House Hotel, and they held lists with the names and residences of men known to ride with the Red Legs. They quickly surrounded the hotel and proceeded to burn it down and shoot any man suspected of being a Red Leg. After the attack on Lawrence, General Ewing issuedOrder No. 11, in part to prevent the promised revenge upon Missourians along the border by the Red Legs and jayhawkers led by Jim Lane. The order evacuated the remaining Missourians along the border counties who had not already been driven away by the actions of the Red Legs, jayhawkers, Union Army, and the bushwhackers.

Several Red Legs can be seen in George Caleb Bingham’s provocative painting, Martial Law, (or Order No. 11). Two of them are dressed in the customary red leggings, plumed hats, Union long tunic coats, and armed with pistols about their waists. Two more can be seen carrying loot on horseback, with one of them carrying a picnic basket and others loading furnishings onto a wagon from a second story balcony. The Red Legs made a final appearance at theBattle of Westport, inside the boundaries of modern-day Kansas City, Missouri, where they helped defeat General Sterling Price’s 1864 Missouri Expedition. The Red Legs faded from the scene afterwards as guerilla war diminished along the border, and “Doc” Jennison was court martialed and dismissed from service in June 1865. Even after 150 years, though, the deeds of the Red Legs are not forgotten on either side of the state line.

Order%20Number%20Eleven.jpg

Union officer George Caleb Bingham depicts the Red Legs (shown center) negatively in his painting, Martial Law (or Order No. 11). Courtesy of State Historical Society of Missouri - Columbia.
 
Although not a real "chaps" Civil War artillery did use leather leg protectors. They look uncomfortable.

leg.jpg
 
I know Texas had issues during the Civil War with the Apaches and other groups. brush country would have been a great place for them to avoid detection and thus militia groups must have had to traverse brush country looking for them.
 
Just for general information, during the war the Comanche had mostly pushed the Apaches out of Texas into New Mexico. You didn't want to mess with either of them. As opposed the Kiowa of which a touch of I am.
 
Just for general information, during the war the Comanche had mostly pushed the Apaches out of Texas into New Mexico. You didn't want to mess with either of them. As opposed the Kiowa of which a touch of I am.

You are right I should have said Comanche and Kiowa. If you were looking for either you might have been forced to ride through brush country as both were probably too wise to try to hide out in flat open areas.
 
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