RedRover
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
The Confederate Army never had the means to provide standardized shoes in any quantity. During 1861-62 the soldiers had to supply themselves. But the blockade and lack of materials, workmen, or capitol had its effects. According to British visitor to the South W.C. Corsan, it was the spring of 1862 when the market failed, and no man's shoes, of any type, were safe in the South unless on your feet...
When Corsan wrote, the lack of suitable shoes was severe in some Confederate units in late 1862. The veterans of the 1st Georgia Regulars noted...
Large quantities were imported through the blockade of various quality... From 1863, none reported to meet the quality standard preferred...
"The Shoeing of Lee's Army.
A correspondent of the Savannah Republican gives the following account of the feet on which Lee's Army returned from Pennsylvania.
We came out of Maryland with nearly ten thousand barefooted men, and all had suffered more or less in the wear and tear of clothing.—These wants have been pretty well supplied by the quartermasters, who have displayed, commendable zeal in the matter, and by some of the State authorities. The German shoes furnished the men just before they started to Pennsylvania were of a very inferior description. They were low quartered russets, light and thin, and the leather very poor. Such shoes would answer the purpose of a vine dresser, a gardener, or an artisan, who had but little walking to do, but are totally unfit for a soldier, whose marches are long and frequently over rough roads and through drenching rains. They last from three days to six weeks, generally not longer than a week or two, especially if the weather is wet or a river is forded; for the leather being inferior, the soles spread when they get wet, and soon become part of the uppers, as it were, from which they separate when they get dry again.
We hauled pontoon boats from Fredericksburg to the Shenandoah, and thence to the Potomac, and back again to the Shenandoah; and yet the army forded both rivers as we marched north, and a considerable portion of it did the same thin on our return. You are ready to inquire, why is this? I can only reply that it is owing the want of staff officers educated in their duties, and especially to the want of a corps of practical engineers. It remains to be added in this connection, that the English shoes issued to the men since our return to Virginia, are well made, and that the leather is excellent. The only defect in them is the narrowness of the bottom—a defect which all shoe dealers have noticed in boots and shoes of English manufacture. It is a little remarkable that our agents in Europe, instead of making their selections from the stock on hand, do not have shoes made to order—that is, a strong, substantial army shoe, suited to the general shape and size of the foot of southern men. To march well or fight well, a soldier must be well shod. Wide bottomed, roomy shoes, which can be securely tied on the feet and which fit snugly around the ankle, are the best. Such as we have, the supply has not been sufficient to meet the demand; there is still a considerable number of men who are barefooted."
[Richmond Examiner, VA, Aug. 13, 1863.]
From the Confederate prisoners at Gettysburg...
By mid-1864 efforts to produce shoes for the army were underway, with Quartermaster General Lawton making arrangements to make up 600K pair...
But imports were still widely relied upon, with over half a million pair of shoes imported to Charleston and Wilmington through the blockade in the last months of 1864...
The shoes found among Confederates even in that last year of the war were far from suitable for military service. For example Confederate dead found in crude "stitch down" shoes...
"The yellow, butternut clothes and stitched-down shoes of Hankin's artillerists as their dead lay almost amongst their enemies, bore sad and striking contrast to the gaily-decked dead of the enemy. The Federal troops were of regiments which had been brought around from Florida, and their uniforms were bright and new." [Claiborne, John H., Seventy-five Years in Old Virginia, The Neale Publishing Company, New York, 1904, 215.]
And Hood's army in October, 1864 butchered oxen and used the hides to make up moccasins for barefooted troops... Albert Goodloe of Hood's army recalling...
Leander Stillwell of the Union Army subsequently noted of prisoners taken from Hood's army several weeks later...
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