Confederate Commutation System

[captaindrew]

A very nice video from Civil War Digital Digest and Dan Wambaugh explaining the Confederate Commutation system of supplying uniforms.

 

[Rusk County Avengers]

I love the cloth on their replica.

 

[major bill]

Great video. Some interesting points were made.

 

[A. Roy]

A very nice video from Civil War Digital Digest and Dan Wambaugh explaining the Confederate Commutation system of supplying uniforms.

Great presentation -- I was just wondering about the commutation system, as I've been combing through a large number of Confederate service records.

Roy B.

 

[JD Mayo]

North Carolina had the best issued uniforms NC Sack coats and Frock Coats. I love Ben Tarts uniforms for the impressions we had for reenacting.

 

[UCVRelics]

Great Vid. Here is an interesting letter I found in the Alabama archives.

 

[Rusk County Avengers]

North Carolina had the best issued uniforms NC Sack coats and Frock Coats. I love Ben Tarts uniforms for the impressions we had for reenacting.

Oh North Carolina did not have the best uniforms by a long shot. My money's on Texas.

Lightweight white kersey woolens, imported blue-gray kersey after mid 1863, and all cotton jean, were the standard fabrics for Texas uniforms, and there was enough for a surplus in Trans-Mississippi. Trans-Mississippi Texans were probably better supplied. Less Yanks burning farms, less blockade keeping stuff out.

I'll attest from my experience that the British blue-gray kersey is very comfortable in the summer. Winter, believe or not you'll freeze to death and it'll feel like you ain't got anything on.

 

[JD Mayo]

Nice photo of that confederate. Yes I still like the style of the jackets with the early war black shoulder bars on them. Specially what the 4th NC Infantry had.

 

[Rusk County Avengers]

Nice photo of that confederate. Yes I still like the style of the jackets with the early war black shoulder bars on them. Specially what the 4th NC Infantry had.

I understand that. Take a look at this photo from 1864 of I think the 4th Texas:

White frock coats, every one of them. And General Slaughter and his staff in Galveston, 1864. The servants are wearing what looks to be possible Houston Depot jackets

While folks in Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia were waiting on depot issue uniforms, with some brigades supposedly in rags, and others fully kitted out, Texas was having a surplus in goodies for its troops. Enough to help out Louisiana and Arkansas, (when they could pay up, State's Rights a bummer like that, North Carolina has a similar more well known story as I recall). Only problem Texas had was number of wagons to transport it to the troops. I don't recall exactly where, but I have read an account where in 1865 they burned something like 10,000 bales of unissued uniforms near Hempstead, Texas when the war was done.

Then there's the memoir of a Washington Artillery officer sent back to the Trans-Mississippi before the Red River Campaign by the name of Charles W. Squires. He made mention that when he was detailed to take I think is was an entire brigade's artillery, from SW Arkansas to the Texas Coast, he and his men were in brand new blue-gray uniforms with red trim. Every man in identical uniforms, and plenty of food given to them from every town they passed through. Full picnics for them I'll add

That is until they got to a small town and while waiting on further orders by telegraph, they found out the war was over!

The tale of North Carolina being the only Confederate State to adequately provide uniforms to its soldiers is an old story, that the more I read, the more I'm convinced its one of the many stories without proper context or an outright myth. After all every Lost Cause story out here in Texas has the soldiers in ragged citizen's cloths, or almost naked with everyone starved half to death, when the records and a lot of first hand accounts say otherwise. Not just in Texas, but through most of the Confederacy.

Confederate uniforms are a never ending study...

 

[JOHN42768]

Thanks for posting. Great info

 

[FedericoFCavada]

Interesting thread. As a skirmisher, I got myself a commutation style Rebel forage cap from Jarnagin in Corinth, MS for times I have to dress like the "home team" instead of the "away team." It is a very blue gray, such that most people refuse to believe it is a secesh cap. I guess kepis and slouch hats were far and away more common that forage caps in CSA ranks, no?

 

[Rusk County Avengers]

I guess kepis and slouch hats were far and away more common that forage caps in CSA ranks, no?

I'd say so.