Another issue thus far not addressed in this thread is the carriage of ammunition in driving rain or snow or inclement weather. To keep it waterproof would be mighty important. A lot of early cartridge boxes used in the ARW and by militia in the very early Republic had wooden boxes with holes bored in them for each individual paper cartridge, covered by a simple leather flap. This was found to be less than satisfactory, and so an additional inner flap was often added made of oil cloth. Later still, particularly after the War of 1812 and its ancillary conflicts like the Red Stick War/ Creek Civil War and so on, a side panel of leather was stitched on either side of the outer lid. By the time of the Civil War, the cartridge box ideally was of heavy leather construction, with a side panel on either side of the lid, plus a thicker inner lid of leather. Inside the main pouch there was now a pair of tin boxes. A package of ten cartridges with 12 caps was loaded into the inner cells, while two additional packets of cartridges would be stuffed into the upper cells where they'd be accessible to the firer's searching hand when given the order to "handle cartridge." This system in the Civil War was reasonably waterproof, and certainly superior to the earlier cartridge boxes. Additional ammunition could be carried in one or another tarred or oil cloth receptacle like the knapsack or similar.