Is it a Civil War photo or a post War photo?

major bill

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Forum Host
Joined
Aug 25, 2012
When a forum member posts a question about a photograph and wants to know if the image is Civil War or not, some images are hard to evaluate. One problem is that the Union Army had huge numbers of uniform items in storage at the end of the Civil War. This meant that the Army would issue Civil War surplus uniforms for years.

If a soldier in a photograph is wearing surplus Civil War uniform items, how can we tell if it is post Civil War? This nice little book lists some of the common post Civil War field modifications of surplus Civil War uniforms.
post war.jpg



The book also give information about uniforms of the 1866 to 1871 era. The book below can help when trying to evaluate if am image is post Civil War.

post war 2.jpg
 
Note that there are a large number of books that cover US Army uniforms. Some cover post Civil War uniforms in great detail and some in less detail. However, few books cover the field modification of surplus Civil War uniforms in detail. One should also remember that huge numbers of Civil War uniforms were sold and were available to the general population at very reasonable costs. Bands and such purchased some of these surplus uniforms.
 
It looks to me like quite a bit of Civil War equipment is being worn by the five men. I would think that this was the case probably until around 1870. At least until the newer equipment and uniforms came into the general supply system. We all know the quartermasters, issue until the supplies are exhausted. I suspect a lot of wartime items had a long life. This would make it pretty hard to tell what year a photo was taken. We can only take someone's word for it.
 
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