Manner of Dress

On the matter of dress in the camp, addressed simply by Regulations 4 and 5, there are a number of qualifications and observations which could be made. When we are discussing military protocol during the War Between the States, we must recognize that not all of the soldiers were necessarily Regular Army. Quite a large percentage of the men in either blue or grey were members of state guards, state militias, and the like. Although the armies both sought standardization, there was indeed a great deal of variegation in dress among the troops, particularly among those of the South. The variegation in the Confederate army’s clothing became greater the longer that the blockades strangled commerce in the South.

Most of the men who were in uniform during those years were not career soldiers - only about 15,000 men at the War’s start were Regular Army - and many were barely more than civilians even after three or four years of service and training. To think that all abided by the regulations on dress strictly would be foolhardy, especially in light of the photographic evidence. Numerous authors speak of the great streaks of independence running through the men of the Confederate army, but a significant degree of individuality was also seen in the Union army, too. Their mode of dress was a means by which they exhibited that individuality.

The custom, established by regulation, was to wear the coat or jacket buttoned at the collar, for instance. In camp, it was not uncommon for men to wear a shirt without either jacket, coat, or vest. A custom of the period was to wear a vest when dispensing with the jacket or coat, for exposing one’s shirt-front - especially for an officer - was considered crude to the point of indecency, although this may have been more widely observed among the men of refinement and higher social stature than other men.

Vests were a common garment in civilian life, and that carried over into military life as a personal item because it was not standard issue to the troops. The rule of thumb was that they matched the uniform - or not. In other words, variety was normal, although there seem to have been a good many made to match the uniforms. Collars of the vests seen most often on the soldiers of the day had the same collar as the shell jackets, which differed from the civilian vests’ collars.

Officers, both commissioned and noncommissioned, wore sashes for ceremonial occasions.  There is an art to tying the sash.

Start on the left side of your body, letting approximately 12" to 14" of one end of the sahs hang straight down from your natural waist (which is at your navel, not your hips).  Make a 45° fold in the sash, bringing the sash around the front of your body and begin to wrap it around.  The sash should go around twice, wrapped snugly, leaving about 14" to 16".

Take the remaining portion of the sash and slip it up under the point at which the sash was folded at a 45° angle.  Bring it up between your side and the sash.  At this point, the two ends of the sash should be hanging side by side, and they should be approximately the same length.

Don your sword belt over the sash, with the outer end of the sash (the end of the sash that you looped under and around; not the first end that hung down initially) going over your sword belt.  Arrange the sash and belt so that you can hook and unhook your saber without difficulty.

On occasion, men elected to wear cravats, something which was most often seen in formal settings. Even a cursory study of the cravat of the period reveals that the norm is almost anything you care to use. Cravats were wide or relatively narrow; well-tied or sloppily, loosely tied for an affected look of casualness; black or bright colors; tied with one end inserted under the coat or jacket lapel, or spilling down the shirt front. A significant percentage of the cravats in the photographs had two light-colored stripes on one end of the cravat, an end which was intended to be left outside the jacket lapels.

The Victorian era was a time when formal dress was rather highly regarded, and that held true among the ranks of the armies. All too often, the romanticized notion of a barefooted, rag-tag collection of Confederate bone-bags and scarecrows is represented to the spectators at events as the pure, historical truth. While certainly it was true in part, that image is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth, however; some emphasis should be placed upon the other end of the scale.

Remember that after the end of the War, the South still had the mindset which Samuel Clemens ("Mark Twain") accused Sir Walter Raleigh of having inflicted upon it, a disposition to romanticizing life and viewing all matters within the framework of the fantasy of a chivalric world where all real men were cavaliers and all real women were princesses or ladies fair. From the better world of chivalry and the horrible world of a devastating defeat and accursed Reconstruction rose what has come to be called "Lost Cause" poetry, literature, art, and mythology - romantizations of what really took place. Many re-enactors do too much of their research from the perspective of the noble but vanquished Southern warrior, and far too little research from source documents.

This in no way seeks to diminish the true and horrendous suffering of soldiers and civilians alike, for the depredations and atrocities committed in that War can never be fully understood or told, and perhaps we should be thankful thank we can know no more than we do. At the same time, it is not appropriate for us to ignore history in favor of romance in our impressions.