CONFEDERATES IN BLUE: “ENGLISH ARMY CLOTH” IN THE A.N.V. by David Burt

[paulcalloway]

The following article is provided by David Burt and posted here with his permission.

CONFEDERATES IN BLUE
"ENGLISH ARMY CLOTH" IN THE A.N.V.
By David Burt
During the last two years of the was there were many stories and reports by soldiers of both sides of troops in the Army of Northern Virginia appearing to be uniformed in Blue.

One story written by a Georgian in Hills Corps wrote. He had received clothing that was "blue in colour but not like Yankee Blue" he also complained that his jacket and trousers did not match".

A soldier in the 2nd Georgia, Bennings Brigade, Longstreet's Corps wrote, "sometimes the Govt would get a supply of fine cloth, and we would get uniforms almost to Blue".

Another report by Augustus Dickert Co.H 3rd S.C.Vols. stated the uniforms consisted of "a dark blue round jacket closely fitting".

Even union troops had trouble distinguishing Longstreet's men from their own. Lt C Clark of the 125th Ohio on viewing Kershaw's Brigade at Chickamauga ordered his men to hold their fire saying, "at a distance they appeared to wear dusty blue". A volley by Kershaw's men ended the confusion.

So where did this Cloth come from, and what did it look like?

In December 1862 Major J B Ferguson was sent to England to become the Quatermaster Departments first foreign agent.The Sixty year old Ferguson’s initial orders were to buy as many blankets, shoes and woollens as quickly as possible.

According to surviving records the first shipment of this cloth was purchased by Ferguson, in Manchester – where he now had his base - in April 1863.This was purchased according to Ferguson “from sixteen Yorkshire woollen mills”. And in a letter written by C.S. Secretary of War James A Seddon to CJ McRae, dated July 4th 1864. Seddon informed McRae that Maj Ferguson could supply cloth from “Lancastershire (sic) ( Lancashire) and Yorkshire”.

It was widely used by the British Army for uniform trousers and greatcoats hence the term it became to be known as in Richmond "English Army cloth".

The first major shipments of this cloth, arrived at the warehouses in Richmond on July 9th 1863. Records show that this shipment consisted of 18 bales totaling 3,336 yards of 1 1/2 yard wide blue grey kersey.
However small amounts of this cloth did arrive prior to this date, in a letter written in April 1863 by Q.M. Major Richard Waller of the Richmond Dept mentions the purchase of English cloth "A small portion of which has now arrived". Major Caleb Huse, whilst engaged in purchasing goods for th QM Dept in 1861 –62, also imported large amounts of cloth supplied by S Isaac Campbell & Co of London.

In a report by Josiah Gorgas C.S Chief of Ordnance entitled. “Abstract of Summary of Supplies purchased and shipped by Maj Caleb Huse Dated Feb 3rd 1863, mentions that 78,520 yards of Cloth had been received, some of which we now know was the Blue Grey “English Army Cloth”

So what did the colour look like? Various descriptions have come to light one states "it was a variably toned blue grey wool with a dark hue".
Another went on "The shade of cloth varied from a dark grey to a blue grey, to a shade that looked very much like Dark Blue.

When examined closely the material is variably toned, but when viewed under magnification the wool is revealed to be a combination of both dark blue, and light to medium grey fibres.

The wool was apparently dyed in two colours and then carded together before spinning into yarn.

As synthetic dyes came into use in England at the time of the Civil War, it is likely they were used in the making of this cloth. Another pointer to the fact synthetic dyes were used is the fact that surviving jackets show very little signs of fading. Evidence of good solid English synthetic dyes.

Records indicate that the Quartermaster's Department in Richmond did not begin to receive any large quantities of the Blue Grey kersey until October 1863. By the spring and summer of 1864 the amounts running the blockade were huge, for example on June 10th 1864 4,574 yards of "English Army Cloth" came in, followed by 4,983 on June 13th, 3 days later 2,983 more came in, so that in one week the Richmond Depot received 12,540 yards of blue grey "English Army Cloth".

This was probably typical, although some week's smaller quantities were received.

By the summer of 1864 the Richmond Depot was becoming virtually reliant on this imported English kersey for uniforms. Even though some smaller quantities of jeans, cassimere and kersey were still being produced by domestic sources.

By the time of General Grant's arrival at the gates of Petersburg, A.N.V. uniforms were largely made of the blue grey kersey. In the last half of 1864 up to the war's end, upwards of 75,000 jackets and tens of thousands of pairs of trousers were made of this cloth.

Known as the Richmond Depot Type III by the Les Jenson Typology these jackets were the same as previous styles produced by the Richmond Depot but lacked shoulder tabs and belt loops.

This same English Blue Grey kersey was used by another manufacturer to supply uniforms for the Confederacy. This firm was Peter Tait and Co of Limerick Ireland. Tait was a Scotsman who founded the company in 1852 and by the end of the Crimean War was the biggest uniform contractor to the British Army.

Tait was using the blue grey kersey at the time of the Civil War for British uniform trousers and greatcoats. Peter Tait & Co bought a lot of his cloth from the firm of Joshua Ellis & Sons of Dewsbury, Yorkshire. Tait in all likelihood used many of the same firms in Lancashire & Yorkshire as Maj JB Ferguson did, to procure his other supplies.

Tait's distinctive jackets complete with a double row of stitching on the button side and lack of centre seam at the back of the jacket began to arrive in the South in the autumn of 1864.

A surviving quartermasters book records the arrival of 4,400 jackets and trousers on December 29th 1864 as part of the Collie and Tait contract.
As both the Tait jackets and trousers and the Richmond Depot Type III jackets were the final uniforms issued to the army of Northern Virginia, both were made of Blue Grey kersey, it was probably the only time the A.N.V. ever achieved any kind of uniformity - in colour at least.

Sources:

• Correspondence with Ron Field
• The New Richmond Depot Catalogue - Chris White Citing Record Group 109 Nat Archives
• Regiments and Uniforms of the Civil War - Don Troiani
• A Survey of C.S. Central Govt Issue Jackets - Les Jenson
• Confederate Industry Harold S Wilson
• OR Series IV vol II pages 383-85
• OR Series IV vol II Pages 525-29
• McRae Papers Authentic Campaigner Website.

Written by David Burt 2007

[paulcalloway]

David Burt has revised this article.

[tmdreb]

I really enjoy this topic, but hasn't it been well-established that a large quantity of blue gray kersey arrived in Texas in the third quarter of 1862? The continuing research on imported goods keeps pushing back the date of first import earlier and earlier. The Fingal even brought ready-made clothing in 1861 to Savannah, though I couldn't say what kind of cloth it was made from.

[Jim Mayo]

Couple of observations on an excellent thread.

Phil: My corrrespondence with some relic hunters in Texas has shown that there are many Tait BM buttons found there. In fact it seems to me that it may be too many for just late war Tait jackets. It may also be that the Texas ports were easier for the blockaid runners to enter. I will try to find out a little more info on the time period of the sites.


In Mr. Burt's article he states

"By the time of General Grant's arrival at the gates of Petersburg, A.N.V. uniforms were largely made of the blue grey kersey. In the last half of 1864 up to the war's end, upwards of 75,000 jackets and tens of thousands of pairs of trousers were made of this cloth.

Known as the Richmond Depot Type III by the Les Jenson Typology these jackets were the same as previous styles produced by the Richmond Depot but lacked shoulder tabs and belt loops. "

The above words would lead one to think that only Type III jackets were being made with English Army cloth and that these would be the prevelant jacket worn by the troops in the trenches of Petersburg after 1864. The problem with this is in the Petersburg death photos ( including Alsop's farm), most of the jackets where a distinction can be made as to type are type II and appear to be made of a dark woolen material. (I am not including the Tait jacket worn by the Confederate in Ft. Mahone. ) Granted this is a microscopic view of just 4 or 5 people from the ANV but how should we interpret this? With the number of jackets issued from mid 64 to the end of the war it seems like early 64 manfactured type II jackets would be all used up/worn out by April 65. The pictures seem to indicate that Type II jacket were continued to be made using English Army cloth after the summer of 64 and were still being used at the close of the war.

Anyone else have any thoughts on that?

[Dan Wambaugh]

Jim,

I completely agree with you. I think when referring to the typology of the jackets produced by the Richmond Depot we have to be very, very careful and above all keep an open mind. There are no documents issued by the officers commanding the depot saying "On this day we will be switching from type II to type III" and so on. The borders between when the different types were issued and used are gray, if there are in fact borders at all!

One can only guess at what led to the change between the "type II" and "type III" jackets, but without concrete evidence to the contrary it could even be something as simple as which cutter at the depot cut your jacket out! Any other number of theories could be put forth as well, and without concrete information coming forth from the depot we may never know the truth.

The point is that photograpnic evidence supports the use of what we call the "type II" RD jacket until the very end of the war, and that is some of the only concrete evidence we have on the subject.

By the way, excellent article! I too would enjoy very much seeing a study of English Army Cloth use in the Trans Mississippi and Western Theater, both areas I feel are often overlooked when discussing importation of goods. Keep up the good work David and thank you for writing the article!


Best Regards,

[jacobite8749]

I have always thought that finding the buttons does not always mean that a Peter Tait & Co jacket was ever attached to it. Peter Tait & Co buttons (block I or A) are back marked P. TAIT & CO. with or without the addition of LIMERICK.
Some Confederate buttons found in Texas with the back mark R. T. TAIT & Co./ESSEX STREET/STRAND are attributed to a firm called TAIT Bros & Co. in London. These never had a jacket attached at all. This firm was an off-shoot involving Peter’s brothers, James and Robert. James Tait was the "Major" Tait who appeared in the States during the war .
A further firm called Robt.Thos TAIT & Co. was set up after James went to Richmond. All the Tait firms merged in 1866.

One of my other pet issues is that while Tait did have a contract with Collie for 50, 000 pounds sterling worth of uniforms, a further 100,000 pounds sterling was also within the contract and they were no doubt fulfilled by other British manufactures, Hebbert, Cromie and others. However, what I think that is really lacking is what the specifications for each contract, and the allowed variations by each contractor. Also what were the specifications for Tait's Alabama contract? again another unknown.

[Gallo de Cielo]

The large number of surviving "type II" Richmond Depot jackets made from English Army cloth attest to the fact that jackets made from this material were not at all confined to the later-war variant.

Additionally, this article seems to omit much scholarship- some mentioned by Phil with regard to cloth/uniforms coming in from Texas as well as the MacRae papers, an effort which certainly owes a good deal to Neil Rose.

My two cents,

[roundshot]

A large number of Type II's of English Army cloth still surviving? I'd be interested in knowing where some of them are. I don't doubt their use, just their survivability. I am aware of the Marsh 4th NC jacket. Can you steer me on to others?

[Tom Ezell]

By the way, excellent article! I too would enjoy very much seeing a study of English Army Cloth use in the Trans Mississippi and Western Theater, both areas I feel are often overlooked when discussing importation of goods. Keep up the good work David and thank you for writing the article!

Fred Adolphus' article in MC&H ("Confederate Clothing of the Houston Quartermaster Depot," Military Collector & Historian, XLVIII (Winter 1996), pp. 171-180) is an excellent start on the material culture of the mid- and late-war Trans-Mississippi, and was the long time source for our fetish for English army cloth out here. Lon Webster has followed up on that recently with a book-length study that will be published by The Watchdog sometime later this year. Big parts of his research into the English (and as we find out, some Belgian stuff in the mix) were published in the 'Dog the year before last (C. Lon Webster, "Belgian Army Cloth in the Trans-Mississippi: Edward Gautherin and Company's Imports Through Matamoros," The Watchdog, Vol 13 No. 3 (Summer 2005) pp. 6-14). This is just a taste of what Lon came up with after rooting through the microfilmed records for the past couple of years.

And by way of personal involvement, my great-great uncle, Jonathan Ashcraft of Company D, 26th Arkansas Infantry was on a detail assigned to guard the wagon trains as Churchill's Arkansas/Missouri Division moved from southwestern Arkansas to reinforce Richard Taylor in the opening moves of the Red River campaign in March 1864. While encamped overnight at a crossing on the Saline River near Longview, AR, the trains were raided by a Federal cavalry force sent out from Pine Bluff. The Confederate pickets allowed the Feds to ride right into camp with them, mistaking them for Confederate troops since they were wearing the same type of short dark jackets as the Confederates, and the pickets mistook them for friendly troops. Uncle Jonathan sat out the rest of the war at the Rock Island, IL POW camp for his part in that mistaken identity. Likewise, there are many anecdotal stories of Trans-MS Confederates wearing captured Union garments when those units had not had an opportunity to be around any place to capture any such items.

This point got driven home to me back in 2000 when a group from the old Dixie Guard and the Night Monkey Mess got together and sewed up a bunch of jackets from "English army cloth" and did a living history down at Mansfield SCA and the nearby Pleasant Hill reenactment/Rebfest. Just about all of the tourists who came by saw us and asked where the Confederates were ;-)

I've still got a Tait and a Houston jacket that I made back then, and some of the old 2000 jackets get swapped around on this forum from time to time. The T-Ms fashion trend seems to have swapped around to "penitentiary cloth" garments (likely because most of the sources for the kersey have dried up), but the English kersey is probably more appropriate, and is still sorely under-represented out here.

As for RD II's made of the stuff, one should think of Longstreet's Corps as they re-deployed to Chickamauga, and the reports of their bluish jackets -- made on what we refer as the "RD II" pattern with epaulettes and belt loops, but out of the bluish English and possibly Belgian cloth. And if I recall Mr. Jenson's typography for these jackets, one of the defining characteristics of what he labeled as an "RD III" is that it is made of blue-gray kersey.

Tom

[LibertyHallVols]

There is a kersey RD2 in the Smithsonian, is there not? I seem to recall it being featured on their website not-so-long ago, complete with interactive "zoomable" photograph.