Federal Garrison Standards Published

[Pvt_Sullivan]

The Federal Garrison Standards for "To Prevent the Effusion of Blood" are completed and available here in Adobe PDF format.

The Federal Garrison will be portraying the Staff and Companies E and H of the 1st U.S. Artillery and these standards are based off the 1857 Regulations for the U.S. Army and first hand accounts of the equipments and uniforms these Soldiers had.

if you have any question concerning these standards please contact the Event Coordinator - Pete Berezuk at pete.berezuk@gmail.com concerning them.

[PetePaolillo]

Re: Federal Garrison Standards Published

Here are a few sketches of the US Army regulars at Fort Moultrie. These are from various Harpers Weekly issues. Although they are not photographs, they are good representations of what the Garrison troops were wearing at this time. The first sketch shows Anderson's Men spiking the cannons and preparing to burn the carriages at Fort Moultrie. The second shows them evacuating Fort Moultrie under the cover of darkness. The third shows the docking at Fort Sumter.

[Pvt_Sullivan]

Desired Federal Impression

Since publishing the Federal Garrison Standards, I've received a number of good questions about what we desire to see our participants as Federal Soldiers wearing. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I asked Brian Sharp to have his picture taken in the required Federal Kit.

Click on the image for a larger copy

Our desired Federal Impression is of a U.S. Artillery Regular wearing the proscribed uniform based on the 1857 U.S. Army Regulation and the applicable General Orders of the period up to December 1860. Here are some notes for clarification.

- The desired head wear is the Dress Hat proscribed by General Order #3 of 24 March 1858. For Enlisted men of the Artillery. the Dress Hat is to be looped up on the left hand side with a brass eagle, have a red worsted wool cord, a single black ostrich plume and a pair of brass crossed canons on the front. In addition, a brass company letter and regimental number will be provided to all participants at the event.

- Next he is wearing a sky blue foot pattern overcoat. Since our event is occurring in January, we've decided to require our participants to bring an overcoat. Because the overcoat will be covering the other coats, participants can choose to bring either a fatigue jacket (four button sack coat) or an Artillery Trimmed Frock Coat.

- Our example is wearing a pair of foot pattern trousers in dark blue wool with a 1 inch red worsted stripe indicating his rank of Sergeant. The 1857 US Army Regulations set the trouser color to dark blue and we are requiring our Federal participants to have dark blue trousers.

- The weapon our example is carrying is an 1842 Model smooth bore Musket in .69cal. These weapons were produced at both National Armories in Springfield and Harper's Ferry. This weapon is finished bright and was the only weapon available to the Federal Garrison in December 1860.

- The Accoutrements our example has are those proscribed in the 1857 U.S. Army Regulations. We are not going to get nit-picky with specific patterns since a mix of old 1839 pattern accourtrements and the new 1858 pattern accoutrements were available in 1860. The main thing we will be looking for are that the belts are blackened (be they made from Buff, Bridle or Waxed leather) and that we prefer hand sewn items vice riveted items. The only thing we will not accept are the late civil war 1864 pattern accoutrements with primarily riveted construction. Please ensure you have the belt and box plates required. Note that our model has a Sergeant's Belt Plate to denote his rank.

My hope is this is helpful to our registered and planned participants. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me directly at pete.berezuk@gmail.com.

My thanks to Brian Sharp for helping us out by braving the South Carolina heat at Fort Moultrie to have his picture taken in head to toe wool.

[Benedict]

Re: Federal Garrison Standards Published

The second shows them evacuating Fort Moultrie under the cover of darkness.

Interestingly, the caption is in German.

[PetePaolillo]

Re: Federal Garrison Standards Published

Interestingly, the caption is in German.

That etching was reprinted in many European newspapers. I wish I had more info where this particuular German version came from, which newspaper etc.
I have a US copy of that etching in my collection. It comes from The Pictorial Histoy of the War of 1861. The print is captioned Evacuation of Fort Moultrie by Major Anderson and the United States Troops under his command, December 25, 1860 Here are a couple of photos of it.

[Pvt_Sullivan]

TPEB Participants Only - Federal Trousers Bully Buy

One unique item we are asking our Federal Participants to have is a pair of Dark Blue Federal Foot Pattern Trousers. Chris Sullivan of the Stony Brook Company has graciously offerred to support "To Prevent the Effusion of Blood" by offerring his Federal Foot Pattern Trousers in Dark Blue at a 10% discount to registered TPEB participants. There are thousands of pairs of Stony Brook Company trousers in the living history community. Chris Sullivan has invested years of research and experience into his craft. He also recognizes the constraints of a living historian's pocketbook and offers his trousers in both a Museum Grade and Commercial Grade. Both grades are acceptable for the TPEB Federal Garrison. Chris also has period correct artillery red worsted wool trousers stripes for Corporals and Sergeants.

Details of how to take advantage of the TPEB Participant Bully Buy will be provided to each participant upon receipt of their registration form and payment. This Bully Buy runs until 1 September 2010, so if you are interested you need to register as soon as possible and contact Chris Sullivan to take advantage of it.

TPEB Registration information is available here.

Disclaimer - this Bully Buy was arranged for TPEB participants by the event organizers based on our desired impression and TPEB acceptable standards. This was not coordinated through or approved by the Authentic Campaigner and this post does not imply any approval of Stony Brook Company products by the Authentic Campaigner.

[Pvt_Sullivan]

The Federal Dress Hat

To remove any confusion about this item from the Federal standards, I've written a short article about the U.S. Army Dress hat as described in General Order Number 3 of March 4, 1858.

The Federal Dress Hat

During his tenure as Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis had approved the creation of two regiments of cavalry and a distinctive uniform for cavalrymen that included the introduction of what would become known as the "Dress Hat" or as reenactors call it today the "Hardee Hat". Introduced for use by the cavalry in 1855, the Dress Hat replaced the 1851 Pattern Shako as the U.S. Army's dress uniform headwear in 1858 and was approved as a modification to the U.S. Army regulations of 1857 in General Order Number 3 of March 24, 1858. You can read the full text of General Order Number 3 here.

The Federal Participants for To Prevent the Effusion of Blood are asked to have a Dress Hat that is fully dressed for their assigned role as identified in General Order Number 3. To facilitate understanding of this request, Greg Deese has dressed his hat in accordance with the General Order for an enlisted soldier of Company E of the 1st Artillery and here is a picture of the result...



The event will provide a correct brass Regimental Number 1 and brass Company Letter to each participant assigned an enlisted role. Our recommendations for vendors for Dress Hats are TP&H Trading Company and Dirty Billy. The requested trimmings are the brass eagle plate, brass cross canon, red worsted hat cord and black ostrich plume. These items are available from most Civil War Period Sutlers and our recommendations are to either order the hat already trimmed or to purchase the items from S&S Firearms (they have some original items in their catalog still), and S&S Sutler.

Please feel free to contact the event organizer with any questions.

My thanks to Greg Deese for the picture and for putting up with my insistance on perfection in dressing his Dress hat.

Disclaimer - Vendor recommendations made in this post are based on our desired impression and TPEB acceptable standards. This was not coordinated through or approved by the Authentic Campaigner and this post does not imply any approval of vendors or products by the Authentic Campaigner.