Confederate Uniforms & Gear (North Carolina)

the basic camp life uniforms and web burners I say camp life in uniform in the daily process of a Confederate soldier my buddy Casey here is that he's dressing up today is one of our rugged warriors you'd find late in the war as a matter of fact that pretty much what he's wearing right now would be almost what's left of some of the soldiers uniforms late in the war the trousers he's wearing right now would be considered a blue Union uniform but of course at the time Confederate soldiers would wear anything they had during the war and a lot of guys the very beginning of the war were part of the Union Army who jumped and transfer to the Confederate Army so these guys will definitely hang on to these trousers but of course also if they happen to have trousers during the war that were so torn up they would just take them off whatever body they really didn't need it anymore and wear it themselves it's a he's very rough and you take a look at these broke hands over here these are what our noble soldiers would be wearing these leather and wood Brogan's with steel plates at the bottom of them for a little extra traction make sure them heels wouldn't wear off of course he's been marching I would say probably about a three four hundred miles and them suckers and they just not torn apart now if you were lucky at least a fair foot exactly you were lucky you still was able to hang on to these things we had boys up in 1862 who still didn't have shoes to wear and we had guys going around the winter who would wrap cloth around their feet just to keep them warm because they didn't have any shoes to wear after every battle you've almost see men walking out scavenging the the battlefield just trying to find a pair of shoes that will fit them to put off here now so let's let's backtrack a little bit here and whether they go to the evolution of the uniform when the warhorse broke out if you were in the Union Army of course you had your uniform with you and a lot of the armies at the time would bring companies together of existing units well for our case here in Forsyth County we had militia units and they had their own personal uniforms at the time which they had to purchase for themselves and make up well for North Carolina units at the very beginning of the war North Carolina of course was always known for being the best well dressed uniform out there or best well dressed units out there the code I'm holding here would be considered at North Carolina sack code at the very end of the war it was a no expense let behind made pretty much made their units look at the back well most well sharp pressed units out there and I will pass this around let y'all get an idea of what the the material they were making this right here is what we would call Jean wool or team cloth and which was much different from what the inner boys wore there's where it's pretty much straight up wool of course in the south we had to make what we could out of them and this was right here as we like appreciate what we what we had to to put on now no Carolina uniforms you had special buttons that were put on them if you look at the buttons on this one that actually has North Carolina steel buttons on there so we actually seal put on them and other ones would have just what's it called the sunburst button the sunburst button was just a North Carolina seal with a or just a North Carolina emblem with a Sun around it so you have those two style buttons along with of course your infantry cavalry and your artillery south of course how this be your trousers of the North Carolina Utes would wear and 20 significant things they had on them of course they have the the black trim on it to represent our units and their core some have given different thicknesses on different colors for the for the units this word he just regular infantryman sergeant or officer of course the the higher and rank you go that the larger the stripe would be to express on your soldiers now also if you look at the the uniform you have on there and the stripe on here this was black the black represented infantry of course then you would have yellow for cavalry and red from artillery now of course our units would would walk out that have all these brand-new brand new uniforms very sharp the very neat of course at the very beginning of the war you've had militia units who hadn't received the uniforms you still had men in these blue groups from the from the Union Army and you still had of course and then you have the uniforms that our states were handing out which would of course that's what added to a bunch of the confusion we had the very beginning we didn't have unified flags we didn't have unified uniforms altogether so that caused a lot of confusion on the battlefield but as I say North Carolina troops they make sure that they are uniforms wear the sharpest and made their uniforms like everything made distinct food for their state Casey could you put your way and everything while cases up here getting aggressive usual model talk about some of the other items we added here some of the basics of the uniform of course what probably the most important part of the inform this uniform were passing around was that distinctive for North Carolina that was distinctive for North Carolina that was that was a North Carolina volunteers uniform now of course one of the most important parts of the uniform if not the your your shoes of course in uniform course this right here is what could call you hammer sack this is what the soldiers kept their food in give it up open it up and you have a lot of times you have a liner inside of it they would keep their food and I mean anything they could eat they put in here anything they had material-wise forks plates napkins and stuff like that they'd stuff that sucker in here now you had two different styles at the very beginning of the war you had the guitar canvas pile and this was all this is made of canvas and it's been dipped in tar the other one you would happen when he's wearing here with his straight up canvas and it would have a leather strap on it and this will be most what most Confederate soldiers would have had at the beginning too late into the war and like so we didn't take all the time but are ours it was considered unnecessary but most Union soldiers were boys who had been at the very end of the war would have ones like these now the drawback to these items right here especially after being out for a very long time was that you put literally everything in here I mean everything apples to to straight-up meat that was just cut off and the problem with that is that the juice is of that meats in the blood and what over time would get soaked into this liner and soaking to the canvas of the back problem with that is it would cost a lot of disease because that stuff but rot over time and with number one death of the war was not considered the bullet it was actually disease that killed most of our soldiers so you have these guys walking around with these haversacks with food and then that's been sitting in there for months and unclean unclean liners on the inside of them it's collecting all this bacteria at all this disease so our men of course would get sick over time and this would kill more soldiers actually then the bullet would Casey got y'all your uniform on then I'm going to roll out make something extra soldier all right now we get to the middle of the war most soldiers of course in North Carolina they start off with the Hammers I mean with the the sack coats like that one and over time material will become a little bit harder to come by so one of the ways to save material is they would come up with the new design called the shell jacket but of course that name wasn't given the time given at the time it's just called a jacket but what they did was they took all this extra material that you would find at the bottom of the of the coat and they pretty much cut it off so what you would come up with is just this regular jacket here and North Carolina you still kept those you'll kept the buttons on there still kept the well some of them actually still actually kept the epaulets on the side of it in black but of course during later even later into the war they got rid of that because that's just more material that you don't need and this jacket IRA's brigly worn out is actually what you would find on a soldier from being around 1863 to early 1864 and believe it or not this jacket at one time was the same color as that sack cooked but sitting out there in the Sun over a period of time these things fade and that's where you get the color that you see most of our soldiers wearing was became less of a gray in color and more of a tan in color of course then you had the boys we're in the dark butternut color which which was somewhat closer that's just a little bit more orange color yeah now Casey here he said he doesn't taking all this time setting up and behind me this is what the late soldier would look like this is like a probably a soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia problem with the say the 28th North Carolina would probably look like between 18 late 1863 - all the way to the end of the war his jackets a much thicker material that the one get you held with his straight up would be called gene pool instead just gene cloth it was a mixture of both hood and you can tell he's been dirty he's been out in the field for a long long time he's probably been out there unshaven he probably hasn't had a bath or even been in a creek and probably a week or so Union had came in a month or so now we have that like said for the basic uniform here you've got the belt at the top we'll start off with the belt here ladies weren't here is a squared georgia belt with a little explanation on this one here Gina George is being framed mu Georgia v frame belt law soldiers like said they didn't have a lot of belt buckles so they would just pick up this one and a lot of these would be actually made at home made by the wives or just picked up from the tailor shop not necessarily a uniformed belt but if you had one that was uniformed a lot of times it would have the Confederate States belt buckle like this one here and I'll pass that one around to give you an idea now the backs of these things were literally filled with leg and that's what held them together there with a with a brass plating on it that's that around get you all the idea feel how heavy that thing is give you an extra idea of how heavy this uniform is on the belt of course you would have the cash box this cap box is what kept our munitions for the for the for the rifle now the right lady is holding here is a what used a domain name for Jade 1848 Springfield which soggy shot a 69 caliber bullet if y'all ever seen a 69 caliber boater ever held one in your hand how many all familiar with a 12 gauge slug okay a 12 gauge slug is not even the same size as one of those this is actually smaller and I've actually got one of the a mini ball that those uniforms took now these mini balls would actually take as they come they'll be wrapped in paper and in the paper you'd have a small wad and you would have a gunpowder underneath so when the solder would have in his wood to take out he'd have his he'd have these and they'd be stuffed in his a cartridge box and of course cartridge box stay here on his side real close to his post it was a right arm so all he would have to do is reach behind him and duck right in and pull out one of these cartridges and besides the box the motive second most important in that box is having two front teeth you didn't have two front teeth you were pretty much useless because you had to take them two front teeth and tear it off the top of that cartridge box or car the cartridge spit it out pour the powder into the weapon slide the minie ball down in there take out your ramrod and stuff it down in there now most uh most US soldiers coursework were issued the Springfield rifle a lot of Confederate soldiers had it also but the most widely used one of the Confederacy was the Enfield rifle which was shipped over to us from England and we had blockade runners come in to through and that's what would give it our troops their rifles now their rifles at 58 caliber a little bit smaller than this so I said I'm gonna pass this around give you an idea of what kind of shot was shot at our soldiers to give you an idea of how bad one of these suckers was tear you up at a low velocity rate now beyond the beyond the munitions and the rifle you get to the the camp life aspects of the uniform as you can tell he has his haversack here on his left side and he also has his canteen the canteen was used we had a couple different types of canteens to choose from or at the beginning of the war and most of them actually sometimes will use a variation that their ancestor used during the Revolutionary War now this one right here is one that I wear a lot and you actually have the your state written on and a lot of one would actually be creative with theirs and on the backsides they would they would paint their state flag on it or they would paint their unit name or something like that paint their their name on it their family name make them real creative and show off the their patriotism for the country of course then you get into the the metal ones which we call their yeah these are both considered to be drum canteens this would be the older version then of course you have the new version was interesting about these right here is uh they're like a barrel pretty much like a whiskey barrel the when you put liquid in it over time and will harden up and or something will soften up and it will seal so water would not escape the other hand you have the metal ones here which if they they had like a small crack in it they would leak so how to fix this problem ladies what so you're drinking water with beeswax lined around the canteen appreciate the head of it wonderful flavor to it is this can you drink out of this one too don't you it wasn't taste like CB bar it's right now staring straight out of the creek right now if you lost your canteen you were pretty much useless um about especially if it was a hot day because this stuff here and I can tell you from experience from wearing it day after day it'll breathe through the summer and it breathes way too much in the winter so these uniforms are what you would get so hot and you would sweat you would sweat and you would sweat now that part about that is with this uniform on that sweat course gets trapped inside the uniform and it actually doesn't be evaporating so it actually keeps you cool the problem is you can only sweat so much before you start you have a heatstroke or either something worse than that of course if you didn't have this canteen on you you were almost considered useless on the battlefield if you got hot in exhaustion proper now after the battle is over you would you go the camp if you weren't retreating if you were if you were successful you would set up for vacations for the next day's battle but what you would have on you for that course you'd have to have sexy food on you for arrest but you would also have your blanket roll some of them would actually have the blanket roll on them and some of them will actually have a a tent on them or a 10 half now this blanket roll right here is a this irregular cavalry blankets no about no longer than about six feet long and about three feet wide so it wasn't really used very commonly but of course our soldiers use whatever they get their hands on a lot of course would have have imprinted on them somewhere what it was competitive States on it some of them of course if they were stolen yeah picked up they would have a union on it but a lot of our men didn't have tent roles so they would sleep on if they had a blanket they sleep on the blanket at night use your haversack or you coat take it off can be used as a pillow at the time of course like I say during the wintertime if you didn't have a tent or if you didn't have a makeshift quarters made up at the time for the winter you were very unlucky on the say the best and a lot of times they would actually have three or four men laying in these small dog tents which actually are not too much bigger base wise than your table is once they're set up and you have three or four minute laying in this tent at the same time just hug them together just trying to show yeah see the funny thing is yes they would say at the time he was which we would Saturday Spoony and the funny thing is you've sitting out here in the middle of night you have four guys laying up against each other and they would say spoon and people actually turn over and lay the other way the fixed rate of the guy on the other end he's facing outward stays more now besides the the trousers the uniform horses blanket the the other very important piece to have on the in-form is your hat the hat course kept your cool on your head and make sure that the kids saw daddy drives when you find the rifle and like say it helped you help us distinguish each other from distinguish who we are now very beginning the war you had most people were issued a kepi this was there pretty much your parade hat this was given by the Unites States military I believe they started using these in 1858 so this was a fairly new design for our soldiers at the time but the problem with this year form is or the status when you put it on what does it not cover your gears so a lot of heat is transferred from your ears and if those ears are not covered in a hot summer day you will get very hot and it will get sunburned so a lot of guys will take their and said these campers they take these two cavities just throw them away and they would use a version of a slouch hat a lot of them would be ones that they would have at home and like say they doesn't matter what variation they were this one here's of course my my very favorite ones and Casey yours is a usual have a beehive of happiness you're on the road and the Beehive hat it would be somewhat like what he has but you actually come up to a point at the top and you see a lot of soldiers wearing it with a short brim you don't see when they have it on their heads you have it caught off a little bit to the side and a lot of times that top brand would be bent over because of course when you have to sit out in the field of battle and you're holding this rifle up you have to turn that head and make sure that you will have anything blocking your view or make sure that your head didn't get any pop bottom suckers of course oh yeah when you when you go to a shoulderarms it doesn't knock your hat off to the side so you'd have a bunch of men who would even have a side of their to theirs they've actually just been all the way up and some of would even take a pen and snap it in to make sure that stays where it's at then we get into the food bring up that one last because I've got a little bit of a treat here for you guys tonight when you got out of camp toward the beginning of the war or when you got out of out of the field and beginning of the war we had a lot more food a lot more rations we had we could we could feed our armies but of course you get toward the middle light war especially on these long campaigns you didn't really have a way to collect but you would scavenge which you could if you were marching through an orchard you'd pick the fruits off the trees or you pick the berries off off the bushes and you would keep on going one of the one of the items of the most famous items that were used during the war would be called hardtack and general what heart attack is it's essentially a biscuit or an cracker that is harder than a brick if it's met correctly and they're in what it is essentially it is flour water and if you're lucky you had a pinch of salt or garlic to add flavoring to it and essentially what they would do is we continue it cinch it these any fabrics out here essentially what they would do is they would take what little rations they have a flower makes it with a little bit of water tank it up together and press it into whatever makeshift item they had uses an oven and what we have here for him is a canteen half and this canteen half is would quite literally be from they would take a canteen it was broken and cut it in half and you would take a piece of that piece of dough that you just made set it in there press it down and take put the cover back on and throw it into the fire and let it sit and after you've done with it you would live sit for a while and a lot of times in left center tonight and you would get a about a quarter inch thick piece of bread or cracker and what it would look like piece here will be something like this and that's all it is just flour water and a little bit of salt and believe it or not they would actually have this in their uniform for almost up to six months at a time six months they would make it in a fire and put it in their haversack and it would sit different almost six months and they would ration off this stuff now I said a lot of times that they had meat or fruits in their in their in their sacks this stuff here would be absolutely no problem whatsoever in soaking up whatever problems they had in there with disease or bacteria but as you know it to actually pass the bag around here limit if you are full enough and let you try get a flavor of what these soldiers say I just made this stuff last night so it's not not as hard as you would expect but I'm gonna pass this around let y'all take a piece out of it and give you an idea of what the what the soldiers say now if you got dentures or if you've got really soft teeth be careful with it except this stuff is can be really hard so uh then brick table son but I think about that heart attack is a the soldiers would joke around is they would actually take this stuff and if it wasn't it would joke around they say they ran out of ammo they take the heart attack out of their pockets and they throw it at the enemy use it as a rock or fill or they ran out of artillery they take their heart attack and stuff into the can and use it as cannon fodder and they would hear jokes about guys taking the taking the heart attack and throwing at their enemy and when they would advance they book on the ground they pick up their food and take a bite off of it and keep on going now odelay the war these were this is what the men or the ate and lived off ball and their uniform like say what they have is what what they had on their back is what their parents they essentially owned besides where they could scavenge these men would sleep in their uniforms ready for battle or the next day if they were if they could and essentially this is this is what they wore for four years for four years of battle they would wear their uniforms and if they were lucky they would pick something off somebody else's more than fallen comrades they would luckily if they were good enough quartermaster if they had enough inventory they would luckily get some new shoes or new new trousers or new coat but with a confederate army we weren't always that funny and we made what we could out what we had the lot of stuff was sent from home like I said of like it I have here would be considered something that was being issued to them for the military they would also have quilts or other blankets that were actually been made by their families sent to them but what do we have here essentially it's just it's just a scratch of the surface of what these soldiers had at the time and I wish I could go into much deeper detail unfortunately how so blessed with having all this equipment but I tell you if anybody here has never been to a war reenactment and would love to get a better history and idea of how the soldiers live that is something you really should go to then you can find one of us anywhere these boys a lot a lot of them are come one day and leave the next and get a bunch of them are a really hardcore on it they have the uniforms of looking exactly like what their ancestors had they sleep out nothing but their a blanket underneath the stars no tent whatsoever cook off off the land we I remember going to a reenactment down in Bentonville a gentleman had a fresh shot turkey out there with him so would you need that turkeys and shelter nobody I shot it about three or Talbert so we had this the a guy with a turkey literally boiling the feathers off of in cooking and I said well you must be the luckiest Confederates out here because you put this me in 1865 you've been looking to get a rabbit out here and I wish I'd like say I was like good a much better detail but with what we have here is this best idea we can give you and if anybody would like to come up or would like me to pass around some of these other items I'd be happy to do that give you a better idea with the Arts and team truth I'll go ahead and do that go ahead and pass a haversack around good job I knew what that is and passed the canteen around and let you all understand the weight of some of these items the material that made out of and d-plex that give you a better athlete better obviously zero is there anybody who has a question I'll be having answered okay I want to ask you have you heard that some of the Confederate pants were made group that meal in Old Salem there was there actually was a uniform maker out there Cooktown mill and I wish I could tell you exactly what type of pattern uniform that meant at the time but unfortunately we actually from what I was told they were actually trying to put a marker out there for the mill yeah and unfortunately was unsuccessful I suppose I understand yes like Old Salem or a Salem at the time which is I mean they were very helpful with you making uniforms and like said the gentleman who owned that mill was very very well she he was was very wealthy top so he could put the top time for the people to work and pay them to make these uniforms yeah but the thing of it is the Ravens privately passed fishing was neutral and didn't want to take a part in the war effort against the Union but to get the money from the confessing this Brooks town meal the fnh fries brothers made some things kind of on the slide that what they make they're pumped up by the Arabians well just like just like the rest of the country the Americans unfortunately were not unified of course they were also split by by this conflict and that's where you get a lot of the the North Carolina regimental bands came from Old Salem the brass bands as a trend enhancer and we had there the the precise rifles themselves were formed out of Salem and some members of Winston so there were members in Old Salem who did fight for the Confederacy so we were they were they were splitting issue but they were not completely that passiveness I can't guarantee you then no that's a great yard somewhere they said where it was left but they've got a right Ian Gregg yard and there's like two or three of the headstones and they're you know the break-ins hey it's not the flat in the headstone you know to getting great hit his name Raisman that he's got battle flag better flags he frames luckier boy flat with Mark Braud laughing I've never have seen that for that Bailey it struck me because we was taping in the parking lot of outside it and I walk around both clothes go crazy or I would go look around it called my above eyes never seen in Brabant great corporation that had to do with the south that's what stroke or caught my of that flag engraved in the headstone the answer love it was great so charging doesn't say now if you wore the same uniform every day for four years you didn't stay in that uniform by yourself no cronies oh oh yeah oh yeah what are the blood of the biggest brought one of the biggest other issues that you had as its better soul goes up or she would have a wife's problem lice was probably the worst problem that we had insect wise and they were actually guys we would talk about going from each other's hair and trying to pick these little suckers out they would actually talk about if you would pick one out of your head and you pinch it and actually make a little popping sound and if they said there which there was a stories about men at night they can hear the sound of these little just meant popping the lights out of their heads and yeah you uh you may used to also take that canteen half and they would have large braces and then my margin of the campaign it canteen that off they would have they would do that they also did if they found like a cockroach or something they have cockroach races put cockroaches on one claim clip cockroach on the other fight see who could get off for miles right of course this lesson there was no family tomorrow I said other side no gambling whatsoever neither a lot of did now they would gambling can come time to party they leave their playing cards and hammock up they didn't want to get caught they have to examine cargo you know a lot of them like there I wish I had always had a little mint your Bible would be too because that's one of the other things that the Confederate Army actually issued out to a lot of his soldiers where they would actually issue a Bible to every single Confederate and there were stories that talk about somehow that that Bible would save your life other times they would have a the Bible in the deck of cards in the same pocket and they would talk about how that minie ball actually goes straight through the Bible actually get caught by the deck of cards so that third so there's actually there's a lot of history behind that part tuna which I had pay an old-fashioned type of card continue because let's let's uh let's be real here you used to not in camp a lot you're gonna you will need some type of recreation and of course gambling was that type of recreation and it took some special skill to take a needle and kill those lots and see and not just the scenes oh yeah well oh yeah so anybody else have a question I've come as a question I know I mean looking live pictures you see a lot of the belts that are on backwards the other way around I've done some research on that and found out that what it was because you know our materials were we didn't have a lot of materials then because I mean with a we working a weren't planned on being under an invasion you don't blame them for war but they would get a hold of us belt buckles from the Union and turn the belt bump upside down and they call it southern nation in put the belt on backwards to be like that I was a part of that well yeah especially a say if you were at the very beginning of the war you were part of the Union Army you still had a Union uniform one of the ways that they would distinguish themselves from the other units was you say you had a cartridge box like this one right here and they would have their big Eagle breastplate on it well the Eagle would actually be facing upwards all on the Union uniforms and you'd have the belt buckle facing regularly well they would take the Eagle and put it in a downward motion belt buckle and and turn upside down and just the I guess anyway you can see how defiance and a way to distinguish themselves from the other soldiers so off that was from earlier war a lot of our officers and stuff like esterday Union off beautiful just that kind of changed it watch it good on you I knew it was happening a lot of pagina not so much towards the end but I didn't really understand where they got them but I know now because yeah well like I say toward makes it toward a middle and especially near the end when you did have any parts that uniform to wear you able to take what they could off the other soldiers and of course a lot of time where the bend those Union self pumps and they just take the buckle just flip it upside down hit and Hank sometimes a lot of them were just saying to heck with it and just put it all straight up either way I thought I've got a friend that he has a UFO from he wears it this locket because he had picture excellent visual basis for where we built buckle that same way and he stand he went out and got more knows and words in that way himself day to day so I saw it does kind of maybe that's really get that you had a bush now okay anything else anybody would like to know I said I've got a bunch of knowledge and I couldn't cover over but if you have a question I definitely can come up with an answer Pro probably alright that's all we have appreciate appreciate y'all's time

Channel: Forsythe Rifles

Views: 74,268

Keywords: Confederate, uniforms, canteens, haversacks, shoes

Id: X0K-KY6YEGM

Length: 35min 21sec (2121 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 09 2013