Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The image of the ‘ragged rebel’ of the Confederate Army has long stalked the pages of American Civil War history. A tattered grey jacket nondescript trousers and shapeless slouch hat have all too often been accepted as the archetypal Southerner. This study which is the result of nearly twenty years of research sets out to create a fuller understanding of what the Confederate soldier really wore – from the first heady days of secession in South Carolina in 1860 to the fall of Richmond Virginia in 1865. It also attempts to explain reasons for the rise and fall in the availability of uniforms as the war progressed. In each of the eleven states which joined the Confederacy during 1861 (plus the three ‘border states’) floods of volunteers to the Southern cause donned pre-war militia dress or had new service uniforms made up by local tailors or by their own womenfolk. The variety cut and colour of these early war uniforms was endless. Inevitably confusion reigned on the battlefields of Big Bethel and First Manassas as friend mistook foe-often with fanal consequences. With the approach of the first winter of war and the realisation that the Confederate Govern ment was ill-prepared to clothe those troops entering its service the first ‘Great Appeal for clothing was issued throughout the Southern press. With the help of countless volunteer and societies composed mainly of the wives daughters and sweethearts of those at the lalefcunt many soldices received a new suit of mainly grey clothes an overot blanket a pair of socks Thus they sured the rigours of the first