Americana Series

For the Confederate Army, procurement of uniforms was the responsibility of company commanders and some state authorities, a system which assured non-conformity and inadequacy, leaving the soldiers to ‘root, hog or die’ supplying themselves. 

As Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia advanced towards the forthcoming bloody Battle of Antietam, eye witnesses described them as ragged and wretched in appearance, with uniforms of ‘butternut’, a homespun and factory-made coarse cloth dyed with walnut (‘butternut’) shells. The colour varied from “deep coffee to the whitish brown of ordinary dust”. Equipment and weapons were a mixture of items made in the Confederacy, imported from England and Europe, or most often taken from Union soldiers.