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Confederate Uniforms:
While there has been an enduring popular image of the Confederates as a “ragtag Rebel force” without a specific uniform, in fact the
The Haversack’s online store offers the 2nd edition of the Museum’s popular Uniform Catalogue, featuring an introduction by guest curator, Les Jensen. This reexamination of the Museum’s collection is arranged alphabetically by the name of the soldier who wore them, known provenance, and detailed descriptions. |
Confederacy’s Quartermaster General had put into place a clothing issue system for the whole army, including state forces, by the fall of 1862. However, the pattern and materials used varied from location to location owing to the availability of materials and manufacturing resources. The government-issued uniforms were often supplemented heavily by the soldiers with homemade, state-issued, and captured items, resulting in the often mismatched look of the Confederate forces. The Confederate Navy’s regulations broke from the universal tradition of blue outfits and detailed gray uniforms. No Navy enlisted uniforms are know to exist today, but regulation uniforms for Confederate naval officers are part of the Museum’s extensive clothing collection.
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New high-resolution digital photography allows museum staff, visitors, and researchers to virtually explore artifacts up close and personal. Please click on this photograph of Alfred Goodwin's shell jacket (right) to see and learn more, or follow this link to view the Museum's entire Digital Collection.
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In Our Vaults:
Of the few hundred known remaining uniforms of the Confederate forces, the largest and most significant collection is preserved by The Museum of the Confederacy. One of the most prized artifacts in the 215-item collection is the uniform frock coat of General Robert E. Lee worn at the surrender in Appomattox. While strongest in Army of Northern Virginia pieces, the collection also features materials from the western front and the Confederate Navy. There are several uniforms from Civil War notables including among others: Richard S. Ewell, William Dorsey Pender, John Bell Hood, Patrick Cleburne, and Ambrose P. Hill. Email us to acquire an object worksheet for research or educational purposes for a uniform or other artifact. The Museum of the Confederacy’s collection is particularly important to scholars because of the detailed histories collected as the uniforms were donated so many years ago.
Did You Know… Every wartime photograph of Robert E. Lee shows him wearing a uniform coat bearing three stars on his collar the insignia denoting the rank of colonel in the Confederate Army. Why did Lee prefer the insignia of a Confederate colonel? Lee had finally attained the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army on the eve of the war and some have speculated that Lee wore the three stars as a gesture of Lee’s famous modesty. Another explanation is that three stars had been in the U.S. Army the appropriate insignia for a lieutenant general a rank that only two men had held: Lee’s idol George Washington and his mentor Winfield Scott.
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Civil War Firearms:
Despite the boast "We can lick’em with cornstalks," the Confederacy needed modern weapons to wage a modern war. In 1861, the largely agrarian South was not prepared for the mass production of weapons needed to arm the growing numbers of soldiers enlisted in the army. Josiah Gorgas was appointed Chief of the Army Ordnance Department, and according to Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, "He [Gorgas] created the Ordnance Dept. out of nothing." United States armories and arsenals in the South were seized, and state military storehouses were opened. However, only the Richmond Arsenal was equipped to manufacture small arms, so the Ordnance Department worked to establish the government armories as centers for arms production with machinery captured from Harper’s Ferry and imported from Europe. In the meantime, they turned to the private sector to fill the gap. With cash grants and loans to set up factories, the government encouraged private enterprise with the guarantee that they would make a profit on any government contract for weapons.
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In Our Vaults:
The Museum’s military collection includes a small but important collection of firearms, including the personal side arms of Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, P.G.T. Beauregard, John Hunt Morgan, and many other notables.
Besides U.S. and European weapons pressed into service, the collection contains examples of southern manufactured firearms such as Leech & Rigdon and Griswold & Gunnison revolvers, Robinson “Sharps” carbine, and rifled muskets from the Richmond and Fayetteville armories. Unique weapons include a breech-loading carbine manufactured by George W. Morse’s firm in Atlanta, Georgia, and a Richmond-made sharpshooter’s rifle used by J.W. Davies, who raised a company of sharpshooters for special service on the James River.
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New high-resolution digital photography allows museum staff, visitors, and researchers to virtually explore artifacts up close and personal. Please click on this photograph of P.G.T. Beauregard's LeMat revolver (left) to see and learn more, or follow this link to view the Museum's entire Digital Collection.
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Swords & Sabers:
Swords and sabers even today invoke romantic images of bold knights and dashing cavaliers, and are the symbols of honor and military elitism. The saber was the arm blanche of Gen. J.E.B Stuart’s Virginia cavalry, even though massed firepower from formed infantry had made Napoleonic style cavalry charges not only obsolete, but also downright suicidal.
During the Civil War, officers in all branches of service, including the Medical Department, and enlisted personnel in the artillery and cavalry carried swords as badges of rank. For some officers, like Gen. Wade Hampton of South Carolina who carried a long, straight, double-edged sword, they were more than just badges of rank they were battle weapons.
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New high-resolution digital photography allows museum staff, visitors, and researchers to virtually explore artifacts up close and personal. Please click on this photograph of J.E.B. Stuart's sabre and scabbard (right)to see and learn more, or follow this link to view the Museum's entire Digital Collection.
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In Our Vaults:
The Museum’s collection of swords and sabers, numbering more than two hundred pieces, includes examples of U.S., foreign, and Confederate manufactured weapons. Both J.E.B Stuart and John Bell Hood carried French officer’s cavalry sabers, while Gen. Richard Taylor carried a foot officer’s sword made by Thomas, Griswold & Company of New Orleans.
Of the presentation swords in the collection, the most famous belonged to Gen. Robert E. Lee. Worn as part of his full dress uniform for his meeting with Ulysses S. Grant, it is often referred to as the “Appomattox sword.” Given to Lee by an anonymous Marylander in 1863, the sword was made by Devisme in Paris, France, and includes the inscription: Aide toi et dieu l’aidera (“Help yourself and god will help you” or “God helps those who help themselves”).
Gen. Lewis Armistead’s sword, carried at the battle of Gettysburg, is also part of the museum’s collection. Commanding one of the three brigades in Pickett’s division, Armistead led his troops during “Pickett’s Charge” with his hat raised high on the point of this sword. Armistead was mortally wounded in the charge and died two days later. The veterans of the unit that defended Cemetery Ridge against the charge returned the sword to the Pickett Division Association during a reunion at Gettysburg in 1906, and it was donated to the museum that same year.
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Confederate Headwear:
A wide variety of covers for the head were worn by the Confederates. Official uniform regulations called for officers and men to wear a French style cap called a kepi, with the officers' cap festooned with gold braid befitting his
rank. Many soldiers, however, officer and elisted man, alike, preferred a soft crowned, brimmed hat known generically as a slouch hat. It proved more comfortable than the stiff kepi, while keeping the sun out of your eyes and the rain off your neck.
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In Our Vaults:
The museum's collection contains more than 50 pieces of military headwear including kepis, slouch hats, forage caps, shakos, and a chapeau bras, a bicorn style hat to be worn by officers on formal occasions. Also in the collection are a variety of havelocks--cotton covers that went over the kepi with an extension down the back to protect the neck--and rain covers made of vulcanized rubber and waterproof canvas.
One of J.E.B. Stuart's famous plumed hats is in the museum's permanent collection, as well as "Stonewall" Jackson's blue forage cap worn at the battle of First Manassas (Bull Run) and Robert E. Lee's gray slouch hat.
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Personal Gear:
The typical Confederate soldier tended to travel "light," carrying with him only those things he absolutely needed. In the infantry that would include a cartridge box and cap pouch for ammunition (though there are accounts of soldiers having lost or thrown away both items and carrying their rifle rounds in their pockets), a haversack, a canteen, a blanket and perhaps a waterproof ground cloth, and, of course, the ubiquitous tin cup, the do-all piece of equipment used for everything from dipping water, brewing coffee to boiling stew. In the cavalry, the horse could bear much of the burden, while in the artillery, the battery's wagons could be used to relieve the men of much unwanted weight.
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New high-resolution digital photography allows museum staff, visitors, and researchers to virtually explore artifacts up close and personal. Please click on this photograph of Marcellus Pointer's binoculars (below) to see and learn more, or follow this link to view the Museum's entire Digital Collection.
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In Our Vaults:
The Museum's collection includes U.S. and Confederate made cartridge boxes and cap pouches, as well as those imported from Great Britain. Cartridge boxes were either worn on a sling over the left shoulder or threaded onto the waist belt so the box rested on the right hip. Waist belts came in a variety of styles; the officers' sword belts often festooned with decorative stitch work or gold braid, while the enlisted man's belt might be nothing more than a piece of canvas painted black with a buckle attached.
A wide variety of canteens were carried. Besides the typical wooden drum and tin canteens, the collection contains a leather covered glass flask, a redware ring canteen, a vulcanized rubber canteen, as well as a filter canteen and the bullet that pierced it at Frazier's Farm in 1862, killing the owner.
Extra clothes and other personal items, when not rolled up inside the blanket, were carried in leather or waterproofed canvas knapsacks. The museum's collection includes box knapsacks (canvas and leather stretched over a wooden frame), soft packs (those without a rigid frame) and a British imported knapsack.
Haversacks, made of leather or cloth, were used to carry a soldier's personal items, such as his playing cards and dice, bible, his pipe and tobacco, perhaps some writing paper and a picture of his sweetheart, along with his rations, which might consist of salt pork, beans or rice, and the ever present army bread, or hardtack. Many officers also carried haversacks when in the field.
Mess equipment, those items used for cooking and eating, could be as simple as a tin cup and a spoon, to the more elaborate affairs consisting of multiple pieces of tinware that nestled one inside the other to form a compact package for carrying. Very popular among the soldiers was a combination knife, fork, spoon made in a jackknife form, a forerunner of the Swiss Army knife.
Also included in the museum's collection are those items not necessarily delineated in military manuals, but important to the personal comfort and well-being of the soldier. Such objects include razors, combs, mirrors, and other personal grooming items; sewing kits, often referred to as a "housewife," that included needles, thread, and extra buttons; pipes and tobacco pouches; and a hog bristled toothbrush.
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 New high-resolution digital photography allows museum staff, visitors, and researchers to virtually explore artifacts up close and personal. Please click on this photograph of a Texas state button (above) to see and learn more, or follow this link to view the Museum's entire Digital Collection.
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Saddles & Horse Equipment:
Thousands of horses were pressed into service in the Confederate army as personal mounts for the officers, as cavalry chargers, and to pull artillery guns and wagons. Horses, mules, and even oxen were employed hauling supply wagons wherever the army went. Officers were required to furnish their own mounts and equipment while cavalry troopers were compensated by the government for supplying their own horses. War could be very hard on the horses: aside from the shared dangers of the battlefield there were the long marches which caused saddle sores and exhaustion, and many an animal went lame under the stress of traveling so many miles. Keeping the horses adequately fed was often difficult, especially in winter, and many died of colic from eating green corn and rotten hay.
Military arsenals and supply and manufacturing depots were spread across the south from Richmond, Virginia, to San Antonio, Texas, and a number of these supplied saddles and other horse equipment to the Confederate armies.
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In Our Vaults:
Perhaps the most famous horse of the war was Robert E. Lee's gray gelding Traveller. In the museum's collection is the saddle, bridle and bit used on Traveller. Also in the collection is the McClellan saddle used by Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's western-style horned saddle, as well as Gen. John Hunt Morgan's silver embroidered presentation saddle, and a brass curb bit given to Nathan Bedford Forrest with the shanks forming the letters "CS." Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, Robert E. Lee's
nephew, rode a McClellan saddle with a quilted leather seat, while Gen. Paul Semmes favored an older model Grimsley dragoon saddle with its high pommel and cantle.
Associated equipment includes wooden, brass, and iron stirrups, saddlbags, saddle holsters, shabraques (decorative saddle cloths), valises, and a "CSA" branding iron.
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Women’s Clothing & Accessories:
Coming Soon!
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In Our Vaults:
Coming Soon!
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Children's Clothing & Accessories:
Coming Soon!
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In Our Vaults:
Coming Soon!
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White House of the Confederacy:
The meticulously restored executive mansion depicts the home in which president Jefferson Davis, his wife Varina, their children, servants, and slaves lived during the Civil War. Approximately sixty percent of the furnishings exhibited in the house are known to have been present in the house during the years 1861-1865. It is one of the most historically accurate historic homes open for public tours in the nation.
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New high-resolution digital photography allows museum staff, visitors, and researchers to virtually explore artifacts up close and personal. Please click on this photograph of the Crenshaw china, which was used in the White House of the Confederacy (right), to see and learn more, or follow this link to view the Museum's entire Digital Collection.
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In Our Vaults:
The Museum's collections include over 1,500 furnishings that are used to interpret the White House of the Confederacy. Artifacts include furniture, ceramics, glassware, silver, textiles, lighting accessories, decorative objects, paintings, sculptures, toys, and personal effects. Many of these items were owned and/or used by the Davis family (such as Jefferson Davis Jr.'s miniature working cannon) or by the servants (such as the Irish servant Mary O'Melia's tea set).
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Lost Cause Era:
Coming Soon!
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In Our Vaults:
Coming Soon!
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