Transcripts For CSPAN3 Civil War Resources - Clothing And Am

Im director of the Virginia Center for civil war studies. So our first speaker tonight and ill just introduce each speaker in turn right before they speak. So our first speaker is dr. Sarah jones wixel and she and her phd from the university of chicago. Shes now the director of research and publications at the American Historical Association in washington dc. Shes also an expert in the material culture of the civil war and most especially clothing and thats the subject of a book shes working on right now clothing in the American Civil War era one. Im very much looking forward to reading when it comes out. And were gonna get a taste for scholarship and this subject tonight with her lecture and title clothing people for war over to you. Thank you. Well, thank you so much paul for the invitation to participate and for that wonderful introduction so glad to be able to participate in the weekend. So, let me share my screen real. Quick all right. So when i began my current book project, i really wanted to understand. The human side of this war the intimacy with which it was both experienced and fought at a very material level at the level of material culture. How do people experience and negotiate the effects of war in their everyday lives how they wage war against one another both on and off the battlefield. What were the racial and gender dimensions of that experience . How did women and men have to change in the midst of war . So as i began this research, i repeatedly encountered incidents related to clothing from the remark from the remarkable to the mundane. The more archival sources. I read the more clothing i found and so i wondered just what was it about clothing . Why was it everywhere and could peoples experiences with clothing with production its use its destruction reveal something new about the nature and conduct of war about the process of emancipation or about wartime society itself. So i can firmly say that the answer is yes clothing played a Critical Role in how people experienced negotiated and waged war. The clothing that people made in war might seem inconsequential, especially when we think about the broader stakes. Theres wartime mobilization the carnage of the battlefield the end of slavery, but clothing was central to the way in which people experienced all of these things. Wartime mobilization meant the mass production of Army Uniforms drawing seamstresses and textile workers into more direct contact and conflict with the government than they had previously experienced. Debates over whether or not to wear body armor affected how men approach the battlefield and the theft of clothing as men looted dead bodies added to the previously unfathomable horrors of the battlefield. The end of slavery posed a pressing need for clothing for hundreds of thousands of formerly enslaved people and it created an entire market of new consumers. And the finer dresses suits and us Army Uniforms that freed African Americans war on southern streets after the war enraged some white southerners and the ripping of that clothing was often the first of many atrocities that they endured and my research has been possible because so many people save their clothing as relics of war as a tangible way of excess accessing their memories. So yes clothing has much to tell us about war. And im happy to expand on any of those topics during the q a but as i thought about this talk i kept returning to this one image that i found in the American Civil War museum in richmond. And that is this tin type. Of charlie wheat a young confederate soldier from luray, virginia. So 1925 a confederate veteran presented the Confederate Museum in richmond with this 10 type of cc charlie wheat who was killed april 19th. 1862. Across the court cardboard mat charlies brother joseph who survived the war scrawled the photographs history. This picture was lost in 61 was found on the body of a dead yankee at sharpsburg 62. So how did this happen . Charlie gave this photograph to a relative, but it was lost when northern soldiers stole from her house in 1861 and a few years later a confederate soldier stopped at this womans home for supper and showed her his collection of battlefield relics. Imagine her shock a discovering the stolen ten type of charlie in the soldiers bag of relics. The pleasure of having the ten type return to her. Must have been dampened by the memories triggered by the knowledge that the ten type had been looted from the pockets of a dead soldier because charlies body too was looted when he died. When his body was found in the woods near luray it was described as all muddy from the red clay and stripped of everything but the underclose charlie wheat and his ten type likeness both fell victim to looting during the civil war the 10 type was stolen by a Union Soldier from a private house. It was taken again when a confederate soldier rifled through the pockets of that dead Union Soldier and charlie himself was stripped of his clothing shoes and all of his personal effects after he was shot dead. The stories remarkable in terms of the series of coincidences that occurred but the individual thefts themselves were not at all uncommon during the war plundering and pilfering have been and continue to be forms of violation that have historically accompanied war. It is then attempting attempting to explain civil war theft is simply a casualty of war. And the soldiers behavior just a wartime aberration. But this explanation fails to capture the connections people made between themselves and their possessions and the powerful effects that loss could have on the human psyche while the people involved in the theft and recovery of charlie wheats 10 type may have temporarily deviated from their normal behavior. They werent alone and engaging in acts of theft and broadly the redistribution of clothing. Both armies captured and put into use material sees from supply trains bodies were stripped on the battlefield union and confederate soldiers looted white and black southerners homes. Formerly enslaved people took clothing from former and slavers. Through all of these acts black and white americans violated the boundaries of the body and a property. Shaping wartime culture in which the threat of looting altered daily material life the clothing of course was far from the only target of looting theft or destruction silver china where even pianos were taken from southern homes, and we know that houses themselves were burned to the ground in their entirety. But the theft of clothing had a more personal critical element compared to the theft of a side chair. People didnt own a lot of clothing in the 1860s and it was very valuable. And as something that is worn against the body and a central to the way people present themselves, its central to a persons identity and an object that is capable of storing memories of a particular person. This isnt to say that other possessions are heirlooms arent significant, but rather that there was a particularly acute feeling of violation when ones most personal possessions the things that they wore and were connected to their body. Were taking against their will whether that happened on the battlefield or at home. So i could take this in a few different ways, but i want to focus on a particular kind of violation the stripping of soldiers bodies on the battlefield and ill offer a word of warning that some of the descriptions that will follow our violent in nature. On february 13th. 1864 Frank Leslies illustrated newspaper published a front page illustration entitled rebel soldiers after battle healing meaning stripping the fallen Union Soldiers from a sketch by an officer. Leslies assessment of this scene is evident in the portrayal of the confederates. The visible faces are sinister a man in the right foreground hasnt almost animal like appearance and in the background two men are tugging a body between them as if it were any other object. Leslies asserted that such stripping was an organized system in the armies of the confederates. And the newspaper further suggested that confederates quote wretched Financial Condition the difficulty of obtaining clothing seem to be an excuse, but the whole affair is so characteristic of the rebels so clear an example of their want a finer feelings. So confederates organized system of peeling bodies was considered to be glaring material evidence of inhumanity. War force soldiers and civilians to contend with bodies and mass death in ways that were unprecedented for this generations of americans. Technological changes meant not only increased increasingly deadly battlefield, but also the meaning of bodies of the men who survived we know that men try to close himself off psychologically which helps soldiers to follow the command of officers and both armies to gather items. That would be useful to the army including guns and ammunition. But as they walked amongst bodies of dead men and horses soldiers on both sides. Also stripped enemy bodies of uniforms shoes and personal effects gathering trinkets and better clothing with which to supply themselves. The scenesmen witnessed in the horrors experience by those who lay incapacitated on the battlefield. Could make the stripping of dead bodies seem inconsequential. Buzzard circled while hogs snorted and rooted through the dead and wounded bodies began to decay quickly in the heat. Faces as one soldier described turned black as charcoal and bloated out of all human semblance. Andy burial details found the bodies had become so offensive that men could only endure it by being staggering drunk bodies in these conditions was driven by more than a desperation for supplies or a breakdown of order. Some confederates were indeed poorly supplied they require new clothing and they stripped bodies to acquire it. But as we see with charlie weeds body Union Soldiers too stole the clothing off of dead men. One former confederate described the transformation of the Fredericksburg Battlefield over the course of the battle and is aftermath he said before the fight there was just the field next it was covered all over with your fellows and blue clothes. Saturday night the blue clothes were stripped off and only their white under clothes left monday night. These were stripped off and tuesday. They all lay in their naked skins. Words describing the stripping dont capture the corporeality of the act or experience to take a bet dead mans clothes did not simply involve picking up an abandoned code from the ground. It required a looter to pull off the mans gear unbutton the code the pants the suspenders to reach into the pockets and sift through letters knives and trinkets it meant wrestling. With to remove that clothing from a body whose limbs had begun to stiffen in the prophecies of rigor mortis at times exacerbated by freezing conditions. So what were the consequences . Such clothing theft had important cultural and political implications for the men involved soldiers journals and reflections. Make it clear that treating the dead with disregard was debasing for both the dead in the living and like the Northern Press Union Soldiers drew on the image of confederate stripping northern soldiers bodies as evidence of southern and humanity and as further reason to seek revenge against rebels. As one ohio soldier explained by the side of every one of our dead men you would see an old pair of shoes and a greasy filthy pile of clothes. I never hated them until now. I have now a thirst for vengeance. A Union Officer believed acts of stripping the bed to be so repugnant that he ordered his men to leave all dead confederates unburied on the battlefield in retaliation. Other officers worried about the practical consequences of wearing stolen clothing including the spread of disease one officer ordered soldiers to avoid using all federal clothing after the recent appearance of the telltale rash and pustules of smallpox on the bodies of confederates that was directly traced to the use of yankee clothing. That had been stolen from prisoners of war. Now when the bodies have been removed from the battlefield the material of battle remained leading to yet another wave of scavenging. At gettysburg the ground was almost carpeted with knapsacks havre sacks canteens hats caps blankets. In fact everything that goes to make the horrors of a battlefield. One might obtain a blanket or a cap. But as one soldier explained. Many of the hats and caps are besmired with brains and the blankets dotted with blood. Nevertheless one man regularly went to communities near chancellorsville and the wilderness where he bought boxes of salvage clothing. To trade now clothing was from families who had picked up soldiers clothes from the battlefields. In this way. Soldiers gear and clothing made its way onto the second hand market and into homes of civilians. Both soldiers and civilians then might find themselves wearing the pants of a dead soldier during and after the war. While on his tour of the south battlefields and ruined cities. John trowbridge encountered a man who told him he that apple tree. I got a right good pair of pants off one of your soldiers under that tree once. Was he dead . Yes shot through the head. The parents werent hurt none. So trowbridge turned to another man and said did you rob a dead soldier of those pants you have on . And there are man replied that he had bought them in fredericksburg, and he had never robbed a dead man. So true ridge preston. How do you know they werent taken from a corpse . The man replied that they might be but it couldnt be helped. So this raises a significant question about the afterlives of ludo clothing. What did it mean to wear the clothing and use the personal effects found in the pockets of the dead . And the mud and meyer that was many soldiers lives. It may have made little difference. But others seem to have been haunted or repulsed by the experience. Few soldiers seem to have written reflections on what it meant exactly to wear a dead mans clothes, but one imagines that when putting on a coat previously worn by a soldier who had died a man might have considered how it had been obtained. Confederate soldier Alexander Hunter was proud of the coheed war so proud in fact that he later donated his coach to this smithsonian. The coal was that of a dead man, but hunter did not steal it rather that dead mans sister gave it to him when she saw that he was wearing a tattered jacket. In contrast another soldiers reaction to the discovery that the pocket watch he purchased secondhand had been looted from a dead mans body suggest that some men found the prospect of wearing such items. Absolutely repulsive. After the war ended charles pumacher purchased this watch and had his initials engraved on it. And describing the purchase he explained. I bought a watch without knowing where it came from, but was told later by comrades of the very thief thief that this timepiece had been stolen from an officer at the battle of antietam. So plumaker inquired further about that officers identity and how he had died. The officers death was caused by cannon fire. He was shot down 16 paces from the canons mouth. We make her didnt elaborate on the significance of the proximity of the officer to the canon but underlying his statement here is the knowledge that the officer would have been severely wounded possibly mutilated. And the thought of this horrified plumbaker. He never wore the watch again. Any eventually seems to have tried to atone for what he considered a disgraceful act by sending the watch to the governor of the state of virginia not knowing the name of the man who had owned it. Eventually, it became part of the Confederate Museum in richmond, virginia. So although both poolmaker and hunter had owned and used at least for a time articles that were taken from a dead mans body. They had opposite reactions to the experience. That contrast suggests that what matter to their sensibilities wasnt the act of wearing something removed from a dead person, but rather how those objects of personal adornment have been taken off of that dead, man. Whether they had been removed lovingly by a sister or seized from the bloody pockets of a soldier made by a cannonball. Battlefield theft involving clothing described in general terms historians convey a battlefield scene in which soldiers picked clothing and possessions off of mens bodies whom they had never before seen but even as soldiers walk the battlefield pulling coats off of corpses. They neither knew nor had killed the dead rarely remained entirely anonymous. Clothing itself offered evidence of the owners identity. It wasnt uncommon for soldiers to have their names written in their clothing as a means of identifying it when they send it out for laundering and tailors too marked clothing is part of an inventory and laundry control system. And then of course the items that were kept in the pockets of coats and trousers. And stripping a mans body of clothing soldiers didnt only debase the humanity of those who had died in battle. They also stole their identity. Stripping and looting the pockets of bodies had devastating consequences for many families with the burial process often taking days after the battle many mens bodies had to be caved beyond recognition. And although names written collars were likely intended for laundry. They could be relied upon to pass on information to family members about a soldiers fate. Letters and papers and jacket pockets and knapsacks could provide clues about a soldiers identity, insignia on hats helped identify the companies. When these items were stolen the letters the coats and knapsacks a body could remain unidentified. And one fredericksburg woman reported that quote all the clothes have been stripped from the bodies of the Union Soldiers and the only clothing that could be identified were three soldiers caps bearing the numbers 131 pv. The burial party did not recover the remains for over a week, and she did not see how quote all the corpses could be recognized. And circumstances like these families might never know the fate of Fallen Soldiers the stripping of their bodies had erased their ability to be identified and therefore their identities themselves. And indeed ive wondered whether charlie weed when stripped to his under clothes and covered in mud. Would have been identified had he not been filled so close to home while patrolling near his community. Thank you. Thank you very much for sharing those powerful stories with us. Second speaker tonight is dana b shoaf. He is the editor o