Q. Page 6D of the Sunday June 23, 2013, StarNews had a photograph purporting to be of a Confederate artillery captain standing next to a Parrott rifle. He is wearing “shoulder boards.” I thought those were only worn by Union forces and Confederates wore commissioned insignia on their collars. Please enlighten me of any variations.
A. A sharp-eyed reader, obviously a history buff, noticed a wire-service travel feature about preparations for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Accompanying the article was a photograph of a Civil War re-enactor portraying a Confederate artillery captain.
The reader noticed something wrong: The re-enactor was wearing shoulder boards to indicate his rank, like the ones John Wayne wore portraying a U.S. cavalryman in such films as “Fort Apache” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.”
Wait a minute, the reader wondered. Didn’t Confederate officers wear their rank insignia on their collars?
Well, Gentle Reader, it appears you are right, at least most of the time. Also, it looks as if the hapless re-enactor got his rank insignia wrong.
Under regulations adopted by the Confederate War Department on June 6, 1861, officers were supposed to wear their rank insignia on their uniform collars or on the lapels of their open-colored jackets, according to Robert Hancock, senior curator with the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.
Earlier in the war, however, anything went, Hancock added. Former U.S. Army officers sometimes wore their old uniforms onto the battlefield; militia units and state troops sometimes wore old-style uniforms, which might have carried shoulder boards.
The Georgia militia was infamous for marching into battle at First Bull Run in blue uniforms, creating some confusion in the field.
At the start of the war, the Wilmington Light Infantry, the elite local militia unit, wore green uniforms, noted historian Chris Fonvielle from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
After the June 6, 1861, regulations were handed down, though, most Confederate soldiers “fell into line quickly,” Hancock said. Gettysburg, fought on July 1-3, 1863, would have been a little late for Confederate shoulder boards.
The Confederacy adopted rank insignia that were substantially different from the Union’s. Confederate second lieutenants wore a single horizontal bar, usually gold, 1/2 inch wide and 3 inches long. First lieutenants wore two horizontal bars, side by side. Captains wore three bars, with no space between them.
The re-enactor wears U.S;-style captain’s bars, like the ones still used by the Army and Marine Corps.
A major wore a single gold star, measuring 1-1/4 inches in diameter. A lieutenant colonel wore two stars of the same style, side by aide. A colonel wore three stars. Generals of all ranks were signified by a gold wreath surrounding a gold star 1-1/4 inches in diameter, flanked by two smaller gold stars, 1/4 inch in diameter.
Rank was indicated, somewhat more approximately, by the gold braid on an officer’s sleeve. Lieutenants wore one strand of braid, captains wore two, field-grade officers (majors and colonels) wore three and generals wore four.
A complete summary of Confederate regulations on ranks and insignia can be found in an appendix to Volume III of “Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command” by Douglas Southall Freeman.
This poor re-enactor did get a couple of things right: The facings, or cuffs, on his uniform jacket are red, the emblem of the artillery. Each branch or arm of the Confederate army had a different facing color: light blue for infantry, yellow for cavalry, black for medical officers and buff for engineers and other staff officers.
And on Jan. 24, 1862, the Confederacy officially adopted the French-style kepi, or circular visored cap, similar to one worn by most enlisted soldiers and many officers in the Union army. Our re-enactor in the photo is wearing an example. In practice, however, “the kepi was seldom seen,” Freeman wrote. Most Confederate soldiers and officers wore broad-brimmed, civilian-style hats.
Nevertheless, the Confederate regulations went into some detail on the kepi, specifying the amount of braid that were to appear on a kepi, in case anyone wore one: one strand for lieutenants, two for captains, three for field-grade officers and four for generals.
Those were the rules. Again, however, Confederate soldiers were considerably more casual about following them than their Union counterparts. Robert E. Lee, for example, appears in some wartime photos wearing what appear to be a colonel’s insignia.
Uniforms were even more varied, when they appeared at all, for militia, State Guard units and other formations well away from Richmond. In Texas, for example – where troops liberated thousands of yards of blue fabric after seizing the federal depot at San Antonio – Confederate forces wore blue uniforms well into 1863.
Officially, uniforms were supposed to be cadet gray. As the war wore on, however, homespun butternut – a nut-brown color – was much more common in the ranks.
Thus, it’s impossible to say that no Confederate officer ever sported shoulder boards – although it’s highly unlikely.
Date posted: June 25, 2013
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