Altered Drawers

[AZReenactor]

Re: Altered Drawers

Hank,
You've helped highlight what I was concerned about when I first asked for documentation. Not having a source for a statement certainly undermines its reliability and is often reason enough to question its veracity. These secondary sources all say soldiers did this but none say how the came by that information. It is a big leap from saying some soldier somewhere may have done this to saying soldiers occasionally, frequently, regularly, always, ... did this. without the extra work to analyze the source of the information one might as well just accept the notion that any lie if told often enough (or put into print) is true. Fortunately with a little extra research and investigation one canmost often do better than that.

The footnote from The U.S. Army in the West 1870-1880 (great find by the way) states that the information comes from A Medical Report upon the clothing of the Soldiers of the US Army by Alfred A Woodhull, 1868. I didn't find a copy online so a trip to the library and submitting an Inter-library loan request may be in order. I did find an interesting summary of Woodhulls report online in Chapter 2 of The Army Medical Department 1865-1917 by Mary C. Gillett.

This whole discussion is a good example of how real research means going well beyond "I heard xxx rumor" or even "I read xxx supposition", and following the trail and investigating sources until one arrives at actual reliable facts. Despite all the great resources being added online today, research often requires one to actually do a little leg work and make some personal investment if they want to move from reenactorism to documented facts.

Here's a book The U.S. Army in the West 1870-1880, about the western post-war army which has footnotes before and after the drawer-cutting statement:

Google books makes it almost impossible to find corresponding footnotes. Anyone have this book to see if the citation would happen to include the drawers specifically, or if it's only citing the quote about soldiers modifying their clothes in general?

Either this is a reenactorism that's just being passed along, or there's actual evidence out there, that writers are basing their statements on.

In asking for supporting documentation and looking for sources, I don't think anyone is concluding that no one ever did this, but rather what I'm reading, is people saying they've not heard or seen any documentation on this notion before and suggesting that we should investigate further to see where it takes us. We may or may not be able to definitively answer the questions about docked drawers, but along the way we are almost certain to learn something more than we knew at the beginning.

[Bob 125th NYSVI]

Re: Altered Drawers

Hallo!

Moderator hat on...

For example, I could conceivably, possibly, maybe and get away with it- say take an extra blouse and cut off the sleeves for "summer wear" to be "cooler" in the Georgia sun of summer.

Curt

Curt I heartily agree that we are skating on thin ice but I think we can reasonably extrapolate that some things happened and went unmentioned due to the morals of the time (for example how many men boasted on thier own of forced 'relations' with 'liberate' free women). I really don't think many men would have written home about how they altered their drawers (assuming they did). Decorum should have prevented that.

However to take your sleeveless shirt anology, in this case decorum worked against it happening.

Victorian society had moral codes and while not all men adhered to them their officers certainly did (in public). For example being seen naked was extremely taboo and while some soldiers certainly were willing to bathe naked in front of comrades, it wasn't unusual for someone to never be seen naked in public.

Pretty much a soldiers drawers were his private business and if he altered them for comfort/fit reasons there really wouldn't be any reason for anyone else to know.

Altering you shirt to be in violation of the established moral codes is a whole different and very public issue.

And lack of proof of existance is not the same as proof of lack of existance.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Altered Drawers

Victorian society had moral codes and while not all men adhered to them their officers certainly did (in public). For example being seen naked was extremely taboo and while some soldiers certainly were willing to bathe naked in front of comrades, it wasn't unusual for someone to never be seen naked in public.

And yet we have not only descriptions of men bathing naked, but photos as well.

So here are some honest questions, not rhetorical ones. For those who assume that soldiers cut their drawers short in summer...

Do you think this was something only soldiers did, or was it something that working men outside the army did too? Why or why not?

If cut-off shorter drawers were chosen as a more practical option in the heat, why do you think they weren't adopted as a regular garment among farmers and laborers? Or do you believe that's part of the missing evidence also? In other words, there are plenty of surviving examples, illustrations, patterns, etc. of the classic long drawers, so historians can pretty much agree what they looked like and that they were widely worn, but none that I know of, of deliberately constructed short drawers. What would be the reason?

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Altered Drawers

Hallo!

Moderator hat off...

"And lack of proof of existance is not the same as proof of lack of existance."

True, it is not the same.

But the fly in the ointment is in how it gets used to understand, interpret, and portray Life in the Past. Otherwise it becomes a reductio ad absurdum argument that brings into existence anything under the justification that since there is no historical or archeological evidence or proof of existence the proof merely has been lost or remains undiscovered.

I could cut off the feet of my socks and wear only the uppers to keep my feet cool in summer arguing that CW soldiers commonly did this but never wrote it down. (With an apology to 18th/19th century Bavarian male folk fashion of wearing footless hose).
And that soldiers did so, but by being underneath trousers and shoes/boots we just cannot "see" it being done.

I am not arguing that short drawers did not exist. I am arguing that, at our current state of knowledge through research and documentation, we have no proof. And that the absence of proof cannot prove the positive (although it tends to confirm the negative.)

I am arguing that "we" can fall into two camps here- the more strict and limited one that strives to replicate and emulate what is known and documentable, and the other less strict and open to "I thought of it now so CW soldiers could have thought of it as well." that allows for greater wishful thinking, imagination, and variations and departures from the narrow confines of research and documentation if not actual history itself.

Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848), the father of British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli wrote "Aquinas could gravely debate, Whether Christ was not an hermaphrodite [and] whether there are excrements in Paradise."

So, how many angels can sit on the point of a pin?

Moderator hat on...

"And lack of proof of existance is not the same as proof of lack of existance."

The standard the AC Forum strives for is the researched and documented (however limited and incomplete) as compared to the pendulum swinging to where the absence of proof of existence is used to justify anything and everything (not saying that "anything and everything" is being argued for in this thread- just pointing out the standard and the possible/probable dangers of where the opposite thinking can take us).

Thanks, Herr Hank for trying to salvage this thread.

Curt
Who wore short muslin drawers in his Mainstream Daze and chafed to death Mess

[Andrew Kasmar]

Re: Altered Drawers

Hi,

The soldier on the right appears to be wearing altered or cut down drawers. Here is a link to were this picture was posted http://www.authentic-campaigner.com/...ad.php?t=22377 . I am not 100% sure, but it looks like what has been discussed in this thread. Thanks



Andrew

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Altered Drawers

Hallo!



I am trying to see it with open eyes, but am having trouble...

The man on the left appears to have shirt tails.

The man on the right appears to have the artist's misunderstanding/ misconception of how much bulk are in rolled up trouser legs OR we are looking at dark slightly rolled up drawers?

And I am not seeing where he is carrying his trousers.

???

Curt

[bluebelly83]

Re: Altered Drawers

Maybe instead of thinking about this issue from the perspective of what soldiers didn't write, maybe we should ask where this would be documented. Would an alteration of this sort be a punishable offense? Has anyone searched for "drawers" in the *OR*?

While soldiers may not have communicated openly their desire to (or actual practice) shorten drawers, they may have documented this in some other way. Post war veteran recollections often include silly stories of much more embarrassing situations that shortened drawers, so perhaps "we" might find the documentation there.

I know the thread has kind of taken on a life of its own with the "what we know" versus "what we think" debate, but I'm hoping this post helps us think about some other ways to get at documentation.

Respectfully,
Greg Jones

[BobRoeder]

Re: Altered Drawers

Hi gang,

This post doesn’t really address the issue of cutting drawers short but I believe it is a good place to add some things I recently read, which do address some things spoken about in this thread.

In the book Turn Them Out To Die Like A Mule: The Civil War Letters of John N. Henry, 49th New York, 1861-1865, on page 23 in a letter to his wife, who must have asked him about some items she was planning to send He says:

Letter is dated Nov. 24th, 1861, Camp Griffin, Va.
“…I want no cotton shorts. The washing won’t pay. Socks would be very acceptable. We shall not look for or expect anything of the kind until it comes.”
I wonder what he means by “cotton shorts”??

It is possible he is speaking about a type of "drawer", but it is very likely the transcriber of the letters misread “shirts”, or John, may have misspelled shirts. In a previous letter (Nov. 12, 1861) he told his wife about the clothing he had on hand, mentioning “…one good government shirt. The other is a thin poor thing. My drawers are passable cotton flannel, but not at all sufficient to meet my wants in view of my largely increased exposure. I shall be obliged to anticipate part of my next payment by an Order on the sutler to secure a supply of flannel. Socks are used up rapidly here & I shall need more soon”.

If it is "shirts" instead of "shorts" that was rather pointless wasn't it?

Also, with regard to the things a soldier would not have written about...if one reads enough it should not surprise anyone the types of things the original guys would talk about in their letters, it probably just depended on to whom it was they were speaking. At one point the fellow above tells his wife how he is feeling and very plainly tells her the color of his “water”.

In The CW Letters of Col. Charles F. Johnson, Invalid Corps, Col. Johnson is not at all shy about discussing in detail the condition of his wounds – one in the hip, another in the genitals. Later he describes the lovely “airy” lattice outhouse at one of his posts in Missouri.

Lastly, with regard to the drawers “bunching” problem, in CMH Journal Vol. XLVII, No. 3, Fall 1995 there is quite an interesting article on Army Drawers by Stephen Osman. Included in the text is a letter from a Dr. Charles C. Allen, Cambridge, MA to Quartermaster Gen. Mont. Meigs, 13 Nov. 1861, in which he presents a new pattern of drawers he developed to alleviate certain discomforts caused by the present pattern(s):

“In the camps of this region many soldiers suffer ill-fitting drawers. If large enough at first, washing them once or twice shrinks them so much as to render them very uncomfortable about the anal & genital parts – even if large they often cause great discomfort even in civil life. As now made, they create too much stuffing about the aforesaid regions – inducing sweating, heating, drafting & other diseases.”

At this point he begins his sales pitch……

And, without going into too much detail (FWIW) the above problems are why I'm so attached to my NJS knit drawers!!!

Have fun!!

[GrumpyDave]

Re: Altered Drawers

I will defer to common sense. If my cut off drawers make me cooler at events in July, I'll continue to wear them, figuring that some overheated soldier, one or more of millions, had the common sense to think of it first, but never took the time to write it down. Or, if he did write it down, it's done lost and gone. I think assuming the boys of 186x had common sense a plenty, is historically accurate and will continue to base some of the things I do at events on common sense. Not to be confused with the, "If they'd a had it, they'd a used it," premise, which, is not based on common sense.

[Chris Fisher]

Re: Altered Drawers

IMHO, the answer to these questions can be found by searching the US Medical Department's monthly Meterological reports, also that of the USSC.

http://ia700309.us.archive.org/7/items/MSHWRMedical1/MSHWRMedical1.PDF

I think the student will find a rapid diversity of climate and weather than what we are accustomed to.
Also we live and work in different conditions than the original cast. Perhaps our metabolic condition determined by our diet may have cause for the some the intolerance to climate we face today.
Another reference would be the Naval records of the day for finding the temperature variants.
YHOS,

[GrumpyDave]

Re: Altered Drawers

Just and FYI, CRRCII.