RDII in Transmiss?

[RNMCSA]

This is a great jacket but reading the discription something is odd. It is discribed as an RDII and obviously is but the seller then claims it was a Transmiss manufacture probably Atlanta depot etc. What do you think.

http://www.oldsouthantiques.com/os1581p1.htm

[GenuineInformation]

Re: RDII in Transmiss?

The author of that description suffers from Confederate term and geographic schizophrenia. The jacket may well have been made in Richmond--it does follow the general pattern of those jackets--and sent to another theatre of war. Or it could have been made somewhere else. As I understand it, Trans-Mississippi means "west of the Mississippi River," and so Atlanta and Tennessee are not properly described as "trans-Mississippi."

[rmilstead]

Re: RDII in Transmiss?

I have no ax to grind here but I would really like to see this jacket vetted by someone like Les Jensen or someone else who has handled a number of known Richmond Clothing Bureau examples (curators at the MOC come to mind). From the pictures it looks almost too good and the condition is somewhere approaching "like new" - especially the interior. I know nothing of the auction house nor the seller and I am not questioning their integrety or expertise but combined with a "strange" provenance the piece does raise some "flags".
Dick Milstead
Hardaway's Alabama Battery
Company of Military Historians

[Mississippian]

Re: RDII in Transmiss?

It is logical that a unit in East Tennessee could get a product of the Richmond Depot. For most of the war East Tennessee and Western Virginia were actually combined into the same military department which got most of it's gear from Richmond. I'm not as familiar with the QM side of things, but I have found a letter from the Ordnance Bureau to the Arsenals in Georgia (Atlanta, Columbus, ect.) telling them NOT to fill requisitions from units in East Tennessee, and that those orders would be filled from Richmond. This is backed up from records of very very large shipments of ordnance stores from Richmond to Knoxville in the fall of 1862.

One other note, whoever wrote the "history" of the 3rd TN Cav Batt. and 1st TN Cav on that page is wrong. The unit rarely left East Tennessee and did not fight at Shiloh, Corinth, or Chickamauga. They were in the Cumberland Gap area in Sept. of 1863.

Will MacDonald

[Secesh]

Re: RDII in Transmiss?

I had an RDII made by Paul Smith IDENTICAL to this is every respect...in fact, at first glance I thought it to be my old jacket...It looks very new and unused, w/o any moth nips, especially after 150 yrs and being worn during the War and in a POW camp....