Federal use of English brogans?

[GeraldDuval]

I was browsing Robert land's site today and noticed that he mentions the north used captured British import brogans taken from blockade runners. It seems to make sense to me, but does anyone have any documentation or evidence to back this up?

These are faithful reproductions of one style of English military shoe originally imported into the Confederacy. But, due to the large amount of blockade runners that were captured these shoes were highly regarded by Union army also.

http://www.robertlandhistoricshoes.com/servlet/Detail?no=14

[Dignann]

Re: Federal use of English brogans?

This from a soldier in the 13th New Jersey Infantry.


"I learned that my Uncle David, a lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth New Jersey, was at Aquia creek, and obtained a pass to go and see him. It involved a walk over five or six miles through the thickest and deepest mud. When I reached his camp my trousers were besmeared to the knees and my shoes were filled with the red pigment. My uncle went to the sutler's and presented me with a nine-dollar pair of boots, coming to the knees. They were admirable for the purpose of keeping out of the mud, and I was heartily pleased with the present.

My uncle probably never knew what became of those boots. On the next march they hurt my feet so that I temporarily traded them with Cornelius Mersereau, one of my companions, for a pair of English shoes that had been captured from a blockade runner, bound for the Confederacy. There is no use talking, nothing is as good as low, flat broad-soled shoes for marching.

But I only intended the exchange to be temporary, till after we had concluded the march. Alas, Mersereau was killed in the next battle, and his feet swelled so that I could not pull off the boots, and they were buried with him at Chancellorsville."

- Joseph E. Crowell, The Young Volunteer: The Everyday Experience of a Soldier Boy in the Civil War (Patterson, N.J.: Joseph E. Crowell, 1906) p. 354


This passage is from a memoir, first published in 1899 and then reprinted in 1906. The period about which he describes is the winter-spring of 1862-1863, when the Union Army was encamped in Stafford County, Va. and along Aquia Creek.

Eric

[GeraldDuval]

Re: Federal use of English brogans?

Thanks, I can always count on the AC