US sack coat field modifications

[billmatt04]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Gentlemen,
Thank you all for your words of wisdom. I had no intention of removing the lining or being "mainstream" in any way. The topic of conversation came up between me and a pard and I thought I would put it to you fellas. Thanks again and if anyone else has any more thoughts please let me know.

Sincerely,
Matthew Cassady
104th Illinois Vol. Inf.

[ScottCross]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Mathew,

After examining over a dozen original fatigues blouses, I have not seen any, or heard of any others, that have had their linings removed. In many years of reading personal accounts, I have found no documentation to show that anyone did it. Does this prove they didn't cut the linings out? Of course not. It only shows that there currently is no documentation for it.

[markj]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Greetings,

For your consideration:

"The uniform frock is good, especially as compared with the coats some regiments carried to Washington [in 1861], before they donned the blue. A Massachusetts regiment, since famous, we remember in ridiculous bob-tailed garments, resembling the dress-parade coat of a street-organist's monkey. The coat is sometimes considered too thick for summer and too thin for winter. But this difficulty is almost unavoidable. Our soldiers are liable to make the transit of half the Temperate Zone in a single campaign, and a dress thick for one might be chilly for his more Northern comrade. But the house or fatigue coat is the easiest and most comfortable of all the garments.
***The Government haversack will outlast a dozen of the fancy sort sold in the stores. These are invariably used up and thrown away after trifling service, and the regulation style substituted. The latter is a simple, inelegant satchel, costing a quarter as much as the other, is stronger, lighter and more capacious. It has fewer pockets, it is true, and the contents are apt to get thoroughly mixed by several days' carriage. It has an inside lining, which, however, usually gets torn up, in time, for gun-wads."

(Extracted from "Infantry Clothing" and "Infantry Equipment," United States Army and Navy Journal, 14 and 28 November 1863.)

Regards,

Mark Jaeger

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Hallo Kameraden!

"Was it a practice at all for Federal soldiers to cut the lining from their sack coats to keep from getting too hot?"

Short answer... no.
If it were to have been PEC enough to become a "practice," it would likely have been well recorded. :-)

Isolated examples to be found. I am sure if it. "Practice," I ratehr doubt it based upon the historical record.
Was such a thing "ever" done? This is where we can quickly slip down the Slippery Slope into Farbery.

John Mead Gould of the 1st Maine, later in the 10th (THE CIVIL WAR JOURNALS OF JOHN MEADE GOULD), wrote back home to a future recruit:

"Have your blouse lined if not made so and have two pockets in it. You cannot carry as much in your pants and your legs will get chafed..."

Just the opposite direction.

Gould also wrote in June of 1861 that he ripped out the padded front of his jacket. (Must have been the 90+ degree Washington D.C. heat...)

I have a bias toward the PEC/NUG Rule. "Exceptions" are Historically Correct and Period Proper when the impression is researched and documented for a particular unit or particular man at a certain time, place, and circumstance (jaguar trousers for example).
But taken beyond that, it does nothing to present a Believeable Image or Quality Impression toward furthering our goals.

Herr Tim Kindred? For some reason I associate your name with the 1st Maine Veteran infantry?

Curt-Heinrich Schmidt

[Yellowhammer]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Well, if you removed the lining from a coat, you would have to fell the front facings to the body, the cuff facings to the sleeve, and the inner collar to the body. Otherwise, lacking a lining, these pieces would flop around, get out of place, etc... Further, without a lining the interior seams would be subject to increased wear and the raw edges would almost certainly begin to unravel and shorten the life of the garment.

In short, in order to remove the lining from a sack coat and still have a serviceable garment, you would essentially have to replicate all the features of an unlined sack coat.

That being said, I have never heard of or seen any evidence of this being done. On the contrary, I have heard of coats and jackets being relined with heavier material for winter.

If you want an unlined sack coat, I would encourage you to be a correctly reproduced unlined sack coat from a reputable vendor. If you already have a lined coat, I would recommend you leave it as is. If you are trying to convert an unauthentic coat into a more authentic version by removing a muslin or some other incorrect lining, I would say get rid of it and buy yourself an authentic coat.

[1stMaine]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Comrade Curt,

Yup. The 1stMaine moniker I use is for the Ist Maine Veteran Volunteers. They were, for the uninitiated, an amalgamation of the reenlisted men and recruited men whose initial enlistments had not expired from the 5th, 6th, and 7th Maine. It's an interesting unit to study because of the variety of different areas the men came from, as well as how they invariably bleneded together to become one single unit.
respects,

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Cutting the lining of sack coats

See post # 24

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Hallo Kameraden!

"The NC sack coat on display in Raleigh apparently had its body lining removed.

Don't know if this helps you any, but it illustrates that at least one Reb adopted this practice."

Ah.. It well could be. But when, why, and by whom? (in 1863, or at a veterans' reunion in 1890, or the 50th or 75th Anniversary of Gettysburg, or by some descendant in 1940 who thought she could get more money from the antique dealer if the ratty and ugly lining was removed first, or by a museum staffer in 1961?)

I appreciate the sharing of the information, and am not pooh-poohing it in any way- just trying to further the discussion of what relics can tell us, and how we should look at them.

Curt-Heinrich Schmidt
Company "C," Squire's Sharpshooters
Remembering the coat of Captain William C. Squire of the 7th ICOVSS where the buttons and rank boards were given to a friend of mine by a lady in a bar, saying that coat was moth eaten and they cut it up for rags saving only the buttons and "tabs."

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Friends,

The NC sack has a full provenance and is from an old and respected collection. It matches the requirements of the NC 1861 warrants precisely.

The current owner is the first outside of the solder's family. The jacket does not display any evidence of tampering or non-period alterations.

This does not reinforce the argument for or against US soldiers altering their issued sacks. I am simply defending the pedigree of the NC coat.

[hardtack1864]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Well, I think we can safely say that cutting the lining out of a coat is not PEC and that there is only one letter or such that says a federal cut out the lining and that one NC coat seems to have had the lining cut out during the war. Also padding being removed from frocks seems to have happened, but that too, does not seem to have happened much either. So I think we should just do what the soldier did, deal with it or try to get a unlined sack coat.

[billmatt04]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Gentlemen,
Thank you again for all of your information. I had no intention of "farbing-up" my brand-new Daley coat, but I was curious if men did back in the day. Thanks for the help.

Matt Cassady
104th Illinois Vol. Inf.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Cutting the lining of Federal sack coats

Hallo Herr Garrison!

Thanks for qualifying the jacket for this discussion.

Curt-Heinrich Schmidt
There Is Method In His Madness Mess

[High-Private]

US sack coat field modifications

Hi,

I have been going through some posts about field modifications and came up with some additional questions:

1. What were the rough dimensions of the patch pockets that were sewn on to the coats?


2. Has anyone run across a coat that was originally too large and then was taken in a bit to fit better? Rolling up the sleeves takes care of that part, but I am curious about the body of the coat.


3. I have seen officer coats with a small patch pocket up high for a watch, has anyone come across a private's coat with such a pocket?

Thanks,

Kevin Coyle
43rd NY

[GreencoatCross]

Re: US sack coat field modifications

Kevin,

If patch pockets were sewn to an issue blouse by a soldier they were most likely whatever size the individual needed or wanted them to be. I haven't viewed an original sack coat with this feature but I've seen one overcoat and two frocks with pockets added by the soldiers. The overcoat had slash pockets with the pocket bags cut from dark blue flannel (possibly from a discarded sack coat). One frock, a U.S. Sharpshooter's frock, had a long, narrow patch pocket on the inside cut from what appeared to be part of a shelter tent half, and was a shape that led me to believe that it was meant to store a pipe. The other frock had a rounded breast pocket sewn on top of the black alpaca chest lining, on the left side, cut from a piece of dark brown silesia (twilled polished cotton). These are just examples of soldiers' handiwork indended for a personal purpose.

I have never seen an original sack coat that was taken in for a better fit, nor have I seen an image of a soldier who has done this. Evidence supporting the alteration of blouses into jackets exists, but I have not seen a "tailored" issue blouse apart from private purchase or commercially made garments.

An unlined sack coat belonging to Sgt. Frank Fitz, 44th Mass. Infantry, in the Don Troiani collection, has what appears to be a post-issuance added small brown polished cotton watch pocket on the inside of the blouse. If memory serves, this pocket was added on top of the kidney shaped pocket indicative in issue sack coats. I haven't seen an original sack coat with an exterior watch pocket, nor have I seen a photo of a soldier wearing an issue sack coat with such an alteration.

Hope this helps!

Brian White
Wambaugh, White, & Co.

https://www.wwandcompany.com

[Ross L. Lamoreaux]

Re: US sack coat field modifications

The best resource I've found for those questions is "For Fatigue Purposes...The Army Sack Coat of 1857-1872" by Patrick Brown (printed by The Watchdog). It has images of field altered coats including patch pockets, cut-downs, etc. Several original coats are featured with detailed pictures, as well as a wealth of original images featuring several variations. Of particular note to your queries is a photograph on the back cover of a company of men loosely posing around Federal colors which shows one particular soldier with three patch pockets - two on the bottom fronts of the coat and one added to the right breast. There is a good studio image of a soldier wearing an altered sack coat making it a shell jacket. It is hard to tell by that image exactly how the tailor or soldier altered it to fit, but one person with limited skill can take in seams and cut down the waist to fit the wearer. There are no images in the book showing a "watch pocket" for enlisted blouses, and I have never seen one in my travels or research. I highly recommend getting the above mentioned book to add to your research library.