White Hose

[macwilkin]

Second, your argument about Civil War reenactors and their persona's don't really apply to us. Civil War soldiers would have been issued uniforms, in some manner or other, even on the Confederate side (although that was less common than with the Union.) Also, Scots immigrating here during the Civil War were most likely commoners, and the kilt was more a garment worn by the aristocracy at the time, owing to the tartan and Highland wear ban after the last Jacobite rising was put down, so any immigrant Scot would most likely have had trousers already, anyway.

Just a point of clarification, but not necessarily. Here in Missouri, the pro-Southern Missouri State Guard was not issued uniforms per se (save a few volunteer militia units such as the Washington Blues of St. Louis), but wore their ordinary mufti as their "uniforms", along with civilian squirrel rifles, shotguns, etc. Even members of the Confederate Army frequently found themselves wearing civilian kit (begged, borrowed or stolen), as Richmond and the Southern states simply did not have the industrial infrastructure to produce mass quanities of uniforms. Even Northern soldiers, who dealt with shoddy kit (we're talking lowest bidder here), frequently replaced issue gear with civilian items (the practical Western slouch hat comes to mind), and at the beginning of the war, some states simply did not have the money to outfit their volunteer regiments. Private Eugene Ware of the 1st Iowa Infantry, for example, documents his "borrowing" a pair of trousers hanging on the line outside a cabin in Southwest Missouri, and how other soldiers patched their "holy trousers" with flour sacks to preserve their modesty.

Such fine distinctions, while not well-known to the general public, did exist.

T.