The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1891-08-06
CONFEDERATE DRESS.
How the people of the South Cloth
ed Themselves.


ed Themselves.
Costly thy habit as thy purse c;
buy, was a maxim of necessity in ii
hard times; for there was no raiment ii
subject of barter or sale which was i
expensive. Sporadic instances taken
random, prove the general rule.
August, 1864, private citizens coat an
vest, made of FIVE yards of coarse hon
spun cloth. cost $3.50 exclusive OF til
price paid for the making. The trim
nlings consisted of old cravats, and fe
the cutting and putting together,
country tailor charged $50. 1t is safe t
| say that the private citizen looked
I veritable guy in his new suit, in spite G
its heavy drain upon his pocketbook.
In January, 1866, the material for
iady's dress which before the war woul
have cost $40 could not be bought TO
less than $500. The masculine mind
unequal to the. task of guessing how
great a sum might have been had TO
bonnets brought. through the lines;
for in spite .ofzpatient self sacrifice an,
-unfaltering devotion at the bedsides o
the wounded in the hospital, or in min
istering to the needs of relatives and de
pendents at home, the southern womeI
of those days are credited with as keeI
an interest in the fashions as women ev
erywhere in civilized lands are apt to bt
in times Of peace. 1t was natural thai
they should be interested, even though
that interest could in the main not reach
beyond theory Without it they often
would have had charm the less and d
pang the more. Any feminine garment
in the shape of cloak or bonnet or dress
which CHANGED to come from the north
was readily awarded it's need of praise
and reproduced by sharp eyed observers
so far as the scarcity of materials would
admit
But fashions rules were necessarily
much relaxed in the Southern Confed-
eracy SO far as practice went when even
such articles AS pins brought through the
blockade sold for $12 a paper, a n d
needles for $40, with not enough of
either.
The superstition expressed in the
couplet,
See pin. and pick it up,
All the day you'll have good luck,
gained it converts by the score; more,
however, AS can be readily imagined, for
the sake of the pin itself, which it was
a stroke of happy fortune to find and
seize, than of any other good luck that
was to accompany the finding. The
broken needle of Confederate times did
not go into the fire or out of the window,
but was carefully laid aside until the red
sealing wax of the ransacked desks and
lent it a head wherewith to
appear as a handsome and useful pin.
To obtain the bare materials out of
which to fashion garments for the fam
ily and for the servants soon became a
serious question, The house carpenter
and the blacksmith were called into SER
vice to this end, and cotton once more
became king, though of greatly
sovereignty. Carding combs
of rough pattern were constructed for
the purpose of converting the raw cot
ton into batting, and thence into rolls of
uniform length and size for spinning. The
hum of the spindle and the clank of the
with which the women at home met the
fierce attacks of the legions of cold and
Spinning wheels, reels, bobbins, looms,
and all the appurtenances for the weav-
ing of cloth were made and used at
home; and the toilers in the cotton fields
and the spinners in the loom shed work
ed on contentedly, with a seemingly
sublime Indifference to the mighty strug
gle that was convulsing continent tor
their sakes. OF this dusky people it may
here be said that, no matter what pills
politicians, or philosophers
have said of them in the past or shall
prophesy of them in the future, they
were true to every trust reposed in them;
and with most tremendous power for
direst evil in their possession, the ne
civil war did naught but good. If the
'scolored troops" of the Union army
''fought nobly, the slaves of the South>
ern plantation so bore themselves in
er need of praise.
Cotton and wooden fabrics of firm and
texture were woven, cut and
fashioned into garments for whites and
blacks. Plentiful crops of flax re-en>
forced the array of wool and cotton and
MANY little flax wheel which in the
days of peace has since moved north to
adorn in it's newly gilded and beribbon-
ed state the boudoir of some aesthetic
girl might tell pathetic tales of its form
er place of residence if the tongue of it's
tiny spindle had but speech.
The dyes of the forest wood barks, of
the sumac, of the Carolina indigo and
of the copperas from the numerous cop
peras wells were utilized to color the
cloth thus woven. We read in the cur
rent newspapers that "a handsome
brown dye" is made by a combination of
red oak bark and blue stone in boiling
water; and that "a brilliant yellow may
be obtained by pouring boiling water
upon other component parts of ''sassa-
fras, swamp bay and butterfly root"
The same authorities tell as that vivid
puppies, reds and green's were produced
from a composition of coal oil and sor-
ghum, tinted with the appropriate tree
bark; though of coal oil for other pur-
poses there was too little. If great
similarity of quality and texture existed
in the honespun cloth, the enumeration
of the foregoing means of dyeing clearly
demonstrates that there was at least OPP
portunity for as great diversity of color
as distinguished the famous coat OF
Joseph; though the reader OF today is
apt to look with some suspicion on the
conspicuous forwardness of the adjec-
tives vivid" brilliant" splendid, ,
which always accompanied these tails
mantle recipes.
Strong thread for sewing was evolved
from the little flax wheels. For any un
xuo,1, ~ hx, ,rxY odd