Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[293] the army of the Potomac were supplied by a firm largely engaged in the manufacture of trimming-laces (passementerie) in Philadelphia, which in a few days threw aside their bobbins to engage in the manufacture of leather belts and sabres. During the first fourteen months of the war the administrative department furnished the army with three million coats and nearly two million five hundred thousand blankets. It supplied two hundred and forty thousand tents for the first winter's encampments. When the armies took the field, they were naturally obliged to leave all these tents behind them, with the exception of a certain number for the officers. The quartermaster's department then substituted shelter-tents, of which they distributed more than three hundred thousand in one year. These were soon improved by the use of india-rubber cloth; and the advantages of this system to the health of the soldiers in the marshy forests of America were so great that by degrees all the coverlets of the army were replaced by the waterproof poncho, a square piece of cloth with a hole in the centre for the head, worn over the shoulders when it rained, and in the evening spread out upon the damp ground, over which the shelter-tent was pitched. Consequently, the number of these Indiarubber garments, which in 1861 was forty thousand, rose to one million five hundred thousand in 1864; and it has been estimated that, placed alongside of each other, they would have presented a surface of one mile and a quarter square—that is to say, four times as large as the gardens of the Tuileries.

The uniforms furnished to the volunteers of various arms were nearly all alike, and this similarity increased in proportion as the outfits which the first regiments had brought from their respective States were replaced by the issues of the government departments. Their color of deep blue distinguished them from the gray coats of the Confederates. The felt hats and the regulation coat of the regular army, which the generals and their staffs adopted almost everywhere, were replaced by the kepi and the blouse, a sack which had the inconvenience of being too loose to fit well about the shoulders. A canvas haversack, a belt to which was fastened the cartridge-box and the bayonet, completed the accoutrement of the foot-soldier.

The equipment of the mounted men was also copied from that