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Show army in its struggles with the well clad enemy. The dress of the period was certainly not calculated to aid action. It is almost impossible to imagine anything any-thing that could make a fighting man more ineffective than the heavy hats, the full, long skirted coats, the skin tight breeches and the leather stocks with which custom clothed the British soldier. Most of the muscles of the body were cased in, and were directed to preserving pre-serving the rod like stiffness which was prescribed by the drill master. It is easy to understand how, other things being equal, men whose clothes permitted per-mitted them to be active and agile could easily overcome the buckram men, who had to shoot over leather stocks. Harper's Har-per's Weekly. 1 DRESS WITH A HISTORY. What th8 Soldiers Wore in the Old Colonial Colon-ial Days Dress Inherited from England. HOWPAET OF TJNIFOBMS SURVIVE. The Origin of the Blue and Buff and What the Biflemen Were Present Day Uniforms. In the colonial days the militia wore the dress that they had inherited from England. Three, at least, of those costumes cos-tumes have survived to the present day. One is that worn by the City Troop, of Philadelphia. Modifications, it is true, have been made in the hat from time to time, but they have been in detail of ( form, and not at all in character. The uniform was and is one of the handsom- . est that was ever worn by a soldier. There is a company in Hartford which still wears scarlet coats and the hat of ' the last century, which call to mind the British Grenadiers and the soldiers of Frederick the Great. : In Richmond, Va., there is a company that wears an , abominable hat, invented in the time of the Stuarts, and possessing only the merit of being historical. ifr IN .REVOLUTIONARY TIMES. ; 'in the war of the Revolution uniforms uni-forms for the troops were out of the question. It was simply impossible to procure he cloth from which to make them, or the money to pay for them. The difficulties in the way of Washing-. Washing-. ton and the Continental congress in this respect have already been fully explained. As for Washington, he adopted a simple uniform of blue and buff for general officers, offi-cers, which may have been suggested, as has been intimated by a high authority, by the Whigs and the Scotch Covenanters, Covenant-ers, but which were more likely inspired by the uniform of the Blues, in which Lord Fairfax, Washington's friend, was an officer. It was a plain, pleasing uniform, not brilliant, but eminently fitting to the wearer and the cause of which he was a leader. It was late in the war when an enlisted man'3 uniform was buff and blue, and then only on paper. The only clothes that were obtainable were the very best for actual service. As early as the French and Indian war Washington, Washing-ton, as the commanding officer of the Virginia militia, urged Governor Dinwiddle Din-widdle to provide the troops with the simple and useful dress of the hunter, and afterward, in the Revolution, he urged that as many as could should procure this comfortable dress, which, as it was the costume of the riflemen, struck terror ter-ror to the heart of the enemy. The riflemen of the last century wore loose fitting tunics or jackets made of homespun. While the rest of mankind wore breeches they wore trousers. They were, indeed, the first to introduce that useful garment, but the trousers did not closely resemble those of our own time. Instead of being tight above the knee, they gave free play of the muscles of the leg, and were gathered close at the ankle by buttons, so that they were not like the awkward flapping, catch all impediments of today. These clothes were ornamented with urbe-lows urbe-lows or ravelings of the materials of which they were made, a fashion that has been always popular with frontier Americans. THE RIFLEMEN'S DRESS. The American riflemen wore the dress that was in its time the best possible , service uniform. It was an ample protection pro-tection from the weather, for it might be of cotton in summer and of wool in winter. It was not burdensome. It permitted the unobstructed use of all the wearer's powers. It did not distract him by petty annoyances. The shoes were closed and guarded by the buttoned bottoms of the trousers, so that during a long march dust and gravel did not intrude in-trude to the wounding of the feet and the laming of the men. The hat was a soft wide brimmed felt, not pressing too much on the head and shading the eyea The accouterment of the rifleman consisted con-sisted of what was useful to him. Of all the soldiers of his time he alone wore a body belt Into this belt he stuck a hunting knife, with which he cnt his fuel, his food, or his pathway through the forests.' His weapon was better than that issued to the troops opposed to him, and the British soldier with his Brown Bess feared the Yankee rifle. Finally his cartridge box and canteen were carried car-ried from his shoulders. This was a virtue of the period, however, for a hundred hun-dred years ago no soldiers carried weight on their waists. . It is probable that the absence of nni-" nni-" form greatly assisted the American .. . -:' -" --'' -'. " '.--.v - -vv -. ' - - ... |