Easter Fashions

Since 2003, once a year, around Easter weekend, son Todd and I have put on the gaudiest Civil War uniforms imaginable: Red fezzes with big fat royal blue tassels hanging off the top. Baggy bright red wool pantaloons with sky-blue trimmed red wool sashes wrapped around our waists. A navy blue bolero jacket with bright red flower shaped designs on the chest, and a wool vest with a red racing strip down the middle. The pantaloons tucked into white canvas button-up gaiters around both ankles and covering the tops of our shoes.

That was the issued uniform of U.S. Army Zouave regiments during the Civil War. The odd Zouave uniforms were modeled after the French army’s Zouaves, soldiers who originally haled from Morocco in North Africa. Like today, French fashions were “in” during the 1850’s and ‘60’s.

To my surprise, the uniform, especially the baggy pantaloons, are comfortable and relatively cool, even if they are wool. The wide waist sash, if put on tightly with the help of friend yanking it as snug as possible, acts like a wrap-around girdle to lard-asses like me. And the white canvas gaiters keep out nasty little critters. If you’ve never itched like mad from two dozen chigger bites in a ring around each ankle, you can’t appreciate the security that gaiters provide. Only the fez, which provides no protection from sun or rain, is useless. But it does mark us on the battlefield, like a bunch of red-headed woodpeckers flocking together.

The photo shows four of us wearing our Zouave outfits, and some of the individual variations that soldiers, real and play-acting, inevitably add to their regulation uniform. I took off my vest because I sweat like a pig, and added a pair of yellow lambskin “jambieres,” overleggings, that lace up the side. Two of us are wearing white flannel turbans around the bottom of fezzes, formal wear that were normally only put on during parades. And one sash is trimmed in white, not blue. So, variety within our uniformity.

 We portray the 165^th NY Zouaves, an outfit from Brooklyn, New York historically. The 165^th NY was part of the siege in May and June of 1863 of the Confederate defenses at Port Hudson. Port Hudson was the site of the cannon-studded defenses that guarded the southern section of the Mississippi River that was still controlled by the Confederacy. The defenses at Vicksburg were thirty or forty miles upriver and that single stretch of the mighty Mississippi was a key highway for greatly needed supplies to pass from Texas and Louisiana to the rest of the Confederacy. It was a very important thirty miles of river, so important that the Union army was simultaneously hammering away at both fortress-like defenses, upriver and downriver.

Next weekend, Todd and I will drive six hours to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to take part in the reenactment at Port Hudson State Park. This will be my eighth trip to Port Hudson to wear the red pantaloons and shout, “New York! New York!” as we charge the enemy breastworks. Usually, I yell, “Texas! Texas!” when we charge because I’m portraying a Texas Reb, intent on driving the dastardly Yanks back where they came from. Not at Port Hudson.

We’ll even throw a couple of dozen homemade faux grenades over the Secesh defenses as the real Zouaves did with real “Ketchum” grenades. In 1863, the Rebs got smart and started catching the finned bombs in blankets before they hit the ground, and tossed them back at the damyankees who threw them. I'm sure our Reb reenacting opponents will relish doing the same with our balsa and styrofoam fake grenades.

In real life, the 165^th New York Zouaves stepped off the paddle-wheeler transport ship at New Orleans without their knapsacks which held their blankets and personal belongings. The canvas packs were still in the cargo hold and were promised to be delivered to the regiment “soon.” The soldiers spent the next thirty days without those packs, just making do with what they wore and carried when they disembarked, including the worthless fezzes.

The 165^th took heavy casualties in a charge against the Confederates earthworks at a part of the defenses appropriately termed Fort Desperate. The attack was unsuccessful. In fact, the Rebs at Port Hudson only surrendered after Vicksburg fell to General Grant’s siege on July 4^th, a month later. With Vicksburg lost, there was no longer any point to continuing to defend Port Hudson.

As to a link to my books, there are Zoauves in the first McBee novel, Tangled Honor. At the battle of Second Manassas, Virginia in 1862, the 5^th Texas regiment charged and routed the 5^th New York Zouaves, all 500 of them. It was a bloody, bloody fight for both the 5^th Texas and the 5^th New York, with the short intense engagement claiming the lives of about half of each regiment.

I’ve never portrayed the 5^th NY Zouaves receiving the charge of the 5^th Texas at a reenactment. I confess I don’t plan to either, after the past three years of researching the minutia of the 5^th Texas regiment’s history, and creating several characters who are fictional soldiers in the regiment, and now are pretty much family members, even if they are sort of like Harvey the Rabbit to everyone but me.

 The 5^th NY was the sister regiment to the 165^th  NY, coming from the same part of New York City. They wore the same gaudy Zouave uniform, the only difference being the 5^th wore bright yellow tassels from their fezzes instead of the royal blue tassels of the 165^th NY.

So, the weekend after Easter, think of Todd and me and our reenacting pards, as we answer 1,001 questions from interested spectators about our goofy red pantaloons and fezzes. By the way, on the rare occasion I drive home without changing out of the pantaloons, and go into a hamburger joint, I answer questions by telling the curious that I’m a rodeo clown. 

This weekend, I trust you will a family-centered and enjoyable Easter Sunday, remembering our Risen Lord. And don't forget the eggs and bunnies.