Mittens were not an article of protective clothing that was typically issued to United States soldiers by the Federal Government during the American Civil War. As a result, it was often necessary for soldiers to obtain their mittens from other sources to protect their hands in cold weather.
In the first year of the war, there were calls for special mittens with "trigger finger" features to be knit by volunteers from patterns distributed on the home front. These mittens were designed to appear like a mitten but had a unique glove-like appendage for the index fingers, allowing the trigger finger to be used for operating a firearm--an especially useful mitten feature for a soldier standing guard or picket duty.
However, there were challenges with placing a reliance on home front volunteers to knit trigger finger mittens. Knitters with the skillsets to create mittens were being asked by the United States government, through a variety of channels, to knit socks for soldiers. Hand knitting garments takes a considerable amount of time, and the government's need for socks provided competition for the available time that volunteer home front knitters had for mittens.
To eliminate a potential shortage of mittens for soldiers in the field, the Wilcox and Gibbs' Sewing Machine Company distributed a paper pattern for a mitten that instead of being knit, was sewn from cut pieces of fabric. Wilcox and Gibbs' pattern directions initially called volunteer sewists to utilize fabric obtained from the uniform manufacturing operations of the Schuylkill Arsenal. However, this plan created obvious limitations to the manufacture of these mittens, based on the available Schuylkill Arsenal fabric needing to be either picked up in Philadelphia or mailed from a Philadelphia location.
The January 1862 issue of the American Agriculturalist expanded the geographical limitation of this mitten pattern and its instructions, by publishing a variation. One of the major variations of this pattern is that it called for the mittens to be cut from fabric recycled from old civilian garments such as the skirts of coats and wide parts of pants. The accessibility of materials that would have been in most households across the United States, expanded the impact of this pattern in helping to equip soldiers quickly with a large number of mittens that would cost the government absolutely nothing to manufacture.
Besides materials, there were other variations to this pattern. The American Agriculturalist claimed that the printing plate was based "exactly" from a paper pattern provided by the Wilcox and Gibbs' Sewing Machine Company. If this was the case, it may signal that there were variations in the cut and sew cloth mitten patterns being distributed by Wilcox and Gibbs. However, the variations could potentially be caused by the engraver of the plate and the author of the instructions. Despite the reasoning behind these variations, there are some noticeable differences between this pattern and multiple surviving printed examples of those directly distributed by Wilcox and Gibbs.
The American Agriculturalist pattern distinctively features a slightly longer thumb piece and a marking calling out where the elliptical thumb flap (welt) is to be connected to the thumb piece. Additionally, there is a lack of a call out for binding (tape or fabric possibly cut on the bias) at the raw edge of the cuff--likely as a result of the recycled civilian garment fabric being tightly-woven and well-milled, making it resistant to unravelling.
One feature that this pattern has in common with a number of surviving printed examples of those distributed by Wilcox and Gibbs is that the seams are sewn with the seam allowance on the outside of the mitten. The feature is an impactful visual element of this textile--so much so, that the American Agriculturalist version states of these outside seams: "It will not look so neatly, though the appearance is not of much account."
In addition to seams stitched on the outside, the pattern encouraged mittens to be pieced if necessary. In Civil War Patterns testing of this pattern, it stood out that one of the most likely areas for piecing would be the seam on the outside of the trigger finger--creating separate front and back panels for the mitten body. This is supported by a surviving Wilcox and Gibbs' printed pattern, which states that heavier fabric could be used as the back portion of a pieced mitten to provide greater protection from the cold for a soldier's hand. The American Agriculturalist version states: "They [the volunteer sewist] may if they please stitch together as many kinds and colors of cloth in a pair of mittens, as there were in Joseph's coat."
A lack of concern for military appearance, suggests that these mittens were a garment with a focus on function rather than fashion--and perhaps were even considered to be somewhat disposable. The American Agriculturalist version of this pattern close with, "Half a million pairs would doubtless be welcomed by the soldiers who are handling cold weapons in this chilly weather. If our girls will get up plenty of these mittens for their fathers and brothers, so that they can have a change every time their mittens get wet with snow and cold rains, they will confer a great favor."
The American Agriculturalist cloth mittens pattern offered by Civil War Patterns is drafted from the original 1862 publication. This historically accurate pattern features a piecing option and over thirty pages of instructions. Visit this link to sew your own pair and make some history!