1862 Cincinnati Sanitary Commission Shirt
Cotton shirts were one of the first garments requested by the U.S. Sanitary Commission (USSC) for volunteer sewists on the home front to construct during the American Civil War. These early USSC shirt patterns had specialized features such as tie closures, bed gown lengths, and openings for wound accessibility that discouraged their use outside of hospital settings. By 1862, there were actions being taken by regional soldiers’ aid societies to make these shirts adaptable to the fluid conditions volunteers encountered in the field as they worked to provide comfort for United States soldiers in need.
One of these adaptations to the USSC cotton shirt pattern was designed by the Cincinnati Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, with the first specifications distributed to aid organizations on February 1, 1862. These specifications called for the shirt to feature sleeve cuffs and a placket front that closed with buttons. As a result, these modifications to the cotton USSC shirt pattern, provided a garment that could be worn by a suffering soldier not only in a hospital environment—but also while in camp, on the march, or holding a battlefield position.
Home front distribution of this garment’s pattern and specifications seems to have been largely focused on the well-populated states of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. However, shirts of this style appear to have been widely provided to suffering soldiers serving in the Western Theater, regardless of what state they originated from. This modified pattern, would have likely been one of the most common cotton shirts manufactured by soldiers’ aid societies in the Western Theater until the summer of 1864 when the USSC updated their requests for cotton shirt donations to follow a nationally distributed pattern.
The 1862 Cincinnati Sanitary Commission cotton shirt pattern offered by Civil War Patterns is based directly from the original pattern and specifications. This pattern is offered both in its original size of a 42 chest (sizes 36 to 42 would be one size, similar to U.S. issue military shirts) and in larger sizes graded through historical methods.
Construction of this garment would have depended on what technology was available to volunteer sewists. It is likely that both hand-sewn and machine-sewn shirts were represented in the numbers of Cincinnati Sanitary Commission shirts distributed to soldiers.
The original specifications for this shirt pattern call for it to be manufactured out of unbleached muslin, bleached muslin, or cotton canton flannel. While the specific button type was not detailed in the original specifications, it appears from other period Sanitary Commission shirt documents that ½” natural colored four-hole bone buttons were typically used. Four-hole white glass/China buttons were common for men’s shirts during the period and could also have been used for constructing this garment.
As this shirt was made on the home front utilizing a wide range of sewing skill levels, this garment is an ideal candidate for being replicated by home sewists with little to moderate sewing experience, by using our digital pattern with extensive instructions.