liturgical dress of chaplains, The

Military Images, May/Jun 2003

Chaplains in both the Confederate and the Union armies wore a variation of officers' uniforms, black civilian clothing, or a combination thereof. Indeed, such was the usual dress when most ordained ministers of most Protestant sects held their services.

However ordained individuals from the three "liturgical" Christian sects, the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal, came from a tradition of wearing special vestments during worship, and they brought this practice with them into the army.

Pere Louis-Hippolyte Gauche, a Roman Catholic priest, serving as a chaplain in the 10th Louisiana Infantry, Army of Northern Virginia, constantly wore a cassock and biretta when going about his business and full vestments when celebrating Mass. He wrote back from Virginia to a friend in New Orleans on November 22, 1861, "This was probably the first time the city of King William of Orange ever witnessed a Catholic priest, fully vested in cassock, surplice and stole, walking in procession down its historic streets. Wonders never cease."

Rev. James B. Sheeran, Roman Catholic chaplain of the 14th Louisiana, noted in his diary on November 14, 1864 that some Protestants had asked him to "hold service" for them that Sunday. "I told them no, as I had no vestments, altar furniture or vessels."

The Episcopal Church was in a state of flux on the vestment issue. In 1552 the Church of England forbade priests to wear vestments. However, in the 1840s a group of English church leaders issued a series of tracts calling for a return to the church's Catholic roots, including the vesting of priests. Within a short time, cassocks and surplices began to appear in some Church of England pulpits.

This movement spread to America only slowly. However Episcopal priests almost universally wore black Geneva gowns. They continued to wear them when in the army. Captain Charles Blackford, an Army of Northern Virginia cavalry officer, noted in his diary June 14, 1863, that he had attended a service conducted by Episcopal priest Brigadier General William Pendleton, the army's artillery chief: "His avocations were curiously mixed in his apparel. The gown covered up his uniform entirely except for the wreath and stars of a general on his collar which peeped out to mildly protest against too much 'peace on earth' and the boots and spurs clanked around the chancel with but little sympathy with the doctrine of 'good will towards men'."

Bishop and Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk wore bishop's garb when he married General and Mrs. J.H. Morgan in December 1862.