"What's With Civil War Soldiers and Beards" Topic

Usually, my TMP ACW questions are hardcore wargame-relevant; weapons, equipment, deployments, etc. But the other day my granddaughter called and asked "What's with civil war soldiers and beards?" She is doing a paper on grooming and clothing in the United States in the 1800's for college ( I know, it confuses me too. But I've learned it only makes me sad if I inquire too closely on what is studied in universities today. So I send her money and keep such inquiries to myself.) But the girl thinks I know something about the civil war so I was embarrassed when I couldn't answer her question immediately.

I did some research and discovered that through the first half of the 19th century men were by and large clean shaven. But starting in the middle of the 1850's there was an explosion of beards of all types; from goatees and mutton-chops to full patriarchal down-to-the-breastbone beards. Yes, it was the style. But why was it the style? What happened in the mid-1850's to cause this affection for facial hair among men not only in America, but throughout Europe as well?

Maybe people were trying to follow the fashion of Prince Albert in the UK and Louis Napoleon in France.

Or maybe they were trying to rebel against their uptight, clean-shaven parents! :)

Damon.

Just an opinion, but a contributing factor might have been the aping of "all things French" which was so prominent in the US of the 1850's. After all Napoleon III was much lauded early on in his reign.

My 2 centimes.

anleiher

Maybe so. Anything to do with the French military was all the rage in the states at that time. That explains the 2nd empire-style goatees. But what about the biblical-sized beards a la generals Longstreet and Stuart? An early screening of "The Ten Commandments?"

Re your member profile, you bear an amazing resemblence to my first wife.

Don'f ask.

I remember reading a primary source where they mentioned letting the beard grow on active campaign cause it was more sanitary or something.

In a similar vein, how in the heck did people survive back then in the heat and humidity buttoned up to the collar ?

Because they look good.

Usually have a beard, myself.

Much of the explosion of facial hair and the widespread adoption of cigars/cigarettes instead of pipes can be traced to the US invasion of Mexico. The young officers went down clean shaven and came back hirsuite.

It was a fashion. Who can explain it?!

Actually the younger men in the 1860's began to change from what their older generation had. The younger men had less full breads in general and more goatees, mustaches or completely clean shaven. In the "Memorial Period" it went back to more mustaches and goatees. That's why many statues show the Memorial Period look and not the CW period.

I think that it's a cyclical thing, just look at some of the equally hideous facial hair from the 1970's too.

I wonder what the facial hair fashions of the mid 21st century will be.

Why does any fashion change? Why are beards more common now than in the 1950s? Why did we wear shorts in the 70s yet today we wear "shorts" that go to the knee or below?

The second half of the nineteenth centrury was just a good time for ludicrous facial adornment. Just look at the Austrian Army in 1866….

When I was in the Marine Corp and in the field or at Desert Storm I did not want to shave as well. Being dirty and only having cold water just took the desire out of you. It would be easier not to then to but being a NCO and a Marine I did what I was suppose to do. As for the question it could have been partly laziness or maybe razor were not a priority. Heck many Corn Feds did not even have shoes or coats in the winter. I'm sure in the south razor came at a premium and who in their right minds would want to shave with a knife.

Facial hair wins wars. It is a fact. Look it up.

It comes and goes. Hardly any facial hair in the late medieval period, but in the Renaissance, Francis I, Henry VIII and Charles V are all proud owners of facial topiary. This lasts well until the mid 1600 during which the goatee and moustache look is popular. Louis XIV in his youth wore a pencil moustache, but like him most people went clean shaved after around 1650. Sideburns make an appearance around the turn of the 19th century as well as moustaches growing into the hair explosion of the mid 19th century with full beards, handlebars, goatees and sideburns you could smother a barber with. Beards are out of fashion around 1900 but moustaches remain popular. Beards make a resurgence in the 1950's, peak in the 1970's and give way to the goatee in the 90's. Another fashion trend is the unshaven look appearing in the late 80's and still popular today.

Beards are usually a fashion statement mimicing the rich and/or famous but I dont know what prompted the popularity of the beard in the late 19th century. IIRC I read about Monarchs of the era sporting beards but I dont know why they became popular among the nobility.

In a hundred years someone will ask of this generation, what's with all the tats, tramp stamps and pierced lips/nipples/noses/tongues? Which king do we blame for that?

Mark Severin
ScaleCreep.com
FlagshipGames.com
DeepFriedHappyMice.com

Ask the ladies.

Allen

Aside from the fad aspect, the cleanliness arguments already made are most convincing to me. If you're dirty all the time, no soap, no hot water, no clean cloth, probably no good clean sharp razors, etc. – you'll just live with the face fur. Given that a shaving cut that festers can kill you just as easily as a musket ball, seems reasonable to me to skip it.

Doug

Facial hair is a strange thing in the military… pictures of Victorian gentlemen always show them sporting magnificent moustaches, whereas we (British Army in the 1990s) were not allowed a moustache to extend below the top lip. I'm not sure how widespread this rule was, but did not seem to apply to the SAS, however, and they took great delight in displaying their status by growing 'bandito' style moustaches – which became known (to us, at least) as an 'SAS moustache'.
We had a 'moustache growing competition' when I was in Ulster, but I (as a twenty year old squaddie who had never grown such a thing in my life) was horrified to see a couple of ginger hairs appearing after a few days. I thus shaved the fluffy monstrosity off instantly, thus forfeiting any chance of winning the several hundred pounds worth of prive money.
I recall reading about a similar 'moustache incident' of an RAF officer on attachment to the USAF in the last few months. He was ordered by his (American) commander to remove his enormous moustache, but refused, quoting RAF regulations as to the size / shape / scope of a permitted moustache – and won the day… though perhaps not the respect of his USAF comrades.
Similarly, the Selous Scouts of Rhodesian bush war fame all took to growing beards (my understanding is that they were permitted / encouraged so to do) which in turn sparked a mini-craze in beard growing amoung Rhodesians as a whole. I doubt the smart troopers of the Rhodesian Light Infantry were permitted to do such things, but stand to be corrected.

I remember reading somewhere that the British army left for the Crimea clean shaven, and returned sporting the bushy beards so prominent in most photos of the conflict. Supposedly, the style took hold, and evolved into the magnificent facial hair seen throughout Victoria's reign.

If this is true, it's an easy enough jump to conclude that either this style crossed the ocean (or perhaps the French came home similarly, and THAT crossed over), or perhaps the style evolved similarly on this side of the pond after the ACW started.

Take it with a grain of salt, but it seems plausible to me…

"Re your member profile, you bear an amazing resemblance to my first wife."

I hate to break it to you, but you were apparently married to Burl Ives.

Why did we wear shorts in the 70s yet today we wear "shorts" that go to the knee or below?

I think that this goes back to Michael Jordan wearing baggy basketball shorts when everyone else wore them high and tight.

Everyone wanted to "be like Mike" and copied his long, baggy basketball shorts, which in turn, caught on with urban and suburban youth.

I will be happy when kids start wearing their baseball caps with the bill/brim in the front again.

I believe the Civil War beard is over rated. Yes, it was a style. See those studio portraits of the generals. Yet look at those few photos of troops on campaign or died doing there duty: not near the beard representation. And beards are not sanitary, especially on campaign. The longest I went without shaving in a war zone was about 14 days and by then you could tell a lot about what I had been eating. Sweat and dirt make mud and a beard is a good place to carry it. Shaving is not difficult with a razor if that's the way you learned.
Now I have a beard, thanks to CW reenacting, but I also have indoor plumbing and a shower.

In 1850 every barber in the world died.

That is why you see photographs of men who, although clearly dressed in their best, simply look like tramps who have been given a wet comb, dressed up, and told to look presentable in five minutes.

It's not just the beards, it's the long hair desperately brushed into some sort of limp, greasy shape that characterises this period.

By 1870 Prussia was training barbers, and they began to spread again.

Did THIS man ever own a comb?
picture

His wife trimmed his hair and his beard with hedge clippers.

Proof of what I said, John.

Owing to the demise of all skilled tonsorial artists, people were driven to extreme solutions. Mrs Sherman used hedge clippers. Most ACW generals and politicians clearly let their hair and beards grow, hoping that a barber would somehow appear, but wetting their locks and tucking their hair behind their ears like Bob Weir in early photos of the Grateful Dead.

The Beard is good.

Don't forget the French Zouaves. They were very popular in the 1850's and 1860's. The French zouaves distinguished themselves during the Crimean War and during the Franco-Austrian War (Italian campaign of 1859).

They became well known around the world and had two distinguished characteristics: the colorful uniform and long beards.

Take a look (click on the pics to enlarge them)…

Regiment of Zouaves of the French Imperial Guard

Photos taken in 1857:

picture

picture

picture

Guard Zouaves after the 1859 Italian campaign (Franco-Austrian War): picture

"In a hundred years someone will ask of this generation, what's with all the tats, tramp stamps and pierced lips/nipples/noses/tongues? "

A hundred years? I've been asking that for a decade already! No doubt they will find the answer in an archived version of 'Hello'

Re the beards, Flintloque (and Cuirassier) are right, in the Crimea the brits had a really hard time, and the brit army effectively ceased to function. By the storming of the Redan, the original Brit army of 30,000 was reduced to just 12,000 effectives. Water was very scarce, hot water non existent, so they stopped shaving and started a fashion! WIth the Brits so hard pressed, thank goodness the French were there. Zouaves became <the> soldiers of the period, and consequently the watchword of fashionable style. It was very colourful and copied all over the world.

Men didnt shave every day in Victorian Britain anyway; it was a long winded affair at the best of times, so just a few times a week for the average man seems to have been OK. Of course you had a shave and brush up if you were going to have your photo taken…….. so it looks from photos like everyone shaved all the time. Barbers did a roaring trade in shaving the middle classes & well to do several times a week, the rest, who couldnt afford such regular barber visits grew facial hair.

Finally, have you seen the razors they used? It would scare the life out of me to put one of them against my face. No wonder sensible men grew beards. They didn't call them cutthroat razors for nothing. It seems to me they let beards, sideboards & 'taches grow in the areas which were hard to shave with a cutthroat, and just shaved the bits which were accessible and reasonably flat for the razor!

"Polease that moostache!"

I can't speak of the soldier of the 1860's but I know that firefighters at that time, well into the 1900's wore a moustache and even beards to use as a filter. Before the use of breathing apparatus a moustache or beard was wetted with water and placed into the mouth to act as a filter from smoke.

Facial hair during the ACW is a result of three main factors:
1) The popularity of the romantic Cavalier impression as a result of literature of the period.
2) The soldiers of both armies wanted to look older and called boys
3) It is a pain to shave in the field

Let's not overlook the practical.

I just finished "The Last Stand", by Nathaniel Philbrick.

He relates an anecdote, in which greenhorns riding with the 7th cavalry quickly realized that bushy mustaches were not just a fashion statement. Even with a hat, a very painful facial sunburn (especially on the lip) was common – unless you had facial hair.

In the field in Vietnam (a million years ago) just about everyone who could sported a moustache, and there were some huge ones!! We did shave semi regularly and longer hair was not common (local barbers were everywhere and cheap). I think it was just a fashion that took hold, with no other serious explanation. I've had one ever since too!

1)"The popularity of the romantic Cavalier impression as a result of literature of the period."

I vote for the cult of German romanticism, as well (calling it Cavalier is not quite right, since the Cavaliers at most went for a Van Dyke). Generals' facial hair--and the hair they will tolerate on their men--has nothing to do with practicality; it is always a political statement.

Prince Albert's beard, although profoundly influential in the English-speaking world, was in fact an effect of this, not its cause.

I've often wondered about this myself. It wasn't just the army, as civilians wore beards too. So that let's out the "it's impractical to shave in the field" theory.

I just checked the Wikipedia article on beards. It does not profess to know why beards became popular in the mid-1800s, but has some interesting thoughts on why they became unpopular later:

"Following World War I, beards fell out of vogue. There are several theories as to why the military began shaving beards. When World War I broke out in the 1910s, the use of chemical weapons necessitated that soldiers shave their beards so that gas masks could seal over their faces. The enlistment of military recruits for World War I in 1914 precipitated a major migration of men from rural to urban locales. This was the largest such migration that had ever occurred in the United States up to that time. The sudden concentration of recruits in crowded army induction centers brought with it disease, including head lice. Remedial action was taken by immediately shaving the faces and cutting the hair of all inductees upon their arrival.

When the war concluded in 1918 the "Doughboys" returned to a hero's welcome. During this time period the Film Industry was coming into its own and "going to the movies" became a popular pastime. Due to the recent Armistice many of the films had themes related to World War I. These popular films featured actors who portrayed soldiers with their clean shaven faces and "crew cuts". Concurrently, the psychological mass marketing of Madison Avenue was becoming prevalent. The Gillette Safety Razor Company was one of these marketers' early clients. These events conspired to popularize short hair and clean shaven faces as the only acceptable style for decades to come."

Beards had been falling out fashion for decades before World War I, spurred by the invention of the safety razor in 1880--simultaneously with the steady triumph of Progressivism over Romanticism and Transcendentalism: Wilson, elected in 1912, was the first President since Lincoln to be elected clean-shaven, and Taft and Roosevelt had only moustaches, after five fully bearded Presidents with only unpopular and accidental Andrew Johnson to break the streak.

The significance of World War I is that soldiers were required to be clean-shaven, and Gillette arranged to have the Army give every doughboy a Gillette razor. This seems to have been the fatal blow to the old fashion. After the war, clean-shaven was young and fresh and promising, while the beard was the old order which the U.S. spent most of the 1920s trying to drown in a bathtub of gin.

Wilson? Try William McKinley:

picture

One film critic described 'Gettysburg' as the 'Battle of the ludicrous beards, and was won by the north, because their beards were far more bushy.

Re wife as barber – what do you expect from a man who thinks he is cool to name himself after a tank!

Facial hair was in style,pretty much up until the turn of the century,then it went the other way.

Hats were also very much in style during the Victorian period.

I'm still waiting for that hideous style of wearing a tie goes out of style!!

Bob

Below is my summary of the excellent responses on this thread up to this time

1. Popular European literature of the period celebrated romantic, fighting heroes from European history ( Alexandre Dumas's D'Artagnan series, etc.) many of whom were described or illustrated with facial hair.

2. Popular American literature of the period (James Fennimore Cooper's Leatherstocking series, etc.) celebrated the American frontier spirit with many explorer and frontiersman characters in rustic dress and facial hair.

3. Facial hair was associated with the wars and military leaders and heroes of the period: Mexican-American War, Crimean War, Franco-Austrian War, and the colonial wars of Britain and France.

4. European dress and grooming, especially French, was much admired in America and European males, both civilian and military, had adopted facial hair of various styles depending on the nation in question.

5. Young soldiers new to the military adopted beards to appear older and experienced rather than invite ridicule as green and untried.

6. Older soldiers adopted or kept their beards as silent witnesses to their age and military experience

7. Commanding officers often sported long or extravagantly cut beards so that their men could more easily recognize them in battle.

8. Shaving was a chore while on campaign. Many civil war soldier's diaries and letters mention shaving while in winter quarters but forgoing the practice when actively campaigning.

"William McKinley:"

I will have to grow a beard to hide my blush of shame. Of course you're right--but the larger point about Progressivism pushing out Romanticism remains.

Good answers by all, but all failed to nail the truth of the matter. Recent climatogical evidence in the form of carbon dating and tree ring counting, indicates that due to the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the first indications of climate change were felt. Initially, this was thought to be a warming trend, hence the lack of facial hair in an effort to keep cool. As more data was collected, the evidence pointed to global cooling, which brought on the onset of the growth (nice pun) in popularity of facial hair, even among some segments of the female and minor child populations. This is futher borne out by simply looking at photographs of the period--the reason that they are all "serious looking" is that they are clenching their teeth due to the frigid weather.
It is unfortunate that in an effort to stave off the cold, climatologists resorted to using all the original printed data as kindling.
Mosby65, this explanation will make perfect sense to your grand daughter, fitting in nicely with the world view espoused by our education system. The science is irrefutable.
Hope that helps.

Prior to the presidency of John F Kennedy in the early 1960s men wore hats all the time. Then Kennedy began appearing bareheaded. That became the standard, as men quickly stopped wearing hats as just part of standard fashion. Now, generally speaking, hat are only worn for special circumstances (military, sports, inclement weather, baldness, religion, etc.). Yes, I know some of you wear hats all the time, but take a snapshot of a crowded street and you'll see a dearth of hats.

Likewise, it may be that the Prince Albert, while not originating the proliferation of facial hair in the UK and US, he may well have popularized it in the same way that Kennedy popularized the bareheaded look.

As you say, hats were common right up to the 60s. My father always wore one when dressed up (outdoors -- men never wore a hat indoors, that would be impolite). Note the old movies from the 40s: Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, for instance. Grown men wore suits (not sports coats), white shirts, ties and, when outside, hats, unless they had some sort of manual labor job. In the USAF in the 60s I was REQUIRED (when in uniform) to wear a cap when outdoors. So far as I know, that requirement still stands in the armed forces.

Kennedy and Prince Albert gave the final establishment seal of approval to fashion trends which had been developing before them.

Hats were incompatible with the male hairstyles of the post-war youth culture--which were deliberate rejections of the high and tight military cuts favoured by the GI generation as badges of their service. The Silent generation increasingly embraced fashions like the ducktail and dungarees to reject comparison with their elders.

The Baby Boomers then embraced the counterculture and made the Silents' rebellion mainstream and marketable.

The guys all wanted to be Biblical Patriarchs.

In one of the Flashman books he mentions the "Moustache Movement" that also involved shirts and ties with odd things on them like skulls and Fraser has a footnote about it. (Bank of England tellers were prohibited from having them and he mentions parallels to the hippie movement; and Fraser has Flashman make a comment about always being wary when young men start growing beards as it means a war is coming.) I think it was an 1850s Flashman, but I can't recall which one. (Crimean? Mutiny?)

I haven't read it, but I just Googled this:
link

It looks like there are other things, although admittedly about Victorian Britain and not the U.S., that might help her or lead onto American fashions:
link