Red Badge of Cotton

How Confederate cotton journeyed from Texas plantation to New England mill to become a Union uniform on a Virginia battlefieldThe bloodstained shirt of the Union soldier has long been celebrated as a “red badge of courage.” Yet as a finished product it reveals a narrative not of heroism but of wartime profiteering. After North and South declared mutual trade to be treasonous, a new supply chain emerged to link the cotton plantations of Louisiana and Texas to the mills of the Northeast. In the neutral Mexican port of Matamoros, northern and European agents bought “Mexican cotton” from Confederate merchants for transshipment to New York and New England.This treasonous cotton became woven into the entire outfit of the Union soldier—shirt, underwear, sleeping bag, tent, knapsack, even regimental flags.  In a literal sense, the Confederacy was fighting a Union army it was clothing and sheltering.David Montejano describes the entirety of this wartime trade, from cotton’s harvest on the plantation to its manufacture as uniform and flag, telling the stories of the countless human hands that touched cotton—the slaves, planters, merchants, teamsters, mariners, mill workers, nurses, and soldiers—as it journeyed from the western Confederacy to a Virginia battlefield.David Montejano is Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and History at the University of California, Berkeley. His prizewinning books include Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 and Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981. He lives in San Antonio, TX.