The establishment of a small regular army after the War of 1812 brought with it a government regulation uniform for regular troops, which was in turn followed to some extent by the state troops or militia, but there were still many different styles of uniform in use through the Mexican War and up to the breaking out of the Civil War in 1860. Different units of the forces came to be known by the colors of their uniforms, such as the “Richmond Blues,” the “Red Zouaves,” the “Blue Zouaves,” the “Grays,” and many crack regiments of the militia, or as it came to be known later, the National Guard of the different States, had their own distinctive color and cut of uniform dress. The great Civil War called such large bodies of men to the colors of the two contending sides that the question of economy demanded that the service uniforms for each side be made of one standard color and style, the armies of the North wearing blue and those of the South wearing gray. In each army, however, the different corps were distinguished by a distinctive color for the trimmings or “facings,” a custom which still prevails for the dress uniforms of our troops. After the war with Spain in 1898 steps were taken to bring the uniforms of the several State National Guards into general conformity with that of the Regular Army, and, with the granting of national financial aid to these state troops and the issue to them of government regulation clothing and equipment, all of the armed forces of the country, regular, state and volunteer, gradually came to wear the same uniform, the different kinds of troops being distinguished by the design of the buttons or by letters worn on the collars. In one feature the United States troops of to-day, both in the Army and the Marine Corps, still retain a relic of the “stock” of former times; this is the close fitting, standing collar of the coats for both full dress and service uniforms. The original idea of the stock was to make the soldier hold his head up and stand stiffly erect, and it dates from the time when Frederick the Great introduced mathematical precision into every motion of drill and maneuver. In the early days when the marines wore a leather stock the sailor in his wide collared shirt dubbed the marine a “leatherneck,” a term still applied to him in the slang phrase of the service.