We have grown into a habit of depicting all our revolutionary forefathers, both privates and officers, in beautiful buff and blue uniform as if we were from the start a regularly organized, independent nation, fighting regular battles with another independent nation. There were, I believe, at times a select few, more usually officers, who succeeded in having such a uniform. But the great mass of our rebel troops had no uniforms at all. They wore a hunting shirt or smock frock which was merely a cheap cotton shirt belted round the waist and with the ends hanging outside over the hips instead of being tucked into the trousers. Into the loose bosom of this garment above the belt could be stuffed bread, pork, and all sorts of articles including a frying pan. We of course do not like to have a picture of one of our ancestors painted in such a garment. It would not look well. It is better to have some theoretical uniform, the uniform that our fathers would have had if they had had the money and time to get one, painted on top of a picture of our ancestor. Lafayette has described in his memoirs the rebel army he found in this country on his arrival in the summer of 1777: "Eleven thousand men, but tolerably armed and still worse clad, presented a singular spectacle in their parti-colored and often naked state; the best dresses were hunting shirts of brown linen. Their tactics were equally irregular. They were arranged without regard to size except that the smallest men were the front rank." When the French officers appeared among us after the alliance, our officers were often unable to entertain them for lack of decent clothes and food. Washington in an order of July 24, 1776, said: "The general, sensible of the difficulty and expense of providing clothes of almost any kind for the troops, feels an unwillingness to recommend, much more to order any kind of uniform; but as it is absolutely necessary that men should have clothes and appear decent and tight, he earnestly encourages the use of hunting shirts with long breeches made of the same cloth, gaiter fashion about the legs to all those yet unprovided." (Force 5th Series, Vol I, pp. 676, 677.)