Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1311-1576

Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

History

Committee Chair

Jason Phillips

Committee Member

Brian Luskey

Committee Member

Kate Staples

Committee Member

Joseph Hodge

Committee Member

James Broomall

Abstract

In the American Civil War era, shoddy was difficult to understand. It was simultaneously seen as evidence of advancing western civilization as well as a disgusting amalgamation of refuse and disease that threatened those who touched it. Made from shredding woolen rags and tailors’ clippings, the recycled woolen fibers could by applied in myriad woolen blends that came to dominate the ready-made clothing industry that developed through the first half of the nineteenth century. Its application could soften coarse blends and refine the appearance of cheap cloth. When the American Civil War erupted in 1861, however, shoddy came to define anything and everything that was inferior. Contracting scandals rocked Northern states, and complaints of rotten uniforms propelled shoddy into the wider American lexicon and inaugurated what this dissertation calls the “shoddy crisis”: the immediate, visceral response to early supply problems among Northerners and the continued vitriol through the war that generated public debate on issues of fraud, profiteering, and capitalism. Other historians have broadly examined shoddy’s “adjectification” by analyzing the ways that Civil War era Americans applied the term “shoddy” to things they saw as inferior in their society. This dissertation seeks to reframe the historical analysis of shoddy in the Civil War era by using material culture methodology. In doing so, it uncovers the ways that shoddy fibers impacted antebellum American clothing, wartime contracting, and the culture of the Civil War era North. Shoddy’s “adjectification” was spurred not only by early supply scandals, but knowledge Americans gained about shoddy through the popular press, and centered on the physical characteristics of shoddy in cloth. When used properly, shoddy was nearly invisible and even expert inspectors could not identify it. The contracting scandals and investigations called into question the expertise of inspectors, quartermasters, and clothiers. Questions of how to identify shoddy propelled its use in popular discourse through the Civil War, and the physical characteristics of shoddy learned by Americans through the popular press helped them identify the “shoddies” in their midst. In emphasizing the materiality of shoddy, this dissertation uncovers the myriad ways that simple woolen fibers transfixed a nation at war. Rather than a symptom of the early rush to clothe Union volunteers, shoddy fibers, in all their forms, continued to frustrate Quartermasters, Congressmen, and the American public through the entirety of the conflict.

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