American Civil War Era: Military Academies--CCA

Figure 1.--There is no identifying writing on the paper sleeve of this Civil War era tinytpe. Tyeboy looks to be about 16 years old, old enough to have enlisted. We believe, however, that the bos is a military academy student and not a Civil War soldier. The cap badge suggests an academy and the paper sleeve for the tintype also suggests that it was taken just after the War.

We do not know the name of this military accademy. We do not even know if it is northern or southern. All we have showing tht the school existed is a sleeved tin-type. Here we see CCA on the cap, although we are not entirly sure about the order of the letters. The boy pictures is old enough to have serve. He looks to be about16 years old. Many youth that age served. Enlisted Confederate soldiers often had very basic uniforms, often regular clothes died with grey dye or as the War progressed more commonly locally produced beech nut or acorns giving a greyish-brown look often called butternut. And few would have had badges like this. Military academies did have uniforms and badges. And grey was a commin color for cadet uniforms, including academies in the North. Even West Point had grey uniforms. The rest of the uniform looks more like an accademy uniform than an actual military uniform. The tintype sleeve helps date the image. Tintypes appeared in the mid-1850s. Early tintypes were cased like Dags ans Ambros. We see elaborate heavy embossed sleeves beginning about 1863. We are not sure when simple paper sleeves appered, but believe that it was the era just after the Civil War, Thus we would date this portrait to the the late-1860s - early-70s. This rather confirms that the portrait is of an academy pupil and not a youthful soldier. The rest of the uniform also looks more like the 70s than 60s. Hopefully readers might know what school CCA is.

Created: 5:29 PM 2/7/2016
Last updated: 5:29 PM 2/7/2016