Continental Army Uniforms: Brown Was the First Red, White & Blue
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Search for a Continental Army uniform and you'll find a blue coat, trimmed with red and lined with white. But the first American uniform was brown.
A uniformly dressed American soldier did not exist at the outset of the Revolutionary War. Continental soldiers varied tremendously depending on which colony, region, or regiment they belonged to. New England colonies paid soldiers to bring clothing from home. Massachusetts clothed its Grand Army of 1775 in plain workman's coats of pale brown, with numbered buttons designating individual regiments. George Washington advocated for the hunting shirt, a coarse linen shirt with a cape and an array of fringe, from the western reaches of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Then the Continental Congress resolved that coats should be dyed brown, with each regiment distinguished by the color of their facings. Brown was one of the few things that Pennsylvanians and New England Yankees could agree upon.
By the time the Continental Army formalized blue coats, faced in red, and lined in white for the entire Continental Army, Fort Ticonderoga was already an historic ruin. Perhaps the only troops to serve at Ticonderoga clad in red, white, and blue were the soldiers of the Rhode Island Battalion, who guarded General Washington as he toured these historic grounds in July 1783, three months after the cease fire of the war for Independence.
