The question of butternut is at best difficult to answer. How often was it used? By whom? Just what color was it?
The last question in the easiest to answer. Butternut was made is one of two ways. The first method involved crushing the shells of various nuts (hence the name) and using this as a dye. The second method involved placing iron filings in water until they rusted, the subsequent mixture being used as a dye; this produces a reddish- brown color which is very distinctive. (Polly S makes a rust paint for weathering trains which works very well.) Dye produced from natural ingredients will produce a myriad of colors from a very light (almost white) brown to a deep yellowish brown, the color of mustard,
Almost all surviving examples that I have seen tend towards tannish colors, although this might be due to fading with age. So I paint butternut as a light tan or brown; I have ten different shades. I reserve darker colors of brown for civilian clothes.
As for who used butternut, virtually anyone could have at any point during the war. I tend to use it more with the western armies and at times when the supply system was at a low ebb. I tend to give the Army of Northern Virginia more troops in gray for two reasons. First, it stayed closer to Richmond, a major supply depot and clothing manufacturer. Second, the western armies were farther from the sea and ports, so it would have been easier to ship clothing brought through the blockade to Richmond, rather than to Nashville, Vicksburg, or Chattanooga.
Of the 25 general officers' units that survived the war (and which I have seen), only two are butternut. One belonged to James Pettigrew, a brigadier general in the Army of Northern Virginia, and the other belonged to Benjamin Humphreys, a brigadier general who served in the west.
About 40 percent of the butternut pants/coats combinations I have seen are both of the same color. The other combinations vary.
Finally, let me say that these notes are my own generalizations and impressions; consider your own when painting your own Confederate units. Don't forget sources of reference such Don Troiani paintings or photographs of reenactors.
Copyright 1995 by the American Civil War Society