Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

With the Pentagon budget up two-thirds over the last decade, it’s no surprise that charges of war profiteering make for regular front-page fodder. But for sheer scale and audacity, nothing beats the corruption that surrounded the Union war effort — and, thanks to the horrendously poor quality of the resulting equipment, did much to undermine it.

From the very beginning, government representatives awarded contracts based not on the best product, or the fairest price, but on the highest bribe. As the war progressed, the problem became epidemic: during one week alone in November 1861, contractors in New York generated nearly $3 million in revenues from military deals. It would be easy to excuse a little corruption, or even a lot, if the result was high-quality equipment. But much of the contractors’ profit came from cutting corners. And with the government representatives more concerned with lining their own pockets than establishing a system of standards, there was little quality control over the goods that went into the field.

Library of Congress

Take the clothing sector, where companies made fortunes responding to the demands of a suddenly vast army. Brooks Brothers, for example, was awarded an initial contract for the fabrication of 12,000 uniforms just two weeks after war was declared; in 1861 alone, it filled 36,000 orders. The company had obtained the contract through questionable means, and proceeded to fill the order in much the same way: turned out in a matter of weeks, the uniforms were so ill-fitting – many lacking buttons and button holes – that the New York Volunteers who wore them suffered humiliation from other outfits. Even worse, the soldiers were responsible for paying for their own uniforms out of their clothing allowance, so they took a double hit.

But this was not the worst of it: facing a paucity of wool, Brooks Brothers glued together shredded, often decaying rags, pressed them into a semblance of cloth, and sewed the pieces into uniforms. Far from protecting the soldiers from inclement weather, these uniforms would fall apart in the first rain. The New York State Legislature eventually spent $45,000 — about $10.8 million in current dollars — to replace the uniforms. The company stonewalled; when asked why he did not lower his prices for using lesser materials, one of the proprietors, Elisha Brooks, responded, “I think that I cannot ascertain the difference without spending more time than I can now devote to that purpose.”

Nor did the Brooks Brothers scandal stop the states from engaging with war profiteers. Soon, wool mills sprang up all over the North, operating at outlandish profit margins and brazenly cheating the government. Some of the uniforms were made from cloth of non-regulation color, which sometimes resulted in soldiers firing upon their own comrades by mistake. When the administration looked abroad for its cloth, the Northern mill owners and contractors cried foul in the name of patriotism. Other manufacturers learned to cut corners as well, producing cheap knapsacks, blankets and hats. Some made shoe soles of glued-together wood chips, which would fall apart after just a half hour of marching.

None of this was a secret; in fact, the poor quality of the soldiers’ equipment gave a new word to the English language: “shoddy.” The term, according to a Harpers Weekly article, described “a villainous compound, the refuse stuff and sweepings of the shop, pounded, rolled, glued, and smoothed to the external form and gloss of cloth.” One writer for the New York Tribune painted an equally graphic picture: “Shoddy” was, he wrote,

poor sleezy stuff, woven open enough for seives [sic], and then filled with shearman’s dust. … Soldiers, on the first day’s march or in the earliest storm, found their clothes, overcoats, and blanket, scattering to the wind in rags or dissolving into their primitive elements of dust under the pelting rain.

The same story played out in practically every corner of the war-contracting business. So-called victuallers made huge profits by providing spoiled meat, and hostlers sold old, blind and spavined horses to the government at usurious prices.

Related Disunion Highlights Explore multimedia from the series and navigate through past posts, as well as photos and articles from the Times archive. See the Highlights »

Sadly, the practice of over-pricing under-quality goods continued from the firing on Fort Sumter to the surrender at Appomattox, and made fortunes for many New York businessmen. In 1860, when the war was nothing more than a strong rumor, there were only a few dozen millionaires in all of New York City; by the end of the war, they numbered in the hundreds. True, some made their fortunes fairly, but not for nothing were they known popularly as the “Shoddy Aristocracy.” The New York Herald complained,

The world has seen its… silver age, its golden age….This is the age of shoddy. The new brown-stone palaces on Fifth Avenue, the new equipages at the Park, the new diamonds which dazzle unaccustomed eyes…the new people who live in the palaces, and ride in the carriages, and wear the diamonds and silks – all are shoddy….Six days in the week they are shoddy businessmen. On the seventh day they are shoddy Christians.

Library of Congress

One of the most conspicuous offenders, the merchant George Opdyke, was elected mayor of New York in 1862. During his campaign, prominent New York attorney John H. White referred to the candidate as “a faithful public servant, a sincere philanthropist and an honest man.” Actually, as the city’s largest clothing manufacturer, Opdyke made a good deal of his money before the war by producing cheap clothes for Southern planters to give to their slaves. And shortly before the mayoral election, it was Opdyke himself, in his capacity as clothing inspector, who approved the shoddy uniforms produced by Brooks Brothers. Before the war ended, a noted statesman observed that Opdyke “had made more money out of the war by secret partnerships and contracts for army clothing, than any fifty sharpers in New York.” His unflagging support of the Lincoln administration, however, and his efforts in raising troops for the cause, did much to mask his unsavory activities.

As with war profiteers in other conflicts, not a single member of the shoddy aristocracy was shot or hanged for treason; the more opulent the transgressor, it seemed, the more socially acceptable. As the Herald wrote, “The individual who makes the most money – no matter how – and spends the most money – no matter for what – is considered the greatest man.”

Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.

Ron Soodalter is a journalist and member of the board of directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute. He is the author of “Hanging Captain Gordon” and “The Slave Next Door.”