Book Quotes: Confederate Uniforms from Slave Cloth

From A Woman's Civil War by Cornelia Peake McDonald (page 228):

The 20th of March had come, and Harry was within three weeks of being seventeen years old. He said he was old enough to go into the army, and seemed so anxious to go that I felt it would be wrong to refuse him. To get him equipped was the great consideration. He said if he could get the clothes that his brother Edward had promised to furnish him with a horse and equipments. So I determined to let him go, and bethought myself of a remaining piece of finery, a crepe shawl. I took it up to a shop and exchanged it for a piece of grey cloth, such as before the war had been worn only by negroes, but which now was the only material used for soldiers' clothes. Course and rough as it was, it was worn by the best of the land, and no gentleman himself above wearing it. Some were fortunate enough to get a finer quality of grey cloth, but grey it must be.