Shirt Movements an American Idea?
Some of the most difficult to find Pelley literature is the mimeographed material prepared for the Councils of Safety in 1936 and 1938. The 1936 series of weekly lectures were titled, collectively, “The Master Councillor’s Address.”
Something like 25 years ago I borrowed an incomplete set from an archive in Delaware, if I recall, and read through them carefully taking notes. There were little glimpses at the Legion which I have not found elsewhere. A few of these addresses were signed by Pelley. Most were not and I get the impression that he was not always the author.
I believe that some of these lectures were written by Silvershirt Field Marshal Roy Zachary. He wrote signed columns in other publications and the style is similar enough to allow this conclusion.
In one of the 1936 council addresses there is a paragraph regarding the origin of “shirt” movements. It is stated that the North Carolina Regulators movement a few years before the American Revolution were known locally as “Red Shirts.” I can find no further such reference but this mention introduced me to the Regulators, a forgotten regional rebellion put down by the Crown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulator_Movement
The description goes on to say that Garibaldi got the idea for his Red Shirts from the Regulators. This claim is rather suspect, but it does bring up the point that Garibaldi was likely exiled in America at the time his idea for the Red Shirts was birthed. Some New York historians have made the convincing argument that Garibaldi’s “shirt movement,” granddaddy of them all, was born on Staten Island.
The New York version has it that Garibaldi was inspired by uniformed firemen wearing red shirts. The Uruguay version, dating several years earlier to 1842, makes reference to clothing freedom fighters in uniforms acquired from a factory which were intended for slaughterhouse workers in Argentina.
Regulators and Garibaldi aside, the Carolinas most certainly had a Red Shirt movement late in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and again in the 1890s. The Reconstruction era Red Shirts were supporters of Wade Hampton’s run for South Carolina governor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Shirts_(United_States)
Wade Hampton was well-known in the Cashiers district of Jackson County, North Carolina, where Roy Zachary had grown up and where his ancestors must undoubtedly have been acquainted with the Hamptons. A historical marker to Wade Hampton was raised in Cashiers in 1936.
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=20982
Was the existence of a regional shirt movement in the Carolinas known to Pelley when founding the Silver Legion? Did he intend the Legion as a shirt movement from the outset?
The mainstream, from earliest descriptions, informs us that the Silvershirts were modeled after Hitler’s Brownshirts and Italy’s Blackshirts. Certainly they were formed in reaction to Hitler coming to power, but it is possible that the “shirt” epithet was first used by their opponents and embraced by Pelley as a publicity stunt.
The Silvershirts were certainly not the first “shirt” movement in North Carolina.