subs. (American).—1. A Confederate soldier. Also (2) a Northern and Middle State sympathiser with the South in the American Civil War: the uniforms worn in the early part of the war by Confederate soldiers in the West were homespun, dyed brown with the juice of the BUTTERNUT (Juglans cinerea).
1862. Independent, 22 March. The BUTTERNUT gentry … about four hundred of them [here prisoners] are in the camp hospitals.
1862. New York Tribune, 11 June. We marvelled as we went by that no ambitious BUTTERNUT discharged his rifle or shot-gun at the fleet as it passed; but he did not.
