I do not think any red Indian of the plains exceeded us in the patience with which we worked away at these minutia of life's needs.
Of course the most common source of clothing was the dead, and no body was carried out with any clothing on it that could be of service to the survivors.

The Plymouth Pilgrims, who were so well clothed on coming in, and were now dying off very rapidly, furnished many good suits to cover the nakedness of older, prisoners.

Most of the prisoners from the Army of the Potomac were well dressed, and as very many died within a month or six weeks after their entrance, they left their clothes in pretty good condition for those who constituted themselves their heirs, administrators and assigns.
For my own part, I had the greatest aversion to wearing dead men's clothes, and could only bring myself to it after I had been a year in prison, and it became a question between doing that and freezing to death.
Every new batch of prisoners was besieged with anxious inquiries on the subject which lay closest to all our hearts: "What are they doing about exchange!" Nothing in human experience--save the anxious expectancy of a sail by castaways on a desert island--could equal the intense eagerness with which this question was asked, and the answer awaited.

To thousands now hanging on the verge of eternity it meant life or death.

Between the first day of July and the first of November over twelve thousand men died, who would doubtless have lived had they been able to reach our lines--"get to God's country," as we expressed it.
The new comers brought little reliable news of contemplated exchange.
There was none to bring in the first place, and in the next, soldiers in active service in the field had other things to busy themselves with than reading up the details of the negotiations between the Commissioners of Exchange.