Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) (US) a keen supporter of the American Revolution.

1782		Loyal Verses (1860) 100: Tho’ the Colour’s unlike both Christian and Jew Skin / Yet it greatly reesembles a true Rebel Blue-Skin [DA].
1783		P. Freneau Poems II 157: Let him stand where he is — don’t push him down hill, / And he’ll turn a true Blue-Skin, or just what you will [DA].

(b) (US) a sailor.

1809

A.B. Lindsley Yankee Notions 33: Pass the grog brother blue skin.

(c) (US) a Northern, Unionist soldier.

1863		J.L. Fisk Exped. to Rocky Mtns 31: I went to the [Mormon] tabernacle and heard Bishop Woolley incite the flock to sneer at the ‘blue skins,’ (meaning our soldiers stationed there) [HDAS].
1864		Battle-Fields of South I 254: Darn the blue-skins any how; who’s scared of the blue-bellies (i.e. Eastern men)?

(a) the offspring of a white man and a black woman, a mulatto.

1774		Foote Cozeners in Works (1799) II 147: Promising to get Bob Blueskin a reprieve.
c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Blue Skin, a Child of a Black Woman by a White Man.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn) n.p.: Blue Skin. A person begotten on a black woman by a white man.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

(b) a black person.

1821		J.F. Cooper The Spy (1843) 137/2: You seem very careful of that beautiful person of yours, Mr. Blueskin.
1847		J.S. Robb Streaks of Squatter Life 111: ‘What, Missus dar, too!’ shouted the nigger [...] and off the cussed blueskin started fur the house.
1849		A. Harris Emigrant Family I 286–7: ‘I’ll go down to-morrow, Blueskin, and burn the carcass.’ [...] From the time of this occurrence, the black began to feel there was an urgency in the danger which he had not considered before.
1902		Little Falls herald (MN) 12 Dec. 17/1: Ole Aun’ Sukie Blueskin / She fell in love wid me.
1944		Mencken ‘Designations for Colored Folk’ in AS XIX:3 174: The DAE lists blueskin as an early synonym.

(c) the penis.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

(a) (US) a puritan, a repressive moralist.

1787		R. Tyler Contrast II ii: It is no shame, my dear Blueskin, for a man to amuse himself with a little gallantry.
1823		Yale Crayon 22: I, with my little colleague here, / Forth issued from my cell, / To see if we could overhear, / Or make some blueskin tell.

(b) a Presbyterian.

1848		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms 39: Blueskins, a nickname applied to the Presbyterians, from their alleged grave deportment.
1855		P.T. Barnum Life of P. T. Barnum 50: There the congregation would sit and shiver, and their faces would look so blue, that it is no wonder ‘the world’s people’ sometimes called them ‘blue skins’.
1889		Farmer Americanisms.