The Quartermaster

by Robert O'Harrow

  Along the way, I received help from the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College and the folks at Cornell University Library who maintain an invaluable online reservoir of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate armies. The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History provided a small financial stipend that helped me take time off from work to examine its wonderful files.

  I drew on the work of many other scholars and writers. That includes two earlier, admirable studies: Quartermaster General of the Union Army: A Biography of M.C. Meigs, by Russell F. Weigley; and Second Only to Grant: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, by David W. Miller. I learned much from essays by Sherrod East, including The Banishment of Captain Meigs. Also illuminating and engaging were the essays in Montgomery C. Meigs and the Building of the Nation’s Capital, edited by William C. Dickinson, Dean A. Herrin, and Donald R. Kennon. Mark Wilson’s The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865, and Erna Risch’s Quatermaster Support of the Army provided data and insights that added greatly to my story.

  For details about the Civil War and nineteenth-century America in general, I relied on the extraordinary work of James McPherson in his Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era and of Allan Nevins, including the volumes comprising his Ordeal of the Union, The Emergence of Lincoln, and The War for the Union. Margaret Leech’s magnificent Reveille in Washington gave insight into the nation’s capital during the war. For the life of John Meigs, I turned to Mary A. Giunta’s poignant book, A Civil War Soldier of Christ and Country: The Selected Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 1859–64. I learned more than I knew possible about the capital’s water system from Harry C. Ways Jr.’s fascinating book, The Washington Aqueduct 1852–1992. Guy Gugliotta’s Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War provided keen insights about Jefferson Davis and the struggles between Meigs and Walter, the labor they and others poured into the Capitol and the significance of those efforts to the nation. I also drew on the terrific, interesting History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics by William C. Allen.

  The backbone of The Quartermaster—at least until Lincoln calls on Meigs to serve as quartermaster general—is the transcription of some 2,800 pages of the shorthand journals that Meigs kept while supervising work in the nation’s capital before the war. This is a story in itself. The transcriber was William Mohr, a shorthand specialist who retired in 1989 as official reporter of debates for the U.S. Senate. In 1991, Mohr began working closely with a group of smart, dedicated folks to make sense of Meigs’s seemingly inscrutable shorthand journals after they came to the attention of Richard Baker, Senate historian, and Barbara Wolanin, curator for the Architect of the Capitol. A ten-year-long effort to transcribe and publish the journals included specialists from the Architect of the Capitol, the Senate Curator, the Senate Historical Office, and the Library of Congress. I relied primarily on the complete transcript of Meigs’s journals. I also drew on Capitol Builder: The Shorthand Journals of Montgomery Meigs, 1853–1859, 1861, edited by Wendy Wolff, an engaging, abridged version of the transcript that includes related observations.

  Thanks to Amy Rennert for helping so ably as my agent and advisor, and to Alice Mayhew, my editor at Simon & Schuster, for her guidance and spot-on editing and advice. Alice and her talented colleague, Stuart Roberts, helped me at every step during the long haul to the book’s completion.

  I cannot express enough gratitude to the Washington Post, the news organization that has sustained me for more than a quarter-century. I owe much to former owner, Don Graham, a remarkable man and a great steward of the newspaper through both good and hard times. Thanks to our current owner, Jeff Bezos, the Post has new life. I am indebted to a long line of editors who have helped me and taught me along the way. Lynn Medford, the former editor of the Washington Post Magazine, and David Rowell, her deputy, gave shape to the article that became the seed of The Quartermaster. I owe much to investigations editor Jeff Leen for his counsel, ideas, and steadfast leadership.

  And, finally, thanks to my dear wife, Amy, for her wisdom and love.

  About the Author

  PHOTOGRAPH BY MARVIN JOSEPH / THE WASHINGTON POST

  Robert O’Harrow Jr. is a reporter on the investigative unit at the Washington Post. He is author of No Place to Hide and Zero Day: The Threat in Cyberspace, an ebook produced by the Post. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife and children.

  @RobertOHarrow

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  Notes

  TITLE AND PROLOGUE

  “I do not know one”: Abraham Lincoln, June 5, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov.

  “Without the services of this”: William Seward, May 28, 1867, letter in Henry B. Meigs, Record of the Descendants of Vincent Meigs (Baltimore: John S. Bridges, 1901), 258.

  “The logistical demands of the”: James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 325.

  “Meigs should be given”: Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), 471.

  CHAPTER 1: RIGID DUTY

  Montgomery Cunningham Meigs: Henry L. Abbott, Memoir of Montgomery C. Meigs 1816–1892, in National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs (Washington, DC), www.nasonline.org.

  They lived not far from the Savannah River: Russell F. Weigley, Quartermaster General of the Union Army (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 19.

  So they returned to Philadelphia: S. Emlen Meigs in Vincent Meigs, 269.

  Sometimes in the summer: Montgomery C. Meigs, The Shorthand Journals of Montgomery C. Meigs, 1853–1859, 1861, Complete Transcript, vol. 4 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2001), 7 (hereafter cited as GPO).

  Montgomery was bright and affectionate: Louisa Meigs notes copied in letter to Montgomery Meigs, July 14, 1874, Montgomery C. Meigs Papers (Washington, DC: US Library of Congress, Manuscript Division), shelf 18,202, reel 12 (hereafter cited as LOC).

  The stories begin: Henry Meigs, in Vincent Meigs, 7.

  He told the children: John Forsyth Meigs in Vincent Meigs, 231–32.

  Montgomery Meigs would credit: Montgomery Meigs letter, September 3, 1888, Meigs Papers, LOC, shelf 18,202, reel 16.

  He dreamed of going: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 22.

  He was accepted: Abbott, Memoir, 315, and Army Corps of Engineers: A History (Alexandria, VA: Office of History, Headquarters, US Army Corps of Engineers, 2008), 17–20.

  Meigs studied mathematics: Barbara A. Wolanin, “Meigs the Art Patron,” in Montgomery C. Meigs and the Building of the Nation’s Capital, ed. William Dickinson, Dean A. Herrin, and Donald R. Kennon (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 134.

  He complained about: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 29.

  In 1836 Meigs: Meigs West Point journal, Meigs Papers, shelf 18,202.1, reel 11; George W. Cullum’s Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy, 846, http://penelope.uchicago.edu.

  In the summer of 1837: Rick Britton, “What a Beautiful County It is,” Robert E. Lee on the Mississippi, Lee Family Digital Archive, Washington and Lee University, http://leefamilyarchive.org/refe
rence/essays/britton/index.html.

  Meigs admired Lee: A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey Press, 1983), 44.

  CHAPTER 2: PATIENCE AND PERSEVERANCE

  Meigs began a long: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, September 4, 1855.

  The project posed: Kelli W. Dobbs, Rebecca J. Siders, Fort Delaware Architectural Research Project (Center for Historic Architecture and Design, University of Delaware, 1999), 1–10.

  On Pea Patch: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 35.

  “I am a”: Mark R. Wilson, The Business of Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 63.

  In 1839 Meigs received: Cullum’s Biographical Register, http://penelope.uchicago.edu.

  Montgomery and Louisa: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, September 4, 1855; Sherrod E. East, The Banishment of Captain Meigs (Washington, DC: Historical Society of Washington, DC, 1940), Vol. 40/41, 98.

  The defenses were part: Reynolds Farley, Christ Church, www.detroit1701.org/ChristChurch.html#.VhO5kLRViko.

  he filled some: Farley, Historic Fort Wayne, http://detroit1701.org/Fort%20Wayne.html.

  Montgomery and Louisa: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 45.

  The family relished: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, August 27, 1855.

  In his inaugural: James K. Polk, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1845, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25814.

  Soon after taking office: R. D. Monroe, Congress and the Mexican War 1844–1849 (Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project, 2000), http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/biography4text.html.

  The war resulted in: James M. McPherson, “America’s ‘Wicked War,’ ” New York Review of Books, February 27, 2013.

  The House approved: Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, James K. Polk: Foreign Affairs, http://millercenter.org.

  Meigs was unsettled: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, October 31, 1853.

  Totten knew Meigs: J. G. Barnard, Eulogy of the Late Joseph G. Totten, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution 1865 (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1865), 137–72.

  Totten lives on: Memoir of Joseph Gilbert Totten, J. G. Barnard (National Academies of Sciences, 1866), 89, www.nasonline.org.

  It was the brainchild: S. P. Langley, A Biographical Sketch of James Smithson (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), Smithsonian Institution Archives, James Smithson: Founder of the Smithsonian Institution, http://siarchives.si.edu.

  A chemist and mineralogist: Smithsonian, James Smithson and the Founding of the Smithsonian, www.si.edu/About/History.

  at the time: National Register of Historic Places—Nomination Form, Smithsonian Institution Building (National Park Service), www.nps.gov/nr.

  For Meigs and others: Harold K. Skramstad, The Engineer as Architect in Washington: The Contribution of Montgomery Meigs (Records of the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, DC, 1969–1970), 267.

  Eastman was a: Henry R. Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1851); Charles E. Fairman, Art & Artists of the Capitol of the United States of America (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1927), 239–40.

  The paintings spurred: Skramstad, Architect in Washington, 268.

  fearing he would: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, December 25, 1854.

  Meigs thought it was ironic: Ibid., August 5, 1858.

  He also made time to: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 51.

  Even his hunting: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, October 1, 1854.

  CHAPTER 3: WHOLESOME WATER

  The fire started somewhere: William Dawson Johnston, History of the Library of Congress, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1904), 275.

  The library itself was: Ibid., 23–25.

  In August 1814: Jefferson’s Legacy: A Brief History of the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/loc/legacy/loc.html.

  Thomas Jefferson reseeded: William C. Allen, History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction and Politics (Washington, DC: US GPO, 2001), 132.

  Officials took new precautions: Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870 (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England), 223–25.

  “No public building”: French, Witness to the Young Republic, 225.

  Jones told investigators: Johnston, History of the Library of Congress, 275.

  Pretense and muck: The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850.

  The Treasury Department: History of the Treasury Building (Washington, DC, US Department of Treasury), www.treasury.gov/about/education/Pages/edu_fact-sheets_building_history.aspx.

  Off to the side: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1983), 260.

  After his only visit: Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (London: Chapman and Hall, 1842), 1: 281–82.

  It was a sluggish: Joseph T. Kelly, Memories of a Lifetime in Washington (Washington, DC: Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 1930), 31/32: 117–49.

  The inadequacy of the water: Harry C. Ways, The Washington Aqueduct, 1852–1992 (Baltimore: US Army Corps of Engineers 1992), 1–3.

  Many of the city’s: Kelly, Memories, 123.

  “And as nothing”: Millard Fillmore, First Annual Message (Santa Barbara, CA: American Presidency Project, 2012), www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29491.

  Congress’s vacillation flowed: Skramstad, Architect in Washington, 266.

  So Totten turned to: Pamela Scott, Capital Engineers: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Development of Washington, DC, 1790–2004 (Alexandria, VA: Office of History, Headquarters, US Army Corps of Engineers, 2011), 40–41; Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, September 4, 1855.

  When he arrived: Ibid., vol. 1, February 12–30, 1853, and Ernest B. Furgurson, Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2004), 53.

  He was to conduct: Meigs report in Senate Ex. Doc. 48, 32nd Congress, Second Session, Message of the President, 8.

  It would take: “The Potomac Aqueduct,” Baltimore Sun, March 23, 1855, in Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, 1855.

  With discipline and enough: Baltimore Sun, March 23, 1855.

  He also rekindled: Meigs, Senate Doc. 48, 10–11.

  Frontinus’s memoir: Sextus Julius Frontinus, Translated by Charles E. Bennett, Frontinus: Stratagems and Aqueducts of Rome (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1925), 329–467.

  The Roman described: Frontinus, 331.

  Frontinus wrote that: Ibid., 455.

  He also shared this: Ibid., xvii.

  CHAPTER 4: AN AQUEDUCT WORTHY OF THE NATION

  Three months after: Meigs, Senate Doc. 48, 55.

  The population soared: Martin V. Melosi, The Sanitary City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 58.

  Meigs described how: Meigs, Senate Doc. 48, 9.

  Washington had almost: Ibid., 44.

  The system he had: Ibid., 36.

  “If it is not good”: Meigs letter to father, February, 12, 1853, Meigs Papers, LOC, shelf 18,202.1, reel 4; David W. Miller, Second Only to Grant (Shippensburg, PA: White Main Books, 2000), 19.

  After years of: Harry C. Ways, “Montgomery C. Meigs and the Washington Aqueduct,” in Building of the Nation’s Capital, 21.

  In one of his first acts: Allen, United States Capitol, 211; Guy Gugliotta, Freedom’s Cap (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 126.

  During army service: The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 5, Rice University, Chronology, http://jeffersondavis.rice.edu.

  Like Meigs: Gugliotta, Freedom’s Cap, 31, 39.

  “Davis excelled in”: Ibid., 221.

  Davis pressed Pierce: Wendy Wolff, ed., Capitol Builder: The Shorthand Journals of Montgomery C. Meigs, 1853–1859, 1861 (Washington, DC: US GPO, 2001), xxix.

  It was a fantastic: Weigley, Quartermaste
r General, 67.

  In reality, it was: Glenn Brown, Glenn Brown’s History of the United States Capitol, Annotated Edition in Commemoration of the Bicentennial of the United States Capitol (Washington, DC, US GPO, 1998), 186, 302.

  Before taking on: Gugliotta, Freedom’s Cap, 71.

  His best-known work: Founder’s Hall, Girard College, www.girardcollege.edu.

  After the fire: Walter letter, January 27, 1852, in Documentary History of the Construction and Development of the United States Capitol and Grounds (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1904), 342.

  His ink and watercolor: Allen, United States Capitol, 190.

  Despite his fine record: House Proceedings, March 12, 1852, Congressional Globe, in Documentary History, 468–71.

  Contractors, lawmakers and: Allen, United States Capitol, 211.

  He thought Walter: Meigs in Report of the Secretary of War, December 1, 1853, 75.

  The two would fight: Thomas U. Walter letter to friend, April 19, 1858, Walter letter book, Architect of the Capitol office.

  Meigs’s plans: Wolff, Capitol Builder, xxx; Brown, Glenn Brown’s History, 374.

  To link the building: Wolff, Capitol Builder, 788.

  His plans included: Meigs in Report of the Secretary of War, December 1, 1853, 71–75.

  Meigs soon took aim: Meigs, Notes on acoustics and ventilation, with reference to the new Halls of Congress, by Captain M. C. Meigs, United States Corps of Engineers, May, 1853, in Report of the Secretary of War, December 1, 1853, 80–84.

  The other, Joseph: Hugh McColloch, Men and Measures of a Half Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1889), 262.

  They expressed enthusiasm: Joseph Henry letter to Meigs, Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 8, May 6, 1853, 539.