The Quartermaster
Page 29
The surge in spending: Wilson, Business of Civil War, chart, 38; Historical Statistics of the United States, pt. 1, Bureau of Census (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1975), 165.
Quartermaster employees needed: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 1, 100.
He wrote later: Ibid.
To be sure, Federals had: Nevins, War for the Union, vol. 1, 145, 252–57, 342; Bureau of the Census, Manufacturers of the United States, 1860 (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1865).
New technology helped: Amy Breakwell, “A Nation in Extremity: Sewing Machines and the American Civil War,” in Textile History, May 2010, 98–107.
The quartermaster system: Wilson, Business of Civil War, 2, 78; Nevins, War for the Union, vol. 1, 290.
As historian James McPherson: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 325.
Though Meigs’s portfolio: Meigs, Copy of Private Journal, July 29, 1861.
At the same time: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 2, 803–4.
“The nation is in extremity”: Nevins, War for the Union, vol. 3, 291.
Waste compounded Meigs’s: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 2, 804.
He adopted the pragmatic: Ibid., vol. 4, 901–2.
Adjusting his view did not: Ibid., 224–25.
Gray, wool, and warm: Ibid., vol. 2, 483.
In something of an: Ibid., 804.
Though undeniably creative: Ibid., vol. 1, 582–83.
“Should the Board”: Ibid., 583.
“[If] the conditions in”: Ibid., 378–79.
Meigs standardized contracting: Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, pt. 1, 222.
Meigs even found: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 3, 264.
“There never was an army”: Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, pt. 1, 138.
Even as Meigs surmounted: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 1, 866.
CHAPTER 22: “THE WAR CANNOT BE LONG”
McClellan came from: George B. McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1887), 13, 52.
“The war cannot be”: “Presentation of a Sword to Major General McClellan,” Sunbury American (Pennsylvania), November 9, 1861.
McClellan showed no inkling: Meigs, Conduct of the Civil War, 298.
At the same time: McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story, 147.
It was the president: Meigs Pocket Diary, January 10, 1862.
“General, what shall I”: Meigs, Conduct of the Civil War, 292.
“Send for them”: Ibid.
Lincoln agreed and: Ibid., 292–93; Irvin McDowell notes in William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1882), 67–72.
“You are entitled”: McDowell notes in Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, 73.
Meigs moved his chair: Meigs, Conduct of the Civil War, 292–93.
He urged the: McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story, 148.
He nevertheless offered: Meigs Pocket Diary, January 14, 1862.
“It is clearly a”: Draft passage of War Department Annual Report at Freedman and Southern Society Project, www.freedmen.umd.edu.
The war had given: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 4, 893–94.
The quartermaster general: Ibid., vol. 2, 809.
He had an: Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, vol. 1, 15.
“The army will move”: Evening Star (Washington, DC), January 20, 1862.
Meigs’s disapproval soon: Meigs, Conduct of the Civil War, 293.
A physician was called: Carmen Brissette Grayson, “Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and the Peninsula Campaign, January–August, 1862,” in William J. Miller, ed., The Peninsula Campaign of 1862: Yorktown to the Seven Days, vol. 2 (Campbell, CA: Savas Woodbury, 1995), 84.
A War Department clerk: Charles F. Benjamin, “Recollections of Secretary Stanton,” Century 33, March 1887, 764, http://digital.library.cornell.
He told Meigs: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 213.
To ensure that Stanton’s: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 5, 41.
CHAPTER 23: GUNBOATS
The story of that: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 2, 792–93; Myron J. Smith, Jr., The USS Carondelet (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 3–14.
Meigs put out a: Nevins, War for the Union, vol. 2, 70–73.
He sold the idea: Smith, Jr., USS Carondelet, 6.
On August 7, Eads: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 2, 817–20; Meigs letter to Lincoln, February 28, 1862, http://memory.loc.gov.
Work began almost: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 22, 314–16.
It took Foote and Meigs: Ibid., vol. 8, 367.
Though these wrinkles irritated: Smith, Jr., USS Carondelet, 31.
With improvisation: Nevins, War for the Union, vol. 2, 71.
The black-painted boats: Smith, Jr., USS Carondelet, 35–36.
The Essex soon drifted: Meigs letter to Lincoln, February 28, 1862.
After just over an: Evening Star (Washington, DC), February 8, 1862.
“Whenever you need”: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 243.
Meigs told Stanton: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 2, 797.
He shared his thoughts: Meigs letter to Lincoln, February 28, 1862.
With preparations under way: Evening Star (Washington, DC), “The Official Dispatches,” March 10, 1862.
At least 240 Union men: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 376.
The president, Stanton: Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, vol. 1, 100.
On March 9 he ordered troops: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 7, 79.
Day after day: Ibid., vol. 5, 46.
Department officers under: Risch, Quartermaster Support, 415.
“The magnitude of the”: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 1, 158.
While planning the: William J. Miller, “ ‘Scarcely Any Parallel in History’: Logistics, Friction and McClellan’s Strategy for the Peninsula Campaign,” in The Peninsula Campaign of 1862: Yorktown to the Seven Days, vol. 2, ed. William J. Miller (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas, 1995, 2013), 129–88.
One of his senior: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 1, 13–14.
“I beg to assure”: Ibid., 15.
CHAPTER 24: “HIS BEST NAME IS HONESTY”
The quartermaster general met: Grayson, Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln, 88.
Lincoln secretary William Stoddard: William O. Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1890), 103.
Meigs became Stanton’s: Grayson, Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln, 87.
Stanton turned to Meigs: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 3, 57–58.
Meigs did so: Ibid., pt. 1, 27–28.
“You will retain”: Ibid., pt. 3, 176–77.
Meigs convinced the president: Ibid.
At eleven at night, Major: Ibid., vol. 12, pt. 1, 525.
“The secretary will be”: Ibid., vol. 51, pt. 1, 628.
Meigs played an important: Ibid., vol. 12, pt. 3, 216–17; Grayson, Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln, 94.
Meigs expressed “hope”: Ibid.; Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 12, pt. 3, 219.
“This is a crushing”: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 12, pt. 3, 220.
But “the lack”: Peter Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 4.
The army consumed six hundred thousand: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 1, 159; ibid., ser. 3, vol. 2, 806.
Every horse needed to: Ibid., ser. 3, vol. 2, 798.
All together, the animals: Ibid., ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 1, 157–59.
At the beginning of: Risch, Quartermaster Support, 379–82.
But the department eventually got: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, 850.
To keep the army: Ibid., vol. 11, pt. 1, 157–59.
They naturally blamed: Regis De Trobriand, Four Years with the Army of the Potomac, trans. George K. Dauchy (Boston: Ticknor, 1889),
216.
Still, the quartermaster officers: Peninsula Campaign: Robert Lee and the Seven Days, Civil War Trust, www.civilwar.org.
Instead of one well-organized: Risch, Quartermaster Support, 425.
“A struggle for the”: John D. Billings, Hard Tack and Coffee; or, The Unwritten Story of Army Life (1887; repr., Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1888), 356.
Like a growing number: Charles Royster, The Destructive War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 232–95.
“In the mean time”: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 250–51.
To clarify matters: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 3, 340–41.
Though McClellan claimed: War for the Union, vol. 2, 158.
“I who am not”: Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 191.
“President thinks I tried”: Meigs Pocket Diary, July 5, 1862.
Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Ingalls: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 3, 326–27.
“They cling to him”: Meigs letter to Louisa, July 31, 1862, in Grayson, Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln, 104.
In July Major General: Meigs, Conduct of the Civil War, 294.
“The success of these”: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 2, 796.
To the end: Meigs, Conduct of the Civil War, 296.
He acknowledged responsibility: Grayson, Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln, 97.
But he held McClellan: Meigs, Conduct of the Civil War, 295–97; Grayson, Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln, 97.
CHAPTER 25: “VAST IN QUANTITY”
“To Quarter Master”: “Stuart’s Raid,” Dayton (OH) Daily Empire, January 3, 1863, 4.
“As [rebel] resources”: Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times, 208.
Lee understood the: Royster, Destructive War, 35.
They skirmished with: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 12, pt. 2, 12–17.
On August 24, Jeb: Ibid., 641–48; Nevins, War for the Union, vol. 2, 175–77.
“The hungry, threadbare”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 527.
Jackson’s report to Richmond: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 12, pt. 2, 644.
With flames leaping into: Nevins, War for the Union, vol. 2, 177.
In response to a: Peter Cozzens, General John Pope: A Life for the Nation (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 161–62; Hay, Inside Lincoln’s White House, 37.
While the president pondered: Hay, Inside Lincoln’s White House, 37.
Chase privately called McClellan: Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, vol. 1, 103.
“Unquestionably he has acted”: Hay, Inside Lincoln’s White House, 39.
The president told Welles: Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, vol. 1, 113.
“The purpose, if discovered”: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 2, 590–91.
“The army is not”: Ibid.
Questions about supplies arose: Ibid., 592.
“I shall endeavor”: Ibid., 596.
Lincoln complained that: Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, vol. 1, 113.
The army’s problem: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 4, 888.
They carried every kind: Ibid., vol. 2, 799; Billings, Hard Tack and Coffee, 353.
In a stern letter: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 3, 225–26.
Soldiers dubbed the: Risch, Quartermaster Support, 360.
The quartermaster pegged the: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 2, 798.
“The extra wagons, now”: Ibid., ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 3, 225–26.
In a related push: Ibid., vol. 25, pt. 2, 489–91; Edward Hagerman, The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 70–72.
A year later, in: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 25, pt. 2, 487.
“The nation is rapidly”: Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 253.
“God bless you, and”: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 1, 53.
On September 13: Ibid., 603.
“I have all the”: Ibid., pt. 2, 281.
By sunset, the death: Ibid., pt. 1, 200, 813.
McClellan claimed later: Ibid., 70–71.
“This army is not”: Ibid., 70.
“The country is becoming”: Ibid., pt. 2, 394–95; see also Report of the Joint Committee, pt. 1, 43–47.
One depot in Washington: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 1, 21.
McClellan’s well-provisioned: Ibid., pt. 2, 633.
“I am sick, tired”: Ibid., ser. 3, vol. 2, 703.
“[T]he Quartermaster-General would”: Ibid., ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 2, 521.
Though Lincoln did: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 502.
He hoped they would: Miller, Second Only to Grant, 177.
CHAPTER 26: HOPE WANES
On November 5, 1862, Lincoln: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 2, 557.
Everyone felt that swift: Ibid., 565.
Their plan was subverted: James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 143–44.
As one historian: E. B. Long with Barbara Long, The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, unabridged paperback ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1985), 296.
“For the failure”: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 21, 67.
“My Dear General”: Ibid., 916–18.
“Every day weakens”: Ibid.
In January 1863: Congressional Globe, Senate, 37th Congress, 3rd Session, January 15, 1863.
“A question has been”: Ibid.
The numbers in play: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 4, 888.
At the beginning: Ibid., vol. 2, 799.
Enough were available even: Risch, Quartermaster Support, 374.
For many months: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 5, 220–21.
To Meigs, horses: Ibid., ser. 1, vol. 12, pt. 3, 60.
Given the number of: Ibid., vol. 19, pt. 1, 71.
Meigs wrote a testy: Ibid., pt. 2, 424.
“Major-general Rosecrans complains”: Ibid., vol. 20, pt. 2, 328.
“General Halleck informs me”: Ibid.
“It will take some”: Ibid., 332.
“Your dispatch received; thanks”: Ibid., 333.
“Cheap horses for service”: Ibid., vol. 23, pt. 2, 271.
“Inspection by faithful cavalry”: Ibid., 272.
Rosecrans received 18,450: Ibid., 301.
Finally, fed up about: Ibid., 300–304.
“Such marches destroy”: Ibid., 301–2.
“[N]ever to pass a”: Ibid., 303.
CHAPTER 27: “FRET HIM AND FRET HIM”
He recognized the: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 3, 881.
In contrast, the rebels: Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 113–15.
“We are too much”: Joseph E. Johnston letter to brother, May 7, 1863, in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, vol. 50 (Governors Island, NY: Military Service Institution, 1912), 319.
“Never, as long as”: Royster, Destructive War, 242.
The enemy seemed to: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 1, 36.
“Fight him, too”: Ibid., 35.
He moved to ensure: Ibid., pt. 3, 120.
Meigs also focused: June 20, 1863.
“God does not intend”: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 286–87.
“Last fall I gave”: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 3, 378–79.
The note troubled Ingalls: Ibid.
Rumors asserted that Gettysburg: Robert L. Bloom, “ ‘We Never Expected a Battle’: The Civilians at Gettysburg,” in Pennsylvania History 55, no. 4 (October 1988): 171–72, https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/24708/24477.
Drawing on lessons: Hagerman, American Civil War and Origins of Modern Warfare, 73.
Baggage and t
ents: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 1, 221–24.
“That man Haupt has”: Risch, Quartermaster Support, 396; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 527.
He addressed this apparent: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 1, 22–24; Daniel Carroll Toomey, The War Came by Train (Baltimore: Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, 2013), 175.
Haupt estimated that 150 cars: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 3, 511–12.
“These men are not”: Ibid., 512.
“They began the fight”: Ibid., 503.
“Let nothing interfere”: Ibid., 523.
“Withdraw all your construction”: Ibid., 696.
Captain W. Willard Smith: Ibid., 568–70.
People came in “swarms”: Royster, Destructive War, 248; John H. Brinton, Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton (New York: Neale, 1914), 240–45.
Some took guns, bayonets: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 3; W. Willard Smith letter to Meigs, August 7, 1863, Gettysburg Library; D. Scott Hartwig, Quartermaster’s Tale, The Blog of Gettysburg National Military Park, https://npsgnmp.wordpress.com.
“I told him if”: Hartwig, Quartermaster’s Tale.
More than 24,000 muskets: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 1, 225–26.
“Against any but the”: John Meigs letter to Don Piatt, June 28, 1863, Giunta, Civil War Soldier, 179.
Garrett assigned three hundred of: Alan R. Koenig, “Ironclads on Rails” (dissertation, Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1995).
John Meigs named them: Toomey, War Came, 177.
Schenck sent John Meigs: Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 3, 571–72.
“I am not afraid”: Ibid., 607.
“Remember that the duty”: Ibid., 608.
John also wrote to: Giunta, Civil War Soldier, 184.
CHAPTER 28: “EXHAUSTION OF MEN AND MONEY”
Far from Gettysburg: Grant, Grant Memoirs, 381; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 636–37.
In an overview of: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 3, 599–605.
He praised Grant’s reliance: Ibid., 601.
Most of all, he: Ibid., 602.
A Vicksburg woman: Dora Richard Miller, “A Woman’s Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg,” ed. George W. Cable, Century Illustrated Monthly 30, no. 5 (September 1885), 775.
“The National Government”: Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 3, 605.
Still, Meigs warned Seward: Ibid.
His emotions flared: Montgomery Meigs in letter to father, August 25, 1863, Meigs Papers, LOC, shelf 18,202, reel 16.