Force Sustainment

This page is for the purposes of Canadian Forces College Experiential Learning Visit in support to the Joint Command and Staff Programme.

"[The Union's] system will not stand it and will probably topple and fall. They have raised so large a force that they cannot wield it. It takes more money than they can raise and to advance with such immense armies requires more transportation that they can procure and manage - they cannot keep them supplied..." - Thomas Bragg, Attorney General in the Confederate cabinet.

The Civil War saw the largest military forces ever raised in the Western Hemisphere. By 1864, The Union needed to provide for and move 1 million men under arms. To do so, riverboats and rail systems were utilized by both sides. Confederate soldiers travelled in fewer numbers by rail and steamer than their Union counterparts, largely due to lower capacity, reliability and availability of military transportation in the South. Most western riverboats were constructed and owned by Northerners, most were in Northern rivers when the war broke out, and all of the owners were happy to do work for the US government due to their belief in the financial stability of the government in Washington. The Confederates by comparison had a shortage of boats and during Grant's Vicksburg campaign, destroyed dozens to keep them from falling into Union hands. Southern railroads were not as advanced as the Northern lines when the war started and never caught up. There were too few engineers and mechanics, too little iron, too little money, and too few plants capable of building engines and cars, all of which the Confederacy failed to address or compensate for. Railroad owners preferred to ship private freight and passengers because they received payment to do so. The Confederacy also was reluctant to take control of the railways and operate them using army personnel. Therefore, the failure was multi-dimensional, one of technology, industrial capacity, financial power and the assertion of governmental control.

It wasn't just the size of the armies but also the practical realities of campaigning in North America that burdened field transportation and supply requirements, compounded by procurement policy issues for the Confederacy. The Quartermaster and Subsistence bureaus were decentralized and inefficient. There were no designated areas of forage, no delineations of authority between agents of the supply bureaus and the supply agents of the armies of the field. The field commanders were concerned mostly for their own troops, or arranging procurement and distribution through their own districts, and had little understanding of the bigger problems. The main foreign policy to wage war was through economic pressure resulting from the withdrawal of cotton from Union and European markets. At the same time, the Confederate Congress failed to impose price controls of foreign or domestic procurements. As prices soared, allotments to its War Department did not keep apace. The department only ever had enough to meet minimum requirements to maintain the armies, not including offensive campaigns. In the early stages of the war, the Southern people came to the aid of the army, which was sustained through massive voluntary contributions. By 1862, the loss of border areas and New Orleans meant critical shortages of beef, flour, clothing, and other manufactured goods, leading to the contraband trade systems.

The situation was not easily or quickly remedied. By February 1963, the Confederate army was in crisis with extreme shortages in footwear, clothing, draft animals, and wagons. In addition, the rations were at a severely reduced calorific standard such that although they could sustain an army in encampment, they were completely inadequate for field operations. Although the confederacy had enough food to feed both its civilian and military populations, Virginia was the only state without food surpluses. It was also where the surpluses were most needed to support the army campaigning being conducted in its area. Therefore early in 1963, to effectively marshal their limited resources, the Confederacy reorganized the Quartermaster and Subsistence bureaus. The procurement wing of the Quartermaster Department was streamlined and centralized, with exclusive control over purchasing as well as eliminating wasteful competition between the bureau supply agents and those of the field commanders. The Subsistence Department underwent similar changes except that the commissary general chief did not receive authority to centralize distribution. Instead, the chief commissaries of the armies in the field submitted their requisitions instead to the their counterparts of the state or states in which their armies were located or intended to pass through. Commissaries of one state or district could borrow on the depots of others. However, there remained no chain of authority between the field commanders and the Subsistence Department, giving rise to conflicts that impacted efficient gathering of available resources. The organization changes were an improvement but still allowed for more waste than could be afforded.

The detrimental impact of the resource situation was only worsened by the failure of the railroads to cooperate with the distribution of food surpluses from other states to the Army of Northern Virginia. Neither the Confederate government or the army had any control over the railways. At one point, the Confederacy undermined its own strategic cotton policy, allowing the trade of cotton to the Union through the lines. However, the tactical benefit of this move was not realized as the Union tightened up on contraband trade. Faced with the Army of Northern Virginia starving, the Confederate Congress granted the executive the authority to regulate the railroads in April 1963. Theoretically, this would allow scheduling of the interchange needed of rolling stock from one railroad to another. However, at the same time Congress signed this into law, they withheld the complementary administrative framework needed to make it work: the suggested office of the railroad superintendent.

For the Gettysburg campaign, Lee abandoned his supply lines rather than sacrifice the troops necessary to guard them. At the start of the campaign, with 89 000 men, Lee had the almost the exact supply and transportation capacity needed to move his army when combined with the plan to refill empty wagons off the land rather than sending them back for resupply. Numbers declined through the campaign due to desertion and casualties, which had the morbid effect of reducing the supply requirements. To mitigate the abandonment, Lee marched his men in columns in the fields on each side of the turnpikes where the supply trains moved. This provided access to the troops while allowing foraging parties to sweep the areas between the columns, shielding the foraging parties at the same time as speeding up movement. Speed and the corollary logistical organization were the keys to living on the resources available.

Lee said after Gettysburg that he had not intended to fight so far from the railhead. However, having stumbled across the Army of the Potomac, a withdrawal through the mountains was considered too dangerous, particularly without the reconnaissance provided by his cavalry.