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.

In supplying its army, the Confederacy's procurement policy compounded its issues. 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.