Quartermasters were vested with the responsibility for procuring and managing military transportation in the Civil War. They were among a select group of o cers in several departments who provided fundamental but often overlooked support for Union and Confederate soldiers. These support departments seldom received much attention from the public. When a special committee of the Confederate Congress investigated their activities early in the war, its report tried to illuminate their signi cance. “The labors of these departments penetrate the entire military establishment, breathe life into the Army, nurture its growth, give it strength and e ciency in the eld, maintaining its health and facilitating its movements.” A poor quartermaster “may e ectually check the progress of an army, and the demands of an [infantry] o cer may destroy the most perfect administration” of the transportation system.1
Like the rest of the army, quartermasters were faced with a task of far greater proportions than any yet undertaken by Americans.
No previous con ict had seen the raising of 3 million men North and South; moreover, the creation of this huge military force proceeded at a rapid pace. Early in the con ict, the Federal government increased the size of its army by 27 times in only four months. In contrast, the American army increased by only three times in four months early in World War I, and by four times in one year just before the opening of World War II. Quartermaster o cers faced with supplying and transporting the rapidly increasing number of soldiers often found the task daunting. “My duties have been & are now ten times more arduous & responsible than those of a Major General in command of a Brigade,” Stewart Van Vliet complained to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Most soldiers took their supply arrangements for granted; a few understood how di cult a task organizing it could be.2
Quartermasters were charged with a variety of duties, which included procuring a range of equipment and supplies (other than food for the men, weapons, and ammunition) and arranging for the shipment of literally everything the army needed even if they had not been responsible for obtaining it. As Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs pointed out, a no less important job was to keep accurate nancial records and strive to save the government as much money as possible without stinting the troops. The array of items a quartermaster either purchased, moved, cared for, accounted for, or worried over can be staggering to the reader.3
In 1861, the Federal government maintained seven military bureaus to support its army in the eld. These included o ces run by the adjutant general, commissary general, surgeon general, paymaster general, chief engineer, chief of ordnance, and quartermaster general. The heads of these bureaus did not report to the general-in-chief but to the secretary of war. The quartermaster general acted to coordinate the activities of his subordinate o cers in his department and in the eld. Department o cers were those not assigned to a particular unit in the eld;
they worked in Washington or in a number of key commercial cities across the country. The number of department o cers rose steadily as the war progressed. By May 1862 there were 200 such o cers, three-fourths of them volunteers and only one-fourth holding commissions in the regular army. By July 1, 1864, a total of 549 volunteer o cers and 76 regular o cers worked for the Quartermaster Department. One responsibility of these o cers was to organize and manage dozens of depots across the country that acquired, stored, and distributed the array of material and animals needed by forces in the region. While the majority of quartermaster o cers working directly for the Quartermaster Department were volunteer o cers without military training or prior experience, the minority of professional soldiers they worked with dominated the department, its policies, and its administration.4
In addition to o cers assigned by the department, there were hundreds of quartermasters embedded in units in the eld, from regiments up to eld armies. Regimental quartermasters received their appointments from the governor of their state, while those serving on brigade, division, corps, and army sta s were appointed by the president. John J. Metzgar enlisted in the 76th Ohio in October 1861 and served as its quartermaster sergeant from the beginning. He was promoted to 2nd lieutenant a year later and led Company C until he su ered a severe wound at the battle of Ringgold, Georgia, in November 1863 that put him out of action for a few months. When recovered, Metzgar was promoted to 1st lieutenant and assigned as regimental quartermaster. All quartermasters serving with units in the eld had authority to procure needed material or arrange for transportation. Each one had to take orders from the commander of the unit he served as well as from his supervising quartermaster o cer in the unit above his in the order of battle.5
The supply and logistics chain of command ended with the Quartermaster General. Thomas S. Jesup had held that position from 1818 until his death in June 1860. Joseph E. Johnston replaced him but resigned on April 22, 1861, to join the Confederate army. Montgomery Meigs took the position by mid- June. Born in 1816 and graduating from West Point 20 years later, Meigs served as an engineer; his most prominent work was the renovation of the U.S. Capitol and the Aqueduct in Washington during the 1850s. Meigs initially had only 37 o cers in his department, one-third of them in o ce since 1838.6
Meigs’s role in managing the expansion of the Quartermaster Department and supervising o cers in the eld cannot be overestimated—he and his o cers were responsible for Union logistical success in the Civil War. Meigs submitted estimates of expenses needed in the near future for congressional approval and his o ce handled a mountain of paperwork owing in from hundreds of quartermasters in the eld. That paperwork largely revolved around vouchers and receipts, which had to be examined
by clerks before submission to the secretary of war, who passed them on to the Treasury Department for payment.7
Meigs was careful to inform Stanton of the increasing volume of paperwork his men processed as the war continued. He estimated that company-level o cers led 40,000 quarterly statements every year and regimental quartermasters produced an additional 12,000 accounts and returns each year. In addition, quartermasters working on brigade through army levels led an additional 3,600 monthly statements every year. His clerks had to examine each one of these documents and correspond with o cers who did not ll them out properly. Meigs saw this task as second only to the procurement of material because of the enormous amount of government money involved.8
He had far too few clerks for the job. By November 1862 Meigs complained to Stanton that his people had been able to process only one-fourth of the paperwork covering the previous scal year (which ended June 30, 1862). The unsettled accounts from that previous year amounted to about $105 million. Meigs wanted at least 120 more clerks to have a reasonable chance of getting caught up in the near future. Stanton responded; by 1863 Meigs had 213 clerks, and at war’s end 591. Having started with only 13 clerks in June 1861, Meigs managed to increase his clerical sta by 45 times in four years.9
2.1. Montgomery C. Meigs, Quartermaster General of the U.S.
Army. A tower of strength and e ciency, Meigs masterminded the most important department in the Federal war e ort. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpbh-04284)
These clerks were highly skilled, experienced accountants and they drew large salaries. They were used even by quartermaster o cers serving in the eld. Philip Sheridan issued general orders regulating the pay allotted clerks who worked for quartermasters in the Middle Military Division during the late summer of 1864.
Those working on brigade-level sta s received $75 per month and those on division and corps level sta s earned $100 per month.10
Meigs also managed a major reorganization of the Quartermaster Department from a simple administrative o ce to a multi-dimensional organization. His subordinates had pointed out as early as 1863 that some o cers, such as the personnel responsible for clothing, had such a complicated job to perform that they should constitute a separate unit within the department.
Meigs worked out a plan to divide the department’s functions into nine divisions, and after some trouble Congress approved the reorganization on July 4, 1864. Three of the nine divisions handled transportation; the 3rd Division dealt with Ocean and Lake Transportation, the 4th Division handled Rail and River
Transportation (that is, contracting and chartering privately owned trains and river steamers), and the 7th Division supervised Military Trains and Incidental Allowances (primarily the government-controlled U.S. Military Railroad).11
The new divisions re ected an important reality of procurement and transportation in the Civil War. As historian Mark R. Wilson put it, the quartermaster system was “a mixed military economy,” combining the utilization of private enterprise with government ownership and management. This dual approach to ful lling army needs was most prominently seen in the procurement of supplies of all kinds, but it was re ected in arrangements for the transport of this material as well. It has been estimated that the Quartermaster Department managed more than
$600 million worth of transactions during the course of the Civil War, and $240 million of that expenditure went toward transportation costs.12
Quartermaster o cers were aware that their work was fundamentally important but often not appreciated by outsiders.
Captain James F. Rusling, who served as chief quartermaster of the Third Corps in the Army of the Potomac, noted after the war that the Quartermaster Department was “the most abused and the least understood of any in the army, though the most important by far of all the sta departments.” An old saying emerged from the prewar army that “the rst duty of a quartermaster is to make himself comfortable; that his second duty is to make himself more comfortable; his third duty, to make himself as comfortable as he can; and his fourth duty, to make everybody else uncomfortable!”13 But both quartermaster and commissary o cers often fought against this negative image. “Any nincompoop will make a good enough quartermaster or commissary in time of peace,” concluded H. C. Symonds, who served as a commissary o cer, “but in war those o ces are in every respect the most important to the commanding general, to the troops, to the government, and to the people.” A good quartermaster did not have to be trained at West Point or have any prior experience in the U.S. Army, thought Lewis
B. Parsons. “A good business man may enter the service on nearly, if not quite, an equality, so far as practical usefulness is concerned, with any regular o cer.” Parsons himself held a college degree and good experience in the business world. Simon Perkins Jr.
coupled his business experience with family political connections to secure a position in the army and turned out to be a superb quartermaster. Talent enabled Philip Sheridan to handle both quartermaster and commissary duties in Samuel R. Curtis’s Department of the Southwest early in the war. Sheridan thought it was a natural combination, given that Curtis relied heavily on foraging across the countryside to feed his little army as it drove into southwestern Missouri and it made sense to have one man in charge of not only gathering the food but getting it to the troops.
“A great quartermaster or a great commissary must . . . be a man of brains” asserted James Rusling. “A good quartermaster is expected to be ‘su cient unto himself,’ and to make good the de ciencies of everybody else.”14
Moreover, quartermasters were legally accountable for their work. They had to le a bond worth $10,000 that made them personally liable for mistakes, and government accountants held them strictly to this pledge. As Herman Haupt pointed out, quartermasters often were happy when generals ordered stores burned in order to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. In those cases, their personal liability for the safety of the material was waived. Haupt heard of cases where quartermaster o cers actually celebrated at the receipt of such orders and also heard the same applied to stores destroyed when western river steamers sank or were burned.15
Held to strict accountability and given enormously important tasks, many volunteer o cers who found themselves doing quartermaster duties in the eld suddenly realized they had little idea how the government wanted them to operate. Charles Leib found himself in this situation in the mountainous counties of western Virginia early in the war. He had no experience at army work and there was no copy of army regulations anywhere near
his post. Leib “felt as does the mariner cast away in an open boat on an unknown ocean, without chart, compass, or rudder.” He soon after wrote a book that recounted with zest his many problems and his attempts to catch up with them, eventually nding himself out of a job because he would not cooperate with unscrupulous contractors.16
But as the war e ort evolved, quartermaster o cers were often given detailed instructions to guide their e orts and order grew out of chaos. Rufus Ingalls, chief quartermaster of the Army of the Potomac for most of the war, lectured his subordinates not to refer trivial matters to higher authority but to exercise judgment about which questions they could decide and which needed the approval of a superior. Ingalls emphasized good business sense, as did William S. Rosecrans when he tried to nd a “business quartermaster” for the depot at Nashville early in 1863. “Orders and instructions are not the things,” he told Meigs. “Power and energy, with system and business capacity, are what is now wanted.”17
Rosecrans wrote of the ideal quartermaster; in fact, many of them t his bill perfectly, while others were lacking in the qualities he described. As with infantry o cers, being a quartermaster in a small sphere of responsibility was comparatively easy, but holding a job with wider and more complex tasks required a rare combination of talents in a man. Those talents included not only good business sense, but a professional attitude in dealing with hundreds of people in and out of the army. It also was vitally important that the quartermaster be honest, for he was exposed to innumerable shady businessmen from the civilian world eager to o er bribes for lucrative contracts.
It was not until fairly late in the war that Meigs set up examining boards to evaluate the quali cations of quartermaster o cers working directly for the department. The process continued well into the postwar months because those o cers had to continue handling mountains of material and hundreds of contracts long after Appomattox as the U.S. Army slowly wound
up its wartime business. By October 1, 1865, the boards had examined 283 o cers; they found 216 of them quali ed for their job and 67 unquali ed to perform their duties. Of the latter category, 28 were mustered out, 18 resigned, and no action as yet had been taken on the other 21 o cers. The boards still had 245 o cers to examine. Almost one out of four quartermaster o cers in the department were found un t for their positions; one can take this statistic either way. Given the need to rapidly expand support activities and having to rely mostly on volunteer o cers who came directly from civilian life, the department can be excused any censure for the fact that almost a fourth of its appointees should not have been appointed.18
Members of these examining boards were given additional tasks as well. Alexander Bliss was also assigned to serve as president of a board to revise the department’s regulations and soon after was told to take over Lewis B. Parsons’s job of managing the 4th Division, with responsibility for overseeing all river and rail transport in the country. James F. Rusling served on Bliss’s board for revising the army regulations and the manual for quartermaster o cers before he was put on a board to examine depots south of the Ohio River. He nished a 200-page report (with an additional 200 pages of tables) on the subject in about six weeks.19
“A quartermaster who does his duty sees not many leisure moments,” concluded Henry H. Howland, quartermaster of the 57th Illinois. The weight of his duties increased whenever the government seemed not to support him. A. S. Baxter, an assistant quartermaster at Cairo, Illinois, complained to Parsons that Washington failed to provide enough funds for him to pay his civilian workers. Many of them had not seen a penny in six months and were demoralized. “I had rather be in the bottom of the Mississippi than work night and day as I do without being sustained by Government,” he moaned.20
Baxter’s experience was comparatively rare. More often the problem lay not with Washington but with the individual
quartermaster. Men who were not up to their duties created many problems. In preparing for the Atlanta campaign, William G.
LeDuc was frustrated by a quartermaster assigned over him who seemed to think that prewar routine was good enough for wartime work. He kept rigid o ce hours from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., blamed soldiers if their clothing and equipment wore out, and tried to keep transportation costs to a bare minimum. “This was absurd in an army in active service,” LeDuc rightly concluded. He learned to stash away extra amounts of all material without reporting it so that he could obtain more control over what his command needed.21
James Rusling also understood the needs of wartime. He opened his o ce as assistant to the chief quartermaster of the Department of the Cumberland in Nashville at 8 A.M. and dealt with a constant stream of people until closing it at 8 P.M. every day.
James L. Donaldson (the chief quartermaster), Rusling, and seven clerks worked in this o ce. By December 1863, Donaldson had more than a dozen quartermasters, 12,000 civilian workers, more than 600 miles of railroad to manage, and over 100,000 men to support. His o ce disbursed over $5 million worth of business every month. “This is the biggest army depot to-day on the face of the earth,” Rusling proudly reported, and managing it was a gargantuan task.22
The scale of work and the weighty responsibility attending it demanded highly quali ed men at these higher levels, and it was not easy to nd them. Colonel C. G. Sawtelle, chief quartermaster of the Military Division of the Gulf, still had 192,000 troops to supply as late as December 1865 because of the continued prospect of dealing with French occupation of Mexico. Sawtelle could not nd enough quali ed assistants to help him, given that the war was long over. In fact, the trouble had started back in March during Edward R. S. Canby’s campaign against Mobile. An examining board was just then dismissing many quartermasters as incompetent and Sawtelle was forced to detail lieutenants from
infantry regiments who had little if any knowledge of quartermaster duties. They also were not bonded at the time.23
2.2. Quartermaster’s Wharf at Alexandria, Virginia, with Steamer John Brooks at the Wharf. A huge stack of hay bales (fodder for horses and mules) lies on the left, while on the right is a large accumulation of either cordwood to fuel the steamers or ties for a railroad track. Also, note the large number of sailing vessels and the relatively small number of coastal steamboats, giving some indication of the relative use of both types of craft by Federal quartermasters. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-34823)
S. B. Holabird, who managed the quartermaster sta of the Gulf Department in 1864, indicated that the problem of nding suitable o cers was deeper and more persistent than Sawtelle realized. It was more challenging to be a quartermaster o cer than any other type of support personnel because of the array of duties and the requirement of a bond. “There are abundant other sta positions requiring no bonds, no responsibilities, substantially nothing to do,” he complained. Trying to recruit experienced men from civil life proved di cult as well. When Captain Goodwin of Boston, who was “a thorough sailor and gentleman” agreed to work for the army at $200 per month, he went to Pass Cavallo on the Texas coast to manage the di cult task of getting supplies o steamers and onto land, where proper port facilities were lacking. He took