Railroads in the Civil War: The Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat

Introduction: Development of an American Transportation System

Introduction Development of an American Transportation System Logistics: The procurement, distribution, maintenance, and replacement of matériel and personnel. —The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Logistics: Beans, bullets, and bodies. —Soldier slang In September 1863, Union General William S. Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland slashed through eastern Tennessee, captured Chattanooga , and continued marching straight toward Atlanta. Even as Rosecrans entered Chattanooga, however, thirteen thousand Confederate soldiers in General James Longstreet’s corps left Virginia, headed west to stop him. Riding broken-down southern railroads, half reached northwest Georgia in time to reinforce General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, make a significant contribution to the victory at Chickamauga , and save Atlanta for the Confederacy for a year. Following a failed attempt to recapture Knoxville, Longstreet’s troops returned to the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1864. Five days after Chickamauga, twenty-three thousand soldiers in the 11th and 12th Corps of the Union Army of the Potomac began boarding trains in Virginia. Northern railroads carried them and their artillery , horses and wagons, and equipment to Tennessee to reinforce the 2 Railroads in the Civil War hard-pressed Cumberlanders, now besieged in Chattanooga. They first guarded the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad from Confederate raiders intent on breaking Rosecrans’ supply line, helped to lift the siege, and then drove the Confederates from east Tennessee. They transformed Chattanooga into a gigantic warehouse, the forward supply depot that supported General William T. Sherman’s decisive campaign for Atlanta in 1864. The 11th and 12th Corps, now consolidated into the 20th Corps of the Army of the Cumberland, marched with him to victory. Dramatic logistics accomplishments, the two rail movements illustrate the great importance of railroads in the Civil War. Almost fifty years ago, Kenneth P. Williams wrote of the 11th and 12th Corps movement, ‘‘the fifty pages in the Official Records devoted to the move tell a thrilling story that can still be studied with profit by anyone interested in logistics.’’1 They also provide a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the quality of war management exercised by Union and Confederate leaders. Many elements contributed to the mosaics of victory and defeat. In his Second Inaugural Address, President Lincoln attributed victory to ‘‘the progress of our arms, on which all else chiefly depends.’’ The armies ’ victories and defeats on the war’s many battlefields certainly decided the outcome of the war. The competence with which each side managed the noncombat elements of its war effort, however, also emerges as an important factor. Superior organization and management, as demonstrated by its skillful use of railroads, made a genuine contribution to Union victory. The Confederacy’s leaders, in contrast, proved unable to recognize or adapt to the demands of an increasingly logistics-driven conflict. The failure of its war management, as seen in part by its inability to organize the southern railroads effectively to support the war effort, thus represents an important, if little studied, factor in Confederate defeat. At the beginning of the expected short conflict, few Civil War leaders anticipated, or even dimly understood, war’s management compo1 . Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War (New York: Macmillan, 1950–1959), 2:765. Introduction 3 nent. When short turned long, however, their ability to adapt to new conditions became crucial. The Confederates began what Emory Thomas calls a ‘‘conservative’’ revolution. But, he adds, they did not use revolutionary means to fight it, while the Union ‘‘revolutionized the art of war.’’2 The Civil War affected every activity in the Union and Confederacy and required a total commitment of civilian and military effort. Starting as a traditional, Napoleonic-style conflict, it quickly evolved as a war of transition. New technology, such as the railroads, and the rising importance of logistics, combined with war’s reckless waste and insatiable appetite for food, material and equipment, and especially human lives, advance the arguments of those who define the Civil War as the first modern war. Frank E. Vandiver observes that ‘‘mass war meant mass logistics.’’ The prominence of logistics as a prerequisite to war began in the Civil War and distinguishes it from earlier conflicts. The European armies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generally limited their campaigns to populated areas because they depended on local food supplies for sustenance. They also had to...