The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 1, July-December, 1864 | Page 2

its influence upon military operations, may be ranked as among the most important. This department provides clothing, camp and garrison equipage, animals and transportation of all kinds, fuel, forage, straw, and stationery, an immense variety of the miscellaneous materials required by an army, and for a vast amount of miscellaneous expenditures. It is, in fact, the great business operator of a military organization. In an active army, the success of movements depends very much on its efficiency. Unless the troops are kept properly clothed, the animals and means of transportation maintained in good condition, and the immense trains moved with regularity and promptness, the best contrived plans will fail in their development and execution.
The department, at the commencement of the war, had supplies in store only for the current uses of the regular army. When the volunteer forces were organized it became necessary to make hasty contracts and purchases to a large amount; but as even the best-informed members of the Government had no adequate prevision of the extent and duration of the war, and of the necessary arrangements for its demands, a considerable period elapsed before a sufficient quantity of the required materials could be accumulated. Those were the days of 'shoddy' cloth and spavined horses. The department, however, exhibited great administrative energy, under the direction of its able head, General M. C. Meigs, and has amply provided for the enormous demands upon it.
Depots for the reception of supplies are established in the large cities, whence they are transferred as required to the great issuing depots near the active armies, and from them to the depots in the field. Thus, the main depots of the Army of the Potomac are at Washington and Alexandria--a field depot being established at its centre, when lying for any length of time in camp. Only current supplies are kept on hand at the latter, and no surplus is transported on the march, except the required amounts of subsistence and forage.
A great deal is said in connection with military movements, of 'bases of operation.' These are the points in the rear of an army from which it receives supplies and re?nforcements, and with which its communications must at all hazards be kept open, except it has means of transportation sufficient to render it independent of its depots for a considerable period, or unless the country traversed is able to afford subsistence for men and animals. When an army marches along a navigable river, its secondary base becomes movable, and it is less confined to the necessity of protecting its rear. In Virginia, however, the connection of the Army of the Potomac with Washington is imperative, and this fact explains the contracted sphere of the operations of that army.
The transportation of supplies is limited by the ability of the Government to provide trains, and by the ability of the army to protect them; for large trains create large drafts on the troops for teamsters, pioneers, guards, etc. An army train, upon the most limited allowance compatible with freedom of operations for a few days, away from the depots, is an immense affair. Under the existing allowances in the Army of the Potomac, a corps of thirty thousand infantry has about seven hundred wagons, drawn by four thousand two hundred mules; the horses of officers and of the artillery will bring the number of animals to be provided for up to about seven thousand. On the march it is calculated that each wagon will occupy about eighty feet--in bad roads much more; consequently a train of seven hundred wagons will cover fifty-six thousand feet of road--or over ten miles; the ambulances of a corps will occupy about a mile, and the batteries about three miles; thirty thousand troops need six miles to march in, if they form but one column; the total length of the marching column of a corps is therefore twenty miles, even without including the cattle herds and trains of bridge material. Readers who have been accustomed to think that our armies have not exhibited sufficient energy in surmounting the obstacles of bad roads, unbridged streams, etc., will be able to estimate, upon the above statements, the immense difficulty of moving trains and artillery. The trains of an army have been properly denominated its impedimenta, and their movement and protection is one of the most difficult incidental operations of warfare--particularly in a country like Virginia, where the art of road making has attained no high degree of perfection, and where the forests swarm with guerillas.
To an unaccustomed observer the concourse of the trains of an army, in connection with any rapid movement, would give the idea of inextricable confusion. It is of course necessary to move them upon as many different roads as possible, but it will frequently happen that they must be