Head-Quarters, Army of the Potomac. General Orders, August 21, 1863. In order that the amount of transportation in this Army shall not in any instance exceed the maximum allowance prescribed in General Order, No. 274, of August 7, 1863, from the War Department, and to further modify and reduce baggage and supply trains, heretofore authorized, the following allowances are established and will be strictly conformed to, viz.: 1. The following is the maximum amount of transportation to be allowed to this Army in the field: To the Head-Quarters of an Army Corps, 2 wagons or 8 pack mules. To the Head-Quarters of a Division or Brigade, 1 wagon or 5 pack mules. To every three company officers, when detached or serving without wagons, 1 pack mule. To every 12 company officers, when detached, 1 wagon or 4 pack mules. To every 2 staff officers not attached to any Head-Quarters, 1 pack mule. To every 10 staff officers serving similarly, 1 wagon or 4 pack mules. The above will include transportation for all personal baggage, mess chests, cooking utensils, desks, papers, &c. The weight of officers' baggage in the field, specified in the Army Regulations, will be reduced so as to bring it within the foregoing schedule. All excess of transportation now with Army Corps, Divisions, Brigades, and Regiments, or Batteries, over the allowances herein prescribed, will be immediately turned in to the Quartermaster's Department, to be used in the trains. Commanding officers of Corps, Divisions, &c., will immediately cause inspections to be made, and will be held responsible for the strict execution of this order. Commissary stores and forage will be transported by the trains. Where these are not conveniemt of access, and where troops act in detachments, the Quartermaster's Department will assign wagons or pack animals for that purpose; but the baggage of officers, or of troops, or camp equipage, will not be permitted to be carried in the wagons or on the pack animals so assigned. The assignment for transportation for ammunition, hospital stores, subsistence, and forage will be made in proportion to the amount ordered to be carried. The number of wagons is hereinafter prescribed. The allowance of spring wagons and saddle horses for contingent wants, and of camp and garrison equipage, will remain as established by circular, dated July 17, 1863. 2. For each full regiment of infantry and cavalry, of 1000 men, for baggage, camp equipage, &c., 6 wagons. For each regiment of infantry less than 700 men and more than 500 men, 5 wagons. For each regiment of infantry less than 500 men and more than 300 men, 4 wagons. For each regiment of infantry less than 300 men, 3 wagons. 3. For each battery of 4 and 6 guns for personal baggage, mess chests, cooking utensils, desks, papers, &c., 1 and 2 wagons respectively. For ammunition trains the number of wagons will be determined and assigned upon the following rules: 1st. Multiply each 12 pdr. gun by 122 and divide by 112. 2d. Multiply each rifle gun by 50 and divide by 140. 3d. For each 20 pdr. gun, 14 wagons. 4th. For each siege gun, 24 wagons. 5th. For the general supply train of reserve ammunition of 20 rounds to each gun in the Army, to be kept habitually with Artillery Reserve, 54 wagons. For each battery, to carry its proportion of subsistence, forage, &c., 2 wagons. 4. The supply train for forage, subsistence, quartermaster's stores, &c., to each 1000 men, cavalry and infantry, 7 wagons. To every 1000 men, cavalry and infantry, for small arm ammunition, 5 wagons. To each 1500 men, cavalry and infantry, for hospital supplies, 3 wagons. To each Army Corps, except the Cavalry, for entrenching tools, &c., 6 wagons. To each Corps Head-Quarters for the carrying of subsistence, forage and other stores not provided for herein, 3 wagons. To each Division Head-Quarters for similar purpose as above, 2 wagons. To each Brigade Head-Quarters for similar purpose as above, 1 wagon. To each Brigade, cavalry and infantry, for commissary stores for sales to officers, 1 wagon. To each Division, cavalry and infantry, for hauling forage for ambulance animals, portable forges, &c., 1 wagon. To each Division, cavalry and infantry, for carrying armorer's tools, parts of muskets, extra arms and accoutrements, 1 wagon. It is expected that each ambulance, and each wagon, whether in the baggage, supply or ammunition train, will carry the necessary forage for its own team. BY COMMAND OF MAJOR GENERAL MEADE: OFFICIAL: S. WILLIAMS, Assistant Adjutant General. Ass't Adj't Gen'l. As the transportation was reduced in quantity, the capacity of what remained was put to a severer test. For example, when the Army of the Potomac went into the Wilderness in 1864, each wagon was required to carry five days forage for its animals (600 pounds), and if its other freight was rations it might be six barrels of salt pork and four barrels of coffee, or ten barrels of sugar. Forty boxes of hardtack was a load, not so much because of its weight as because a wagon would hold no more. It even excluded the forage to carry this number. In the final campaign against Lee, Grant allowed for baggage and camp equipage three wagons to a regiment of over seven hundred men, two wagons to a regiment of less than seven hundred and more than three hundred, and one wagon to less than three hundred. One wagon was allowed to a field battery. But, notwithstanding the reductions ordered at different times, extra wagons were often smuggled along. One captain, in charge of a train, tells of keeping a wagon and six mules of his own more than orders allowed, and whenever the inspecting officer was announced as coming, the wagon, in charge of his man, Mike, was driven off under cover and not returned till the inspection was completed. This enabled him to take along quite a personal outfit for himself and friends. But his experience was not unique. There were many other "contraband" mule-teams smuggled along in the same way for the same object. In leaving Chattanooga to advance into Georgia, General Sherman reduced his transportation to one baggage-wagon and one ambulance for a regiment, and a pack-horse or mule for the officers of each company. His supply trains were limited in their loads to food, ammunition, and clothing; and wall tents were forbidden to be taken along, barring one for each headquarters, the gallant old veteran setting the example, by taking only a tent-fly, which was pitched over saplings or fence rails! The general has recorded in his "Memoirs" that his orders were not strictly obeyed in this respect, Thomas being the most noted exception, who could not give up his tent, and "had a big wagon, which could be converted into an office, and this we used to call Thomas's circus.'" In starting on his "march to the sea," Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 120; paragraph 3 of this order reads as follows: "There will be no general train of supplies, but each corps will have its ammunition train and provision train distributed habitually as follows: Behind each regiment should follow one wagon and one ambulance; behind each brigade should follow a due proportion of ammunition-wagons, provision-wagons and ambulances. In case of danger each corps commander should change this order of march, by having his advance and rear brigades unencumbered by wheels. The separate columns will start habitually at 7 A. M., and make about fifteen miles per day, unless otherwise fixed in orders." I presume the allowance remained about the same for the Wilderness Campaign as that given in Orders No. 83. General Hancock says that he started into the Wilderness with 27,000 men. Now, using this fact in connection with the general order, a little rough reckoning will give an approximate idea of the size of the train of this corps. Without going into details, I may say that the total train of the Second Corps, not including the ambulances, could not have been far from 800 wagons, of which about 600 carried the various supplies, and the remainder the baggage the camp equipage of the corps. When the army was in settled camp, the supply trains went into park by themselves, but the baggage-wagons were retained with their corps, division, brigade, or regimental headquarters. When a march was ordered, however, these wagons waited only long enough to receive their freight of camp equipage, when away they went in charge of their respective quartermasters to join the corps supply train. I have alluded to the strength of a single corps train. But the Second Corps comprised only about one-fifth of the Union army in the Wilderness, from which a little arithmetic will enable one to get a tolerably definite idea of the impedimenta of this one army, even after a great reduction in the original amount had been made. There were probably over 4000 wagons following the Army of the Potomact into the Wilderness. An idea of the ground such a train would cover may be obtained by knowing that a six-mule team took up on the road, say, forty feet, but of course they did not travel at close intervals. The nature of the country determined, in some degree, their distance apart. In going up or down hill a liberal allowance was made for balky or headstrong mules. Colonel Wilson, the chief commissary of the army, in an interesting article to the United Service magazine (1880), has stated that could the train which was requisite to accompany the army on the Wilderness Campaign have been extended in a straight line it would have spanned the distance between Washington and Richmond, being about one hundred and thirty miles. I presume this estimate includes the ambulance-train also. On the basis of three to a regiment, there must have been as many as one hundred and fifty to a corps. These, on ordinary marches, followed immediately in the rear of their respective divisions. When General Sherman started for the sea, his army of sixty thousand men was accompanied by about twenty-five hundred wagons and six hundred ambulances. These were divided nearly equally between his four corps, each corps commander managing his own train. In this campaign the transportation had the roads, while the infantry plodded along by the roadside. The supply trains, it will now be understood, were the travelling depot or reservoir from which the army replenished its needs. When these wagons were emptied, they were at once sent back to the base of supplies, to be reloaded with precisely the same kind of material as before; and empty wagons had always to leave the road clear for loaded ones. Unless under a pressure of circumstances, all issues except of ammunition were made at night. By this plan the animals of the supply consumed their forage at the base of supplies, and thus saved hauling it. It was a welcome sight to the soldiers when rations drew low, or were exhausted, to see these wagons drive up to the lines. They were not impedimenta to the army just then. |