Maintaining authorized strength

[atlantis]

The union appears to have done a better job maintaining authorized strength than the confederacy.
I would submit that this is so because the union had a better track record of honoring its commitments to its soldier. Everything from term of service to pay and supplying the individual soldier.
In contrast the confederate struggled to pay and feed the men in ranks. Further the confederates extended the term of service for 1year enlistees and near the end made all service for the duration. In a society base on honor code, the failure to honor the terms of enlistment and the failure to pay fueled desertion thus making maintenance of authorized strength a herculean task.
Any opinions on this.

 

[Cryptic]

The union appears to have done a better job maintaining authorized strength than the confederacy.
I would submit that this is so because the union had a better track record of honoring its commitments to its soldier. Everything from term of service to pay and supplying the individual soldier.

Any opinions on this.

I think those factors clearly mattered. What soldier does not prefer being paid in real money and eating rations consisting of real food- ok. at least relatively real food?

But.... I think there were some other factors as well:

Transportation: The Unions tremendous transportation advantage meant that men in distant states enlisting in a particular deployed regiment could be transported to the location of that regiment. Thus, a deployed regiment could receive a steady stream of new recruits.

As a side note, Delaware's 2nd Infantry regiment was the state's "combative" regiment and the dwindling number of fully enthusiastic Delaware union recruits would ask for it instead of the more common Delaware rear echelon regiments. Superior transportation also meant that soldiers returning from home leave and wounded soldiers returning to duty could also be readily re-assigned to their own regiment.

Meanwhile, the CSA was the exact opposite. A failing transportation network led to recruits unable to be sent to a preferred regiment. Men returning from home leave or hospitals could be "stranded" and assigned to another regiment for convenience.

Union Advances: Union occupation of increasingly larger parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and TN and advances that put pro CSA areas of Missouri and Kentucky into the distant rear made CSA recruiting far more difficult.

This led to cases where the regiments from those states and areas continued to fight, but could no longer receive replacements (or received very few replacements) and fell way understrength.

 

[RedRover]

The "authorized strength" of a unit being fixed by law, and the actual strength by circumstances, the two seem exclusive to each other. Besides details, illness and injury, there were indeed the large numbers of a.w.o.l.'s and desertions.

Regarding the US Army:

Confederate absenteeism hovered about 40 percent by mid-1863, and increased. By late September, 1864, Jefferson Davis reported 2/3rds of Confederate soldiers on the rolls were absent, some sick and wounded, but the greater part absent without leave, etc.

By March, 1865 the absenteeism in the Union Army was significant, but not so great as on previous occasions:

 

[Cryptic]

By March, 1865 the absenteeism in the Union Army was significant, but not so great as on previous occasions:

View attachment 475546

I am thinking that number of out right desertions declined as the war moved into its end stage under Union dominance.

There might, however, be some additional de facto deserters in the 143,449 men in general hospitals or on home sick leave:

- Soldier: "Grant me a lenient home sick leave." (thinking I"ll absent myself at first opportunity if I don't get it).
- Senior NCO: "Recommend giving him the sick leave. The war is almost over and desertions make our stats look bad".

 

[RedRover]

I am thinking that number of out right desertions declined as the war moved into its end stage under Union dominance.

There might, however, be some additional de facto deserters in the 143,449 men in general hospitals or on home sick leave:

- Soldier: "Grant me a lenient home sick leave." (thinking I"ll absent myself at first opportunity if I don't get it).
- Senior NCO: "Recommend giving him the sick leave. The war is almost over and desertions make our stats look bad".

It is evident that officers of volunteer units were loath to outright report their men as deserters. Strikes me they certainly did so when there was not the slightest knowledge of where the chap went, and a certainty that he wasn't coming back of his own volition. When a man was declared a deserter, his back pay, rations, etc. was forfeit.

The Confederates often did the same. It was said, for example, that Gen. Hood "furloughed" a large number of the Army of Tennessee after the disastrous Nashville campaign, while others comment that the men were going home, with or without permission...

If the Confederacy dropped every a.w.o.l. man from the rolls as a deserter, their army would have been halved even before Gettysburg. As it was, many of these same men as occasion dictated, returned to the ranks.

 

[Bruce Vail]

Your post understates the severity of the Confederate draft laws. Men who signed up for one-year enlistments in 1861 were denied the right to go home after the year was up, and had their military obligation extended for two more years. The amended draft law required all men 18 to 35 years to serve for three years (unless they qualified for an exemption).

 

[RedRover]

Your post understates the severity of the Confederate draft laws. Men who signed up for one-year enlistments in 1861 were denied the right to go home after the year was up, and had their military obligation extended for two more years. The amended draft law required all men 18 to 35 years to serve for three years (unless they qualified for an exemption).

The Confederate conscription was often enforced by extreme measures, declaring the able-bodied men by law to be soldiers in the army, and subject to military regulations and national war powers whether any had ever served an hour. The "buttermilk rangers" and home guards generally went after these fellows, but the numbers actually delivered to the camps of instruction from April, 1862 to early 1865, by Confederate army numbers, was reported as 81,993, with another 73,000 volunteering in the same period. There were estimates that that the Feb., 1864 expansion of the conscript acts would net 400,000, and a year later it was evident they had failed. In March, '65, recognizing no capability of enforcing the conscript acts, the CS Govt. passed an act to enroll slaves...

And to that end, Gen. Lee as general-in-chief evidently planned to recruit negroes locally, to add a colored wing to each existing volunteer regiment from men from its home district.

The war ended before any such re-organization.

Throughout the war, in the South there was a vast number of exemptions from conscription, and among those taken in "details" to "bomb-proof" positions.

Gov. William C. Oates, late attacker of Little Round Top, commented after the war on the subject:

The Confederate conscription was based on that of the Jacobin French in the Napoleonic period.

By the close of the war the men were leaving their units in numbers impossible to stop.

Shortly before Joe Johnston surrendered, he was apprised that his total ACTUAL embodied force in the Carolinas included an aggregate of 70,510 troops on the rolls, but a total present of only 18,578 (26%); in other words a 74% absentee rate for all causes. Of those present, the fighting force, or effectives, numbered only 14,179, only 20% of the aggregate.

If the larger number of the fighting men of the South went home, then the exempts, "bomb-proofs" and "buttermilk rangers" certainly would not take their place.

 

[EHParks]

The union appears to have done a better job maintaining authorized strength than the confederacy.
I would submit that this is so because the union had a better track record of honoring its commitments to its soldier. Everything from term of service to pay and supplying the individual soldier.
In contrast the confederate struggled to pay and feed the men in ranks. Further the confederates extended the term of service for 1year enlistees and near the end made all service for the duration. In a society base on honor code, the failure to honor the terms of enlistment and the failure to pay fueled desertion thus making maintenance of authorized strength a herculean task.
Any opinions on this.

Weren't there two different systems of replacing men/dissolving Regiments between the Union Army and the CSA as well?

 

[RedRover]

In 1863 the US Army reorganized many volunteer regiments which had become too weak in the field. The companies were consolidated into as many functional companies as possible. These could be consolidated into other weak regiments, etc.

Gen. John Beatty, USA noted in late 1862:

The 116th Pennsylvania Volunteers, for example:

Or the 10th Illinois Cavalry Regiment:

The Confederate Army had no mode of legally extinguishing a regiment through reorganization. The War Dept. just did "consolidations" usually of a couple regiments. Consequently might see reference to the 1st Florida Cavalry/4th Florida Infantry (consolidated) etc. Both regiments still existed separately. Only in Feb., 1865 did the CS Govt. pass a law allowing to re-organize consolidated units. At the end, in North Carolina, whole brigades were being consolidated into tiny single battalions.

A unit in the Confederate army had to be strikingly reduced to be consolidated at all. In most cases whole brigades could muster for action fewer men than a reduced regiment. The balance being absent sick, detailed, awol, etc. Walter Taylor of Lee's staff noted of their first campaign in 1861:

Taylor mentions at Antietam, the vast straggling from the ranks in the previous weeks had reduced some brigades to the strength of a company (120 men max.).

After each campaign the stragglers, etc. would be gathered up to restore the regiments more or less.

 

[Stryker65]

I remember while reading S4V3 of the OR that the Confederacy apparently made the "authorized strength" for each company sixty-four men, maybe to give commanders an easier time to keep up that authorized strength? Just my opinion.
-Stryker

 

[Dan Kohli]

The number of privates per federal volunteer infantry company was between 64 and 82. This does not include any of the other company grade ranks.

 

[Cryptic]

The Confederate conscription was often enforced by extreme measures...

I agree.

As the war progressed, Union conscription laws and polices were increasingly enacted by a nation that was slowly, but steadily winning the war- even if the march to victory lacked say, Rommel's military finesse. That meant the Union could afford to be softer in regards to conscription where as the increasingly desperate CSA needed a harder approach.

Union sweeps though draft resistant counties could be kinder, gentler, probably restricted to just sweeping the towns rather than beating the bushes around farms for evaders. CSA sweeps got "up close and personal".

Andy the Adirondacks trapper could be placed "out of sight, out of mind"- well, so long as he was not openly encouraging others to evade the draft Meanwhile, the CSA needed to confront Andy the subsistence farmer from south Appalachia.

As for macro policies, the Union's increasingly victorious position allowed generous policies to remain in place. Every county in every union border state was allowed to keep a company of home guard, draft exempt men. Generous definitions of "border state" meant that Iowa, Illinois and Pennsylvania etc were afforded such companies.

The Union could also continue the unwritten agreement that Delaware conscript regiments would be only assigned rear area security duties. Meanwhile, the slowly losing CSA needed to void "non deployable" or "west of Mississippi only" agreements made with less than fully enthusiastic Texas regiments.

 

[RodentRevolution]

Transportation: The Unions tremendous transportation advantage meant that men in distant states enlisting in a particular deployed regiment could be transported to the location of that regiment. Thus, a deployed regiment could receive a steady stream of new recruits.

Well the picture there was very mixed. There was a system of recruiting depots set up that should in theory have done precisely this but nothing much happened until about August 1864. After this there was indeed a stream of new recruits but given men could choose with which regiments to serve these numbers were highly variable and while regiments often kept close to the strength they had in about September 1864 most never returned to their full authorised enlistment strength. There were some exceptions such as the 3rd Wisconsin but many more examples such as the 25th Massachusetts which would fall from an initial strength of over a 1,000 men to just 370.

Personnel Replacement System in the United States Army

Published in 1954 that is still a useful work that covers the means by which Continental and US Armies were kept up to strength in a variety of conflicts from the American Revolution to World War 2. Chapter II covers the Civil War from the perspective of the Army of United States.