Petersburg/Richmond Petersburg Confederate Unit Strengths over time

Luke Freet

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I remember about 2-3 years ago I came across this website which had collected a bunch of unit reports for the siege of Petersburg, and had a list of troop strengths over time that was very helpful. I can't find it anymore and I believe it has just been deleted or lost.
Anyways, the meat and bones of what I want to get at is those brigade strength tables. I asked before about the Confederate numbers in the Overland Campaign, where people linked pages from Albert Young's book on that particular subject. If anyone has any information, or places where I can find this, I would love to hear it.

Note: If you are pointing me towards the OR I would prefer to be given some specific citations. I have been directed towards them before without a citation and was unable to find what that person was pointing me too because he would not give me specifics.

Edit: Link to the Overland Campaign thread I refer toohttps://civilwartalk.com/threads/confederate-unit-strengths-in-the-overland-campaign-army-corps-division-and-or-brigade.155605/
 
Presume your refering to stuff like this? http://www.beyondthecrater.com/reso...te-oobs/anv-nafziger/864iad-anv-10-sept-1864/

Because this is nice and all but...the breakdowns I found went down to brigade level, rather than the division.
Several new books are out on Petersburg, I will need to find notes on one that was referred to me. You might be able to contact that author who then might point you in a better direction. Or contact beyond the crater and see if he has info that he did not post. I have not talked to him in years so I'm not sure what else he has.
 
The Final Battle of the Petersburg Campaign: Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion . This is the newest book referred to me . The second edition had some changes and was the one suggested. It's on Amazon.
 
The Final Battle of the Petersburg Campaign: Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion . This is the newest book referred to me . The second edition had some changes and was the one suggested. It's on Amazon.
This is an excellent book, but the author has recently published another one called A Campaign of Giants, which is to be the first of a trilogy. I haven't read it yet but my guess is that it is as thorough and good as the one you mentioned.
 
This is an excellent book, but the author has recently published another one called A Campaign of Giants, which is to be the first of a trilogy. I haven't read it yet but my guess is that it is as thorough and good as the one you mentioned.
Thanks, I will have to check that out.
Phil Hatfield will have one out soon dealing with a WVa unit and Petersburg but I forget the title now. It's in peer review now I believe. He has published on Anse Hatfield and the CW and how the NC Militaria helped start the war. All on Amazon.
 
Well...looks like BTC is down. Hopefully it is not permanent

It was definitely temporary. My name is Brett Schulte. I run the the www.beyondthecrater.com site. My goal is the same as yours. I want to get down to regimental strengths of EVERY unit at Petersburg for as many dates as possible. The Nafziger OOBs are posted to give people something to look at until I can get even more detailed. I have collected thousands of newspaper articles, letters, diaries, first person accounts, regimental histories, Confederate Inspection Reports, etc. trying to get at this kind of info. For right now, I've posted this kind of information on my unit pages. I have a page at my site for every regiment, battery, or battalion (and now ships as well) which participated in the Siege of Petersburg, if even for as little as a week. You can find all of them here: http://www.beyondthecrater.com/resources/units/

Any unit strength I've listed is properly cited, often with a link directly to the information on my site or elsewhere. I have tons of other mentions of unit strengths in my collected materials, but haven't had time to go through them. It's a lifelong project for me.
 
Thanks, I will have to check that out.
Phil Hatfield will have one out soon dealing with a WVa unit and Petersburg but I forget the title now. It's in peer review now I believe. He has published on Anse Hatfield and the CW and how the NC Militaria helped start the war. All on Amazon.

Phil is working on a book on the 11th West Virginia and Petersburg. I'm unsure of the title.
 
I remember about 2-3 years ago I came across this website which had collected a bunch of unit reports for the siege of Petersburg, and had a list of troop strengths over time that was very helpful. I can't find it anymore and I believe it has just been deleted or lost.
Anyways, the meat and bones of what I want to get at is those brigade strength tables. I asked before about the Confederate numbers in the Overland Campaign, where people linked pages from Albert Young's book on that particular subject. If anyone has any information, or places where I can find this, I would love to hear it.

Note: If you are pointing me towards the OR I would prefer to be given some specific citations. I have been directed towards them before without a citation and was unable to find what that person was pointing me too because he would not give me specifics.

Edit: Link to the Overland Campaign thread I refer toohttps://civilwartalk.com/threads/confederate-unit-strengths-in-the-overland-campaign-army-corps-division-and-or-brigade.155605/

Also, Al Young is working on a Petersburg follow up to his Overland Campaign book. I am not at all sure of the time frame there.
 
@Luke Freet , I also forgot to add (because I've been away from this for quite some time), that I am beginning to add the Orders of Battle for each of the nine offensives. For now, I only have commander names (where known) as well as units listed (with links to every regiment, battery, and battalion). Eventually, I hope to add the unit strenths to these pages too. But that is quite a ways off. When I manage to get to it, this is the link to where it will all be displayed (for the First Offensive, the other eight offensives to come later):

Siege of Petersburg Online Confederate First Offensive OOB

At the very least, it gets you links to the smaller units all on one page. Much more to come.
 
@Luke Freet , I also forgot to add (because I've been away from this for quite some time), that I am beginning to add the Orders of Battle for each of the nine offensives. For now, I only have commander names (where known) as well as units listed (with links to every regiment, battery, and battalion). Eventually, I hope to add the unit strenths to these pages too. But that is quite a ways off. When I manage to get to it, this is the link to where it will all be displayed (for the First Offensive, the other eight offensives to come later):

Siege of Petersburg Online Confederate First Offensive OOB

At the very least, it gets you links to the smaller units all on one page. Much more to come.
Thank you, for this and other posts. Your site could use more work, but it provides much information that I find valuable.
 
Thank you, for this and other posts. Your site could use more work, but it provides much information that I find valuable.

You're welcome. In what ways, specifically, would you like to see it changed? I'm open to suggestions for sure. At the same time, it is my hobby, and I have three young sons i school, so my time is fairly limited for the next 5-10 years.
 
You're welcome. In what ways, specifically, would you like to see it changed? I'm open to suggestions for sure. At the same time, it is my hobby, and I have three young sons i school, so my time is fairly limited for the next 5-10 years.
Well, I say that refering to the holes in information, as you probably know already all to well.
But will take this oppurtunity to ask about the old temporary site you refered to in that first post of yours. Do you remember any details on that? I assume that you were one of the people who created it, given most of the stuff on that site related to Petersburg, sans one article regarding how Longstreet's Corps gained their blue coats. If you did create it, why was it taken down? And what happened to those unit tables? Im sure you'd have carried them over to this site. Maybe I'm making the wrong assumptions here.
 
Well, I say that refering to the holes in information, as you probably know already all to well.
But will take this oppurtunity to ask about the old temporary site you refered to in that first post of yours. Do you remember any details on that? I assume that you were one of the people who created it, given most of the stuff on that site related to Petersburg, sans one article regarding how Longstreet's Corps gained their blue coats. If you did create it, why was it taken down? And what happened to those unit tables? Im sure you'd have carried them over to this site. Maybe I'm making the wrong assumptions here.

Luke,

I agree that there are TONS of holes for sure. I picked Petersburg for precisely that reason. I think, given enough time and knowledge of where to look, that a LOT of those holes are going to be filled.

I'm trying to build the "skeleton" of the site before I methodically go through every page of the nine reports and correspondence volumes of the ORs for Petersburg. I'm THIS close to being done. I just need to create pages for each of the brigades, divisions, corps, and armies at Petersburg. Once I do that, I'll have a place to "store" any bit of info I come across in doing research. And once that happens, I'll begin researching in earnest. I haven't even really started that part yet. My hope is to be finished with all of the brigade to army level pages by June of this year.

As to the first post in this thread, I'm drawing a blank on what that could be. I'm not aware of it, in any case. Is there anything else you remember about it? The part about unit reports definitely bears a resemblance to my site, since I've got every report on Petersburg published in the ORs, including the original OR supplement. But I don't recall having Orders of Battle with unit strengths at the brigade level in table format. Jim Epperson runs a Siege of Petersburg site and has the following table of unit strengths, but it is at the army level: https://www.petersburgsiege.org/numbers.htm I'm not sure what else it could be.
 
Luke,

I agree that there are TONS of holes for sure. I picked Petersburg for precisely that reason. I think, given enough time and knowledge of where to look, that a LOT of those holes are going to be filled.

I'm trying to build the "skeleton" of the site before I methodically go through every page of the nine reports and correspondence volumes of the ORs for Petersburg. I'm THIS close to being done. I just need to create pages for each of the brigades, divisions, corps, and armies at Petersburg. Once I do that, I'll have a place to "store" any bit of info I come across in doing research. And once that happens, I'll begin researching in earnest. I haven't even really started that part yet. My hope is to be finished with all of the brigade to army level pages by June of this year.

As to the first post in this thread, I'm drawing a blank on what that could be. I'm not aware of it, in any case. Is there anything else you remember about it? The part about unit reports definitely bears a resemblance to my site, since I've got every report on Petersburg published in the ORs, including the original OR supplement. But I don't recall having Orders of Battle with unit strengths at the brigade level in table format. Jim Epperson runs a Siege of Petersburg site and has the following table of unit strengths, but it is at the army level: https://www.petersburgsiege.org/numbers.htm I'm not sure what else it could be.
The tables also included the reports from some staff departments detail the conditions of the brigades (I know it was at brigade level). I remember little else, aside from looking at it during my Junior Year of High School (2016-2017).
Edit: I know it was this time, because I remember looking up the site in the low periods during my Forensic Science course. Im certain I've made attempts to look up the site again, to no avail. Probably was taken down in 2017-2018.
 
The tables also included the reports from some staff departments detail the conditions of the brigades (I know it was at brigade level). I remember little else, aside from looking at it during my Junior Year of High School (2016-2017).
Edit: I know it was this time, because I remember looking up the site in the low periods during my Forensic Science course. Im certain I've made attempts to look up the site again, to no avail. Probably was taken down in 2017-2018.

Now I think I know what you are talking about. There was a site which transcribed some (all?) of the Confederate Inspection Reports. These Confederate Inspection Reports were mainly done in 1864-65 and did PFD strengths for each brigade (and even each regiment within each brigade). They also covered things like weapons, cleanliness, etc. I cannot find that site either. It may have gone away, as you say. Now for the interesting (for you) part. I have purchased many (about half) of these reels from the NARA web site in digitized format. I took those files and posted them at the Internet Archive for anyone to look at, as follows:




However, there are caveats. These are HARD to read, and even illegible in some cases. It will take tons of time to go through and compile this info. The Confederates used a ridiculous indexing system as well. And a bunch of inspection reports are still missing from Internet Archive because I haven't purchased the rest yet. And I haven't had time to go do indices for Reels 13-15.
 
However, there are caveats. These are HARD to read, and even illegible in some cases.
Hi Brett. So good to see you here posting at CWT! Thanks for sharing these links and for providing access to the Inspection reports. I'm pretty good at deciphering old handwriting. Is there a way to crowd source to help you with transcription? I'd be happy to help.
Best regards.
Laura
 
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