Wagon Supply

[tony_gunter]

What's the greatest distance over which an army attempted to sustain itself for a length of time via wagons in the ACW?

 

[Sivart]

It might've been Sherman's March to the Sea in late 1864. It wasn't all wagons, but they played a pretty big part in the campaign. I believed they traveled around 300 miles. That's probably wrong, but that's thing only one I can remember.

 

[Pat Answer]

Good question. I'll have to look that up later.
Off the top of my head, I might guess (east of the Mississippi) it would be Bragg's Kentucky campaign for distance.

 

[tony_gunter]

It might've been Sherman's March to the Sea in late 1864. It wasn't all wagons, but they played a pretty big part in the campaign. I believed they traveled around 300 miles. That's probably wrong, but that's thing only one I can remember.

I should have been more specific, I was thinking of an army tethered to a base over roadways.

 

[tony_gunter]

Good question. I'll have to look that up later.
Off the top of my head, I might guess (east of the Mississippi) it would be Bragg's Kentucky campaign for distance.

Bragg's terminal supply depot would be Lexington in that case?

That's 41 miles.

Just eyeballing the math, it looks like 45 miles would be the max.

 

[wausaubob]

Good question. I'll have to look that up later.
Off the top of my head, I might guess (east of the Mississippi) it would be Bragg's Kentucky campaign for distance.

Would the US campaign from Grand Gulf to Jackson and then back to the Yazoo River be in contention?

 

[Sid J.]

Bragg's terminal supply depot would be Lexington in that case?

That's 41 miles.

Just eyeballing the math, it looks like 45 miles would be the max.

I am a little unsure of the exact route, but the Union supply line (post chickamauge and prior to opening the cracker line) from Bridgeport to Chattanooga was about 45-50 miles. The AoC was woefully under supplied in this time frame by most accounts.

 

[tony_gunter]

Would the US campaign from Grand Gulf to Jackson and then back to the Yazoo River be in contention?

I don't know if that counts. Grant cut the tether when he turned on Jackson. No wagons went back to Grand Gulf from any farther than ~Auburn.

 

[tony_gunter]

I am a little unsure of the exact route, but the Union supply line (post chickamauge and prior to opening the cracker line) from Bridgeport to Chattanooga was about 45-50 miles. The AoC was woefully under supplied in this time frame by most accounts.

Did that kill horses? At 45-50 miles the only way to leave room for food and ammo is to leave forage behind.

 

[Lampasas Bill]

In 1864 Sterling Price's army marched over 1,400 miles, from southern Arkansas, through Missouri and Kansas and into northern Texas. His extensive wagon train slowed his movements and aided to his eventual defeat. Like Sherman in Georgia, his army lived on what they carried with them and what they "appropriated" on their march.

 

[Sid J.]

Did that kill horses? At 45-50 miles the only way to leave room for food and ammo is to leave forage behind.

Most definitely. I've reached accounts where dead horses were along the road side. Wheelers troopers caused at least some of that. Forage along the route would have been picked through in short order.

 

[tony_gunter]

Followup question: how did Napoleon carry out these grand campaigns logistically without the advantage of river and rail transport?

Was it the extreme (by comparison) population density of Europe that guaranteed supplies could be impressed by an army on the move?

 

[Rhea Cole]

In January 1863 Bragg's Army of Tennessee went into winter quarters along an east / west line (+/-) 70 miles wide. Bragg's depot was at Florence, Alabama. Logically, the supply line ran from Florence to Decatur to Columbia TN (+/-) 180 miles. Unfortunately, the rail line was in a state of collapse. Man & nature had all but destroyed it. Bragg had neither engineering assets nor materials necessary to rebuild the line. The entire sustenance of the army had to be hauled from Florence to Columbia with animals & wagons.

Realities:

An army wagon hauled by four horses / mules had a 2,000 pound capacity.

The daily ration for an equine weighed 26 pounds. 14 pounds of grain & 12 pounds of hay. That equals 56 pounds of grain & 48 pounds of hay / day / wagon,

The maximum daily range of an equine is 20 miles. Exceed that limit & the animals will break down. Once broken down, an animal would be out of service until recovered or most likely never.

Just for back of the envelope numbers, the 180 mile haul from Florence took nine days @ 105 pounds / day = 947 pounds X the return = the capacity of the wagon.

Upon arrival at Columbia, it was (+/-) 160 out & back to distribute the supplies from the depot.

Wooden wagons & wheels had a limited useful life. The long hauls from Alabama to Tennessee & back destroyed the Army of Tennessee's rolling stock.

Equally, the winter hauls over impossible roads was brutal on the army's animals. Colonel Cole, IG of transportation reported that both the animals & wagons of the Army of Tennessee were in a state of total collapse.

In June / July 1863 the Tullahoma Campaign forced the Army of Tennessee out of the state. In June the Amy had no meat ration to distribute at all. However, in typical Bragg fashion, huge reserve supply dumps at Tullahoma & other locals had to be abandoned because there was no way to transport it. The bounty was a boon for Cumberlanders whose logistics were bogged down in bottomless mud.

Note: The best depiction of the collapse of Bragg's communications & citations I know if is in Connelly's "Autumn of Glory."

 

[Rhea Cole]

Followup question: how did Napoleon carry out these grand campaigns logistically without the advantage of river and rail transport?

Was it the extreme (by comparison) population density of Europe that guaranteed supplies could be impressed by an army on the move?

Napoleon's armies lived off the land. It was foraged food & fodder that supported his forces. The retreat from Moscow retraced the route of the advance. There wasn't anything left for the army to subsist on.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Trestle Bridge at Whiteside

The trestle bridge at Running Water Creek, built for the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad Company. The bridge was built by the 1st Regiment Michigan Volunteer Engineers and Mechanics, assisted by the United States Railroad Construction Corps, during the fall and winter of 1863.

digitalcollections.smu.edu

Digital Collection SMU
I do not know of anything that graphically demonstrates the challenge that the Army of the Cumberland faced in July 1863 than the Running Water Creek trestle. I am sure that many of you all have traveled to Chattanooga on I-24 via the Falling Water gorge. Especially coming on it from the north the modern trestle looks like it is dangling from the sky.

The Falling Waters trestle is emblematic of the superb staff work Rosecrans' engineers accomplished during the winter & spring of 1863. I always laugh when somebody sneering states that Rosecrans did nothing for six months. Unlike the Army of Northern Virginia's incursion into Pennsylvania, Rosecrans was prepared to advance all the way from Murfreesboro to Atlanta & hold the ground in between.

The Louisville & Nashville / Nashville & Chattanooga Rail Road system was the lifeline that made the advance possible. The N & CRR had been built with light weight British rails to save money. Nobody conceived of the volume of heavy wartime freight that left 1,300 broken rails between Nashville and Chattanooga in December 1862. On June 23, 1863 behind the Tullahoma Campaign advance were railroads engineers & lashups of cars loaded with rails / equipment necessary to rebuild the RR.

Once again I refer to those of us who have driven over Monteagle Mountain. I don't have to explain what a massive obstacle it is. Before a RR could be built between Nashville & the Deep South, a single track tunnel had to be driven through the mountain. To this day north & south bound trains dose-do on the long siding at Murfreesboro. There is still only one track through the mountain.

You are, perhaps, asking yourself what all this RR stuff has to do with a thread about long haul wagon transport? It is relevant because until the RR was up & running, the Army of the Cumberland depended on equine motive power & army wagons to keep the army supplied.

In the first post I made in this thread there is a breakdown on the grain & hay needed to keep horses & mules at work. If you are familiar with shipping, the concept of cubing out before you gross out a well known principle. Essentially it comes down to a truck that could carry 2,000 pounds of freight filled with styrofoam weighing almost nothing.

Equine rations were shipped in gunny sacks. They were vey bulky. By contrast, 8 to 9,000 daily rations for soldiers were packed into a boxcar. That meant that a single typical ten car lashup carried (+/-) a daily rations for the Cumberlanders. By contrast, only 1,000 pounds of equine rations could be loaded on a wagon. @ 105 pounds of feed / four horse team, a thousand pounds did not go very far.

That is the reason that Rosecrans ordered that as the N & CRR was repaired that only equine rations would be shipped south from the Nashville & Murfreesboro depots. Rations & ammunition was dispatched on wagon trains. Nashville to Chattanooga was (+/-) 100 miles over challenging "lumpy hills" as General Wilder called it.

In order to ascend Monteagle wagons had to traverse six "steps." Just like it sounds, limestone seams created impassible obstructions. Freight had to be unloaded; wagons were taken apart; teams were unharnessed & led up over the obstruction. The freight & wagon parts were then carried or drug up to the top of the step before being reassembled… repeat as needed.

The Great Stone Door.
On an alternative route from McMinnville to the Highland Plateau, wagons & freight was winched up a 40 foot limestone bluff at the head of Savage Gulf. Equines & people climbed up through the narrow "Great Stone Door" to the top of the plateau.

Without doubt the best known mule drawn wagon effort was the 60 mile drag from Bridgeport to Chattanooga. It is impossible to exaggerate the horrors inflicted on the suffering animals. In an act inconceivable by any other Civil War general, Grant mounted up to see conditions for himself.
The trains that carried the fodder south were loaded with animals that had broken down under the strain. Remounts from the Murfreesboro depot passed them on sidings southbound to replace them. The number of animals that died keeping the Chattanooga army group fed was in the tens of thousands.

I hope these posts give some small notion of the challenges that Cumberlanders & animals faced during the Tullahoma / Chattanooga Campaign.



Note: Savage Gulf (named after a family) is part of a huge TN State Park system.

Link:

Laurel Falls and Great Stone Door - Savage Gulf State Natural Area - South Cumberland State Park

After hiking with Ranger Aaron earlier in the day on National Trails Day, 2013, I decided to take his advice and walk out to the Great St...

americantraveljournal.blogspot.com