Many history books say that one reason the Confederacy lost the war is because the Union had more railroad milage. Christopher Gabel in an article Rails to Oblivion disagrees. In 1860 the whole country had 30,000 miles of railroad of which 9,000 were in the soon to be Confederate states. The Confederacy was an agricultural area with a rural population. Dr. Gabel argues there were sufficient railroads for the Confederates to win the war.
In the early part of the war Confederate Generals used their railroads quite successfully to transport troops and equipment to battle. As the war went on the railroads wore out and there were inadequate or no efforts to to repair and maintain them. Yet as late as September, 1863 James Longstreet moved his men 800 miles from Virginia to Chickamauga to support Braxton Bragg and enabled Bragg to stop the Yankees. There were a lot of problems with the move and long delays. Half of Longstreet’s men arrived too late to do any fighting. But enough got there to make a real difference. Without them Sherman would have reached Atlanta a year earlier.
In 1863 the smart money in Europe and Great Britain was betting the Confederacy would win the war. After all, the Union had to occupy and subdue a hugh area of hostile territory; the Confederacy only had to avoid losing the war. British merchants were selling all kinds of supplies to the Confederates, all of it on credit. At the end of the war warehouses in Wilmington, North Carolina were full of all kinds of supplies but by that time the Confederates were unable to distribute them on the worn out rail system.
In Gabel’s view the Confederacy lost the war not because its rail system was inadequate but because it went to pieces from lack of care and maintenance.
Well, since I’m living here in “Civil War Central” there’s no way I can stay out of this one!
Certainly, Gabel’s correct when he says the Confederates lost because their railroads went to pieces because of lack of maintainance, but that’s only part of the picture. The only factory in the South capable of producing railroad equipment and matierials was Richmonds Tredegar Iron Works, Tredegar was a great outfit, they could make anything, but not everything all at once. Tredegar was heavily involved in munitions and ordnance manufacturing and railroad supplies had to take a back seat. With the Yankees only 100 miles north, and General Lee’s army the only thing keeping them out of Richmond, keeping that army supplied with the tools of the trade HAD to take precedence.
Another problem with Southern railroads is most didn’t connect with one another. The Southern philosophy of railroad building was to build a 'road from the farms to the nearest river for trans-shipment of cargos (like cotton) to the nearest seaport. As a matter of fact the remnants of one of those 'roads is only two miles from my house. It ran from the farms of western Henrico County to the James River/ Kanawha Canal and no further. So, there was no cogent rail network in the South to form the basis of an efficient supply system.
AND you can throw the “States Rights” philosophy into the mix. The southern states were very jealous of their sovereignity and only grudgingly gave any consitant co-operation to the Confederate central government. That meant their local railroads were THEIRS, and THEIRS alone. The Confederates never had anything like the US Military Railroad system with a kick-butt, no-nonsense commander like General Herman Haupt running it. Jefferson Davis said it best when he said the Confederacy "
So it seems, except by most railroad historians, and perhaps some military/ logistics historians. I especially liked the “FOREWORD” on the 2nd page of that monograph, which is too long for me to retype here this afternoon - though it can be found at:
In addition to the railroads, the telegraph as radically changed the way the war was fought in comparison to previous wars. Note that the transcontinental telegraph line was a high priority item in the first few months of the war.
I’ll suggest “Railroads in The Civil War; The Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat” by John E. Clark Jr.
The Confederacy may have had an adequate rail network, but they failed to grasp the importance of logistics.
They didn’t improve or maintain their rail capacity. Some southern towns had passed laws that prohibited rail lines from connecting. This benefited those particular towns at the expense of the overall economy. Through freight had to be unloaded from the rail cars of one railroad, drayed by team and wagon to the other rail line, and then reloaded. This “created” jobs and profits in that town, but it was at the expense of economic growth and efficiency. Overall, it cost more jobs and profits than it ever created.
This was an economic burden in peace time. But when it came to a war for survival it was a disaster. Nobody in the Confederacy ever directed that the rail lines be connected in order to facilitate the war effort. Nobody understood the need to do so. They just didn’t grasp the importance of logistics.
The northern army was driving on Atlanta but was turned back at Chickamauga. (I was told my great-grandfather fought at Chickamauga with an Illinois regiment.) It fell back to Chattanooga and fell under siege. Both sides shifted a large number of troops from the eastern theater to the Chattanooga area by rail.
The Union had a much more difficult task. They had exterior lines of communication while the Confederacy had interior lines of communication. But the Union did a much better job, largely because they understood the whole logistics thing much better than the Confederacy did.
The Union moved two complete Army Corps. They were pulled out of the line in Virginia and loaded on the Baltimore and Ohio. Moved west to Indianapolis where there was a break in gauge. South to Louisville and on&nbs
Something like 9 out of 10 soldiers are in non-combat branches, if I recall correctly.
A truism is that “Amateurs study weapons and tactics; professional soldiers study logistics.” Often it’s not about guns and troops, but about fuel, ammo - and intelligence. Note that Gus Pagonis Pagano [corrected] was promoted to Major General as a result of his logistics performance during the 1991 Gulf War.
Funny you suggest Railroads in The Civil War Greyhounds. That is the book I am reading right now. It has such a wealth of detail that I am struggling to take it all in and since I haven’t finished I didn’t want to mention it. But so far it is everything you say it is.
The more I read about this the more I am inclined to believe that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were victims of their own education. Both went to West Point were they learned about interior lines taught by David Mahan and read Henri Jomini. And they never were able to see beyond that. Abe Lincoln with about a third grade education could and did see the importance of railroads and used them. The Union didn’t do a perfect job but it did work at the right job which was to use rail roads effectively. The Confederates never tried. Davis’s and Lee’s education prevented them from understanding the importance of maintaining their railroads, to their war effort.
Davis and Lee not being able to see beyond their educations? I’m not so sure about that. Neither Davis or Lee, hold it, let’s clear up a misconception before I go to far. Robert E. Lee was an army commander, specifically the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee didn’t make Confederate war policy although I’m sure Jeff Davis listened when Lee had something to say. General Samuel Cooper was the top Confederate general through most of the war, although his duties were mainly administrative. Lee didn’t become the top Confederate general with war planning responsibilities until February of 1865, far too late for him to do any good.
OK, back to where I was going. Even if Davis and other Confederates saw the importance of railroads, and I have to believe they did, they weren’t stupid men, we get back to the States Rights thing and the Confederate government’s inability to really force its will on the individual Confederate states. And that’s the lesson they REALLY missed.
The American Revolution nearly failed because of the lack of a strong central government able to call the shots and enforce its will. The Confederate government should have realized that lesson but apparantly they forgot it or ignored it. The result was disaster. Like Jeff Davis said, the Confederacy “died of a theory”, the theory being blind adherance to an extreme States Rights doctrine and the inability to put it on the “back burner” for the duration.
Let me try to respond to your first section and later get back to the other sections which deserve response too.
I know when I blame the West Point Education both these men have for the loss of the war I’m stirring up a hornet’s nest.
Lee beleived from the first to the last that you win the Civil War by winning battles and you win in a way that will punish the Yankees for even thinking they should make war. He did this again and again and again. And in the short run it worked. By the fall of 1862 Union morale was at a low ebb. But in the long run it was inadequate. To smash the Yankees Lee took calculated risks and, while he came out ahead, he couldn’t afford those loses. But because of the advantage of interior lines he thought he could hold out long enough. That is what a West Point education meant to him. I wonder if he ever thought about railroads other then using them when he needed to. The railroads were civilian; it was not part of Lee’s job to concern himself with their operation.
Jefferson Davis had much broader experience. After the military he went into the Congress and became the leader of the Southern Democrats. He was Secretary of War under Franklin PIerce. He was a courtly gentleman and got along well with northern Senators, especially with Senator William Seward who led the Republicans and became Lincoln’s Secretary of State.
Davis was also a Democrat and faithful to the Democratic ideology.
The whole point of “The Great Locomotive Chase” was that stealing a locomotive and sabotaging the rail lines was thought of as having a major negative impact on the South’s war efforts. OTOH, I doubt if anyone under 50 is even aware of that movie.
Sherman apparently hated the telegraph as well, one of tehe points of his March to the Sea was being unreachable by telegraph.
I think it’s quite a stretch to blame the Confederacy’s lack of understanding of the importance of logistics on the fact that Lee and Davis went to West Point.
Important Union generals went to West Point too and they “Got It”. Grant, Meade, Thomas, Sheridan, Sherman were all USMA grads and they used railroads well. Thomas in particular had a focus on securing the rail line from Nashville to Cattanooga to supply his army.
It is important to note that Grant primarlily served as a quartermaster (supply) prior to the Civil War. When Sherman took off from Atlanta to march through Georgia he had one wagon for every 20 soldiers. The West Point guys, at least on the Union side, understood logistics.
Absolutely! If you examine the rolls of major commanders on both sides, most were graduates of West Point. 15 Confederate generals were graduates of VMI; while others were from the Citadel. Inept generals on both sides were from the Point (eg., Burnside and Bragg), but not because of the quality of their training. Some of the worst officers were the political appointees, often with no previous training or experience.
AMEN!! Lincoln made many political appointments to field commands, with sometimes-disastrous results. Davis probably did too, but they were either not so spectacularly inept or were appointed to positions where they couldn’t do much harm. I’ve often thought that if the generals in place on both sides at the beginning of the war had been switched, the Confederacy would have lasted about six months.
I don’t suggest that all Confederate generals failed to see the importance of railroads or that Dennis Mahan taught that technological advances should be ignored. However, I do think that both Davis and Lee were so focused on the importance of interior lines that they failed to see how railroads modified that theory.
I agree that Lincoln appointed some officers for political reasons. One example of a political appointment is General Alexander Schimmelpfennig. Lincoln was looking to bolster support in the German community. I have also seen these appointments defended, notably by James McPherson, as necessary to the national strategy.
A brilliant engineer and highly capable organizer, George B. McClellan just wasn’t an army commander. In that position he proved the weakness of West Point in its early years; the academy was simply geared to the production of engineers and company officers for a small, pre-Civil War regular army…
He worked for the Illinois Central-as chief engineer and vice president and just before the Civil War became a division president for the Ohio & Mississippi. Despite his success in the private field he was happy to reenter the military in 1862…
Initially appointed by Ohio’s Governor William Dennison, he was soon made second only to Scott by a former attorney for the Illinois Central-Abraham Lincoln.
McClellan may have known how to build and run a railroad better than a battle. Credited with building up the army that went onto victory under Grant, what role did McClellan play creating the understanding of using railroads to support an army in the field?
As stated, McClellan’s Commander in Chief had some legal expertise when it came to railroads. Would legal research and representation of railroads have given Lincoln a better understanding of the railroads importance in war.
How many of the Confederacy’s top leaders could claim prior experience with railroads?