The Civil War was the first time American military planners had to sustain large armies over extended distance and for prolonged periods of time. While many had sound theoretical training in military logistics, very few had any practical experience in the continuous sustainment of armies in the field. Both Federal and Confederate logisticians, from the national to the tactical level, grappled with the simultaneous problems of calculating their logistic requirements, identifying reliable sources of supplies, acquiring or purchasing those supplies, establishing the depots to store the supplies, transporting the supplies to the area of operations, and finally distributing the supplies to the units that needed them in a timely manner. Failure to properly address any one of these issues meant that the troops would soon run out of beans, bread and bullets.

In the era of foot-powered infantry and horse drawn artillery, the basic requirements of an unengaged civil war army, while small by today's military standards, were still substantial. For instance, per day, each man required four pounds of food or other supplies, while each mule required 23 pounds of fodder and each horse consumed 26 pounds of fodder.

Hence, an army such as Sherman's - with 100,000 men and 35,000 animals - would consume, each day, slightly more than 600 tons of supplies, without moving or firing a single shot. Furthermore, these theoretical calculations usually fell short as large amounts of supplies were lost, forgotten, misdelivered, rotted, or simply disappeared. Once the army began moving, this "wastage" inevitably got worse as distances grew longer and animals and wagons wore out. And once the army began fighting, demand further increased as the additional burdens of evacuating the wounded, replacing lost men, animals, equipment, and munitions substantially complicated the logistic equations.

To account for this, experienced Union generals began to use a rule-of-thumb that doubled the theoretical supply requirement to estimate their actual supply needs. For example, to cover all exigencies, Sherman insisted on a minimum of 1300 tons per day be delivered to his forward depot at Chattanooga once the Atlanta campaign began.

Of all the many logistic issues, the most troublesome was that of transport. For example, according to Joe Johnston, the main reason that the Confederates abandoned their strong position at Yorktown in 1862 was that of insufficient transport to move supplies from the Richmond depots.

While Joe Johnston may have had other reasons to fear McClellan's army, his concern over transport was real enough. Lee, even before the lean years of 1864 and 1865, was frustrated by lack of transport. For instance, in December of 1862 Lee ordered all but 12 of his batteries to be wintered well to the rear of his army as the south's transportation infrastructure was unable to move sufficient forage forward to keep the battery horses fed. Some elements, such as the artillery's reserve horses were sent as far south as North Carolina.

And even when spring came and forage became more plentiful, Lee made a point of telling his artillery commander, William Pendleton, not to bring up his teams, "faster than you can forage them."

The supply of the largest armies yet seen on the American continent would require the massing and management of hundreds of steamboats, locomotives, freight cars of all types, and thousands of wagons. Coordinating the efforts of these vastly dissimilar transport assets was no small tasks.

The Streamboat

The steamboat was clearly the most efficient mode of delivery; an average river steamboat could carry 500 tons of supply. But steamboats were obviously limited to navigable waterways, required pier space and consumed prodigious quantities of firewood. This created the logistic paradox that while, in theory, one steamboat could replace 500 wagons it never really worked out that way as to build up the immense firewood stocks required for a steamboat landing required many wagons hauling wood in from the countryside.

Additionally as the armies moved, new landings with new wharves and warehouse would have to be built, which consumed piles of construction materials and employed hundreds of workers, all of which generated their own supply requirements.

The Railroad

The railroad was the next most efficient, as an average ten car train could carry 100 tons of supplies. However, early locomotives had high maintenance demands and trains could only go where rails were laid. Train wrecks were common and long unprotected rail lines were a favorite target of marauding enemy cavalry. Major operations, such as the Atlanta campaign were often totally dependent on rail supply, to the point, that Sherman refused to commence the operation until it was supported by at least 100 locomotives and 1,000 freight cars.

Due to vastly greater resources and significantly better management, northern railroads clearly outperformed southern ones. For instance, Sherman's railroads ran four train convoys - each convoy with four ten car trains - daily from Nashville southward, delivering about 1,600 tons of supplies a day. In contrast, Lee's primary logistic lifeline, the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad seldom managed more than two trains a day for a total of 200 tons.

The Wagon

The wagon could go almost anywhere, but could carry only one ton. Additionally, if an army depended totally on wagons, it would not - in General Sherman's opinion - be able to deploy further than 100 miles from a railroad or major depot as, at that point, the wagon team - whether horses of mules - would have consumed the entire contents of the wagon.

For example, with each wagon using six horses, each wagon team will require 156 pounds of fodder per day; which means that after 13 days, whether it went a hundred miles or not, the team would have consumed the wagon load. Wagon trains also frequently used the same roads as the infantry corps, which meant that combat power was often delayed reaching the battlefield by the wagons of the unit in front of it.

Also, for tons of supplies delivered wagons demanded a relatively high number of personnel. For instance, when the Army of the Potomac entered the Wilderness it took 20,000 men to operate its roughly 5,000 vehicles.

Foraging, or living off the land, was much easier said than done. In some areas, it simply was not possible. For instance, Sherman referred to the rugged countryside of north Georgia as a patchwork of dense pine forests and hardscrabble farms, totally incapable of sustaining large armies. Hence, his campaign north of Atlanta was leashed to his railroad, which would consistently constrain his attempts to outflank Joe Johnston.

On the other hand, his famous march to the sea was made possible by the fact that the area his corps would be marching through represented the richest area of that state. Sherman was well aware of this, having personally surveyed much of Georgia prior to the war and he literally planned his advance using the latest Georgia agricultural census. Diaries of Sherman's "bummers" boasted of never feasting so good.

A practice of both armies that sometimes created more logistic problems then it solved was the habit of using cattle as self-transporting rations. While beef-on-the-hoof certainly reduced the wagons needed to carry rations, it did require that the area of operations have sufficient grazing area for the cattle, or the cows would simply become another fodder consuming burden.

Grant's army in 1864 made extensive use of cattle and began its campaign with three days of walking rations (8,000 to 10,000 head) and ten days of conventional rations and forage in its trains. However, the mobility of the beeves proved an embarrassment when outside of Petersburg, a daring raid by Wade Hampton resulted in one of the all time great cattle rustling adventures.

One could attribute much of the eventual success of the Federal armies to their superior logistic system and the failure of the Confederacy to keep its armies supplied. However, the truth is somewhat more complex. In many ways, even at the end, the Confederacy had everything it needed to sustain its armies.

For example, in the trenches outside of Petersburg, the Army of Northern Virginia was reduced to threadbare tunics for uniforms and thin gruel for rations. But, yet - at that same time - warehouses in North Carolina were stacked with new, never to be issued, uniforms. And the farmlands of southeast Georgia, along with most of the Trans Mississippi, would end the war with food in abundance. These facts suggest that the collapse of southern logistics was first and foremost a collapse of their transportation system, which prevented the distribution of supplies from where they were to where they were needed.

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