Reading through Ulysess S Grant's "Personal Memoirs" he often goes into detail about the importance of logistics in regards to troop movement, avoiding disease etc. Obviously in the end he got it right, or close enough, but were there any examples during the war of the exact opposite happening?
Having this map open might help you visualize the story a little better if you're a visual learner.
The logistical nightmare that most comes to my mind occurred during the Appomattox campaign to R.E. Lee’s Army of N. Virginia. Up until this point in the war, the logistics work that the Confederates had pulled off was remarkable when you consider the Union blockade of their ports and the siege at Petersburg. This isn’t to say Lee’s men ate like Kings, much of the food was rancid bacon and cornmeal while they were entrenched at Petersburg, but the men didn’t starve.
But after evacuating Richmond-Petersburg, Lee ordered rations be sent to Amelia Court House, on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, so they could be waiting for his men upon their arrival. Lee’s plan was to march his Army south down the railroad from Amelia Court House, get down to Burkeville, and take the trains to link up with Gen. Joseph Johnston’s forces in N. Carolina or wherever they could affect a junction.
"Lee ordered them [rations] to be sent there [Amelia Court House] from Danville, for he has so stated; and General J. M. St. John, then commissary general, states that on April 1, 1865, there were five hundred thousand rations of bread and one million five hundred thousand rations of meat at Danville, and three hundred thousand rations of bread and meat in Richmond, and that he received no orders to send supplies to Amelia Court House either from Richmond or Danville; and Mr. Lewis Harvie, then the president of the Richmond and Danville Railroad, has testified that no orders were ever given to his officers to transport any rations to Amelia Court House."
Whatever the reason for the supply failure it had catastrophic consequences for Lee’s Army. When the Army of N. Virginia arrived at Amelia Court house on April 5th Lee was aghast to find no rations waiting for his men due to this logistical error. "Not finding the supplies ordered to be placed at Amelia Court House," says Lee, "nearly twenty-four hours were lost in endeavoring to collect in the country subsistence for men and horses. The delay was fatal, and could not be retrieved."
Gen. Phil Sheridan had already cut Lee’s planned path to Burkeville by arriving at Jetersville, but Lee would have been able to attack Sheridan had the rations been at Amelia Court House. As it stood, Lee’s soldiers were exhausted and in no condition to fight from want of food. The days that followed April 5th till the Army reached Farmville on April 7th were like a scene out of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Lee’s Army starved on the march. They slept little and were constantly foraging for any food they could find. I try to imagine walking tens of miles with nothing to feed myself with but the food I could find, from the already ravaged country, and the water I could drink; all the while being pursued in a running battle with the well fed and well equipped Union Army. I get light headed if I skip lunch! A soldiers diet consisted of, “A dozen ears of corn, with a suggestion that he parch the grains on getting into camp.” Straggling was very high; many men in Lee’s Army simply stopped marching due to starvation and exhaustion, but it’s a testament to the men who continued on.
The soldiers finally received their first rations since leaving Richmond on April 7th at Farmville and Lee loaded up his supply trains for the march to Lynchburg in the east. On April 8th Lee sent his supply train ahead of his Army to Appomattox Station where General Sheridan was able to capture it and put an eventual end to the campaign. This is why when U.S. Grant provided Lee’s famished soldiers 25,000 rations after the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Lee said something to the effect that it would have the most positive effect on his men and do much to reconciling their people. They had been marching for almost a week and only received rations on the 7th which were promptly captured by the Union on the 8th.
But back to the original logistics error, had Lee’s Army received the supplies they needed they could have attacked Sheridan’s cavalry at Jetersville when they first arrived at Amelia Court House. By not having the rations where they needed to be it severly hampered any chance Lee had of being able to link up with Johnston. I can only speculate as to how much longer the war would have lasted had the rations been waiting for Lee and his Army been able to battle their way to Burkeville. So, as it always seems in war, what is a catastrophe for one side turned out to be a bastion of good fortune for the other side.
Sources
Fitzhugh Lee. General Lee
James McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom.
S. Foote. The Civil War Narrative Vol. 3.
In Engines of War, Christian Wolmar details the contributions of Daniel McCallum and Herman Haupt. In 1962, McCallum was named as the Union's military director and superintendent of the railroads, but Haupt became known as 'the war's wizard of railroading.' As far as he was concerned, a number of logistical catastrophes were underway, and he crusaded against them.
Haupt had two guiding principles:
As Wolmar says,
This second issue might sound prosaic, trivial even, but proved time and time again in the Civl War and subsequent conflicts to be an absolutely vital requirement in ensuring the efficient use of the railroad in meeting military needs. (pg. 43)
For a more vivid example, we can look at ‘Stonewall’ Jackson in 1861.
Although the territory around part of the Baltimore and Ohio was occupied by Confederate forces, jackson had allowed freight trains run by Union forces to continue using the railroad. This might have appeared to be a magnanimous gesture but was nothing of the sort. Recognizing that locomotive power would be crucial to the war, he devised a cunning scheme to capture as many engines as he could manage as well as wretch the railroad. He informed the railroad management that he did not want the trains keeping his troops awake at night and therefore it was arranged that they would only be allowed to enter the Confederate zone between 1 a.m. And 1 p.m. Amazingly, the Unionists accepted this flimsy argument and enabled Jackson to lay a perfect trap. On 14 June 1861, he allowed the trains to the fifty-four-mile section of line but then prevented them from leaving by ripping up the track. Before the Union forces grasped what was happening, he destroyed forty-two locomotives and 386 freight cars, taking with him by road another fourteen engines as well as much of the track for use in the South. His men wrecked the machine shops and warehouses at Martinsburg and as a result of the attack the Baltimore & Ohio’s western section was closed for nine months.” (pg. 45)
One example would be for the Confederates in late 1863. When they sent Longstreet's corps out west to help stop Rosecrans at Chickamauga, the Union used their superior rail logistics to send Hooker to help Grant win immediately afterward at Chattanooga, which of course would set Sherman up for success in 1864. The transfer was nearly seamless on the Union side, while the Confederate transfer exposed shortcomings in the way they mobilized their industry and rolling stock for war.
