Railroad Generalship: 

Foundations of Civil War 

Strategy 

bY 

Dr. Christopher R. Gabel 

U.S. Army Command and General Staff Cotlege 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-I 352 
CSI publicatims cw+ee a variety o’f military history topics. The views expressed 

: herein are tfmse ofthe author amd not necessadly those of the Department afthe Amy 

or the Beptiment of Defers5 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data 

GEbel, Christopher R. (Christopher Richard), 1954- 

Railroad generalship: foundations of Civil War strategy i by 

Christopher R. Gab& 

p. cm. 

CSI logo appears on t.p. 

Includes bibliographical references. 

1. United States-Histoq+Civil WarJ 861-1865-Transportation. 

2. Railroads-United States-History-19th century. 3. Strategy-History-19th century 

I. U.S. Army Command and General Staff ColLege. Combat Studies Institute. 

II. Title. 

E491.G33 1997 

973 1’ 3013-dc21 97-33 11 I 

CIP 
CONTENTS 

IIlustmtions ...................................................................................................... V 

Tables ............................................................................................................... vii 

Text .................................................................................................................. 1 

Bibliography .................................................................................................... 25 

I.. 

111 
ILEUSTRATIONS 

Figures 

1. “Interior Iines” ............................................................................................. 5 

2. USMRR organization .................................................................................. 14 

3. Tactical rail line: ideal ................................................................................. 14 

4. Haupt system: organization ......................................................................... 18 

Maps 

1. Sherman’s rail communications, Atlanta campaign, 1864 .......................... 4 

2. Interior lines nullified, September 1863 ...................................................... 6 

3. Union railheads in Virginia ......................................................................... 7 

4. First Bull Run campaign............................................................................. 9 

5. Confederate rail net and Union offensives .................................................. 10 

6. Tullahoma campaign ................................................................................... 10 

7. Union rail net and vulnerable chokepoints .................................................. 11 

8. Administration of XI and XII Corps move .................................................. 15 

9. Second Bull Run campaign ......................................................................... 17 

10. Rails to Gettysburg ...................................................................................... 19 

11. Atlanta campaign, 1864 ............................................................................... 21 

12. Grant’s campaign, 1864 ............................................................................... 22 

13. Petersburg operations, 1 X64-65 ................................................................... 23 
TABLES 

1. Ton-miles per ton c‘fuel’f .............................................................................. 2 

2. Rate oftravel.. .............................................................................................. 3 

3. Aquia Creek line.. ........................................................................................ 8 

vii 
S ince the dawn of history, military strategy has been dominated 

by the inexorable calculus of Iogistics-distance, time, transport 

capacity, and consumptian. For thousands of years, every army that 

waged war relied upon the muscles of its men and animals to carry it 

across the countryside. It is sobering to consider that, up until 1830, 

every soldier that ever went into battle got there on his own feet or by 

the efforts of an animal. Every weapon, every round of ammunition, 

every pound of food eaten by an army, every tent peg, and every 

bandage reached the battlefield by muscle power. The only 

exceptions were those resources transported by water and those 

extracted from the countryside. 

Ironically, the armies with the largest contingents of draft animals 

for their supply trains also faced the most difficult logistical 

challenges: each ofthe animals pulling a supply wagon had to eat too, 

which meant that even more wagons and animals were needed to 

carry food for the animals hauling supplies for the fighting troops. 

Naturally, one then needed animals to carry fodder for the animals 

carrying fodder. This pattern of diminishing returns compounded 

dramatically the farther an army got from its supply base. Typically, 

food for animals constituted more than half of an army’s supply 

requirement. Under the best of circumstances, an army relying 

exclusively on muscle-power transport could carry a maximum of 

about ten days’ worth of supplies. No wonder that armies of the 

preindustrial age were so often hungry, ragged, and exhausted, 

spending far more time scouring the countryside for food than they 

did fighting the enemy. 

Nowhere was this more true than in North America. The New 

World was just too big a battleground for armies moving by muscle 

power. In addition to the vast distances involved, roads were 

generally poor, and much of the countryside was undeveloped, 

offering little to a foraging army. Consider the various canflicts 

fought in North America-colonial wars, the Revolutionary War, 

and the War of 18 12-and one finds that often the biggest challenge 

in planning a campaign was just getting to the battlefield without 

1 
2 

Tan-Miles per Ton ‘LF~el” 

Tons Carried Multiulied bv Miles Traveled on a Ton of Fuel 

Table 1 

starving en route. Fighting the enemy was almost incidental. This is 

why, in colonial days, a log fort containing a few dozen soldiers and 

some barrels of wormy flour could dominate thousands of square 

miles of wilderness-nobody else could get there in any condition to 

dispute ownership. 

s situation changed dramaticahy by 1861. There were more 

farms, less wilderness, and a wider variety of bad roads to choose from. 

Just as important was the advent of steam-powered transportation, 

What exactly did steam power do for military logistics? 

Obviously, a railroad train could carry more tons of cargo than a 

mule-drawn wagon, but this alone did not confer any logistical 

advantage, for one could make up the difference in tonnage simply by 

adding more mules and wagons. The steam locomotive’s advantage 

resided in the fact that it could haul more supplies farther opz a given 

am~unf ofJi~elr (see table I). A team of six mules drawing a wagon 

carrying 1.5 tons ofsuppIies could travel approximately 333 miles on 

one ton of food. Multiplying 1 .S tons by 333 miles yields 500 tonmiles of transport capacity generated by that ton of mule forage. In 

contrast, a Civil War-era freight locomotive could travel only thirtyfive miles or so on a ton of fuel, but its payload could be as high as 150 
Rate of Travel 

3 

tons, yielding 5,250 ton-miles per ton of fuel consumed. 

(Steamboats, incidently, did even better.) 

Trains, moreover, traveled about five times faster than mule-drawn 

wagons, which not only expedited the delivery of supplies but actually 

reduced the number of supply vehicles required. Faster travel meant 

more round trips in a given time, which meant that fewer vehicles were 

needed to maintain the required flow of supplies (see table 2). Faster 

travel also meant that cargoes, be they men or supplies, arrived at the 

front in better condition. Troops traveling by tram rather than on foot 

experienced less fatigue and fewer instances of straggling and desertion, 

even though the freight cars used for most troop movements were 

anything but comfortable. Supplies hauled by rail were more likely to 

reach the troops in useable condition, owing both to the speed of delivery 

and to the shelter afforded by enclosed railroad cars. 

The Civil War-era steam locomotive, although unreliable by 

modern standards, was still somewhat more dependable on campaign 

than draft animals. Nules, in particuhar, tended to operate under their 

own value system and could not always be relied upon to do their 

patriotic duty. Moreover, when not in use, the locomotive did not 

consume any fuel, whereas animals kept eating whether they were 

working or not. Finally, the manufacture of locomotives could be 
4 

Sherman’s Rail Commu$z$ons, Atlanta Campaign, 

Louisville 

&fly 1 

modified and expedited to meet demand. But the mule comes in only 

one model, and its “manufacture)“ is governed by inflexible 

biological timetables. 

In sum, the advent of the steam-powered railroad boosted logistical 

output by at least a factor of ten. Such a dramatic development was 

bound to have a major impact on strategy in the Civil War. 

Most notably, the railroad increased enormously the geographical 

scale of military operations. An army supplied by railroad could 

operate effectively even when hundreds of miles from its main base 

of supply. Such a capability allowed the waging of war on a 

continental scale? enabling armies to conduct campaigns that would 

have been unthinkable with wagon-haul logistics. Railroads also 

permitted armies to become larger. In previous North American 

wars, armies of 30,000 taxed the limits of wagon-haul logistics and 

local requisition. But in 1864, Major General William T. Sherman 

waged an offensive campaign with an army of 100,000 men and 

35,000 animals (see map 1). His supply line consisted of a singleextending 473 miles from Atlanta to his main supply 
base at Louisville. Sherman estimated that this rail line did the work 

of 36,800 wagons and 220,800 mules! 

The railroad did more than just expand the scale of warfare. It 

seems also to have contributed to the prolongation of the Civil War 

by making it more difficult to wage decisive campaigns. One ofthe 

foremost techniques of Napoleonic warfare, which many Civil 

War generals tried to copy, involved the use of “interior lines” to 

mass against and annihilate the enemy’s field armies one at a time. 

‘“Interior lines” simply means that a group of cooperating armies 

on the inside of a curved front can mass more quickly than their 

opponents on the outside, because they have a shorter distance to 

travel (see figure I>. Railroads made such geographical 

dispositions less relevant. Effective use of railroads by the force 

on exterior lines might allow it to move as fast or faster than the 

force on the inside. In September 1863 Lieutenant General James 

Longstreet’s corps of 12,000 men traveled by rail, on interior 

lines, from Virginia to northern Georgia where it reinforced 

General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee at the Battle of 

“Tnterinr 1 inen” 

Exterior Lines 

lnterh Lines 

Figure 1 
Interior Lines Nullified, SeMember 1863 

Chicrkamauga. Longstreet’s corps traveled roughly 800 miles in 

about twelve days. Two weeks after the Confederate victory at 

Chickamauga, two Union corps (the XI and XII), totaling 25,080 

men, traveled 1,200 miles from Virginia to the Chattanooga front, 

where they reinforced the defeated Army of the Cumberland (see 

map 2). This movement on exterior lines also took about twelve 

days, even though the distance was greater and the number of 

troops larger. Thus, the more efficient Union railroads 

demonstrated the potential to nullify Confederate interior lines. 

Paradoxically, at the level of the individual field armies, 

railroads actually restricted maneuver. Field armies tended to 

bunch up around their railheads. One reason for this was the 

interface at the railhead of two very different modes of 

transportation. Up to the railhead, supplies and reinforcements 

traveled on the industrial-age railroad. Beyond the railhead, 

transportation depended upon muscle power. In other words, it 

was often easier to move troops and supplies hundreds of miles 

from the home front to the railhead than it was to move even a few 

miles beyond it. Like water behind a dam, armies gathered in 
Union Railheads In Vir 

Map 3 

large, nearly unassailable masses around their railheads. The 

Union Army of the Potomac spent most of the war operating on 

one of two railheads-the Orange and Alexandria Railroad and the 

Aquia Creek section of the Richmond, Fredericks 

Potomac (see map 3). The Aquia Creek line was p~rti~~~ar~y 

noteworthy; railroad ears could run straight throu 

D.C. to Alexandria, where they were loaded onto barges carrying 

eight cars apiece. Steam-powered tugs took the barges to Aquia 

Creek where the cars were reassembled into trains and run to the 

front at Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg. A sixteen-car train 

could travel from Washington to Falmouth in twelve hours. There 

was no transloading involved. By 1863 the Aquia Creek line 

averaged about 800 tons of supplies (eighty railroad cars) per day 

(see table 3). To advance beyond Falmouth meant that the army 

would have to resort to wagon-haul by 400 to 800 wagons per day. 

No wonder that so much of the fighting in Virginia occurred within 

the immediate area of Fredericksburg! 
8 

Aguia Creek Line 

Daily Deliveries 

(Early 1863) Cl 100 200 300 400 50 

Table 3 

On the other side ofthe coin, such logistical equations meant that it 

was harder to isolate an enemy field force for a battle of annihilation. 

An army sitting on a railhead, when threatened with attack by an 

enemy relying on wagons, often could be reinforced by rail before the 

muscle-powered attacker could destroy it. This became apparent 

early in the war at the Battle of First Bull Run (see map 4). In July 

1861 Brigadier General Irwin MeDoweR’s Union army, marching 

overland from Alexandria, threatened to destroy Brigadier General P. 

G. T. Beauregard’s forces at Manassas. Using the Manassas Gap 

Railroad, Brigadier Genera1 Joseph E. Johnston’s army traveled from 

the Shenandoah valley in time to reinforce Beauregard and foil 

McDowell’s offensive. 

RaiIroads also tended to diminish the significance of victory or 

defeat in battle. When defeated, an army supplied by rail often could 

be reinforced before the victor: traveling on muscle power, could 

exploit his success. Thus tactical victories seldom led to strategic 

gains. In the case of First Bull Run, when McDowell’s defeated army 

retreated to Washington, it fell back on its replenishing railhead. This 

_____ 
9 

First Bull Run Campaign 

Winchester 

Map 4 

left the Confederates with the wagon-haul problem, and forestalled 

any attempt by them to capitalize on their victory. 

The general reliance on rail lines of communication, moreover, 

tended to channel offensive operations along clearly defined axes of 

advance. Through the first three years of the war, the Confederacy 

had little trouble predicting where Union offensives would 

come-along navigable water and along rail lines (see map 5). Thus, 

Union reliance on the railroad greatly reduced the element of 

strategic surprise, making it even more difficult to win a decisive 

victory. An exception to the rule occurred in the summer of 1863, 

when Major General William S. Rosecrans surprised Bragg’s Army 

of Tennessee by moving away from the rail line into back country, 

flanking Bragg out of his defensive position at Tullahoma, Tennessee 

(see map 6). But Rosecrans was quick to get right back on the rail line 

once Bragg retreated. Generally speaking, offensives mounted 

completely beyond the capability of rail or water supply amounted to 

raids: armies could advance deep into enemy territory, but they could 

not stay. The great Confederate offensives of the war all fell into this 

pattern-Antietam and Gettysburg in the east, Perryville and 
10 

Confederate Rail Net and Union Offensives 

Map 5 

Map 6 
11 

Nashville in the west. Likewise, Sherman’s famed “March to the 

Sea’” was essentially a raid culminating in the establishment of a new 

line of supply. 

With armies following rail lines of advance, it was natural that rail 

centers figured prominently as military objectives. Rail lines led to 

rail centers. Moreover, rail centers tended to be important both 

economically and politically. And, of course, cutting the enemy’s 

transportation system by capturing his rail centers would impede his 

ability to wage war. Corinth, Jackson, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and 

Petersburg, all of which were targets in various Union offensives, 

owed much of their military significance to the railroads that passed 

through them. Likewise, the Confederates tried at different times to 

strike the <Union rail centers of St. Louis, Louisville, and Harrisburg 

(see map 7). They did of course take Harper’s Ferry more than once. 

Baltimore was another tempting target. Confederate control of 

Baltimore would have cut the only rail line linking Washington, D.C. 

to the rest of the Union. For that reason, the protection of Baltimore 

was almost as important to the Union as the defense of Washington. 

In addition to the major offensives, smaller-scale raids against 

railroads were a common practice by both sides. Such operations 

were rarely decisive, but they were a very cost-effective way of 

producing “friction” within the enemy’s war machine. 

Uniii Rail Net and Vulnerable Chokepoints 

Map 7 
12 

On a few memorable occasions, the interdiction of rail lines 

proved to be the deciding factor in a campaign. In December 1862 

Major General Earl Van Dorn and Major General Nathan Bedford 

Forrest severed the rail line supporting the first Union campaign 

against Mississippi, causing the Union invaders, commanded by 

Major General Ulysses S, Grant, to break off the operation. In 1864, 

Sherman found that the only way to force General John B. Hood from 

Atlanta was to capture and hold the railroads supplying the city. And 

in 1865, it was the loss of the South Side Railroad that compelled 

General Robert E. Lee to abandon Petersburg and take the road that 

led to Appomattox. 

Clearly> the railroad dominated strategic thinking in the Civil War. 

Other things being equal, most of the factors cited above should have 

favored the Confederates: they were on the strategic defensive, and 

the defender should have better access to raiI communications than 

does an invader. However, in war, “other things” are never equal. As 

in all fields of military endeavor, possessing a crucial asset is not 

enough to ensure success, A great deal depends on how that asset is 

used. 

Civil War generals had to learn “railroad generalship” in the field. 

Robert E. Lee graduated from West Point in 1829-&e same year 

that the first steam locomotive ran in the United States. Needless to 

say, his formal military education included nothing on railroads. The 

situation had changed little, if at all, ten years later when Ulysses S. 

Grant graduated. These men, like other higher commanders, quickly 

learned that railroad generalship was a critical factor at all levels of 

war. 

Railroad generalship at the strategic level dealt with long-distance 

movements of troops and war resources. Since most American 

railroads in the 1860s were still small-scale local enterprises, such 

movements typically, involved coordination among multiple 

corporate entities. Naturally> the military desired priority treatment 

by the railroads, but railroad managers still had an obligation to show 

a profit and to maintain civilian traffic. Railroad corporations, civil 
13 

government, and the military were all involved in this delicate 

balancing act. 

On the Union side, the solution to this challenge involved both 

formal legislation guaranteeing military priorities and an informal 

agreement that the railroads could support the war effort and still turn 

a fair profit. In January 1862, the United States Congress authorized 

President Abraham Lincoln to seize control of the railroads and 

telegraph for military use. The operation of any rail lines seized by 

the military was entrusted to a new War Department agency called 

the U.S. Military Rail Roads (USMRR). In practice, however, the 

USMRR restricted its authority to Southern rail Iines captured in the 

caurse of the war. Except in time of extreme emergency, the military 

counted on cooperation rather than coercion in dealing with Northern 

railroads. Realistically, the military had no choice. Relatively few 

military men were experts in railroad transportation The true experts 

in railroad generalship at the strategic level were the civilian 

executives who managed railroads as a profession. 

The Union government went a step further, by actually 

commissioning civilian railroad men and placing them in positions of 

responsibility within the USMRR. For example, Daniel C. 

McCallum, one-time general superintendent of the Erie Railroad, 

became director and superintendent of the USMRR, with the rank of 

brigadier general. Herman Haupt, once the chief engineer. of the 

Pennsylvania, became chief of construction and transportation in the 

Virginia theater. He also eventually attained the rank of brigadier 

general. At an even higher level, Thamas A. Scott, vice president of 

the Pennsylvania Railroad, served as an assistant secretary of war 

from 1861 to 1862. John W. Garrett, president of the vital and 

vulnerable Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, enjoyed direct access to the 

secretary of war, providing him with technical advice and 

administrative assistance. 

Under the broad authority granted by Congress, and with the 

expertise provided by northern railroad executives, the Union 

government could have created a truly centralized military 

railroad organization with a clear chain of command and effective 
4 

USMRR Organization 

(Actual, c1863) 

Figure 2 

coordination across the various theaters of war. But the Civil War 

took place in an era when the Federal government had neither the 

desire nor the administrative ability to exercise such sweeping 

powers. Consequently, the Union military railroad establishment 

suffered from micromanagement by the secretary of war, 

overlapping authority over the military railroads in Virginia, 

western departments that operated autonomously, and railroads 

that tended to deal directly with local military authorities rather 

than with Washington, D.C. (see figure 2). Despite its flaws, the 

Union railroad system succeeded because it granted authority to 

individuals who knew how to make the trains run. 

Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment of these civilian 

experts was the movement of XI and XII Corps from Virginia to 

Tennessee in 1863, mentioned above (see map 8). On 23 September, 

the president, the secretary of war, the general in chief, and the 

superintendent of the USMRR met to discuss the feasibility of 

moving 25,000 reinforcements to Tennessee. Planning began on 24 

September. The transportation department ofthe Baltimore and Ohio 

Railroad, not the War Department, performed the planning and 

coordinated with the five other civilian railroads involved. On 25 
15 

Administration of XI and XII Corps Move 

Indiana Central 

Jeffersonville, Madi 

Nashville & Chat&moo 

September the first troops boarded cars in Virginia. McCallum, 

superintendent oftheUSMRR, handledthe loading oftroops. Garrett 

and the Baltimore and Ohio staff supervised the move as far as 

Louisville. Scott, who had returned to his position as vice president 

of the Pennsylvania Railroad the year before, accepted the special 

assignment of managing the movement from Louisville to the 

detraining point at Bridgeport, Alabama. From an organizational 

point of view, the most impressive aspect of this operation is that it 

began only two days after it was first proposed. Clearly, the Union 

enjoyed a high order of railroad generalship at the strategic level. 

At the tactical level, railroad generalship meant providing and 

maintaining supply lines for the front-line troops. In many ways, this 

task was even more difficult than strategic-level railroading. 

Problems near the front lines could not be solved by “‘networking” the 

bigwigs. They called for hands-on expertise and hard work. 

Ideally, a tactical rail line would have numerous sidings to allow 

opposing trains to pass, spacious platforms to facilitate unloading, a 

Yvye” for turning trains (a three-point-turn, so to speak), and a 

telegraph system to coordinate train movements (see figure 3). 

Typically, railroads near the front lacked most or all of these 

amenities. Additional problems usually included track that was in 
16 

Figure 3 

poor condition when acquired, not to mention track and bridges 

destroyed by enemy action. Even more serious could be the 

interference of military officers who understood nothing of rail 

operations. Quartermasters at the front would overtax the system by 

demanding supplies in excess of actual requirements, and then insist 

on rail transportation to evacuate those same supplies when 

threatened by enemy capture. Line officers sometimes 

commandeered trains for their units, snarling traffic on single-track 

lines. (During the Confederate evacuation of Atlanta, one officer 

who commandeered a train for his wounded, without telling the 

railroad, caused a head-on collision.) Military officers would 

sometimes refuse to detail their men for the purpose of unloading 

trains, creating congestion that could tie up the entire line. Others 

would seize railroad cars for their own use. Boxcars made fine 

offices and warehouses, but such misuse aggravated an already 

chronic shortage of rolling stock. On top of it all, enemy forces, 

uniformed or irregular, found these tactical rail lines to be lucrative 

targets for sabotage. 

Perhaps no episode illustrates the hazards of tactical rail operations 

quite so well as the Second Bull Run campaign (see map 9). In the last 

days of August 1862, Major General John Pope’s isolated Union army 

was about to receive a pounding from Lee”s Army of Northern Virginia. 

Meanwhile, Union reinforcements from Major General George B. 

McClellan’s Army of the Potomac rushed north by water from the failed 

Peninsula campaign. Upon arrival in Alexandria, McClellan’s troops 
Second Bull Run Campaign 

n 

should have marched the twenty miles or so to Pope’s beleaguered force, 

but instead they jammed into Alexandria and waited for train transport. 

McClellan himself sat on his hands and allowed Herman Haupt, Pope”s 

railroad director, to sort out the mess. Haupt performed miracles in 

rushing troops forward and evacuating supplies threatened with capture, 

but not everybody appreciated his efforts. One commander bringing up 

reinforcements, Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis, stopped four 

trains on the main line near Alexandria and ordered them to transport his 

brigade to the front immediately, even though the troops were not even 

ready to board. Once at the front, Sturgis’ men took their time 

disembarking. The actions of this one irresponsible commander 

completely disrupted Haupt”s work and blocked all other traffic for the 

better part of a day. When Haupt explained to him the importance of 

maintaining rail traf%c for Pope’s endangered army, Sturgis uttered the 

immortal words, “I don’t care for John Pope one pinch of owl dung.” 

It was Herman Haupt, the civilian railroad man in uniform, who 

established a system for tactical rail generalship that eventually came 

into use throughout both the eastern and western theaters. His 
Haupt System: Organization 

I Department 

RR Director I I 

I 

I 

I c orw3 I 1 corps 

1 1 1 I 

Figure 4 

principles were simple and direct and received the blessing of the 

secretary of war. 

1. No military officers were to interfere in the running of trains. 

2. Supplies would be sent forward only as needed. 

3. Trains reaching the front were to be unloaded immediately by 

anyone available. Officers who refused to cooperate faced dismissal. 

4. Where telegraph communications were unavailable, trains 

would run according to a rigid schedule. All trains departed on 

schedule, fully loaded or not. Extra trains would pick up the slack. 

5. On lines where the absence of sidings prevented opposing 

trains from passing each other, convoys of five or six trains would 

travel as a group. Each convoy delivered its cargo and returned to 

base before the next convoy started out. 

By 1863, Haupt controlled an organization of full-time 

transportation experts to run the military railroads in Virginia. He 

organized his work force into distinct construction and operations 

functions (see figure 4). The Construction Corps was responsible for 

making rail lines fit for military use. It consisted of professional civil 

engineers, skilled workmen, and manual laborers who were provided 

with stocks of materials, tools, and their own transport. Among their 
Rails to Gettmbure 

Ge 

MD A 

of the 

Potomac 

Frederick 1 

Harper’s V 

Ferry I 

Westminster 

materials were prefabricated components to speed the repair of 

damaged track and bridges. The corps was organized into selfsufficient divisions, any one of which could respond to a crisis in its 

assigned sector and put rails in order without outside assistance or 

detailed direction from above. The Construction Corps stressed 

speed, not permanence, in its work. By war’s end, construction corps 

in the various theaters employed 10,000 men, many of whom were 

ex-slaves. 

The Transportation Corps performed routine maintenance and 

operated the trains just as the Transportation Department of a civilian 

railroad would do. In fact, most of its personnel were civilian railroad 

men hired for government service. It too was organized into 

divisions with responsibility for specific sections of the line. 

Haupt’s finest hour came during the Gettysburg campaign of 1863 

(see map 10) The campaign began with the Union Army of the 

Potomac situated near its railhead at Aquia Creek. As the army 

marched north, railheads opened successively on the Baltimore and 

Ohio, Western Maryland, and Gettysburg lines. The Baltimore and 
20 

Ohio was a first-class railroad, but neither the Western Maryland nor 

the Gettysburg was fit for heavy-duty use. The government seized 

control of both lines, and Haupt went to work. Construction teams 

replaced bridges and repaired track torn up by Confederate raiders, 

Transportation crews brought in Iocomotives and cars from the 

USMRR lines in Virginia. By 4 July Haupt had the decrepit Western 

Maryland running at five times its normal capacity. It delivered 

1,500 tons of supplies per day to Westminster in the days following 

the battle. The Gettysburg Railroad opened for traffic in time to assist 

in the evacuation of 16,000 wounded soldiers. It is important to 

remember that when the Army of the Potomac started marching north 

from Virginia, not even the army commander knew where it would 

end up, but Haupt and the USMRR were able to maintain virtually 

continuous rail support throughout the campaign of maneuver. 

During the Gettysburg campaign Haupt had the advantage of 

falling back on pre-existing rail lines already under friendly control. 

But by 1864, construction crews of the USMRR, organized along the 

lines established by Haupt (who had returned to civilian life), were 

actually able to keep pace with armies invading the Confederate 

heartland. They repaired track as fast as the combat troops could 

advance and maintained a plentiful flow of supplies. Sherman’s 

campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta in the spring and summer of 

that year is perhaps the best example of a rail line being rebuilt as part 

of an army’s advance, and then maintained despite repeated 

disruption by enemy raiders (see map 11). Construction crews laid a 

total of seventy-five miles of new track and built eleven major 

bridges during the campaign. Union supply trains rolled into Atlanta 

one day after Sherman? troops entered the city. Subsequently, fulltime repair teams, posted at intervals along the track, plus 

construction trains stationed at each end ofthe line, kept the rails open 

despite incessant raids by the Confederates. 

Also in 1864, the USMRR allowed Grant’s army in Virginia to 

finally crack the Rappahannock River line and drive toward 

Richmond. During the Wilderness and Spotsylvania battles, Grant 

relied on the old Aquia Creek line of supply. He then shifted his base 

to Port Royal on the Rappahannock where water transport served as 
21 

Atlanta Campaign, 1864 

his line of communications. Upon moving south from the North 

Arma River toward Cold Harbor,‘Grant directed elements of Major 

General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James to occupy White 

House on the Parnunkey River (a tributary of the York River) deep in 

enemy territory (see map 12). The USMRR opened and operated a 

section of the Richmond and York River Railroad from White House 

to Dispatch. Grant then advanced toward this new supply base. 

Later, when Grant passed south of the James River, the USMRR put 

the City Point and Petersburg Railroad into operation (see map 13). 

In the ensuing months, as Grant’s army extended its siege lines south 

and west around Petersburg, the USMRR laid new track to facilitate 

supply ofthe Union left wing. Grant’s army, supplied by one jerrybuilt but professionally operated railroad, fared better logistically 

than did Lee’s Confederates in Petersburg, who had several preexisting rail lines at their disposal. 

What of the Confederates? They too relied heavily on railroads at 

both the strategic and tactical levels and conducted many noteworthy 
22 

Grant’s Campaign, l&64 

Map 12 

troop movements in the course of the war. However, the 

Confederacy began the war with a fragmented and incomplete rail 

system (9,000 miles, as opposed to 20,000 miles in the north). Unlike 

the Union, the Confederacy lacked the manufacturing capacity to 

expand, or even maintain, its railroad infrastructure once the fighting 

began. Moreover, it was not until February 1865 that the Confederate 

government asserted its authority over the railroads. For most of the 

war, military traffic moved only at the discretion of civilian railroad 

managers. There was no Confederate equivalent of Thomas A. Scott 

or .Tohn W. Garrett who possessed both the expertise and the authority 

to mesh military requirements with corporate capabilities. There was 

no Confederate Herman A. Haupt to institutionalize and enforce the 

procedures for effective tactical raiI operations, and no Confederate 

Military Rail Roads to operate Tines in immediate support of the 

armies. The Confederate military rail effort operated under all of the 

problems that plagued its Union counterpart, but it lacked the expert, 

centralized guidance that enabled Union railroads to do their job. One 

example serves to illustrate the point: during the winter of 1863-64, 
23 

Petersburg Owrations, 1864-65 

Richmond & Petersburg 

Confederate Lines A 

Map 13 

when the Union Army of the Potomac subsisted happily on the 

deliveries of the Aquia Creek line, Lee” s Army of Northern Virginia 

suffered hunger, even though it had a direct, thirty-mile rail link to the 

national capital. Supplies for the troops were available, but the 

Confederate authorities could not get them to the front. 

Clearly, the railroad was a major factor in shaping strategy during 

the Civil War. Railroads dictated the strength and direction of many 

military operations. Railroads may have helped to protract the war by 

making it difficult to win battles of annihilation And Union 

superiority in railroad generalship provided the logistical foundation 

for the campaigns of 1864 and 1865 that doomed the Confederacy to 

defeat. 

The railroad remained a vital element of military science after 

Appomattox. When we look ahead in time and across the ocean to the 

outbreak of World War 1: we find that Germany’s Schlieffen Plan and 

France’s Plan XVII consisted largely of highly detailed railroad 

timetables for the mobilization and deployment of troops. In a very 

real sense, railway transportation was no longer just a part of strategy, 
24 

it had become strategy in its own right. The American Civil War was 

the first conflict in which railroads played a dominant role, thus 

introducing to the world a military instrument that changed the face 

of warfare forever. 
25 

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Billings, John D. Hardtack and Co&e: The Unwritten Story of Army Lije, 

1861-286.5. Gansevoort, NY: Corner House Historical Publications, 1996 

(original edition 1887). 

Black, Robert C. The Railroads of the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: University of 

North Carolina Press, 1952. 

Engels, Donald W. Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian 

Army Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978. 

Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U S. Grant. New York: Charles L. 

Webster & Co., 1885. 

Huston, James A. The Sinews of War: Army Logistics 177.5-1953. Washington, 

DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1966. 

Kamm, Samuel R&hey. The Civil War Career ofThomas A. Scott. Philadelphia: 

University of Pennsylvania, 1940. 

Lord, Francis A. LincolnS Raidroad Man: Herman Haupt. Rutherford, NJ: 

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969. 

Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General W I: Sherman. New York: D. 

Appleton & Co., 1875. 

Turner, George Edgar. Kctary Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place ofRaiiroads in 

the Civil Wac Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992 (1953). 

The War of the Rebellion: A Compihtion afthe Oficial Record ofthe Union and 

Confederate Armies. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Offrce, 

1899. 

Westwood, John. Railwqsat War. SanDiego, CA: Howell-NorthBooks, 1980. 

Weber, Thomas. TheNorthern Railroa& in the Civil War 1861-186.5~ New York: 

King’s Crown Press [Columbia University], 1952. 

c 
Dr. G&e1 received his undermaduate