Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation by Earl J. Hess

Abstract

Reviewed by: Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation by Earl J. Hess David Fitzpatrick Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation. By Earl J. Hess. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Pp. xxii, 341. $45.95, ISBN 978-0-8071-6750-2.) Lieutenant General Frederick Franks, the commander of the U.S. Seventh Corps during Operation Desert Storm, told author Tom Clancy, "if you [End Page 1011] forget logistics, you lose" (Tom Clancy, Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment [New York, 1994], p. 37). Yet far too many historians of the Civil War, whether focusing on the war in general or on individual battles and campaigns, have all but forgotten this vital aspect of warfare or address it almost as an afterthought. Earl J. Hess's latest work, Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation, gives focus to this vital subject. As its subtitle conveys, the work is not about all aspects of military logistics, just the transportation of men and supplies in support of ground operations, and in that limited scope it is a marvelous piece of scholarship. After an illuminating chapter that provides a brief narrative of the history of military transportation up to the Civil War, Hess delves into the specifics of that conflict. He identifies four categories of transportation (the river-based system, the rail-based system, the coastal shipping system, and wagon trains) and dedicates a chapter to each, outlining their organizations, costs, strengths, and shortcomings. More attention is paid to the Union side of the problem than to the Confederate, due primarily, as Hess notes, to the dearth of primary sources regarding rebel efforts. But Hess then explores other issues. There is a fascinating chapter that details the use of "Pack Trains, Cattle Herds, and Foot Power" (chap. 7). One of its revelations is the importance of beef on the hoof to Union operations and the unpleasantness of turning those animals into food. While encamped near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in early 1863, William Rosecrans's army butchered fifty to sixty head of cattle every day. The resulting refuse, Hess makes clear, violated the senses of soldiers and civilians alike, and a serious health hazard was avoided only by detailing men to dig pits and bury the carcasses. Pleasant duty, indeed! Another absorbing chapter outlines the employment of Union and Confederate transportation systems to transfer large numbers of soldiers between and within theaters of war. Hess, of course, describes the well-known details of the transfer of James Longstreet's corps to the western theater just prior to the battle of Chickamauga, as well as the Union's transfer of its Eleventh and Twelfth Corps to that theater in the battle's aftermath. But he also recounts the details of less familiar movements, among them that of John Schofield's force from Tennessee to near Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1865, as well as the transfer of Union units to the Texas frontier at war's end. Hess concludes, much as did Jay Luvaas nearly sixty years ago regarding military affairs, that Europeans learned little from the American experience in the Civil War. "European military use of modern transportation," according to Hess, "spun out along its own course of development with precious little in the way of lessons learned from the American experience" (p. 271). But he finds this lack of knowledge just as true of the United States as it was of Europe, the transportation debacle of the Spanish-American War revealing that the Civil War experience had been almost totally forgotten. This is an enlightening volume on an important if oft-neglected subject. I recommend it highly. [End Page 1012] David Fitzpatrick Washtenaw Community College Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association