I fear that I may be compelled to-night to do what may appear inhuman—turn out the sick in the street. Doctors will persist in sending sick, often without papers, to get them off their hands, and we cannot send forward the troops if we must run our trains to Washington with sick to stand for hours unloaded. My first care is to send forward troops, next forage and subsistence.
Still more serious were the irregularities due to delays in the unloading of trucks and the return of empties. The amount of rolling stock available was already inadequate to meet requirements; but the effect of the shortage was rendered still worse by reason of these delays, due, in part, to the too frequent insufficiency of the force available for unloading a train of supplies with the expedition that should have been shown, and in part to the retention of the cars for weeks together as storehouses; though the main cause, perhaps, was the inability of military men, inexperienced in railway working, to appreciate, as railwaymen would do, the need of getting the greatest possible use out of rolling stock in times of emergency, and not allowing it to stand idle longer than absolutely necessary.
How such delays interfered with the efficiency of the railways was indicated in one of Haupt's oft-repeated protests, in which he wrote:—
If all cars on their arrival at a depôt are immediately loaded or unloaded and returned, and trains are run to schedule, a single-track road, in good order and properly equipped, may supply an army of 200,000 men when, if these conditions are not complied with, the same road will not supply 30,000.
On July 9, 1863, he telegraphed to General M. C. Meigs:—
I am on my way to Gettysburg again. Find things in great confusion. Road blocked; cars not unloaded; stores ordered to Gettysburg—where they stand for a long time, completely preventing all movement there—ordered back without unloading; wounded lying for hours without ability to carry them off. All because the simple rule of promptly unloading and returning cars is violated.
As for the effect of all these conditions on the military situation as a whole, this is well shown in the following "Notice," which, replying to complaints that railwaymen had not treated the military officers with proper respect, Haupt addressed "To agents and other employés of the United States Military Railroad Department":—
While conscious of no disposition to shield the employés or agents of the Military Railroads from any censure or punishment that is really merited, justice to them requires me to state that, so far, examination has shown that complaints against them have been generally without proper foundation, and, when demands were not promptly complied with, the cause has been inability, arising from want of proper notice, and not indisposition.
Officers at posts entrusted with the performance of certain local duties, and anxious, as they generally are, to discharge them efficiently, are not always able, or disposed, to look beyond their own particular spheres. They expect demands on railway agents to be promptly complied with, without considering that similar demands, at the same time, in addition to the regular train service and routine duties, may come from Quartermasters, Commissaries, medical directors, surgeons, ordnance officers, the Commanding General, the War Department and from other sources. The Military Railroads have utterly failed to furnish transportation to even one-fifth of their capacity when managed without a strict conformity to schedule and established rules. Punctuality and discipline are even more important to the operation of a railroad than to the movement of an army; and they are vital in both.
It is doubtful if even the Confederate raiders and wreckers had, by their destructive tactics, diminished the efficiency of the Union railways to the extent of the four-fifths here attributed to the irregularities and shortcomings of the Federals themselves. The clearest proof was thus afforded that, if the new arm in warfare which rail-power represented was to accomplish all it was capable of doing, it would have to be saved from friends quite as much as from foes.
Haupt, as we have seen, suffered much from officers during the time he was connected with the Military Railroads in Virginia. He had the sympathetic support of the Commander-in-Chief, who telegraphed to him on one occasion (August 23, 1862), "No military officer will give any orders to your subordinates except through you, nor will any of them attempt to interfere with the running of trains"; and, also, of the Assistant Secretary of War, who sought to soothe him in a message which said:—"Be patient as possible with the Generals. Some of them will trouble you more than they will the enemy." But the abuses which arose were so serious that, in the interest of the military position itself, they called for a drastic remedy; and this was provided for by the issue of the following Order:—