All the window-weights in all the houses, and all the other leaden things that could be melted down, were converted into bullets. Even then we ran dreadfully short towards the end of the war. At Petersburg, good soldiers felt it to be their duty to spend all their spare time in collecting the multitudinous bullets with which the ground was everywhere strewn. These battered missiles turned into the arsenals were remoulded and came back to us in the form of effective, fixed ammunition.
When we marched to meet Grant in the Wilderness, in the spring of 1864, we were about the most destitute army that ever marched to meet anybody, anywhere. We had nothing to transport, and we had no transportation.
At the beginning of every campaign it is customary for the commanding general to issue an order, setting forth the allotment of baggage wagons to officers and men. Just before we marched that spring some wag in the army had printed and circulated a mock order from General Lee, a copy of which now lies before me.
General Orders, Number 1.
Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia,
April 20, 1864.
The allotment of baggage wagons to the officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia during the coming campaign will be as follows:—
To every thirty officers.... No baggage wagon.
To every three hundred men.... Ditto.
(Signed) Robert E. Lee, General.
This order was a good-natured forgery, of course. Nevertheless it was carried out to the letter. The fact is that we had no baggage and no baggage wagons. The only baggage wagons I ever heard of in connection with that campaign were a few that General D. H. Hill summoned for a special occasion. His musicians put in a petition at the beginning of the summer’s work for wagons to carry their instruments. He assented instantly, and ordered the wagons brought up. As soon as the instruments were comfortably deposited within them, he turned to his quartermaster and said: “Send those wagons to Richmond.” Then turning to his adjutant he said: “Have muskets issued to these men immediately.”
General D. H. Hill was not a man from whose orders anybody under him was disposed to appeal.