"At Richmond, Virginia, 300,000 rations bread and meat; at Danville,
500,000 rations bread; at Danville, 1,500,000 rations meat; at
Lynchburg, 180,000 rations bread and meat; at Greensboro, North
Carolina, and vicinity, 1,500,000 rations bread and meat.
"In addition, there were considerable supplies of tea, coffee, and sugar carefully reserved for hospital issues chiefly. These returns did not include the subsistence collections by the field-trains of the Army of Northern Virginia, under orders from its own headquarters, nor the depot collections at Charlottesville, Staunton, and other points upon the Virginia Central Railroad, to meet requisitions from the Confederates operating in the Valley and western Virginia. South and west of Greensboro, North Carolina, the depot accumulations were reserved first to meet requisitions for the forces operating in the Carolinas, and the surplus for Virginia requisitions. . . ."
The report then refers to a conference between the Secretary of War
(Breckinridge) and the General commanding (Lee) with the
Quartermaster-General (Lawton) and the Commissary-General (St. John).
After a general discussion of the wants of the army in clothing,
forage, and subsistence, to an inquiry by General Lee, General St.
John replied:
"That a daily delivery by cars and canal-boats, at or near Richmond, of about five hundred tons of commissaries' stores was essential to provide for the Richmond siege reserve and other accumulations desired by the General commanding; that the depot collections were already sufficient to assure the meeting of these requisitions, and, if the then existing military lines could be held, the Commissary-General felt encouraged as to the future of his own immediate department."
The procuring of supplies was only one of the difficulties by which we were beset. The deteriorated condition of the railroads and the deficiency of rolling-stock embarrassed transportation, and there was yet another: the cavalry raids of the enemy frequently broke the railroads and destroyed trains. General Lawton, with great energy and good judgment, under the heavy pressure of the circumstances, improved the railroad transportation. I quote again from the report of General St. John:
"Upon the earliest information of the approaching evacuation, instructions were asked from the War Department and the General commanding for the final disposition of the subsistence reserve in Richmond, then reported by Major Claiborne, post commissary, to exceed in quantity 350,000 rations. The reply, 'Send up the Danville Railroad if Richmond is not safe,' was received from the army headquarters, April 2, 1865, and too late for action, as all railroad transportation had then been taken up, by superior orders, for the archives, bullion, and other Government service, then deemed of prior importance. All that remained to be done was to fill every accessible army-wagon; and this was done, and the trains were hurried southward."
It will be seen from this statement that the reply was only directed to the removal of the subsistence reserve if Richmond was not safe. It can not be supposed that such a reply emanated from General Lee, as he surely never contemplated an attempt to hold Richmond after Petersburg was evacuated. General St. John then adds:
"On March 31st, or possibly the morning of April 1st, a telegram was received at the bureau in Richmond, from the commissary officer of the Army of Northern Virginia, requesting breadstuffs to be sent to Petersburg. Shipment was commenced at once, and was pressed to the extreme limit of transportation permitted by the movement of General Longstreet's corps (then progressing southward). No calls, by letter or requisition, from the General commanding, or from any other source, official or unofficial, had been received either by the Commissary-General or the Assistant Commissary-General; nor (as will be seen by the appended letter of the Secretary of War) was any communication transmitted through the department channels to the bureau of subsistence, for the collection of supplies at Amelia Court-House. Had any such requisition or communication been received at the bureau as late as the morning of April 1st, it could have been met from the Richmond reserve with transportation on south-bound trains, and most assuredly so previous to General Longstreet's movement."
On the morning of the 3d the Commissary-General left Richmond and joined General R. E. Lee at Amelia Springs. There were at that time about eighty thousand rations at Farmville, "there held on trains for immediate use." On the morning of the 6th the Commissary-General asked General Lee whether he should send those rations down the railroad or hold them at Farmville. Not receiving instructions, the rations remained at Farmville, and on the 7th the army passing there took a portion of them. On the morning of the 8th the subsistence trains on the railroad at Pamphlin's Station, twenty miles west of Farmville, were attacked by the enemy's cavalry and captured, or burned to avoid capture. The surrender followed on the subsequent day. The foregoing extracts, I think, prove unquestionably that no orders were received to place supplies for Lee's army at Amelia Court-House; that sufficient supplies were in depot to answer the immediate wants of the army, and that the failure to distribute them to the troops on their retreat was due to the active operations of the enemy on all our lines of communication; hence, when the Commissary-General applied to General Lee for instructions as to where supplies should be placed, he says, "General Lee replied in substance that the military situation did not permit an answer." Lest, however, what has been given should not seem conclusive to others, I add confirmatory testimony. General John C. Breckinridge, in a letter to General I. M. St. John, of date May 16, 1871, wrote:
"A few days before the evacuation of Richmond you reported to me that besides supplies accumulated at different distant points in Virginia and North Carolina, you had ten days' rations accessible by rail to [General Lee] and subject to the orders of his chief commissary. I have no recollection of any communication from General Lee in regard lo the accumulation of rations at Amelia Court-House. . . . The second or third day after the evacuation, I recollect you said to General Lee in my presence that you had a large number of rations (I think eighty thousand) at a convenient point on the railroad, and desired to know where you should place them. The General replied that the military situation made it impossible to answer."