VI. Hospital stores, ammunition, Quartermaster’s Stores, and subsistence stores in bulk will be transported in special trains.
VII. Commanding officers will be held responsible that the reduction above ordered, especially of officers’ baggage, is carried into effect at once, and Corps commanders are specially charged to see that this responsibility is enforced.
VIII. On all marches, Quartermasters will accompany and conduct their trains, under the orders of their commanding officers, so as never to obstruct the movement of troops.
IX. All Quartermasters and Commissaries of Subsistence will attend in person to the receipt and issue of supplies for their commands, and will keep themselves constantly informed of the situation of the depots, roads, etc.
By command of Major General McClellan:
S. WILLIAMS,
Assistant Adjutant General.
Official:
Aide-de-Camp.
This order quite distinctly shows some of the valuable lessons taught by that eventful campaign before Richmond, more especially the necessity of limiting the amount of camp equipage and the transportation to be used for that purpose. But it further outlines the beginnings of the Supply Trains, and to these I wish to direct special attention.
I have thus far only referred to the transportation provided for the camp equipage; but subsistence for man and beast must be taken along; clothing, to replace the wear and tear of service, must be provided; ammunition in quantity and variety must be at ready command; intrenching tools were indispensable in an active campaign,—all of which was most forcibly demonstrated on the Peninsula. Some effort, I believe, was made to establish these trains before that campaign began, but everything was confusion when compared with the system which was now inaugurated by Colonel (now General) Rufus Ingalls, when he became Chief Quartermaster of the Army of the Potomac. Through his persevering zeal, trains for the above purposes were organized. All strife for the lead on the march vanished, for every movement was governed by orders from army headquarters under the direction of the chief quartermaster. He prescribed the roads to be travelled over, which corps trains should lead and which should bring up the rear, where more than one took the same roads. All of the corps trains were massed before a march, and the chief quartermaster of some corps was selected and put in charge of this consolidated train. The other corps quartermasters had charge of their respective trains, each in turn having his division and brigade quartermasters, subject to his orders. “There never was a corps better organized than was the quartermaster’s corps with the Army of the Potomac in 1864,” says Grant in his Memoirs.