Black Silk and Gold Cord: Staff and Headquarters Operations in the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865

By J. Boone Bartholomees

Black Silk and Gold Cord (taken from contemporary regulations for the uniform of a staff officer) is a study of how the Army of the Potomac, the Union army in the eastern theater during the US Civil War, organized and conducted headquarters and staff operations. Subjects covered include personnel management, logistics, engineering, pay, rations and subsistence, ordnance, railroad management, medical, signal, chaplain, provost marshal, and judge advocate affairs, as well as planning and supervision of combat and intelligence operations. The study examines staff selection, training, procedures, processes, authority, and relations with commanders. It focuses at corps and higher level, although there is some discussion of division and brigade headquarters. Black Silk and Gold Cord also provides details of headquarters facilities and life. A separate chapter examines Ulysses Grant's headquarters and staff (not a part of the Army of the Potomac). Includes maps, a collection of pictures, a bibliography, and hyperlinked endnotes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Boone Bartholomees
• Release date: Feb 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301517091

J. Boone Bartholomees

J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr. is a retired U.S. Army infantry colonel who served in a variety of staff positions from battalion level to the Army staff in the pentagon. He holds a PhD in Military History from Duke University and is the author of Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons: Staff and Headquarters Operations in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 as well as award winning articles on the theory of war and strategy. He is a Professor of Military History and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College where he held the General Dweight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Strategy (a rotating honary chair for distinguished faculty) and served as Chariman of the Department of National Security and Strategy.

Book preview

Black Silk and Gold Cord

Staff and Headquarters Operations in the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865

by

J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr.

Colonel (Retired), PhD

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Copyright J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr. 2013

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The views expressed in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the US Army War College, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the US Government.

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Paragraph 1480 Hat Trim: For Officers of the Adjutant-General's, Inspector General's, Quartermaster's, Subsistence, Medical, and Pay Departments, and for Judge Advocates, above the rank of Captain—the same as for General Officers, except the cord, which will be black silk and gold.

Article LI, United States Army Regulations, 1861 (Revised)

Cover is a photograph of a modern example of a Union staff officer’s hat showing the black silk and gold cord.

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Table of Contents

Illustrations

Maps

Preface

Introduction

1. Staff Organization

2. The General Staff in the Army of the Potomac: Chief of Staff, Adjutant General, and Commissary of Musters

3. The General Staff in the Army of the Potomac: Chief Quartermaster

4. The General Staff in the Army of the Potomac: Commissary of Subsistence, Assistant Inspector General, and Paymaster

5. The General Staff in the Army of the Potomac: Medical Director

6. The Special Staff in the Army of the Potomac: Chief of Artillery, Chief of Ordnance, and Chief of Cavalry

7. Special Staff in the Army of the Potomac: Chief of Engineers and Chief of Topographical Engineers

8. Special Staff in the Army of the Potomac: Chief of Signal and United States Military Telegraph

9. Personal Staff in the Army of the Potomac: Aide-de-Camp, Provost Marshal, Chaplain, and Judge Advocate General

10. Ulysses S. Grant’s Staff and the Armies Operating Against Richmond

11. Headquarters Personnel and Life

12. Staff Selection and Training

13. Staff Authority and Relations with the Commander

14. Staff Procedures and Planning

15. Intelligence and Counterintelligence

16. Staff Combat Functions

Bibliography

Endnotes

The Author

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Illustrations

People

Army Commanders

Corps Commanders

Chiefs of Staff

Assistant Adjutant Generals

Quartermasters

US Military Railroad

Commissary of Subsistence

Medical Directors

Chief of Artillery

Chief of Cavalry

Chiefs of Engineers and Topographical Engineers

Chief of Signal

US Military Telegraph

Grant and his Chief of Staff

Headquarters Personnel

Bureau of Military Intelligence Personnel

Facilities

Wagon Park

US Military Railroads

Quartermaster Depots and Facilities

Commissary of Subsistence Facilities

Medical Facilities

Siege Trains

Ordnance Facilities

Mobility Operations

Signal Facilities

US Military Telegraph Facilities

Armies Operating Against Richmond Headquarters Facilities

Army Headquarters Facilities

Balloons

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Maps

The Eastern Theater

Selected Battles

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Preface

This book is a companion to the earlier work, Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons, on the staff system of the Army of Northern Virginia. It is not, however, a clone. Black Silk and Gold Cord mimics its predecessor in taking its name from the uniform regulations, in general topics examined, and in organizational structure. Otherwise, this is a completely different work. The reason is obvious. The staff system of the Army of the Potomac differed fundamentally from that of its opponent. The author is not as convinced that the difference between the staff systems affected performance as dramatically as some historians, but it inevitably produced a different study. Like Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons, this book is for a specific audience. I assume that anyone with enough interest to read a scholarly book on the subject of Civil War staffs, has more than a passing knowledge of and interest in that war. There is, therefore, no attempt to explain or locate spatially or temporally battles and campaigns. There is a map of the eastern theater to help locate places, but it was impossible to include on the map every site mentioned in the text. Similarly, there is no biographical data for major characters, usually commanders, with whom a Civil War audience should be familiar.

Again following the example of Buff Facings, I have interpreted what constitutes the Army of the Potomac liberally. I include under that general heading Irvin McDowell’s Union Army of Northern Virginia at First Manassas; John Pope’s Army of Virginia in the Second Manassas campaign; Nathaniel Banks’s corps before it became successively V Corps, Army of the Potomac, II Corps, Army of Virginia, and XII Corps, Army of the Potomac; Ambrose Burnside’s IX Corps during the early phase of the 1864 Overland campaign when it was directly under Grant; and portions of Phil Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah in 1864 that were traditionally associated with the Army of the Potomac. Conversely, there is no analysis of the staff of the XVIII Corps of the Army of the James when it operated with the Army of the Potomac, although that corps figures occasionally in the text. XI and XII Corps drop from consideration after their departure from the eastern theater to join the Army of the Cumberland in September 1863, and evidence from IX Corps during the period it was on extended detached service with Burnside outside the Army of the Potomac’s area of operations is used sparingly.

Further, anyone working with the Army of the Potomac faces the problem of Ulysses S. Grant. Despite popular misperception both at the time and today, Grant did not command the Army of the Potomac. Nevertheless, he was inextricably intertwined with its operations, and it is often difficult to draw a clear distinction between his extremely close supervision of that army and formal command. I have chosen to deal with Grant, the staff of the Armies Operating Against Richmond, and their joint relationship with the Army of the Potomac in a separate chapter. Regardless, Grant and his staff necessarily appear throughout the text. Finally, unlike the companion volume that delved into Confederate staffs to brigade level, this book focuses primarily on division and higher-level organizations with the major emphasis on the corps and army staffs. Although Army of the Potomac brigade staffs are not completely ignored and evidence on them is presented where appropriate or necessary, they were too numerous for exhaustive consideration. For the same reason, the treatment of division staffs is incomplete.

The author’s intent is to combine training as a historian with experience as a staff officer to draw conclusions about the Army of the Potomac’s staff system. That is a formidable task, since the relevant material is virtually limitless—anything written by or about anyone in the army potentially reflects some aspect of staff responsibility. Faced with the dilemma of more material than is manageable, I consciously limited research to published primary material, the archival records at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, and a few reliable secondary sources. In isolated cases, such as Edwin Fishel’s Secret War for the Union about intelligence operations, where a modern author has done extensive research on a specific aspect of staff operations, there is no need to reinvent the wheel and this study can lean heavily on the existing body of knowledge. In such cases, I do not necessarily accept the authors’ interpretations as readily as I accept their research. Facilities like the National Archives hold millions of scraps of evidence that bear directly or indirectly on the subject of staff operations. I do not believe pouring over them would fundamentally change my interpretation. Except in isolated instances, space limitations prohibit giving more than one or two examples to illustrate points. I have tried to avoid repeating examples, so the reader will encounter anecdotes that demonstrate points beyond the ones for which they are used. That is intentional; such cases simply reinforce the overall thesis.

I began writing this book for standard paper publication and only later changed to the epub format. That introduced some limitations. I believe I have successfully worked through the idiosyncrasies of the format changes, but some may remain based on the large number of e-readers, file types, and reading options. I apologize for any inconvenience. To save space and file size and to avoid irritating hops to endnotes because of inadvertent touches, I consolidated endnotes as much as possible. Should the reader inadvertently find him/herself at an endnote, touching the note number will take you back to the endnote in the text. In many cases, consolidating endnotes resulted in paragraphs with quotations and other citable material that do not have an endnote. When that occurs, the next endnote contains the appropriate citation.

I cannot count the people, beginning with my wife and family, who ask why Buff Facingsand Gilt Buttons did not have pictures—the answer has to do with the availability of good photographs of Confederate staffs. That is not a problem with the Army of the Potomac, which received good contemporary photographic coverage. Thus, I have included a selection of contemporary pictures to illustrate specific personalities, facilities, and activities. These are necessarily limited by file size constraints. Those interested in pursuing the photographic record in more depth should check the extensive on-line collection of the Library of Congress cited in the bibliography.

This book would have been impossible without the assistance of numerous people. The great professionals at the United States Army Military History Institute of the Army Heritage and Education Center at Carlisle Barracks were indispensable in this respect. Len Fullenkamp, my friend and office-mate, suffered through interminable discussions on this arcane subject and gave useful feedback on ideas and drafts. My wife, Sharon, cheerfully tolerated long periods of semi-isolation when I was closeted in my basement office struggling through the research and writing process. She gave encouragement and support that were as valuable as any direct contribution to the manuscript. Despite the great effort of all those people, mistakes of fact or interpretation are mine alone.

Over years of closely scrutinizing the Army of the Potomac, I grew to like its staff officers and admire their system. Neither was perfect; both had warts and made mistakes, but in the end they turned in a credible performance. I hope I can convey to the reader some of the respect I gained for those long-dead soldiers.

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Introduction

The organization that would become the Army of the Potomac had an inauspicious beginning. War Department General Order 26, issued May 27, 1861, formed a special geographic department encompassing the territory generally north of the James River, east of the Allegheny Mountains, and south of the Maryland state line. The order, essentially the birth announcement of the Army of the Potomac, did not even give the new department a name. However, the army that grew from that humble beginning would be the major Union army in the primary theater of the Civil War. In the words of one of its commanders, George B. McClellan, It is the task of the Army of the Potomac to decide the question at issue. At times, the Army of the Potomac’s territory extended as far north as Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Conversely, in September 1862 the same George McClellan who thought his command would decide the issue of the war virtually disbanded the Army of the Potomac on his own. Discouraged by having to send troops to support John Pope’s Army of Virginia, McClellan told his staff to drop the heading ‘Army of the Potomac,’ and say from the present simply ‘Headquarters.’(1) The Army of the Potomac suffered similar highs and lows in combat. Sometimes, it looked like the inept foil of the Confederates; sometimes it clearly had the measure of its adversary. Part of the reason for both the successes and failures of the army was its staff—like the army as a whole, the staff system had an uneven history.

The Army of the Potomac reflected the larger institution from which it rose. The United States Army entered the Civil War as a collection of regiments and companies scattered in remote garrison locations. Geographic Military Departments formed the only basis of higher organization. At the national level, the staff bureaus were well established but of little direct help to forces in the field. The exigencies of large-scale war proved this system lacking. On the field at First Manassas, Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, a protégée of politically powerful fellow-Ohioan Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and a member of the venerable Winfield Scott’s staff, but otherwise an unlikely army commander, tried to personally perform all the duties necessary to coordinate a large army in combat. His staff could give little help. Only nineteen staff officers were present for duty at the army headquarters, and they struggled with their most basic responsibilities. For example, during the advance from Washington, the army staff completely lost track of two subordinate units for long periods. Nothing improved as the army closed with the enemy. McDowell, either because of mistrust of the staff, personal preference, or lack of experience, wasted time and energy doing a personal reconnaissance that contributed little to his understanding of the situation. Once committed to battle, the commanding general attempted to maneuver the subordinate units himself. Such a personal system of command, which might have worked with different forces on smaller battlefields in an earlier age, broke down under the conditions of Civil War combat.

McDowell could only personally control the troops in his immediate vicinity—and he could not be everywhere or always at the crucial point on the field. A critic suggested he should have had someone in the rear with full authority to manage reinforcements, as Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston did for the Confederates. McDowell was a new commander, unused to handling large bodies of troops in either peace or war, and unable to visualize the entire battlefield. He did not have help; he certainly did not have Joe Johnston. What he had was a makeshift, raw, and untrained staff trying to execute a complex plan. Later analysts blamed much of McDowell's tactical failure at Manassas on a staff too small and inexperienced to relieve the commander from distracting details.(2) Such criticism is not a recent phenomenon.

Contemporary European observers, accustomed to large units and efficient staffs, were uncharitable to the American Civil War military establishment. They especially denigrated the staffs that supported American commanders—particularly early in the war. A French officer, Camille F. Pisani, visiting with Prince Napoleon during August 1861, wrote home, I even took the liberty of telling him [George B. McClellan] how surprised we were, as Frenchmen, to see the complete lack of a hierarchical constitution for the command of higher officers, in other words the complete lack of a permanent military organization beyond the regimental organization.(3) Another French critique, this one on Army of the Potomac staff work during the advance on Williamsburg in 1862, is typical of the European attitude.

There is no special branch of the service whose duty it is to regulate, centralize and direct the movements of the army. In such a case as this of which we are speaking, we should have seen the General Staff Officers of a French army taking care that nothing should impede the advance of the troops, stopping a file of wagons here and ordering it out of the road to clear the way, sending for a detail of men there to repair the roadway or to draw a cannon out of the mire, in order to communicate to every corps commander the orders of the General-in-Chief.

Here nothing of the sort is done. The functions of the adjutant-general are limited to the transmission of the orders of the general. He has nothing to do with seeing that they are executed. The general has no one to bear his orders but aides-de-camp who have the best intentions in the world, and are excellent at repeating mechanically a verbal order, but to whom nobody pays much attention if they undertake to exercise any initiative whatever.

Of course, the commentator, the Prince de Joinville, may not have been as astute as he believed, since he thought the Confederates had a more efficient staff system than the Army of the Potomac. European observers who saw a more competent staff system in operation later in the war still found few American practices beyond medical/sanitary procedures and railroad repair techniques to recommend to their readers on the continent.(4)

Twentieth Century authorities have been equally harsh in their analysis of Civil War staffs, although Union staffs generally fair better than their Confederate counterparts. Early in the century, one biographer thought it incredible that the army conducted the 1864 campaign without benefit of an effective general staff. He claimed Ulysses Grant’s use of the simile of a balky team showed the general-in-chief recognized the defective staff organization. More recently, Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones commented, In the face of sustained active operations, the utter inadequacy of staffs early became obvious; but rather than rejuvenate and strengthen the von Steuben example or implement the excellent example offered within the Prussian army, the two armies [Union and Confederate] only slightly increased the number of officers allowed in the various departments. In a comparison of Lee's and Grant's staffs, historian T. Harry Williams found the former to be little more than glorified clerks and messengers, while the latter were slightly more modern and expert. Kenneth Allard asserts that what staffs there were in the field commands were small, haphazardly organized, and unevenly employed. He accepts the (incorrect) contemporary characterization of Grant’s staff at war’s end as only comprising fourteen people, and criticizes staffs at all levels [for being] organized primarily around administrative functions, which often overlapped with operational functions; staffs, being creatures of the units they served, were usually incapable of taking up the slack. British historian John Keegan is particularly uncharitable. According to Keegan, Ulysses S. Grant gained high command based on his own intellect. Once there, he was able to allow competent subordinates to operate on their own. The result according to Keegan was that Grant made due with a small staff of mediocre men and Illinois cronies, who served as a conscience and link to the common soldier without having to perform real staff duties.(5)

Keegan is wrong on both fact and interpretation, but that does not nullify the judgment of other historians or contemporary observers. They make a valid point—Army of the Potomac staff work was not always good, especially early in the war. However, both the French commentators cited above and most modern critics miss a basic factor. The army’s problem was not just lack of organizations higher than the regiment, or staff officers who could carry orders but had no authority and did not supervise operations, or the lack of a modern General Staff system. The problem was a mind-set. Early in the war the Army of the Potomac did not think like an army, and the staffs at all levels were not trained, experienced, or coordinated enough to offset the deficiency. A member of the Army of the Potomac showed a clear understanding of the basic problem when he wrote about the same confused movement to Williamsburg that Joinville described:

Our army was an enormous heterogeneous mass, without any pretense of a system to centralize its movements. An army is not organized by throwing it into brigades and divisions; this is but the first and easiest step. The departments must be so organized that each performs well its part, without interference with another. In this case the quartermaster's department sadly interfered with the others. Every regimental quartermaster was for himself, and, as a natural result, the immense trains were thrown into great disorder, impeding the movements of all the other branches of the service. No one seemed at liberty to bring order out of this confusion.(6)

Such a situation did not persist—order did emerge from chaos in later campaigns. Years of war changed the Army of the Potomac. The army that conducted the Overland campaign of 1864 and the subsequent siege of Richmond and Petersburg bore little resemblance to the poorly organized host Irvin McDowell led to battle along Bull Run or the infant army McClellan took to the Peninsula. In the late-war, the Army of the Potomac was a mature army. It thought like an army as it had not through at least the Antietam campaign of 1862. One major aspect of the Army of the Potomac’s maturation was the gradual rationalization and professionalization of staff work. Perhaps American staffs never equaled their European counterparts in training or efficiency, but they were not as abominable as either contemporary or modern critics describe. Union army staffs became efficient and surprisingly modern—unfortunately, they never overcame initial impressions, either at the time or later. While they were not perfect, and certainly not mirrors of modern organizations, staffs in the Army of the Potomac became effective and professional during the war.

The task at hand is to understand the process of maturation. Who were the staff officers? How were they organized? How did they operate? What did they do? What should they have done that they did not? What did they contribute? Were they merely nattily attired messengers, or did they perform vital functions? A biographer of Major General Gouverneur K. Warren described staff officers as follows:

Be it said for the enlightenment of civilian readers (if any) that staff officers are the general’s eyes, ears, memories, and voices. More frequently than not, they are his brains. Often with justice, either because they have advanced knowledge of events or drive too hard, or make mistakes, they are cordially envied or hated by officers of the line. A few staff officers plume themselves on duty well done, if they succeed in being admittedly handsome ornaments round a headquarters; they may plod along as faithful clerks, accountants, or glitter as social secretaries. But the best of the class are indispensable. Lacking their guidance and control, the bravest and best-equipped army ever seen would fall apart. They are animated by two principal motives—a ceaseless effort to anticipate and supply the troops’ every need, and an absolute loyalty toward their general, who, reciprocally, gives his staff all his confidence. To the limit of human endeavor, they work day and night to ensure the proper execution of their general’s orders, trying tactfully first to awaken within him some intelligent ideas. There exists no such thing as a mediocre staff officer—he is a failure or a success. Either he rates as a meddling muddler and a popinjay, or he is acknowledged as powerful and invaluable. No man should ever be assigned to staff duty till after he has served a time with troops in the field and under fire.(7)

That was a fair evaluation of Civil War staff officers. As the war progressed, staffs rationalized their organization, and individual officers learned their duties. They became successful in the sense used above. The mature staff system of the Army of the Potomac was an efficient, almost modern, organization handling all aspects of army administration and operations.

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1. Staff Organization

Defining the Staff

Command of major military organizations involves more detailed work than a single individual can effectively handle—thus, the age-old practice of giving a military commander assistance in the form of a staff. Staffs do command, control, administrative, logistic, and supervisory functions. They do so in the name of the commander. In the modern theoretical construct, a coordinating staff group handles the functions of command while a special staff group of technical experts (for example ordnance, signal, engineer, and artillery officers) advises the commander on all matters concerning their branches. A special staff officer may simultaneously command troops of his or her branch and perform staff functions. A third general group, the personal staff, serves the commander personally. In modern terms that means they work directly for the commander rather than through a chief of staff or executive officer.(1)

Civil War usage did not correspond perfectly with modern staff theory. Some contemporary authorities conceptualized the staff under three general headings, although the categories differed from today’s. A popular reference work of the day, Colonel Henry Lee Scott’s Military Dictionary, described US Army staff officers as either part of the general staff, members of the staff corps or staff departments, or belonging to regimental staffs. The dictionary’s category of general staff included assistant adjutants general, assistant inspectors general, and aides-de-camp. They carried orders, but also dealt in regulating camps, directing the march of columns, and furnishing to the commanding general all necessary details for the exercise of his authority. Their duties embrace the whole range of service of the troops, and they are hence properly styled general staff-officers. As defined, the dictionary’s category of general staff was conceptually analogous to a modern coordinating staff—dealing with issues of command. The second category was another close fit. Members of staff corps and staff departments corresponded directly to today’s special staff. The Military Dictionary said about such officers, [Their] duties are confined to distinct branches of the service like engineers, quartermaster, commissary, pay, and medical. Conversely, Colonel Scott distinguished regimental staffs from the other categories because their activities were unit-specific and not concerned with the army as a whole. Modern doctrine does not distinguish between staffs based on unit level, so regimental staffs did not equate to modern personal staffs. Civil War soldiers did use the term personal staff. They did not, however, associate it with relations to the chief of staff or executive officer as we do today. Because the chief of staff position was embryonic, there was no formal doctrine that the staff routinely worked for him; defining the personal staff as officers who work directly for the commander instead of the chief would have been nonsensical. Instead, personal staff referred either to officers who served for the commander as an individual (not as a member of the unit) or to the commander’s closest staff officers. None of this categorization was universal. In his autobiography, Major General Oliver O. Howard wrote about George B. McClellan: He gathered around him a large staff, personal and administrative, which from time to time he caused to be announced to the army.(2) Howard’s division of the staff into two parts expanded the meaning of personal staff to include anyone who was not doing purely technical or administrative work—a significant reshuffling of staff categories that would have encompassed both today’s coordinating and personal staffs.

The issue of command arrangements for staff agencies and their associated units deserves discussion. Staff departments often had specific units of their corps—such as engineer regiments or signal detachments. In special cases, a staff section might also have ordinary combat units under direct staff command or supervision. Some system to coordinate the relationship was obviously necessary. Several theoretical command relationships between a staff section and units of the same staff corps exist—the Army of the Potomac practiced them all. The easiest to understand and the simplest to execute was the total separation of the staff officer or section at headquarters from the unit commander. Army of the Potomac engineers habitually practiced that arrangement. The next possibility was for the staff officer at headquarters to serve as the informal commander of units of his branch or staff corps. The artillery did that at various times while the medical corps and ambulance corps liked the arrangement (especially at mid-level headquarters). Next, one might have found the staff officer at headquarters formally designated as the commander of his units, as often happened with the provost marshal and normally the chief signal officer. To mix things up even more, the Army of the Potomac had staff sections representing specialized units like the cavalry during some periods and did without such staffs at other times. Finally, special organizations like the civilian US Military Telegraph or the US Christian Commission needed military staff support but for a variety of reasons had to depend on goodwill and the personal effectiveness of their civilian leaders to coordinate their actions with the army they supported. Whatever the command relationship, however, someone at headquarters had to (or at least should have had to) assume staff responsibility for the activities of the units under his purview. How much command authority the staff officer had or lacked simplified or complicated the task; the responsibility remained unchanged.

For purposes of this study, we will use the modern paradigm of a tripartite staff—coordinating, special, and personal. To stay as close as possible to Civil War usage, we will call the coordinating staff a general staff. Arbitrarily, since they would not necessarily be so clustered either now or then, we will consider the chief of staff, assistant adjutants general, assistant inspectors general, quartermasters, commissaries of subsistence, commissaries of musters, medical directors, and paymasters members of the general staff. Artillery, cavalry, engineer, signal (to include members of the US Military Telegraph corps), and ordnance officers on staff duty comprised the special staff. The personal staff included aides-de-camp, chaplains, provost marshals, and judge advocates. No matter how categorized, the most important aspect of staffs was what they did.

Contemporaries explained staff duties using specific lists. The following quote from an 1863 text is representative.

It is plain that one man alone is insufficient for the various duties involved in the conduct of an army, or even a division; a certain number of officers is therefore given to the commander-in-chief, in order to assist him in the details of his command, and these officers form what is called his staff. Their duties embrace the whole range of the service of the troops; they transmit the orders from headquarters, and see that they are executed; they regulate the marches; they mark out encampments, make reconnoissances, and procure information of the position and movements of the enemy; they receive the flags of truce, and interrogate the spies; they keep and improve the topographical, statistical, and historical maps and tables, and study and investigate all the details relating thereto; they record the progress and history of the war; correspond with the various departments, and make their inspections, that the general may be accurately informed of the condition of all branches of the service; in other words, they are the intermediary nerves through which the chief communicates the impulse to this large body, called an army; through them he controls its movements, and prevents any faltering which might hinder its progress.(3)

In the dictionary cited above, Colonel Scott, while editorializing against the establishment of a permanent General Staff, gave another list of staff duties.

An officer grown old in the silence of a bureau would hardly in the tumult of battle, or under critical circumstances, second his general by aiding him intelligently concerning warlike operations. Can he interrogate spies, watch over the observance of order in military trains; draw up orders and instructions, mark out military positions; improvise a fortification; organize and conduct foraging parties, direct markers for grand manoeuvers? Open the march of armies? Vault at the head of light cavalry? Stimulate and enlighten the troops by his interpretation of the orders he carries, by his intuitive knowledge of their tactical position, by his coup d’oeil, by the propriety of his counsels, and by the vigor of his impulsions? . . . but these are important duties of general staff officers."(4)

Modern doctrine approaches the question of what staffs do in a less specific and more theoretical (while admittedly less colorful) fashion. The US Army assigns certain critical functions and characteristics to staffs. According to modern Army doctrine, staffs assist the commander by:

•Securing and providing information, data, and advice.

•Preparing detailed plans and orders according to the commander's decisions and guidance.

•Transmitting orders, directions, and so forth, to the command.

•Notifying the commander of matters which require his action or of which he needs to know.

•Making a continuous study of the situation.

•Preparing tentative plans for possible future contingencies for the commander's consideration.

•Supervising, within its authority, execution of the commander's orders as he may prescribe.

•Carrying out as necessary, the commander's intentions.(5)

A historian of military staffs, James D. Hittle, would agree completely with those bullets. However, his study includes theoretically analysis of staff systems in general that give us additional criteria by which to evaluate the Army of the Potomac’s staff. Hittle found certain characteristics that must be possessed by a staff system before it can be considered to exist and function according to the modern understanding of the term. He listed those characteristics as: A regular education system for training staff officers, delegation of authority from the commander, supervision of the execution of orders issued by or through the staff, and a set method of procedure by which each part performs certain specified duties.(6)

Army of the Potomac staffs routinely did the activities required by modern doctrine. Staff officers did not always prepare operational plans for the commander's decision or prepare contingency plans, but those functions occurred with increasing frequency as the war progressed. The failure to provide consistent operational or contingency planning was a serious deficiency that contemporary observers did not commonly recognize. In the mid-nineteenth century, the practice of staff operational and contingency planning was emerging in the Prussian general staff, but uncommon elsewhere. As for Hittle’s characteristics of a modern staff system, the Army of the Potomac met every one except the first—a regular education system for training staff officers. Only after the war would the US Army institute such a system, and it would not be completed until the establishment of the Army War College at the turn of the century. In the important characteristic of education, Union staffs failed to meet either Hittle’s or their European contemporaries’ standards. That failure, however, should not automatically brand them an incompetent or even old-fashioned staff. In fact, performing efficiently without formal education might be more impressive than a similar achievement by professionally trained officers.

Formation of US Army Field Staffs

The antebellum United States Army’s staff organization traced its roots to the American Revolution. In the years since gaining independence, the upper echelon of that staff in the national capital had matured (sometimes ossified). Subordinate field headquarters above the regimental level appeared in response to crisis and disappeared on the return of peace. Laws regulated the total number of staff officers by specialty; regulations outlined staff duties and procedures without specifying organizational detail. The primary thrust of regulatory provisions on staff assignment was to limit the ability of the staff agencies to spirit line officers away from their regiments.(7) Historically, at the onset of hostilities the Army created field headquarters, based when possible on the geographic department headquarters, from scratch.

The outbreak of civil war caught the United States government and its military institutions off-guard. Saddled with inadequate and inefficient militia laws, a weak secretary of war, and a recessed Congress, Abraham Lincoln called on the states for troops. The states willingly assumed responsibility for raising forces—some, such as Wisconsin, even anticipated Lincoln's request and passed enabling legislation before the fall of Fort Sumter. Men in every Northern state rushed to the colors in unprecedented numbers. Existing militia units, often gaudy remnants of the military fad that followed the Mexican War and more useful for parade and cotillion than combat, were incapable of efficiently absorbing the recruits. The onslaught of volunteers also overwhelmed the national military system—designed to support a small, peacetime regular army based in penny-packets along the coasts and on the frontier. No military headquarters existed above the regiment (company or battery in the artillery) except geographic departments and the headquarters in Washington.

Understandably, organizing headquarters and staffs for the assembling armies took a backseat to arming, feeding, clothing, and equipping the troops—a formidable task the national military establishment abrogated to the states and only later reclaimed. Leadership to control and coordinate the mobilization was sorely lacking. Simon Cameron, the secretary of war, was incompetent; Winfield Scott, the general-in-chief, was old, infirm, and feuding so intently with the bureaucracy that for years he had maintained his personal headquarters in New York City. The seven staff bureaus in Washington worked independently from the general-in-chief, were firmly entrenched bureaucracies focused on their own business and issues of bureaucratic power, and had difficulty coordinating their activities with the demands of the forces in the field.(8) When authorities got around to forming brigade, division, and army headquarters and staffs (corps and even grand divisions would come later), they did so on a distinctly ad hoc basis. No one expected a long war; therefore, there was little need for methodical organization of high-level field headquarters—necessary in the short term but again superfluous at the conclusion of hostilities. Like much of the early strategic planning for the war, ignoring field staffs proved to be an unfortunate oversight.

In April 1861, Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas toyed with the idea of giving a brigade of four or more regiments the totally inadequate staff of one aide-de-camp and an inspector; divisions would receive the same allocation with the magnanimous addition of a second aide—primarily a concession to the rank of the commander. The omission of other staff functions from General Thomas’s list speaks volumes about the orientation of the Washington bureaus. Less than a month later, when Thomas’s office issued its first general order regulating staff authorizations, his thinking had not changed significantly—the brigade and division inspectors became assistant adjutants general, and brigade staffs got a surgeon, a quartermaster, and a commissary officer. The other Washington bureaus had waded into the fray to protect their interests, but no one saw a need for a robust brigade staff or more than a token headquarters at division level. Other provisions of the same general order show the priority of mental energy at the time. Much more thought apparently went into the pay and allowances of regimental officers and reserving staff appointments for the president than went into the design or functioning of the headquarters. In another general order issued the same day the war department gave regular brigades the same staff as their volunteer counterparts, minus the surgeon, while regular division staffs would have commissary and quartermaster officers. The department gave no explanation why regular divisions needed quartermaster and commissary staffs while volunteer divisions did not. When Congress returned to session and passed legislation to ratify President Lincoln’s call for volunteers, it validated the brigade and division staff structures already established by the war department—modified only by the addition of one aide-de-camp to each.(9)

Army Commanders

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Irvin McDowell

(Library of Congress)

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George B. McClellan

(Library of Congress)

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John Pope

(Library of Congress)

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Ambrose Burnside

(Library of Congress)

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Joseph Hooker

(Library of Congress)

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George G. Meade

(Library of Congress)

In August 1861 after the loss at First Manassas when it was clear the nation faced a long war, Congress moved quickly to expand and reform the military establishment. Part of the intended reform would be in the staff departments. However, debate on the bill concentrated more on the superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point and filling vacancies at that institution caused by withdrawal of Southern cadets than on staffs. A proposal to increase the number of ordnance officers died without much debate and had to be resurrected at the last moment. In the end, the total increase in authorizations was stingy at best and did not exhibit any logic in the numbers authorized. For example, the final law authorized the addition of just twelve commissary officers—less than half the number of new quartermasters. The engineers and topographical engineers got a grand total of three first and three second lieutenants each. For the engineers, the legislators quickly amended their work by adding two lieutenant colonels and four majors (still a paltry figure) to each branch, but they diluted the number of engineer officers available for staff work by authorizing the formation of three engineer companies and one company of topographical engineers—each of which required engineer officers.(10) Of course, the new positions were in the regular army and thus difficult to eliminate after the war, and Congress had already provided for staffs in volunteer outfits, but such thinking was shortsighted in terms both of a long war and higher level staffs. There was no legislative guidance on the use of the newly-authorized officers. The war department could determine its own allocation between bureau offices in Washington, depots and other support activities, and field army staffs—and at least theoretically, it had to resource all requirements from the total pool of staff officers (regular and volunteer) Congress provided.

However, Congress was not completely negligent in giving field commanders appropriate staffs. In recognition of needs with which the legislative process could not keep pace, the legislators passed a unique law giving army commanders a major tool for staff management. Public Law # 42, August 5, 1861, authorized the general-in-chief or any regular major general commanding an army in the field to appoint as many additional aides-de-camp in the grade of captain to colonel as he needed and the president approved. That law facilitated promoting junior staff officers to appropriate grades for their responsibilities and filling the staffs with necessary officers (within limits) regardless of existing authorizations. Congress’s intent was obvious; the legislators meant to give commanders the staffs they thought they needed without undue restraint. During Senate debate on the bill, Mr. [Henry] Wilson [R-Massachusetts] stated that the number of staff-officers was inadequate to the needs of the service. Mr. [James Rood] Doolittle [R-Wisconsin] desired some limitation upon the number. Mr. Wilson thought the discretion of the president an ample guarantee that no more will be appointed than the service required. Wilson won his point, and the only limit on the number of additional aides-de-camp was what the president would approve. Thus, the unusual expedient of additional aides-de-camp effectively gave field army commanders a blank check on staff appointments, design, and management.

That four months passed before the war department used the provisions of the August law to appoint a significant number of additional aides-de-camp was George McClellan’s fault, not Congress’s. The commander who made his reputation as the organizer of the Army of the Potomac started at the bottom and did not begin concentrating on higher headquarters organization or procedures until December (although in August he did appoint four aides under provisions of the new law). When McClellan acted decisively though, he did so with a vengeance—appointing seven colonels, eleven lieutenant colonels, a major, and eleven captains (a total of thirty officers) as additional aides-de-camp for the Army of the Potomac. Some of those men, like Henry Hunt and Rufus Ingalls, would play key roles on the Army of the Potomac staff for the rest of the war; others, like French Princes Louis Philip and Robert d’Orleans, would not be long with the army. Congress did not grant the president and the army unbridled authority to appoint staff officers for long. In July 1862, it revoked the authority to appoint additional aides-de-camp; however, the revocation specifically left all officers properly appointed under the law in their ranks and positions. The war department published lists of forty-four colonels, eleven lieutenant colonels, thirty-two majors, and 114 captains appointed to staff positions (army wide) under provisions of the additional aides-de-camp legislation, so it was a major tool for staff construction and management while it lasted.(11)

Obvious deficiencies existed in the legislative foundation of field staffs. Most conspicuous was the total lack of authorizations for field army headquarters. The additional aide-de-camp bill that gave control of that process to army commanders was the sum of congressional efforts on the subject. Less obvious but equally serious were the lack of assistant inspectors general in any of the headquarters and the dangerously under-sized division staffs. One could not expect other staff representation that might have been included—ordnance, engineer, artillery, paymaster, and so forth—so early in the war given the US Army’s traditional technique of providing those specialized services. Congress would address most problems of staff organization piecemeal over time; some would never be fixed. Nevertheless, the legislation of late July and early August 1861 formed the skeleton on which the Army of the Potomac staff system would grow.

After the flurry of legislation in the aftermath of the First Manassas debacle, Congress reverted to its traditional leisurely legislative pace in matters of staffing the armies. Nearly a year passed before the next significant legislation on staffs—a bill to recognize and legally provide staffs for the newly organized (four months earlier) corps headquarters. An act signed in July 1862 provided a modest corps staff of four lieutenant colonels as assistant adjutants general, assistant inspectors general, chief quartermasters, and chief commissaries of subsistence. The same law told the senior artillery officer in a corps that besides his other duties he would act as chief of artillery and ordnance at the headquarters of the corps and gave each army a major to serve as the staff judge advocate. As the war progressed, Congress continued to adjust the staff departments— invariable by providing increases in the number of authorized staff officers, and usually merely codifying or giving legal recognition to practices that had existed for months or years in the field. For example, a law signed in July 1864 authorized quartermaster colonels as the chief quartermasters of armies and majors for the same position in divisions. That had long been the case in the Army of the Potomac—actually, the new authorization represented a grade reduction for many of the officers in those positions. Perhaps, the legislators were more interested in the provision requiring that at least two-thirds of the appointments be filled by volunteer officers and limiting the total number of appointments available than in the more mundane aspects of the law.

Another example is the legislative establishment of the Signal Corps. Before the war, Major Albert J. Myer commanded a small experimental signal detachment in New Mexico that was effective in a campaign against the Navajo. Although Irvin McDowell could not exploit Myer’s proffered talents, George McClellan did. Myer proposed formally establishing a signal corps in May 1861, and subsequently formed a large signal establishment that had been operating more than two years by the time Congress passed enabling legislation in March 1863. The legislative delay was not a case of Congress being unaware of the signal officers in the field. It passed several authorizations for the purchase of signal equipment and debated a bill in February 1862 to grant the president authority to appoint signal officers and sergeants. The best that bill’s sponsors could salvage was permission for acting signal officers to draw the pay of cavalry officers of their grade (essentially compensation for mounted service).(12) Thus, waiting for legal authority to modify staff composition or structure was a risky business.

Without legislation, the war department and the Army of the Potomac used general orders to build staffs. Such orders came in two varieties—often commingled. The first established structure; the second promulgated procedure. An example of both is a war department order in 1864 establishing the position of acting division ordnance officer. (To be other than acting required a formal billet recognized by legislation.) The general order specified that army commanders would appoint a captain or lieutenant from the line for full-time duty as acting ordnance officer for every division. Division ordnance officers would be responsible to the army chief of ordnance, and only the army commander could replace them on the recommendation of his chief of ordnance. After describing the general duties of a division ordnance officer, the order went into specific details of procedure: the ordnance officer would control the division’s ordnance trains; he was responsible for collecting abandoned ordnance from the field after battles; he was responsible for (and would report quarterly on) the condition of ordnance equipment and supplies in his command; he would approve all requisitions for ordnance materials. As a catch all, the order specified that division ordnance officers would also obey any special orders the army ordnance chief might issue. To monitor and control the bureaucracy thus established, the order required army chiefs of ordnance to submit a monthly report of the names and units of acting division ordnance officers.

Corps Commanders

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Nathaniel P. Banks

(USAMHI MOLLUS-Mass collection)

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Darius N. Couch

(Library of Congress)

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William B. Franklin

(Library of Congress)

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William H. French

(Library of Congress)

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Winfield S. Hancock

(Library of Congress)

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Samuel P. Heintzelman

(Library of Congress)

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Oliver O. Howard

(Library of Congress)

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Erasmus D. Keys

(Library of Congress)

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John B. Newton

(Library of Congress)

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Alfred Pleasanton

(Library of Congress)

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Fitz John Porter

(Library of Congress)

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Jesse Reno

(USAMHI)

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John F. Reynolds

(USGenWeb Archives)

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John Sedgwick

(Library of Congress)

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Philip H. Sheridan

(National Archives)

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Daniel E. Sickles

(Library of Congress)

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Franz Sigel

(Library of Congress)

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Henry W. Slocum

(Library of Congress)

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George Stoneman

(Library of Congress)

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Edwin V. Sumner

(Library of Congress)

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George Sykes

(Library of Congress)

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Gouverneur K. Warren

(Library of Congress)

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Horatio G. Wright

(Library of Congress)

Similarly, in March 1864 the Army of the Potomac issued an order codifying the inspector general structure and procedures internal to the army. The order specified the organization of the inspector general branch at all levels from brigade to army. It established appropriate ranks at each level, appointing authority, and supervisory relationships. The order dissociated brigade and division inspectors from specific units and directed that they rotate inspection responsibilities. Once detailed, inspectors could not serve in any other capacity without the prior approval of the army inspector general. The order especially enjoined inspectors to familiarize themselves with the regulations and orders they would enforce. The follow-on explanation of procedures was so detailed the editors of the Official Records omitted them from the published record.(13) The examples show the army fixing its staff system—both structurally and procedurally—in the absence of legislation.

Formal staff increases (even if after the fact), the flexibility of the additional aides-de-camp legislation, and internal army orders on staff structure and operations without legislative basis were absolutely necessary. There was significant work to do, since the Army of the Potomac was always over-headquartered. The problem began with regiments quickly depleted by disease, battle, absenteeism (both authorized and unauthorized), and the assignment of soldiers to support functions. A comment by one brigade commander in late 1863 illustrated the result. My command can hardly be called a brigade, although consisting of five regiments. The field return showed on the morning of the action [at Bristoe Station] but 691 muskets.(14) For comparison, a regiment theoretically had slightly more than one thousand men, so a five-regiment brigade should have comprised about 5,000 men. That brigade’s case was not unusual. Higher commanders did not adjust headquarters arrangements as the regiments shrunk in effective strength. The problem was not that the units were too small (although many regiments did shrink below effective combat strength); the Army of the Potomac always had enough soldiers. The problem was reluctance to consolidate or rationalize headquarters arrangements—starting with regiments but equally egregious with respect to brigades, divisions, and corps.

The tendency to layer headquarters over miniature commands was not a characteristic of the mid to late-war years as one might expect. When, without consultation, Abraham Lincoln forced a corps organization (to include specific corps commanders and the allocation of divisions) on a reluctant George McClellan, the Army of the Potomac commander responded by creating additional corps so he could put his protégées in command. Thus, from the very beginning Union corps were too small for efficiency and too plentiful for an army commander to manage effectively. Frequently they comprised no more than two small divisions, and the smallest were often severely under strength whatever the number of their subordinate units. In his book of military theory, Major General Henry W. Halleck opined that a corps should ordinarily contain from twenty to thirty thousand men. Army of the Potomac returns for the end of March 1863, just before the battle of Chancellorsville, show only the abnormally large VI Corps with a present for duty strength of more than twenty thousand officers and men. The average present for duty strength of the other corps was less than sixteen thousand, while their present and equipped (effective fighting) strength in infantry averaged less than fifteen thousand. The two smallest corps (XI and XII) each had less than thirteen thousand effective infantrymen. For comparison, across the Rappahannock at the time, Stonewall Jackson’s Second Corps, Army of Northern Virginia comprised just under thirty-six thousand infantrymen. After major battles the subordinate units of the Army of the Potomac could shrink to ridiculous sizes. Returns for the end of July 1863, after Gettysburg and the loss of soldiers whose enlistments expired that summer, show no corps with a present for duty strength over fourteen thousand—the average was less than ten thousand. Effective strength, of course, was less.(15) Below the corps, the problem was the same. For example, XI Corps, habitually one of the smallest in the army, stretched its slim manpower between three divisions of two brigades each. Contending with many small units simply multiplied the commander’s burden and degraded efficiency.

Army of the Potomac commanders recognized the problem and tried various methods to reduce their span of control. The most popular and frequently used was the creation of informal, temporary wings. Under the wing concept, a senior corps commander took temporary control of other corps—usually for movement, although using wings in combat was not unknown. The practice started on the Virginia Peninsula in April 1862, when McClellan designated Edwin V. Bull Sumner commander of the two corps on the left of the Yorktown line (Sumner immediately dubbed his new command the Left Wing) and continued through 1863. Wings were so informal they did not always even use a name. Sumner gave his command at Yorktown the name Left Wing in his assumption of command order, but in late September and October of the same year his headquarters issued orders to his wing under the heading Head Quart 2nd and 11th Corps d’ armee’ or Head Quarters 2 & 11th Corps d’ armee’. Since they were both informal and temporary, wings did not have permanent staffs. A wing commander’s normal corps staff either assumed additional responsibility without additional assets or concentrated on controlling the wing while a string of subordinate headquarters moved up to do temporarily the duties of higher headquarters. Usually wing commanders had the option of which technique to choose; however, occasionally the army commander dictated the procedure he wanted, as Meade did in the order organizing the pursuit after Gettysburg. In that instance, all three wing commanders received orders like those issued to John Sedgwick: For the movement and until the concentration at Middletown, General Sedgwick will, without relinquishing command of his Corps, assume command of the Corps forming the right—1st, 6th, and 3rd.(16)

The use of wings was usually an innocuous expedient that, because of its temporary nature, seldom caused much mischief. (Although Ambrose Burnside almost refutes that assertion by his action at Antietam when he continued playing wing commander after the army commander believed the wings dissolved.) They did, however, require workarounds and serve to muddle command arrangements. To illustrate—Brigadier General Jacob D. Cox, a division commander temporarily commanding IX Corps at Antietam while Burnside acted as wing commander, tried to convince Burnside to resume corps command with the following logic: I pointed out that [Major General Jesse Lee] Reno’s staff had been granted leave of absence to take the body of their chief to Washington, and that my division staff was too small for corps duty. However, Burnside provided a workaround. Cox explained, But he met this by saying that he would use his staff for this purpose, and help me in every way he could till the crisis of the campaign should be over. A diary entry of artilleryman Charles S. Wainwright during the movement to Gettysburg when John F. Reynolds was commanding a wing, illustrates the possibility of muddled command arrangements. Though [Abner] Doubleday is supposed to be in command of the corps, all our orders come from Reynolds direct, and he looks as closely as ever after everything himself. Wainwright seemed to approve of this arrangement; however, the possibilities for misunderstanding when two officers commanded the same unit (one formally and one informally) are obvious. In fact, in the specific Reynolds-Doubleday example the two commanders worked at direct cross-purposes in at least one instance. Doubleday issued march instructions to the corps and then discovered Reynolds had issued different orders directly to one division. Doubleday had to issue new orders to conform with Reynolds’s instructions.(17)

More consequential than wings was Ambrose Burnside’s institution of grand divisions during his brief tenure as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside’s grand divisions were essentially permanent wings—responsible for administration, logistics, movement, and combat. They required large permanent staffs. Burnside’s solution to the problem of creating staffs for the grand divisions was to direct that the officers assuming command of those formations (all corps commanders) take their corps staffs with them to become the grand division staffs. The officers