| “The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail”: The Civil War of Captain Simon Perkins Jr., a Union Quartermaster. By Lenette S. Taylor. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2004. xvi, 264 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-87338-783-X.) | |
| Dr. Lenette S. Taylor’s “The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail,” a biography of quartermaster Simon Perkins Jr., is a valuable addition to the scant literature on the Union army’s logistics in the Civil War. Written principally from Perkins’s manuscripts, standard sources, and government documents, the book carefully describes western front logistics from the vantage point of a midlevel manager. | 1 |
| Perkins, a son of John Brown’s business partner, was trained in business by his uncle David Tod, the Civil War governor of Ohio. After service in West Virginia, in 1861 the twenty-three-year-old Perkins became a quartermaster captain and served successively in Tennessee as a forage master, a transportation officer, a headquarters quartermaster, and depot quartermaster at Nashville. | 2 |
| Taylor finds that most quartermasters were efficient former businessmen, but not all. In 1863 young Perkins helped expose the delivery of fifteen thousand defective horses that dangerously impaired the movements of Gen. William S. Rosecrans’s infantry and cavalry (p. 114). The author holds, perhaps too readily, that officers of integrity such as Perkins, along with the department’s impressive paperwork, “virtually eliminated the fraud and corruption that plagued the War Department” (p. 15). She writes that Perkins, although much harassed by Confederate cavalry raids, ran an “extremely efficient business operation” (p. 61). His branch at Nashville served as the major depot for Union campaigns against Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. From here Perkins forwarded five million pounds of forage to Gen. Don Carlos Buell after the battle of Shiloh but omitted the vouchers. As a transportation officer, Perkins was terribly vexed in providing rolling stock for Buell’s assault on Chattanooga, and as a result both men and animals were placed on half rations for months. The Confederates seized so many supply wagons that Perkins’ superior at Cincinnati, Lt. Col. Thomas Swords, complained he could “‘hardly supply the wants of both our and the Rebel Army'” (p. 87). | 3 |
| Captain Perkins quickly adapted to local military necessities, sometimes in advance of government policy, by making impressments, employing freedmen and slaves, and contracting for supplies with pro-Confederate planters. Although most military accoutrements were usually available, he was often deficient in cotton tents, woolen blankets, and greatcoats. | 4 |
| When Rosecrans superseded Buell in October 1862, Perkins forwarded to him over a half million pounds of freight a day, mostly forage, livestock, and commissary goods. He soon stockpiled six months’ supply for future offensive operations. After Rosecrans’s defeat in the battle of Chickamauga, the Union army was effectively blockaded by the Confederates. Perkins’s supply responsibilities worsened with the arrival of Joseph Hooker’s grand division at Chattanooga and Ambrose Burnside’s corps at Knoxville. Only rigorous military action by the new military commanders, William T. Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant, brought relief. Shortly thereafter, after two years of service, Perkins transferred to Gallipolis, Ohio, where he built military hospitals. Following the war he moved to Sharon, Ohio, and pursued a successful business career. | 5 |
| Taylor gives an excellent analysis of midlevel Union logistic difficulties and successes, but an occasional discussion of larger Union supply problems would have been useful. She aptly demonstrates that on the military frontier Perkins and his friends had to improvise and that their work finally established a vital logistical system that permitted the Union to conquer Confederate Tennessee and mount the last great offensive of the war, Sherman’s triumphant march through the lower South. | 6 |
| Harold S. WilsonOld Dominion University Norfolk, Virginia | |
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