"1864 - scarity of OOBs" Topic

When reading about ACW battles I always try to find an OOB showing brigades strenght to better figure out the actual battle.
I've noticed that while for most of 1862-63 battles one can find very detailed OOBs, showing even the effectives for indyvidual regiments, such OOBs are virtually nonexistent for later periods.
I ask myself why. Are ORs more scarce for Overland Campaign that for Gettysburg ?
Or maybe there are books or websites showing the effective strenght for such battles as Chattanooga, Spottsylvania, Atlanta Campaign or Petersburg siege ?

Part of the challenge from the Confederate side is that records weren't being kept as well as from earlier years. They exist for some forces but are almost non-existent for others. And many of the records are "buried" in various archives and researchers either haven't "discovered" them or haven't extracted the data and published it. Also many records were destroyed, either deliberately or accidentally, at the end of the war as the various Confederate commands either melted away or surrendered.

I can't speak about the Union forces but I would surmise that, at least in the Army of the Tennessee on its "March through Georgia" and the Carolinas, records keeping wasn't high on the unit adjutants' priority.

Jim

The Confederate archive also burned when Richmond was evacuated in April 1865, if I remember correctly.

Think about the Overland and Atlanta campaigns in May-August 1864. In Virginia, 30 days of grinding warfare where officers were chewed up in a meat-grinder with appalling regularity. Who was going to write the regimental report? Who kept the records when the officer in charge before you was killed? Oh, and the brigade commander, a replacement himself, just ordered your regiment to get on the march with only 2 hours of sleep, if you are lucky. Daily muster rolls? Not a high priority.

Much the same happened in Georgia, but without the 30 day intensity.

That's not to say the records don't exist. Many of them do in state and national archives. However, the ones that do exist weren't necessarily filed properly and with the correct chain of command. Daily muster rolls do exist for most regiments. Its just a matter of finding them in the correct archives. Even with the internet, it is still a very labor, and travel intensive task. Which also means expensive, paying for travel and accommodations.

And that's just the Union side.

Regiments on both sides were mustered once a month, this was how they were paid. Generally speaking this occurred on or near the last day of the month. Summaries based on these musters can usually be found in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, which can be found on line or on CD. This can give you a rough estimate of numbers and losses. Often you will find more specific information in the Battle Reports of individual units, again available in the ORs. There are some cases, usually Confederate, where exact numbers were never reported or were deliberately faked. An example of the former would be the Battle of Saylor's Creek. An example of the latter would be Hood's Nashville Campaign, where Hood's writings to Richmond barely even admitted that his Army was beaten, let alone that it was virtually destroyed. You may also sometimes find numbers in "Battles and Leaders".

Hometown newspapers sometimes gave regimental strengths for a particular battle, along with publishing casualty lists. Postwar publications such as Confederate Veteran and The National Tribune also sometimes have this information, but its a shot in the dark.

The missing records are either in various state archives, or were destroyed at the end of the war. The ANV records, for the most part, were lost when Custer's men burned the wagons carrying them.

Every unit had an adjutant, and it was HIS job to maintain the company/regimental books, copies of reports, etc. He usually had 2-3 clerks who assisted him with this. Most of the time, he wasn't in the fight and he and his men took the AAR from whoever wrote it, spruced it up into legible handwriting and forwarded copies to those who were supposed to get them. In the southern armies, duplicates of almost every report were sent to the state adjutant general's office where they were filed for future reference.

It's a PITA, to be sure, but about the only way you will get the type of data you are looking for is to go through the various state archives. That will usually involve 3-4 day's of work, provided you set it up with the archive staff ahead of time.

Other places to look are post-war books such as "Our Soldier in the Civil War", etc, but the best place outside of the archives is the Official Records, or OR's in the parlance of the trade.

These 128 hardbound volumes have been reprinted, but they've also been digitized to CD's for easier searching. You can find a copy of the digital version for $10 USD-$20 dollars, and if you are serious about scenario design, rules writing, etc, then it is well worth the money to get a copy.

If you have Martin and Busey's Regimental Strengths and Losses at Gettysburg, he has an entire chapter on just how difficult determining exact numbers can be. They spent years in the National Archives and still had to develop formulae to determine numbers vs engaged strengths. In addition he mentions, and I had forgotten, Livermore's "Numbers and Losses in the Civil War. You would probably be surprised at how many of the numbers at big, well marked battlefields, come from either Regimental monuments or War Department markers.

"Maine at Gettysburg" is a good source for those Maine units which were engaged there. The numbers listed on the monuments come from both the June 30th 1863 consolidated muster rolls, as well as the surviving morning reports of the 3 day's of battle.

FWIW, Maine has one of the best organized civil war records collections of any state I've been to. Every unit has at least one box of official records in folder by month/year, and where non-official letters, diaries, etc, exist they are in a separate unit box, again in folders by month/year.

In addition, every extant monthly consolidated report for each unit has been preserved and bound into large volumes for ease of access as well as protection.

Also, they have at least 1 3X5 card which has listed the data from every man who enlisted in the Army or Navy (and Marines) during the war. These cards contain the physical description, name, place of record, unit(s) served with, dates of service, whether wounded, taken prisoner, etc. VERY valuable data for those interested in individual units. The data was taken directly from the enlistment forms, copies of which were sent to Maine's Adjutant General as they were completed.

There are some 800 images, mostly Carte de Visit but with some tin types, etc, of officers from Maine.

All of this may be accessed by registering as a researcher and making an appointment with the Archives, located right beside the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Maine.

I've read the following books had some informations about 1864 armies:
- Newton, Steven H.; Lost for the Cause: The Confederate Army in 1864
- Young, Alfred C.; Lee's Army During the Overland Campaign: A Numerical Study, 2013

Anybody can confirm this ?

Yes, I have Newton's book. It is excellent. A detailed description of his research methods, and what it takes to find the regimental strength of one unit. Details the location and strength of every Confederate unit in early May 1864 at the beginning of the campaign season. Sometimes he can only get down to division strength, but he does get down to brigade and regimental where possible. He literally includes every unit in the Confederate army, whether in a backwater, or in transit. The research is also extensively footnoted. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I do not have Young's book, but from the reviews I've read, he has done the research down to the regimental level for the Army of Northern Virginia at the beginning of the Overland Campaign. Newton's (and Martin & Busey's) research methods in practice at the regimental level. If its anything like Bradley Gottfried's Brigades of Gettysburg: The Union and Confederate Brigades at the Battle of Gettysburg I'm sure its great.

Many years ago, I was trying to get strengths for the Battle of Peachtree Creek. Almost drove me crazy. Realizing that I need to solve the issue before my deadline to put on the game, I used several methods:

1. Took the reported strengths at the beginning of the Atlanta Campaign and used a formula based on reported losses due to disease and battle and applied it to strengths I couldn't find for the Peachtree Creek timeframe.

2. Combed every personal account I could find for phrases like "we took less than 300 muskets into battle that day"

3. If I could find a brigade strength and SOME of the regiments in the Brigade, I would subtract known regiment strengths from the known brigade strength and divide up the remainder amongst the other regiments.

4. "Borrow" strengths from other author's scenarios that were close the time period of my scenario (this was a club game so I wasn't trying to sell it or anything)

As TKindred says a "PITA."

One more thing, if you are close, that is probably good enough. I doubt anyone is going to say "you list the 44th Georgia with 300 men when everyone KNOWS they had 350 at that battle!!! I am not playing this game!"

Yeah, for my Atlanta Campaign scenario books, I know I'm not going to be 100% accurate on regimental strengths. There's just no way. And there is no way the sales and profitability on a gaming scenario book would justify the years of research necessary to travel to every archive and do the necessary research. So, my research is much like ACW Gamers. A lot of it is a best guess. A lot of good guesses, but sometimes its just a best guess nonetheless.

Strengths changed every day anyway, so approximations are the best you can hope for.

This is an interesting topic to me considering I run a site dedicated to the Siege of Petersburg: beyondthecrater.com

I do have several options for wargamers on the Siege of Petersburg right now.

First, Scott Mingus and Ivor Janci allowed me to post free online versions of Petersburg scenarios from Charge! and Zouave, respectively. I've got the Charge! articles up in their entirety at: link

Second, I have a lot of OOBs from the Nafziger collection up on my OOBs page: link

The two Zouave Petersburg articles I could find will be posted on September 30 of this tear for Pegram's (Peebles) Farm and July 30 of next year for the Crater, on the anniversary of those battles.

Third, a key component for the Confederates are the Confederate Inspection reports. These are available in the form of $125 USD/reel microfilm/DVD/CD from the National Archives, and cover units down to the regimental level PFD on various dates in 1864-1865. I have most of those from the Army of Northern Virginia, and I'm slowly transcribing the unit strengths, weapon types, commanders, locations, and other easily legible portions of these, which is not always easy. I have very, very little done right now, but I offer up my transcriptions at a minimal charge to try to recoup the $125 USD/reel cost I laid out up front here: link

NOTE: If anyone wants to help me transcribe these I'd love the help, and you'd get that particular unit for free essentially.

Lastly, I have individual pages for every regiment, battery, battalion, and company which fought as an independent unit at the Siege: link

On these pages, I also try to list any unit strengths I've run across in my reading. My ultimate goal (years away), is to take these unit pages and "build them up" into original OOBs by Offensive and at specific battles.

All of this listed above is and always will be free, other than the reels where IP'm just trying to recoup my losses and fund money to buy more of the thousands of regimental histories which contain the level of detail I need to "finish" my site.

As Brad mentioned too, there are many, many consolidated morning reports (CMRs) of Federal regiments scattered in archives all over the country. These list the men in a regiment for a given day in minute detail. Here is the very best example of a person taking these CMRs and creating a web site out of them: link

Bryce Suderow has also mentioned to me the existence at the National Archives of many of the invididual company, regimental, brigade, and division morning reports that were eventually rolled into those detailed PFD numbers you sometimes see in the Official Records at the Corps level and higher. See this image from the ORs for July 31, 1864, for example: link

Those PFD numbers came from rollinig up the smaller orgs, and those documents still exist in many cases. It's just a matter of locating them in the National Archives.

PS Newton's book is great. I've read and relied on it extesively when calculating PFD from "effectives". Wherever possible, units on my Petersburg site are listed as PFD to compare apples to apples.

Young's book is not what I was expecting (not the detail anyway), but what he does do is prove conclusively that Lee had more men (and lost more men) during the Overland Campaign than what was originally assumed. He combed Confederate newspapers and other sources for casualty lists, and laboriously went through the CSRs of each Confederate regiment to list strengths and casualties. I wish he'd continue on with Petersburg. I'd buy that book too in a heartbeat.

PPS I should clarify and say that although Young goes into regimental level detail for the casualties, he only goes down to brigade level for unit strengths. I was hoping he'd go to the regimental level there too. It's still a MONUMENTAL amount of effort and very well done, it just didn't explicitly list out strengths by regiment when I know Young has those numbers. His publisher probably wouldn't allow it because it would have made the book too large.

I did quite a bit of the OOB for the Atlanta Campaign for John Tiller's computer game on the subject. You can rough things out fairly from the OR and some of the casualty reports. A bit of guesswork is required at the regimental level, but you just back into it from prior battle OOBs with better records, and then total division strengths for the actual battle. Similar to what ACW GAMER lists above. I remember getting into Atlanta thinking it would be impossible, but in the end I thought the finished product was somewhat close, or as close anyone can likely get.

I did the same for Stones River, which of course had better sources.

I'd recommend look at John Tiller's OOBs for his ACW game, making sure to look at the Design Notes. In Stone's River and Murfressboro, I typed up a summary of the research material and where the guesswork came in, plus a number of unanswered questions. Thus the gamer at least knows where improvement can be made. I think most of John's games have similar OOB notes in the documents folder.

@bschulte….that is darn handy…especially since I hope to run a Fort Fisher game in the future!!!!

Glad it helped! :-)

Hello Brett,

About the Confederate Inspection reports. What is on each individual $125 USD reel? Is it one unit per reel (regiment, brigade, corps, army)? Or all units for a given time frame, Army of Northern Virginia for August 1864 for example? I would definitely lay out $125 USD for the Army of Tennessee in April or May 1864.

Brad, there are something like 16 reels total in existence, but they are laid out by the last name of the Confederate inspector, so reports are all over the place.

Each reel contains dozens of reports for brigades, divisions, and artillery battalions on certain dates. Typically, each brigade, division, and artillery battalion got inspected once a month. If you go to any of my inspection reports I've transcribed and am selling, you'll see a sample excel spreadsheet of Benning's GA Brigade on September 8, 1864. It contains regimental commanders, regimental PFD strengths for that day, arms, and general condition. Check out the page for Heth's Division on August 18, 1864 for instance:

link

I know that reels 10-16 or so are most, but not all, of the Confederate army defending Richmond-Petersburg in 1864-5. However, some of the troops from Beauregard's Dept.and the Dept. of Richmond are in earlier reels, the low single digits. I'm guessing because I don't have access to an index. You have to pay for that reel, you guessed it, $125 USD, which is ridiculous.

What I'm in the process of doing is "cataloging" reels 10, 12-15, the ones I currently own, and I'll place my own indices of these reels free on my Siege of Petersburg site so people can be more selective.

What I'd ultimately love to do is have separate people buy up all 16 or so reels, have a group of interested parties transcribe the data, and then host it in one place for anyone interested in using it free of charge.

PS Brad, here's a good site of a guy who has transcribed a lot of this free of charge: link

He has apparently worked on the AoT. The earliest these reports appear seems to be August 1864, so that obviously isn't so good for the Atlanta Campaign. You might email him to see if he can tell you which reels contain the AoT.

This thread inspired me to get serious about creating indexes for each of the Confederate Inspection Report Reels I own from the NARA Microfilm M935 collection. The index reel costs $125 USD from NARA, so I thought I'd provide indices as I transcribe the reports. The first index, for Reel 10, is up at:

link

I offer the unit commanders, dates, and locations of a report on a given unit for free. For the detailed Present for Duty strengths, commanders, and weapons in a given report, including the sub-units, I'm charging $1 USD to help defray the expense of $125 USD I paid for Reel 10 in order to transcribe it. For wargamers who want this detailed information for every report on the reel, 64 in all, I'm asking for $25 USD.

If anyone is interested, come check it out. I also have Reels 12-15, and I'll be slowly working on indexes for those over the coming months.

Brett

That's awesome Brett.

Thanks Brad. It takes a long time. Some of these are pretty hard to read. You start to get better at it the longer you go.