Civil War Logistics by Earl J. Hess

Author:Earl J. Hess
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Published: 2017-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

7.1. Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia. The scene of a skirmish on August 28–30, 1861, the junction of Columbia Turnpike and Leesburg Pike is in the foreground. The photographer was standing on the Leesburg Pike looking southeast in the direction of Alexandria five miles away. The roadbed is graded but unpaved. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-34809)

Most roads in the Civil War South were comparatively crude affairs, a single lane that was wide enough for one wagon, snaking across the landscape with minimal grading or earth-moving. Most roads also were unpaved, merely dirt lanes vulnerable to the weather. They also were not of uniform quality, and officers paid a good deal of attention to assessing the state of any roads they planned to use in order to gauge what problems they would encounter. Some roads were in good shape, but many others were not. Based on reports, Nathaniel Banks concluded that one road near Culpeper and Sperryville was “very bad, not traveled nor repaired for many years. It is hardly practicable for any force, unless cavalry, and small bodies at that.”60

A few major roads in Civil War America could be classified as improved road systems, based on several methods of constructing modern highways. The idea of planking a dirt road, using split logs or thick planks, began in Russia and was adopted in Canada by 1834. The first plank road in the United States linking Syracuse with Lake Oneida, New York, appeared in 1846. That state boasted 182 plank road companies by 1850. Stringers were laid on the ground and cross planks nailed to them, with sand, gravel, or sawdust spread in a layer over the wooden pavement.61

Such a road needed continual maintenance. Federal troops participating in John Pope’s campaign against Island No. 10 encountered planked sections of an old Spanish road, the King’s Road that linked Sikeston with New Madrid, in southeast Missouri. The well-graded pike ran through several swampy areas that had to be planked. With nearly 200 army wagons using it, the planking became quite cut up and rough.62

A paving method devised by an English surveyor named John Louden M’Adam in the early 1800s proved to be far better than planking. He applied a layer of small stones on the surface of a dirt road without anything such as earth or clay to adhere the stones, relying only on weathering and dust to form a coherent layer. It was cheaper and faster than paving with admixtures and soon became so popular that his name gave rise to the term macadamized to denote this type of road pavement. In the United States this method became the most common mode of making turnpikes, and several major pikes served the needs of Union invaders of the Confederacy. Most Americans viewed this method of improving roads as the most advanced, at times referring to them as gravel roads. They mostly were located in the upper South rather than in the lower South.63

Macadamized pikes were far better than dirt roads and planked roads combined for moving army wagons, and many soldiers thought they were better for marching as well.

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