© 2009 Larry E. Taylor
"The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail "
The Civil War of Captain Simon
Perkins, Jr., a Union Quartermaster
Dr. Lenette S. Taylor
Dr. Taylor visits civic groups,Civil War Roundtable
meetings and others 
for presentations based upon her
book. To schedule a presentation, contact larryetaylor@hotmail.com.
GO TO :
ADAM
CECIL, a reader N E
W -- 
-- N E W
AMAZON.COM -- MRS. MARGEAN GLADYSZ
BEACON JOURNAL / AKRON, OHIO
DRUM AND BUGLE CALL, MAHONING VALLEY CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE
/ BOARDMAN, OHIO
H-CivWar
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY
MILITARY REVIEW
NOBS NEWSLETTER
NORTH AND SOUTH
NORTHEAST OHIO JOURNAL OF HISTORY
NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW
NYMAS REVIEW
RECORD COURIER / RAVENNA, OHIO
STOW SENTRY / STOW, OHIO
Correspondence from Mr. Adam Cecil of Florida, January 2010
"Dear Dr. Taylor,
"I recently picked up your book while zipping through Chicamauga Battlefield on my way home to Florida. And when I got home I must say I have really enjoyed it.
"I have a vivid imagination when it comes to the Civil War period and I picture everything in every book as my imagination and knowledge of material culture allow me to do. I must say that the words of your book come right off the page at me. To most people it may just be a scholarly work (I don't know) but for me it reads like a novel.
"I can picture the laborers refusing to work for the army unless the qm could prove they would get paid. I can picture the steam boat captains seeing a stranded coal barge tethered to a dock and sending their crew in the dead of night to make off with all they could before getting caught. I picture an understaffed qm department trying to keep thousands of forms and thousands of signatures filed in order and kept on hand if and when documentation was needed for anything, especially in a day when almost no identification could be verified and anything could be forged. Wow, those guys were amazing.
"And what is really amazing is that you had the drive to go through all this stuff and create such a book so it makes sense and entertains. It truly is a treasure that I will tell my friends about (and I'm only on chapter three).
"Thank you for bringing these characters alive and for tackling this often ignored, yet very cool subject.
"Yours in a love of history and detail,
Adam Cecil"
A book review on the Amazon.com
website, posted November 23, 2004 -- The reviewer was Mrs. Margean Gladysz of Kalamazoo, Michigan USA.
"This is a tremendous addition to a little studied area of Civil War military science - supply and movement of the wherewithal. A 1990 find still bound in government 'red tape', these records provided rich background on the incredible paperwork and labor needed to supply the hay, grain, horses and mules, ordinance, hospitals, quarters, and the myriad other items needed by a fighting force. We tend not to comprehend the millions of pounds of grain and hay required for just one campaign, for example, nor do we think of the civilian clerks, laborers, teamsters, and others that helped carry out the quartermaster function. This activity was replicated wherever Union soldiers served. All this plus fascinating background on the 23-year-old Captain Simon Perkins, Quartermaster in the Western Theater. "
A book review printed in the NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW, November/December 2005 :
"A wise military tactician once said that an army moves 'on its stomach,' meaning that without adequate supplies, mainly food, an army in the field could be rendered ineffective. Without sufficient arms, ammunition and other implements of warfare, even the grandest division ever assembled would be virtually useless. However, in the annals of recorded history, it is rare that the people who kept these supplies flowing are even mentioned, much less recognized. In "The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail", author Lenette Taylor has made a tremendous contribution to the understanding of just how much the Union army depended upon the quartermaster--in this case, Capt. Simon Perkins Jr.--and his ability to negotiate for supplies to feed, house, clothe, and arm a vast army in the field.
"The excellent introduction to the book describes the duties of an army quartermaster and explains why the role, although important, has often been neglected by scholars. There is little extant primary source material, as most of the records of persons engaged in this activity were either largely forgotten or tossed aside. This fact makes Taylor's works all the more fascinating and amazing. Finding and publishing such a large collection of papers from an army quartemaster is truly an invaluable contribution to Civil War research.
"Taylor begins by examining the background of Simon Perkins. He was born into a wealthy, influential family much involved in business and military affairs. After Perkins enlisted as a regular soldier in an Ohio Volunteer unit, his abilities and reputation caught the eye of Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs. Through the auspices of Mieg's vast influence and some patronage from the War Department, Perkins secured a post as quartermaster."
A book review printed in the MILITARY REVIEW, May-June 2005 :
"Every U.S. military officer has heard the stories, visited the battlefields, and read countless articles and books about the American Civil War. We normally focus our studies on the great campaigns, acts of heroism, and colorful leaders of that conflict. Unfortunately, we rarely consider the immense effort required to provision and support those enormous armies in the field. Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail will certainly help fill that gap. The book is a "must" for logistics officers as well as serious students of the American Civil War.
"Captain Simon Perkins, Jr., a Union Quartermaster in the Western Theater, left behind a trove of records of his service during the Civil War. Lenette S. Taylor used Perkins' personal records and detailed research to write a book that clearly demonstrates the fantastic complexities of a logistics officer during the war. The books' level of detail is remarkable, and the author does an excellent job of keeping the specific experiences of Perkins in the proper context to the overall campaign.
"The book's lessons provide quality insight for logisticians supporting the Global War on Terrorism. The transportation complexities of moving tens of thousands of soldiers through the rural south; the forage and food requirements for armies on the move; extremely difficult distribution of supplies; the protection of convoys and transportation assets from guerrilla bands and criminals; and the requirements for garrison quarters spread over immense distances bring to mind a common situation being experienced even today. The book clearly shows that none of the current U.S. military's logistical problems are unique.
"The only shortcoming is that the reader can easily get lost in ledger numbers and the high level of detail. Fortunately, Taylor does an excellent job directing the reader to the overall context in which the accounts were written and frequently uses humor to maintain the book's pace.
"This book is written for two audiences: today's military logisticians and the serious student of the American Civil War. Taylor's well-written book deserves a place on the professional bookshelf of every military logistician and civil war scholar." MAJ Jason Carrico, USA, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
A book review printed in the RECORD COURIER newspaper, September 15, 2005 :
"... deals with an area not usually covered: how supplies got to where they needed to be. The war could not have been fought--and certainly not won--without the diligence of the quartermaster. His duties included managing railroad traffic, handling labor probems, and delivering goods throughout the embattled country.
"Perkins' father was Col. Simon Perkins of Akron. During Simon Jr.'s service with the Army of the Ohio, the Army of the Cumberland, and the Department of the North, he held key assignments in Tennessee and Alabama, directed wagon trains during the Kentucky campaign, and managed railroad transportation and quarters in Nashville, uring the Chattanooga campaign.
"This is the practical side of war. As just one example, he had to deal with shipping horses and mules to the troops in battle. But his suppliers were sending animals that were too young or too old, or weren't properly loadied into the railroad cars and died en route or suffered from the heat..."
A book review printed in the NOBS NEWSLETTER, Vol. XXI, No. 4, Fall 2004 -- Used with
persmission of the publisher :
"Review by Robert M. Bricker
"This book numbers 264 pages, 208 of which are text, 31 pages of notes, a 12 page bibliography, and an 11 page index. It includes a seven page preface by the author, a six page appendix, 19 illustrations, and a map.
"Lenette Taylor's credentials list her as a Stow, Ohio, author and part-time history professor. Her bibliography lists an imposing number of manuscripts, mostly in Ohio archives. Her main source of material was Captain Perkins' eight trunks of Civil War documents now belonging to the Summit County Historical Society. Her book is taken from her doctoral dissertation, for which her adviser was the late Dr. Frank L. Byrne, at Kent State University.
"In the steady stream of Civil War literature poured out by authors and publishers it is rare to find something that is both different and well done. Lenette Taylor's book is such a work. Most Civil War books tell over and over again the stories of the great battles or the lives of the men who fought them. Taylor's story tells of the organization and enormous effort it took to supply those men who fought those battles. It's like looking behind the stage; the ropes and pulleys the harried people trying to get everything done a the right time and in the right place, and knowing disaster was in the wings if they failed.
"Taylor began with a genealogy for Simon Perkins, Jr. It leads into an interesting tale of mid-nineteenth century Ohio; the family connections, the power, the politics, and the money. Perkins had originally enlisted in the 19th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, a 90 day regiment called into service at the very beginning of the war. Seeing little reason to remain a private, he did not stay in the regiment when his enlistment expired. Instead he waited, and with the aid of his uncle, the governor of Ohio, David Tod, and the secretary of war, Simon Cameron, was appointed to the Quartermaster Department. Captain Simon Perkins, Jr. assumed his duties arriving at Louisville, Kentucky, February 23, 1862, and reported to Colonel Thomas Swords, chief quartermaster of the Departments of the Ohio and the Cumberland, who then sent him on to Major General Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Army of the Ohio. For the rest of the war he would remaining a captain and an assistant quartermaster.
"A fair guess of the number of men who served in the Union Army is 2,898,304. Every one of these souls required enough food to keep him alive and functioning, a variety of clothing, weapons and ammunition, a bare minimum of creature comforts, and all these had to be supplied to huge constantly moving armies, by rail, by water, or by horse or mule drawn wagons. The rail lines were often being torn up, wrecked and burned by Confederate raiders, many rivers were only navigable for about half the year, wagons wore out as did horses and mules, each of which needed 16 pounds of feed per day. On page after page Taylor describes the difficulties and frustrations faced by Perkins and the other quartermasters.
"At the beginning of the war the system was chaotic. No one had ever seen armies of this size that required these enormous amounts of material. Nashville, Tennessee, became the center of supply for Union armies operating in the west, and a great deal of Perkins' time and efforts were spent there. It was a transportation hub with the Cumberland River, seven turnpikes and three railroads converging on it. "Perkins and his fellow quartermasters were the key to furnishing subsistence for men and animals. Strategy was shaped and influenced by them. The quartermaster department assumed the character of a large mercantile business."
"Perkins was not always in Nashville. He along with his supply depot moved temporarily into northern Alabama. When Confederate forces invaded Kentucky in the fall of 1862, Perkins had to send all his supplies back to Nashville, then follow Buell into Kentucky with his supply train in his wake. That supply train was 20 miles long. After the indecisive battle of Perryville, Buell was replaced by Major General William S. Rosecrans.
"While in Kentucky, at Louisville, Captain Perkins had his photograph taken. Included in Taylor's book, it shows a tall, handsome, young officer in a typical Civil War pose.
"As the war progressed Perkins' responsibilities continued to grow; the list is almost endless. At one time or another he was supplying corn, hay, fodder, horseshoes, nails, wagons, harnesses, coal, horses, mules, shoes, socks, underwear, trousers, shirts, jackets, overcoats, paper, pens, ink, printed forms, special provisions for scouts, guides and spies. He was responsible for providing wood for heating and cooking, carpenters, tables and chairs, travel vouchers, transportation for the wounded, for men on leave or changing assignments, for prisoners; quarters, subsistence and wages for laborers—many of them runaway former slaves. He once handled "two barrels of pickles, a crate of live poultry and a box of liquor consigned to General Rosecrans.
"Toward the end of the war circumstances in the west had ceased to be critical as most of the remaining Confederate forces had been defeated. Perkins was shifted to several minor posts, including New Orleans. In June 1865, Perkins tendered his resignation in the Union Army: "My affairs now demand immediate attention." In November 1865, he took advantage of an opportunity to buy half interest in a bank in Sharon, Pennsylvania, beginning a distinguished career as a successful businessman. In April 1869, Perkins was wed to his "beautiful wife" Laura Pease Norton who, according to family folklore, he had met in New Orleans. A minor disappointment in the book was Taylor's failure to include a picture of the lovely Laura Perkins. Together they had four children. Perkins died in May 1911, and his funeral in Sharon, Pennsylvania, was held on June 1. He was honored as "one of Sharon's wealthiest and foremost citizens." Amidst all the re-hashing and trash published almost daily about the Civil War, Lenette Taylor's book stands out like a ten carat diamond. Her research is meticulous. She is a rarity—a scholar and a gifted writer. A man's life that could easily been duller than dirt comes to life in her hands. Her knowledge of the Civil War era is flawless. This is a great, interesting, fun book to read. As a beat up old retired history teacher, and Civil War nut, I give Taylor an A+."
A book review printed in NORTH & SOUTH, Vol. 7, Number. 7, November
2004 www.northandsouthmagazine.com
:
"The Quartermaster Department generally remains the forgotten branch of the army during the Civil War. Lenette Taylor rectifies the oversight through her skillful organization and rich description of one quartermaster's mundane records, reports, and accounts of those transactions that proved absolutely essential to winning the war. Simon Perkins' records will fascinate readers interested in logistics, and offer solid background to students of the western campaigns.
"Quartermasters had to overcome overlapping and conflicting commands, as well as officers demanding (or simply appropriating) supplies without proper authorization, in a business driven by paperwork and accounting. They had to overcome muddy roads, low water, and poorly maintained railroads in order to distribute supplies. They had to give unhappy suppliers vouchers in lieu of cash because of the federal government's delays in sending funds for disbursement.
"A child of a politically prominent Ohio family, Simon Perkins served as a ninety-day volunteer, then used his business background in iron production and banking to secure a commission as a quartermaster captain. The men who served in this understaffed branch of the army sacrificed rank, glory, and recognition for anonymous unappreciated hard work. Perkins proved a resourceful and talented officer and the army rapidly increased his responsibilities. His first assignment in newly captured Nashville called on him to requisition, inspect, account for, and distribute fuel and forage. He took part in the campaign for Corinth, including supervising the wagon trains. He later served in Don Carlos Buell's failed campaign for Chattanooga, then participated in the fighting in Kentucky, the Battle of Stones River, and William Rosecrans' capture of Chattanooga and its subsequent siege.
"Perkins' descendants donated eight crates of his records to the Summit County Historical Society in Akron, Ohio. Taylor arranged and archived the "formidable body of primary source materials" as part of her dissertation research at Kent State University. The author points out that few Civil War quartermaster records have survived, and she has therefore conducted significant historical archeology.
"Taylor uses her treasure well. She inundates the reader with data, such as "nineteen cars of forage—1,710 sacks of grain and 260 bales of hay" (p. 73), "drafts for $300,000 on September 17 and $400,372.25 four days later" (p. 153), a requisition for "85,000 shirts; 50,000 each of infantry trousers, blankets, hats, and canteens; 100,000 each of drawers and socks; and 75,000 pairs of shoes" (p. 154). Some readers may find the minutiae tiresome, but it demonstrates the enormous range of challenges faced and overcome by Civil War quartermasters. The details lend necessary substance to Perkins' story.
"Taylor's work represents important new scholarship. Some readers may quibble with some aspects of her historical framework, but she worked with what Perkins gave her, stays with his story, and tells it well. This is a well researched, well organized, and well written book." — John E. Clark, Jr. Ridgewood, New Jersey
Perkins maintained a busy, at times Herculean work regimen at or near the top of the supply hierarchy within each of the organizations he toiled: the Ohio Army—subsequently redesignated the Army of the Cumberland—and, by 1864, the Department of the North. His responsibilities included the securing and distribution of forage and other vital provisions, the management of supply depots, and the myriad accounting tasks inherent to quartermaster service. Disbursing army wares along intricate (and often dangerous) routes of supply in occupied territory often entailed the best organizational and interpersonal talents available. Throughout this well-written and scrupulously researched volume, Taylor demonstrates that Captain Perkins, despite his youth, was an officer who possessed extraordinary talent and ingenuity in managing the succor of tens of thousands of Union troops and hundreds of thousands of draft and other animals. Indeed, Perkins’s talents drew the notice of all superior officers with whom he came into contact, including Buell, who granted the young captain more and more organizational responsibilities throughout 1862, and Major General William Starke Rosecrans, upon whose staff Perkins worked as the Department (Army) of the Cumberland’s Assistant Quartermaster.
Peculiarly, Perkins’s military service came to an abrupt end by the summer of 1864. Citing “private affairs [in Ohio being left] in a very disordered state” (185), the captain tendered his resignation, which was at length approved on July 12, 1864. Returning home, Perkins over the next forty-seven years amassed a large fortune in banking, iron manufacturing, railroads, gas and water works, and real estate in Sharon, Pennsylvania, located just across Ohio’s common border with the Keystone State; doubtless his experience as an army quartermaster, handling millions of tons of supplies valued at countless millions of dollars, prepared the erstwhile captain for success during the tumultuous Gilded Age.
The chief virtue of this volume is the great mass of official materials detailing the actions of Captain Perkins and the military departments he helped manage. Benefiting from the 1990 acquisition by the Summit County (Ohio) Historical Society of eight crates of Captain Perkins’s army correspondence from family heirs, Taylor not only organized and catalogued the entire collection—consisting of some twenty thousand one-of-a-kind items—she has produced a firstrate narrative study that will likely serve as a model for future scholarly forays into the Civil War supply arm. There are, however, a few deficiencies that limit the work’s general effectiveness. First, the regrettable dearth of private family correspondence leaves the reader yearning to know more about Perkins the individual in addition to Perkins the competent professional. For example, adequate explanation and analysis of the captain’s sudden resignation from army life even goes unexplained within Taylor’s text. This shortfall is of course as unavoidable as it is lamentable. What is not is Taylor’s failure at times to contextualize the captain’s activities more thoroughly within the larger history of trans-Appalachian military operations, as well as more conclusively to demonstrate—utilizing the work of organizational and occupational historians—Perkins’s role in parlaying his acquired expertise into lasting professional success during the post-bellum years. Nevertheless, Taylor’s work should without question stand on its own considerable merits. “The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail” is an invaluable addition to any serious Civil War scholar’s library. It should be especially welcome to those who focus their research/reading interest upon the conduct of the war’s important (and still sadly underrepresented) Western campaigns."— Christopher S. Stowe, United States Army Command and General Staff College
A book review posted Sunday, June 13, 2004, to
the website of the Beacon Journal of Akron, Ohio :
"Supply-side war stories
"Most Akronites know Col. Simon Perkins Jr. as a key figure in the city's development, builder of the Stone Mansion on Copley Road and an early railroad investor. Few know the story told in The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail: The Civil War of Captain Simon Perkins Jr., a Union Quartermaster, a new book by historian Lenette S. Taylor.
"Col. Perkins's son -- also named Simon Perkins Jr., just to confuse matters -- served as a quartermaster during the Civil War, working diligently to equip the Union army. Capt. Simon Perkins, just 23 when he received his appointment, proved worthy of the commission. As he resolved labor disputes and managed rail delivery of supplies, he became known as an efficient and capable officer.
"After the war, Perkins settled in Sharon, Pa., where he became one of the town's leading citizens.
"Taylor draws heavily on the contents of eight crates of documents donated by the descendents of George Perkins, Capt. Simon's older brother, to the Summit County Historical Society. The crates contained correspondence, personnel records and financial accounts. The small picture shows how organized and methodical Capt. Perkins was; the big picture gives valuable insight on practical aspects of how the Civil War was waged.
"The Supply for Tomorrow will interest those looking for a new perspective on Civil War history. Readers simply out for a straightforward account of the logistics of a 19th century military operation will find Taylor's research both scholarly and accessible. The book (hardcover, 284 pages) is available for $35 from Kent State University Press . . . ."
A book review printed in the Stow Sentry, Stow, Ohio, December 19, 2004 :
"Much has been written about the campaigns and key leaders of the Civil War, but very little has examined the men who kept soldiers fed, clothed, and equipped. Taylor seeks to correct this oversight with this work on the military career of Captain Simon Perkins Jr., a Quartermaster in the Army of the Ohio, Army of the Cumberland and Department of the North. Using Perkins' own papers, which were brought to light in 1990, Taylor examines the labor and logistical problems he faced and capably handled, thus greatly aiding in the success of Union armies. This book will appeal to both Civil War buffs and people interested in local history." -- Joe Filippini, Prepress Department
A book review posted to the Strategy
Page, www.strategypage.com/bookreviews
-- and printed in the NYMAS Review, No. 3,
Summer 2004, Annual Civil War Issue :
"A civilian businessman, early in the war Perkins secured an appointment as an assistant quartermaster, and later as a paymaster, and served in the Army of the Ohio and later that of the Cumberland, in Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee, including service during such battles as Shiloh, Corinth, and Chattanooga. His duties seems like the material from which one can make an interesting book, but that is precisely what the author has done, taken a difficult, dry subject, and turning it into an informative, readable account of the logistical side of the war.
"In the course of his duties Perkins managed the supply of fodder to the armies, conducted 'midnight requisitions,' fed – and later paid – thousands of troops, and fought countless bureaucratic battles, all skills acquired through “O.J.T.”, as the Union had very few trained quartermaster and paymaster officers, and no training program for them. The book provides a good lesson in what it took to keep an army in the field during the Civil War, from uniforms and ammunition to pens and ink (the latter in two colors, black and red).
"The book also provides a look at how Perkins career was initiated and sustained by an intricate pattern of family and social ties, and how he maintained his private interests whilst on campaign. A valuable contribution to an often-neglected side of the war."
Reviewer: Albert A. Nofi
CNO SSG
A presentation review
printed in the March 13, 2006, edition of the DRUM AND BUGLE CALL
of Mahoning Valley Civil War Roundtable of Boardman, Ohio follows.
The review was written by Gordy Morgan.
“At last month’s meeting [February 21, 2006] … Lenette Taylor said that the thesis of her book, The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail: the Civil War of Captain Simon Perkins, Jr., Union Quartermaster was that quartermasters were the “most invaluable but invisible men in the Civil War.” Using transparencies of transcribed communications and personal and official documents, she gave us a glimpse into the world of a brilliant and resourceful individual whose service was indispensable to the Union war effort.
“After giving her interesting views on the Civil War and the way it is interpreted by southerners, including members of her own family (she calls herself “thoroughly reconstructed”), Dr. Taylor described the process of reading and interpreting the 25,000 hand-written documents bundled in official Government “red tape” – it took her two years – which are the only collection of papers belonging to a quartermaster serving in the field, and the “largest collection of papers other than those of the Quartermaster General to document any quartermaster’s service in the Civil War.” She says she found the experience “thrilling!” Everything Simon Perkins did in his 2 ½ years of service was contained in those crates.
“Simon Perkins, Jr. belonged to a well-known and well-connected Ohio family. His maternal uncle was David Tod of Youngstown, who you could say got the young man his start in the military when Perkins and his brother joined Co. B of the 19th Ohio 90-day volunteers, an outfit Tod supplied at his own expense. And it was Tod again who petitioned his friend and former campaign manager, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, to get Perkins his first quartermaster’s position. Lenette added that even though Perkins was more than capable, he was the equivalent of a vice-president in his uncle’s bank at age nineteen, and did not need to let people know who his influential relations were, he couldn’t resist “name-dropping” to get what he wanted.
“Union Quartermasters had a myriad of challenges facing them. Being responsible for nearly everything that the army needed in the way of supplies and housing, they experienced a severe lack of cash, different commands hijacking their railroad cars, labor issues, and unrealistic orders from their commanders. But they dealt with these problems using common sense and a little bit of imagination and a lot of cooperation. They were “wonderful middle managers,” Lenette explained, and were “extremely effective and efficient throughout the war.”
“As I stated before, quartermasters had to deal with another relatively unknown but equally important group – hired laborers, and Perkins managed an enormous work force. But he was again an effective manager because he won the loyalty of his laborers by “going to bat” for them when they were involved in a dispute. And Perkins didn’t see the color of a man’s skin. In the record of employment Lenette showed from his first duty in Nashville in 1862, there are references to employees who are described as “colored,” the only payroll records that identify blacks employed by the U.S. Government. And he paid them the same as everyone else in his employ, a practice which often got him into trouble.
“When U.S. Grant took over the Army of the Cumberland in 1863 he sacked most of Rosecrans’ staff, but kept Simon Perkins. On December 24th he is ordered to take charge of the supply operations at Chattanooga in preparation for Sherman’s anticipated operations in Georgia, which culminate in the famous March to the Sea. But for unknown reasons he applies for a leave, which at this point in the war are hard to come by. But Grant gives him permission to take time off. Lenette speculated that Grant did this because he had such good feelings towards Perkins’ family. When he was a young boy, Grant’s father was sent to live with Judge George Tod and his wife, Simon’s maternal grandparents, at Brier Hill in Youngstown. Grant wrote in his memoirs that Judge and Mrs. Tod were the finest people he’d ever known. On that leave home he is intercepted at Cincinnati and put in charge of supplies there, never to return to Chattanooga.
“After the war he moved to Sharon, Pennsylvania and bought half-interest in a bank (probably staked by his wealthy uncles). He became a millionaire, his son married Andrew Carnegie’s niece, and built a house overlooking the river. The house burned in 1913 or 14, but was rebuilt on the original foundation and still stands today near St. John’s Church.
“…You can tell Lenette Taylor spent two years researching Simon Perkins’s life, because she exhibited a deep and intimate understanding of his story. “These people all suddenly became very real to me,” she said. I think they became more real to all of us that night.”
A book review written by Tom Pearson and
published by H-CivWar August 2005, is reproduced
below. The review is also available at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=127211136821285.
"Invisible Men: Union Army Quartermasters
"Pity the poor Union Army quartermaster. On the rare occasion when the average Civil War buff thinks about him, the images that come to mind are those of shoddily-made uniforms dissolving in a hard rain in mid-1861, William S. Rosecrans’s men and animals starving during Braxton Bragg’s 1863 siege of Chattanooga, and thousands of overcoats littering Ulysses S. Grant’s line of march during the Wilderness Campaign of 1864. If these images were in fact accurate measures of the honesty, ability, and efficiency of the typical Union Army quartermaster, then it would appear that the Union Army won the war in spite of the best efforts of these men, not because of them.
"As Lenette S. Taylor’s biography of Captain Simon Perkins, Jr. (1839-1911) makes clear, however, the typical Union Army quartermaster was actually as honest, hard-working, and efficient as working conditions and Army red tape would allow. He was also overworked and undervalued, as the chronic shortage of competent, energetic quartermasters throughout the war attests (pp. 12-13).
"Simon Perkins, Jr. was part of a prosperous and well-connected Ohio family. His father and uncles were rainmakers in the railroad, iron, and banking industries. In a letter to Quartermaster Montgomery C. Meigs stating his qualifications to receive a commission in the Quartermaster Bureau, Perkins listed as references Ohio Governor David Tod (his maternal uncle), Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and Comptroller Elisha Whittlesey. Although he was only twenty-three years old at the time of his application, Perkins already had ten years of experience working in family businesses.
"Perkins probably decided to seek appointment as an officer in the Quartermaster Bureau because service as a private in the original ninety-day 19th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment convinced him that his business experience would allow him to make a more valuable contribution to the war effort as a quartermaster (pp. 10-11). His new boss, Quartermaster General Meigs, was in full agreement with Perkins that the Quartermaster Bureau was the most important of the War Department’s seven staff departments, for shortcomings in that bureau could "make the best planned campaign impracticable" (p. 11).
"Perkins soon became aware that the quartermaster’s job was neither easy nor effortless. He learned his duties on the job, and realized rather quickly that men in his position worked long hours, had numerous duties due to the chronic shortage of competent quartermasters, and rarely received recognition or promotion for a job well done. Problems in the Western Theater (Perkins served in the Army of the Ohio, Army of the Cumberland, and Department of the North) included bad roads and rivers that could be too shallow to navigate at certain times of year, disruption by rebel cavalry and guerrillas of lines of supply and communications, competition for goods and cargo space with commercial vendors, and a parsimonious Congress that made no effort to make available on a timely basis funds for payment of civilian suppliers and employees (pp. 22-23, 39). In addition, the Union war effort’s voracious appetite for manpower made it difficult to procure the services of experienced civilian clerks and white laborers, so free blacks were routinely employed as laborers and teamsters, and slaves were sometimes pressed into service in those same capacities (pp. 26-27, 70-71). Finally, civilian and military personnel on the payroll were often laid low by debilitating diseases like malaria that were endemic to many of the Southern states (pp. 58-59).
"The amounts of men, animals, materiel, supplies, and cash handled by a quartermaster were at times awe-inspiring. While at the Pittsburg Landing supply depot in Tennessee in 1862, Perkins received almost eighteen million pounds of forage in a twenty-nine-day period (p. 46). Perkins’s replacement at the supply depot at Eastport, Mississippi signed receipts for stores on hand that included 2.8 million pounds of corn, 1.9 million pounds of oats, 1.3 million pounds of hay, and 59,000 pounds of straw (p. 63). During a three-month period at the Nashville supply depot in 1863, Perkins dispensed nearly 3.5 million dollars to the holders of 9,000 overdue vouchers (pp. 169-170). Yet during his entire time in the Quartermaster Bureau (two and one-half years), Perkins, like most of his brother quartermasters, held the relatively lowly rank of captain.
"Perkins’s Union Army superiors seemed at times determined to make a difficult, demanding job even more so. Duties and duty stations were changed so frequently for the typical quartermaster that he rarely had time to learn new duties and settle existing accounts before it was time to pack up and head to his next assignment (p. 39). Quartermasters were required to fill out a bewildering variety of forms and reports, including nine monthly reports, each of which had to include nine different lengthy forms, plus three quarterly reports, each of which had to include three mandatory and two optional returns (quartermasters at major depots filled out an additional mandatory return). All returns were documented with abstracts and vouchers, and vouchers accounting for lost, stolen, or destroyed property had to be sworn before a justice of the peace or designated military officer (pp. 204-205). Additionally, the 1862 effort to root out corruption in the Quartermaster Bureau resulted in a requirement that quartermasters make three copies of their reports--one to be sent directly to the Treasury Department, one for Quartermaster General Meig’s office, and one for the quartermaster to keep for his own protection in case of subsequent inquiries by the Army or the Treasury Department (p. 203).
"Quartermasters had to account for lost, stolen, and destroyed property both during and after the war. Perkins had been a quartermaster for less than two weeks when he was required to account for a large load of coal that had been lost on the Cumberland River (pp. 36-37). Such problems cropped up throughout his wartime service, yet his biggest shock in this regard occurred after the war. In 1869, as the result of a Treasury Department audit of his wartime accounts, Perkins received a bill for items unaccounted for. The amount that Treasury claimed he owed was $297,926.18, a truly jawdropping amount in those days. Luckily, he was able to resolve part of the amount owed with a notarized statement of his recollection of the final disposition of certain materials, but erasing the rest of the amount due required the calling in of a few political favors (pp. 194-197).
"Biographer Lenette Taylor went to great pains to acquire source materials for her account of Perkins’s wartime service. Existing autobiographies of quartermasters, as she points out, are "somewhat enlightening but tend to be rather self-serving" (p. xi). An initial survey of more than forty public and private libraries and archives revealed a dearth of collections of personal papers of Union Army quartermasters. Perkins’s family, however, unlike the families of many another quartermaster, had faithfully maintained eight crates packed with records and papers from his wartime service--some twenty thousand of them in all, many still tied in the literal red tape used during the war to seal official documents. These eight crates were donated in 1990 to the Summit County (Ohio) Historical Society, and the records and papers therein were processed and arranged by the author (pp. xi-xii). Numerous primary and secondary materials from the National Archives and other sources "filled many gaps and helped flesh out" Perkins’s papers (pp. xii-xiii).
"Taylor uses her wealth of raw materials to construct a detailed history of the career of an Army quartermaster that also ably illustrates his place in the grand scheme of Western Theater operations. The book is not without flaws; for example, the index is mainly a "proper name" index, and therefore much less detailed than the index of a work on this subject should be. Only one map is provided, a serious shortcoming for a biography of an Army officer posted to numerous duty stations. The subject matter will likely have limited appeal for a general audience. But the book definitely achieves its stated purpose of shedding light on the essential contributions of the Union Army’s "invisible men" to the war effort. Certainly it will be an essential reference for those researching logistics and transportation in the Western Theater--no better-written or more detailed account of the career of a quartermaster in that theater currently exists."
A book review written by Harold S. Wilson, Old
Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, and published by the Journal of American History, is reproduced
below. The review is also available at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/92.1/br_47.html
.
"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.
"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.
"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).
"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.
"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.
"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."
CONTACT: larryetaylor@hotmail.com
Updated 01--29--2010
