Sherman on Railroads

Imaginary Armies

Jun 19, 2026

In the last chapter of his memoirs, William Tecumseh Sherman alternated between retrospective reflections upon his experience and musings about ways to frame the military forces of the immediate future. When, however, it came to railroads, he focused entirely upon the last two years of his war against his kith and kin.

The value of railways is also fully recognized in war quite as much as, if not more so than, in peace. The Atlanta campaign would simply have been impossible without the use of the railroads from Louisville to Nashville - one hundred and eighty-five miles - from Nashville to Chattanooga - one hundred and fifty-one miles - and from Chattanooga to Atlanta - one hundred and thirty-seven miles. Every mile of this ‘single track’ was so delicate, that one man could in a minute have broken or moved a rail, but our trains usually carried along the tools and means to repair such a break. We had, however, to maintain strong guards and garrisons at each important bridge or trestle, the destruction of which would have necessitated time for rebuilding.

For the protection of a bridge, one or two log blockhouses, two stories high, with a piece of ordnance and a small infantry guard, usually sufficed. The block-house had a small parapet and ditch about it, and the roof was made shot-proof by earth piled on. These points could usually be reached only by a dash of the enemy’s cavalry, and many of these block-houses successfully resisted serious attacks by both cavalry and artillery. The only block-house that was actually captured on the main [line] was the one described near Allatoona [Georgia].

Our trains from Nashville forward were operated under military rules, and ran about ten miles an hour in gangs of four trains of ten cars each. Four such groups of trains daily made one hundred and sixty cars, of ten tons each, carrying sixteen hundred tons, which exceeded the absolute necessity of the army, and allowed for the accidents that were common and inevitable. But, as I have recorded, that single stem of railroad, four hundred and seventy-three miles long, supplied an army of one hundred thousand men and thirty-five thousand animals for the period of one hundred and ninety-six days, viz., from May 1 to November 12, 1864. To have delivered regularly that amount of food and forage by ordinary wagons would have required thirty-six thousand eight hundred wagons of six mules each, allowing each wagon to have hauled two tons twenty miles each day, a simple impossibility in roads such as then existed in that region of country.

Therefore, I reiterate that the Atlanta campaign was an impossibility without these railroads; and only then, because we had the men and means to maintain and defend them, in addition to what were necessary to overcome the enemy. Habitually, a passenger-car will carry fifty men with their necessary baggage. Box-cars, and even platform-cars, answer the purpose well enough, but they should always have rough board-seats. For sick and wounded men, box-cars filled with straw or bushes were usually employed. Personally, I saw but little of the practical working of the railroads, for I only turned back once as far as Resaca [Georgia]; but I had daily reports from the engineer in charge, and officers who came from the rear often explained to me the whole thing, with a description of the wrecked trains all the way from Nashville to Atlanta.

I am convinced that the risk to life to the engineers and men on that railroad fully equaled that on the skirmish-line, called for as high an order of courage, and fully equaled it in importance. Still, I doubt if there be any necessity in time of peace to organize a corps specially to work the military railroads in time of war, because in peace these same men gain all the necessary experience, possess all the daring and courage of soldiers, and only need the occasional protection and assistance of the necessary train-guard, which may be composed of the furloughed men coming and going, or of details made from the local garrisons to the rear.

The roundhouse at Chattanooga in 1864 (US National Archives)

For the transfer of large armies by rail, from one theatre of action to another by the rear - the cases of the transfer of the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps - General Hooker, twenty-three thousand men - from the East to Chattanooga, eleven hundred and ninety-two miles in seven days, in the fall of 1863; and that of the Army of the Ohio - General Schofield, fifteen thousand men - from the valley of the Tennessee to Washington, fourteen hundred miles in eleven days, en route to North Carolina in January, 1865, are the best examples of which I have any knowledge, and reference to these is made in the report of the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, dated November 22, 1865.

Engineer troops attached to an army are habitually employed in supervising the construction of forts or field works of a nature more permanent than the lines used by the troops in motion, and in repairing roads and making bridges. I had several regiments of this kind that were most useful, but as a rule we used the infantry, or employed parties of freedmen, who worked on the trenches at night while the soldiers slept, and these in turn rested by day. Habitually the repair of the railroad and its bridges was committed to hired laborers, like the English navvies, under the supervision of Colonel W. W. Wright, a railroad-engineer, who was in the military service at the time, and his successful labors were frequently referred to in the official reports of the campaign.

Sources

Apart from items printed in italic letters, the text of this post comes from: William Tecumseh Sherman Memoirs of William T. Sherman (New York: D. Appleton, 1875) Volume II, Chapter XIV (Internet Archive)

Librivox offers, free of charge, an audio version of the aforementioned chapter. The viva voce version of the paragraphs reprinted in this post can be found in the recording marked ‘Military Lessons of the War - Section 3’. (The Tactical Notebook salutes Librivox reader David Wells for the high quality of this program and thanks him for his support of this remarkable service.)