Importance of Supplies in War

Since men began fighting, it’s known that armies must have provisions, the basic three-Ms  are meals, munitions, and medicines. The definition of “supplies” is the stock of resources from which a person can be provided with the necessary amount of that resource.

Generals do spend a great deal of time planning battles, but they also carefully plot where to obtain the needed supplies to keep their military units marching and how to move those supplies to their positions. Napoleon Bonaparte, who lost more men to spoiled food that to the enemy, is known for saying, “An army marches on its stomach.”

The very next day after George Washington accepted command of the Continental Army in 1775, he created a special position for a man whose responsibilities were the finances and logistics of all the army’s needs—the Quartermaster General. He acquired the supplies and got them distributed to the army.

We’ve all just lived through disruption to our own ‘supply lines’ and know firsthand how devastating it can be. For a general, a vital proponent of winning the war is keeping his own supply lines open while doing his best to destroy the enemy’s. Starvation has meant the surrender of one side since wars began.

The industrial North had so much advantage over the South with their manufacturing abilities. The Southern plantation owners farmed, growing cotton and tobacco crops to sell to the European markets where they ordered goods they could no longer procure from the North. Slave labor was the foundation for a prosperous economic system in the South.

The higher quality of supplies of clothing and gear issued to the Union soldiers made those in gray envious.

Plus the North had the superior infrastructure in their railroads to move both me and goods. They had twenty thousand miles of track compared to nine thousand in the South and their own locomotive factory whereas the South converted theirs into an armament factory. For this reason, both rail centers and railroad tracks became targets for attack.   

In the beginning of America’s Civil War, patriotic citizens of both sides were fully willing to provide for their men going off to fight for the right, to share what they had. This is when my new story takes place, in December of 1861, and in Kentucky which had declared itself neutral, but that didn’t stop the Confederates from making Bowling Green their regional headquarters for their army.

But three years in, that was no longer so. Commandeering food from civilians became rampant. Both the Union and Confederates' military regulations allowed for ‘foraging food and livestock.’ To plunder and pillage though was explicitly banned—except no one paid attention to that part and almost everyone ignored it.

To devastate Lee’s food supply in 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant ordered Major General Phillip Sheridan to destroy all the farms, crops, and businesses in the Shenandoah Valley. He told him to render it so barren that a crow flying over would have to pack its own lunch.

The one hundred thousand men who made up Grant’s Army of the Potomac required forty thousand pounds of meat and vegetables a day. Lee with half that number in his Army of Northern Virginia were existing on half rations, basically starving because the supply lines had been interrupted.

In KENTUCKY BRIDE, book eight of the North & South: Civil War Brides Collection, my heroine, Gardenia Gladiola Garland—who goes by GiGi—is accompanying her grandfather to deliver supplies to the Confederate troops. It is scheduled to debut on June 9th, so is available now for pre-order.

Here’s where to pre-order your copy! <+> https://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-Bride-North-South-Brides-ebook/dp/B085BFF244

And here’s the jacket copy:
In this world, you will have tribulation.
In 1861, a tragic war fell upon America’s United States, dividing them North against South. Some might say a young woman can't be too fussy when almost every unattached young man is off fighting, but that shouldn't mean the daughter of a Union man has any excuse for canoodling with a Rebel.

Still, eighteen-year-old Gigi longed for true love, and the dashing Texas Ranger turned Kentucky Confederate vies for her heart. How will they overcome the odds and a war to be together? A Civil War indeed, such an oxymoron!

Bio: Award-winning Author Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory! And her best-selling novels are blessed with a lion’s share of 5-Star ratings! With fifty-and-counting titles, she loves writing as well as singing the new songs the Lord gives her—listen to a few at YouTube. She and husband Ron share four children and nineteen grandsugars. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, the seat of Red River County, in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door. 

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