FORT ABERCROMBIE, D. T.
Quartermaster Department
1861 REGULATIONS
62…While it is the duty of the Quartermaster's Department to provide quarters, commanding officers are responsible that they are distributed according to regulations.
96…Each Colonel, or other permanent commander of a regiment, will appoint, from the subaltern officers of the regiment, his Adjutant and Regimental-Quartermaster, (the latter subject to the approval of the Secretary of War,) and report the same to the Adjutant-General. These appointments, when duly made and announced, will not be vacated, except by sentence of a General Court Martial, or by the authority of the permanent commander of the regiment.
102…Appointments of regimental quartermaster will only be conferred upon officers who unite the experience, discretion, and qualifications necessary for the efficient performance of their responsible and varied duties.
103…Among these duties, are the laying out of camps; care of the wages and camp equipage of the regiment; superintending the removal of obstructions in roads, during a march; being present at issues, and distributions, to judge of the quantity and quality of the supplies tendered; and the duties of Assistant-Quartermaster at a post or station.
104…In addition to his duties as quartermaster of the regiment or post, the regimental quartermaster will perform the functions of Assistant Commissary of Subsistence, if the command be less than a regiment.
690…The Generals will, when necessary, unite the pioneers at the head of the column, to overcome difficulties in the way of the march, and send forward a quartermaster, or other staff-officer, to superintend these operations.
706…Troops destined to the interior will, generally, be furnished with marching routes, specifying the places where the necessary subsistence, forage, and other supplies, may be found; and whether these supplies e previously provided or not, the commander of the corps or detachment will send forward every morning, a Quartermaster, or some other agent, to prepare for the wants of the troops before their arrival.
709…The baggage trains belonging to general headquarters, and the headquarters of army-corps, will be confided to the officer of the Quartermaster's department, attached to those headquarters respectively.
710…The train of each regiment will be under the conduct of the Quartermaster-Sergeant, or some other Sergeant; that of the brigade, under the conduct of an officer of the Quartermaster's department; and when the several trains of a division are united, the senior officer of the Quartermaster's department shall have charge of the whole.
711…The several conductors of trains shall be responsible to the Quartermaster-General, or the superior officer of his department, for the prescribed order of march; for the parking and for the orderly conduct of all under them. Regimental, to perform duties of assistant commissary of substance
OVERVIEW
During the 1860s, the Quartermaster Department was responsible for the construction, maintenance, and supply of all the army forts and military roads.
The storehouse contains six rooms and could be considered as a 19th Century Hardware and Grocery Warehouse. Each company of soldiers was issued a specified amount of public property and each soldier was responsible for his uniform, weapons, and equipment. If a soldier lost, damaged, or destroyed a piece of public property, he was required to pay for a replacement. In fact, the cost of the replacement was deducted from his pay, before he was paid.
The army shipped everything in boxes, crates, sacks, kegs, and barrels to prevent things from being stolen or damaged.
Tools, supplies, and subsistence items not available on the frontier were purchased back east by the army and shipped to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, near St. Louis. From there the supplies were shipped on steamboats up the Mississippi River to Fort Snelling and then in wagons down the military road to Fort Abercrombie.
The storehouse was part of a complex of buildings known as the Quartermaster Quadrangle. This area included stables for the mules, horses, and oxen that pulled the supply wagons, a blacksmith shop, and carpenter shops.
TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT
The tools used at the Quartermaster Storehouse include the following:
inventory
purposes. Everything in the quartermaster storehouse had to be strictly
accounted for.
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QUARTERMASTER DEPARTMENT
The Quartermaster Department was organized in 1775, when the Continental Congress authorized a Quartermaster General and a deputy to serve the army. The first Quartermaster General was Maj. Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, who was appointed by General Washington. Until 1818, however, the measures introduced by the Quartermaster Department were temporary and usually limited to wartime.
Following the War of 1812, the Secretary of War obtained permission to reorganize the Army, and one of his acts was to establish a permanent Quartermaster General with a department in Washington. Brig. Gen. Thomas Sidney Jesup was selected to head the new bureau, which he guided until his death in 1860. (It was not until 1862 that retirement became available and not until 1882 that it was required.) Jesup was a wise choice, and he brought discipline and enthusiastic energy to his office. He needed both. His staff consisted of two Assistant Quartermasters with the rank of major, and twenty-eight Assistant Quartermaster with the rank of captain each receiving compensation varying from $10 the $20 a month, as the /secretary of War, Jesup had only six permanent clerks to maintain the office letter books, ledgers, etc. The number of items for which the department accounted, as well as the amount of contracts it let are staggering. Yet the Quartermaster Department did it and did it well.
Like the rest of the army, the Quartermaster Department suffered from either feast or famine. In times of war, it added staff and was given funds needed badly; in peacetime, however, appropriations drastically reduced the work the Quartermaster General deemed necessary. In the interim between wars, the budget of the army was extremely tight.
Under such circumstances, construction periodically came to a virtual standstill. The stringent measures resulted in deteriorating buildings, and quartermasters were forced to rely almost entirely upon the soldiers for labor. When skilled labor was not available from the soldiers, the quartermaster was authorized to hire civilians who were specialized tradesmen, which included masons, turners, glaziers, and millwrights.
Reductions in the Army did not necessarily lessen the demands on the Quartermaster Department. Westward expanding frontiers necessitated new fortifications and abandonment of old ones no longer needed. Roads and bridges had to be built to connect these new bases and to provide supply lines. Economy may have been the watchword, but surviving Army structures from the 1860s including those at Fort Abercrombie, indicate the Quartermasters planned graceful as well as practical buildings. Long porches offered shelter from the torrid summers of the plains; large windows let in air and sunlight; and plastered walls and graceful stairways and fireplaces reminded families of officers that they were not away from home entirely. Later posts of the Indian War period did not always have housing as fine as that of the pre-Civil War period.
The majority of the Assistant Quartermasters were graduates of the Military Academy, where they had received training in both architecture and engineering, disciplines they would need. Because of the wide range of objects under their jurisdiction and the opportunities for theft, Quartermasters were chosen for their honesty and kept strictly accountable for everything they ordered. By the outbreak of the Civil War, the Quartermaster Department had 53 separate forms to be filled out, inventorying everything from stationery to the number of days an enlisted man was mustered for extra-duty.
James V. Acker, Pres.
