quarters, nor the depot collections at Charlottesville, Staunton and other points upon the Virginia Central railroad to meet requisitions from the Confederate forces operating in the Valley and Western Virginia. South and West of Greensboro' (North Carolina) the depot accumulations were reserved first to meet requisitions for the forces operating in the Carolinas, and the surplus for Virginia requisitions.
This collection of supplies was reported daily, as it progressed, to the Secretary of War. The Quartermaster-General and his officers were also officially advised as occasion required. It is hardly necessary to add that every possible effort was made to secure from the Quartermaster Department prompt transportation from the railroad depots to the front; but the officers of that Department, owing to the rapid deterioration and, in many cases, the absolute failure of the motive power of the railroads, were unable to forward the collected supplies as fast as they were brought into depots. After every effort to move had been exhausted, the supplies not transported were placed in temporary sub-depots to await events.
Early in March, 1865, the questions arising out of the status thus set forth were carefully considered in a conference between the Secretary of War (General Breckinridge) and the General Commanding (General Lee), to which the Quartermaster-General (General Lawton) and the Commissary-General were called. After a general discussion of the army wants in clothing, forage and subsistence, the Commissary-General, in reply to the inquiry of the General Commanding, stated that a daily delivery by cars and canal boat, at or near Richmond, of about five hundred tons of commissary stores was essential to provide for the Richmond siege reserve and other accumulations desired by the General Commanding; that the depot collections were already sufficient to assure the meeting of these requisitions, and if the then existing military lines could be held, the Commissary-General felt encouraged as to the future of his own immediate Department. Upon the question of railroad transportation, the Quartermaster-General then stated that the rolling stock at command, and especially the engines, had become so much worn and otherwise deficient, and without means or provision for renewal, that the daily delivery in Richmond and Petersburg of five hundred tons of commissary stores in addition to other requirements of the general service and the demands of the resident population, could not be guaranteed. He engaged however, to make every possible effort to secure from the railroad
