OR, Series 4, Vol. 3, Page 339

Confederate States of America, War Department
Richmond, Va., April 28, 1864
 
His Excellency Jefferson Davis
President Confederate States of America
 
Sir,
   I have the honor to submit to you the following report of the operations of this Department:
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   Of all the difficulties encountered by the administrative bureaus, perhaps the greatest has been the deficiency in transportation. With the coasting trade cut off and the command by the enemy, through their naval superiority, of all our great rivers, reliance for internal trade and communication has been necessarily on the railroads. These were never designed nor provided with means for the task now incumbent upon them. They have, besides, suffered much from inability to command the supplies of iron, implements, and machinery they habitually imported, and from many sacrifices and losses in the war. The deficiency of skilled labor has also been a great embarrassment, even in requisite repairs. It is impossible they can be maintained in efficiency, or that even the leading lines can be kept up, without the direct aid and interposition of the Government. Some of the shorter and least important roads must be sacrificed and the iron and machinery taken for the maintenance of the leading lines and for the construction of some essential and less exposed interior links of connection. They will also have to be supplied with sterling funds, or means of exporting our staples to command them, and facilities of purchasing and importing necessary supplies of machinery and the like. The Government will have to assist, by the construction of cars and locomotives, and to give facilities for procuring labor, and especially skilled labor, oftentimes even by details from the Army, in which, during the first stagnation of business attendant on the war, a very large proportion of the machinists and mechanics entered. It is recommended that by appropriate legislation aids in these various modes be authorized. In return for such privileges full command over all the resources and means of transport possessed by the roads whenever needed for the requirements of the Government should be established. It may be, indeed is, believed now to be absolutely essential for the support of leading armies that on certain lines all the means of transport that can be commanded should be exacted. The roads should be run under unity of management, without reference to their local limits or separate schedules, and with the rolling-stock possessed by all, or which can be drawn from other sources. There should be the full power of commanding all this, and at the same time of requiring the continued service, as far as needed, of all officers and employes of the roads, so that there should not be even temporary (which might be fatal) delay or embarrassment in conducting the transportation. There should be also the power of at once taking possession of and removing the iron on roads which must be sacrificed to maintain or construct others more essential, leaving the just compensation and all other questions of possible litigation to be settled by subsequent equitable and satisfactory processes of investigation and decision. The delays incident to previous settlement, often by vexed litigation, are fatal to the imperative uses which demand the sacrifice, and if permitted local and private interests will almost invariably invite them. No reflection is intended on the zeal or patriotism of the officers or members of these railroad companies. On the contrary, it is gratefully acknowledged that they have generally manifested a most commendable disposition to meet the requirements of the Government, and to make even large sacrifices for the common cause. Still, the measure of sacrifice which the need demands is dimmed to their perception by special interests, and is not unfrequently too great to be acquiesced in without the exhaustion of all means of procrastination and prevention. The boards of directors, too, where they would individually make the required sacrifice, feel constrained, by conscientious regard for their representative trust, to interpose all the obstruction and delays in their power. As the immediate possession and use of the iron in such cases is a pressing necessity, no alternative appears to exist but to give the power of seizure in the first instance, with the fullest precaution for after liberal settlement, and it is earnestly recommended this be done.
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Respectfully submitted.
James A. Seddon
Secretary of War

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