-What
is the Supplement?
The original
Official
Records consists of 128 volumes which contain official reports, correspondence,
courts martial where they explain battles, and a smattering of troop itineraries
scattered in with battle accounts. However, much material was left out
of the original edition. Numerous reports were not sent in and Confederates
were reluctant to contribute to a work compiled by Yankees entitled “War
of the Re- bellion.” Thus, the original Official Records were incomplete—however,
this situation is being remedied. For over 20 years we have been collecting,
transcribing, typesetting and indexing the material which was left out
of the original Official Records. To that end, we have tried to
obtain, regardless of expense or labor, all of the material left out of
the original Official Records.
-What
does it contain?
-Soldiers:
Names & Information-
The Supplement
contains twice as many names as does the original Official Records
and, whereas most of the names in the original Official Records
are of men ranking major and above (think of the thousands of occurrences
of Lee, Grant, Sherman, etc.), most of the names in the Supplement
are ranked below major, and it is in the lower ranks that names and information
are hardest to come by. Below major, the Supplement has three
times as many names as the original Official Records, and most of
these names provide the full name, rank, regiment, company, and often the
location of the soldier at a particular time. Plus, the Supplement
names
have already been researched and identified further than their initials,
as far as possible. The Official Records rarely expands names further
than middle initial, and many times only initials (not even first names)
will be given for lesser-ranked men.
-Places: Names
& Information-
The Supplement
has thousands of names—creeks, crossroads, ferries, fords, mills, etc.
The Official Records doesn’t even mention a lot of these, and for
the ones it does, you can spin your wheels for hours trying to pinpoint
even what state, especially if the place is anywhere near a border. The
Record of Events is extremely generous with information for specifying
locale, many times giving the county name. The mileage from the larger
town is also usually given; so, even if a particular small town/crossroad
no longer exists, you can still tell the general locale and county. Since
many place references are referred to by a person’s barn, house, plantation,
field, ferry, etc., and our entries have been checked against the Atlas
and identified, whenever possible, you can use these names that were given
as a locale specification as a secondary source for genealogical research,
in addition to the military names.
-Unit Information:
Records of Events & Itineraries-
The Record of Events and Itineraries of the
Units for both Union and Confederate military organizations, as transcribed
from 299 reels of microfilm in the National Archives, 225 reels Union and
74 reels Con- federate will be published alphabetically by state. Under
each state the regiments and companies will be arranged numerically, with
information for each unit presented chronologically. This part of the Sup-
plement will cover most of the regiments, Union and Confederate. Some regiments
will have information from the beginning of the War to the end, with information
down to company level, while others may have only scattered references.
However, most regiments will have substantial coverage. The Record of Events
and Itineraries of the Units are just what they sound like—the day-by-day
records of the regiments and companies, where they marched, the rations
and arms, clothing, skirmishes, battles, etc. Thus if you are researching
a battle and know the units involved, you can look in the Records of Events
& Itineraries and find the unit reports on the battle down to the company
level.
-Official Reports-
All of the official
reports, Union and Confederate, left out of the original publication. The
material is arranged exactly like the original Official Records,
that is, chronological by subject (i.e., all the Gettysburg material will
be under Gettysburg). There are 12 volumes of Reports, including a cumulative,
every name, place, subject comprehensive index.
-Part I: Reports- Reports of engagements,
actions, battles, maneuvers, etc., written by an officer to an officer.
Included are post war reports requested by the Adjutant General, eyewitness
accounts of engagements otherwise infrequently described, and accounts
supplying substantive supplemental material, including court-mar- tials,
courts of inquiry and proceedings.
-Part II: Record
of Events & Itineraries-
Records of
Events and itineraries show trooops movements and give histories of the
units. Confederate transcriptions include the officer rosters which
usually accompanied the records. Listed by states, alphabetically,
with organizations numbered and named, grouped by organization type.
Records of Events were transcribed from the National Archives microfilm
M594
(Union, 225 rolls) and M861 (Confederate, 74 rolls).
-Part III: Correspondence-
Essential correspondence
omitted from the original Official Records.
-Part IV: Index- Includes more than
1,000,000 entries and cross-references for all of the Supplement
materials.
-Sources-
During the past
twenty years, we have had professional researchers working from Maine to
California, searching libraries, museums, and archives for material left
out of the Official Records. We’ve also combed previously printed sources
for appropriate material. Someone has worked full-time reading the approximately
63,000 newspapers published in the Confederacy (the official reports in
the Union news- papers were included in the Official Records). We
called in our chips and pulled whatever strings we could to persuade private
collectors to share their material with us. They have been most generous.
-Editorial
Staff-
Editor: Janet B. Hewett
Contributing Editors: Gary Gallagher,
Robert Krick, Lee Wallace, Theodore Savas, Robert E. L. Krick, William
Marvel, Michael Cavanaugh, Peter Carmichael, Prof. William L. Shea, Prof.
Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr., Michael Banasik, Silas Felton, Noah Andre Trudeau.
-The
Advantage-
Many of the documents obtained for the
Supplement
were handwritten, barely-legible manuscripts. The
Supplement
is very easy to read and is consistent in format and layout with the original
Official
Records.
(Above) Captain John Johnson's
original report.
_________________
(Below) Captain John Johnson's
report as it appears in the Supplement, Part I Reports, Volume 6, pp. 272-273.
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