Confederate Inspection Report:
Benning’s Brigade, Field’s Division, First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia1
August 9, 1864
The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia produced inspection reports at approximately monthly intervals late in the Civil War. Luckily, many of these reports have been preserved and are available on microfilm from the National Archives and Records Association. I have produced transcriptions of the key information from these reports. See the bottom of this page for freely downloadable transcriptions of most of these reports. This transcription is copyrighted by Brett Schulte and may not be distributed, changed, or reproduced in any manner without the written consent of the transcriber.
M935 Roll #: 10
Image # from Digitized Copy: 0035-0046.jpg
Date of Inspection: August 9, 1864
Commander: Colonel Dudley M. DuBose (of the 15th Georgia)
Inspection Location: New Market Heights, north of Deep Bottom near the James River
Aggregate Present & Absent: 1,963
Aggregate Effective for the Field: 7122
Officers and Men Present for Duty (PFD): 712
Weapons: Enfield Rifles, Springfield Rifles, and Richmond Rifles
Sub-Units:
- 2nd Georgia, Lt. Col. William S. Shepherd, 172 officers and men PFD
- 15th Georgia, Major Peter J. Shannon, 220 officers and men PFD
- 17th Georgia, Lt. Colonel William A. Barden, 147 officers and men PFD
- 20th Georgia, Captain Henry C. Mitchell, 173 officers and men PFD
Downloadable Spreadsheet:
Source/Notes:
- Confederate Inspection Report P-13: Benning’s Brigade, August 9, 1864; Inspection Reports and Related Records Received By the Inspection Branch in the Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office. (National Archives Microfilm Publication M935, Roll 10: Inspection Reports P-12 – 39-P-24); War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109; National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. ↩
- SOPO Editor’s Note: “Effectives” generally means men carrying muskets, so no commissioned officers are included. “Present for Duty” includes commissioned officers. So this number probably should be lower then the PFD. Instead, the Inspector wrote the same number for both, obviously an error. I did not accidentally make a typo. The inspector typed it this way. ↩
Hi. My name is Jeff Dugdale and I am a military historian from the UK. I specialise in late WW2 Panzer units and Confederate uniform issues. I am , at present writing the 3rd volume in a series which concentrate on clothing issues to the ANV. The first ‘Never in Rags’, sold out in the States. (It helped that it was hugely endorsed by Civil War historian William Frassinito). It covered clothing issues in 1863 and was 1100 pages long. The second ‘Confederate Uniforms in the Maryland Campaign: September 1862’, is due out shortly and completely overturns the myth of the ‘Ragged Reb’, with huge uniform issues shortly before the Campaign, whole Brigades dressed in new English cloth uniforms and a large re-supply of uniforms while in Maryland. For the series I gleaned most of the info from the thousands of surviving individual Confederate Companpy Clothing Requisition Forms. They give exact details on uniform issues/when requisitioned/when received/numbers/cost etc.
I have been studying the Inspection Reports for years and have gleaned much information from them, so it is good to see other enthusiasts doing the same. I have only come across your site recently and it looks very interesting…I’m certain that you have put lots of effort into it. Keep up the good work!
Regards Jeff
Thanks for checking out the site Jeff! Once I learned of these, I had to have copies. I have most of them, but still waiting on a few. I have friend working on that, but NARSA has these sorts of orders on hold for now. I’m believe these sorts of primary source materials should be made freely available to researchers. I wish NARA would digitize them in high quality already, but until then, I’ll do my part to help others.
Brett Schulte