Institutional History

During the revolutionary war, the system for provisioning the Continental army was almost continually reorganized, as Congress sought to ameliorate chronic shortages through administrative rearrangements. The following account briefly summarizes the history of the army's procurement system, concentrating on those periods for which the archives' holdings are most complete. For more information, consult the attached bibliography and the archives' research file pertaining to this collection.

As a first step in organizing a supply apparatus, the Continental Congress created the offices of the Quartermaster General and Commissary General on June 16, 1775. The Quartermaster General was responsible for transporting and delivering supplies, establishing the order of battle, regulating the marches and arranging camps. The Commissary General, on the other hand, was responsible for procuring food. Because of their dependency on one another, however, they often overlapped in performing their duties.

In August 1777, following a period in which the army suffered severe shortages, Congress expanded the Commissary General's department to include two new positions: a Commissary of Purchase and a Commissary of Issues. When the army moved from Brandywine to Germantown in September 1777, the Commissary of Issues established temporary magazines along the route, giving orders for the Quartermasters to issue several days provisions to the men. Also in 1778, in an attempt to save money, Congress acted to eliminate the use of regular soldiers as wagoners in the Quartermaster's department. Instead, the Quartermaster General enlisted a special corps of wagoners as he needed them.

When shortages in army provisions continued to prevail, Congress appointed a supervisory board to oversee the two departments in November 1778. A resulting reorganization, finally adopted in November 1779, required the Commissary General to estimate how many provisions the army would need for the following year. He then divided the estimated amount between the states and each state was required to furnish their quota of the needed provisions. The issuing section of the department was completely eliminated, leaving the Commissary General with one assistant at the department's headquarters and one assistant to deal with the states who refused to furnish their quotas.

The reorganization of the Quartermaster General's department occurred somewhat later, in January 1780. Congress appointed one assistant for the Quartermaster General, and the Quartermaster General appointed one deputy for the main army, one deputy for each separate army and one deputy for each state (if necessary).

The new system, however, proved no more efficient than the previous ones. On February 20, 1781, Congress, in the process of its own reorganization, appointed Robert Morris as the executive head of the Treasury Department. In an effort to consolidate responsibility and improve the government's financial condition, Morris was also appointed to oversee the supply of provisions to the army. By the end of 1781, Morris had instituted a system using contractors to procure supplies. Under this arrangement, individuals signed agreements in which they promised to purchase and deliver provisions to specific places for the following year. The existing Commissaries and Quartermasters retained their official titles, but in actuality, they simply served as some of Morris's many private contractors. The consolidation which Morris provided solved the problems of inefficient bureaucracy in the two departments. For the remainder of the war, the army's provisions were more satisfactory.

Table of Quartermaster and Commissary Generals

Quartermaster Generals

Commissary Generals

Bibliography

A Sketch of the Organization of the Quartermasters' Department from 1774 to 1876.
       Washington: Government Printing Office, 1876.

Hatch, Louis, C. The Administration of the American Revolutionary Army, New York:
       Longmans, Green, and Company, 1904.

Johnson, Victor L. The Administration of the American Commissariat During the Revolutionary War.
       Philadelphia, 1941.

Moore Furman papers. (Deputy Quartermaster General, 1778-1780). New Jersey State Archives.

Svejda, George J. Quartering, Disciplining, and Supplying the Army at Morristown, 1779-1780.
       Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1970.

Content Note

The records that follow, which span the period from 1776 to 1789, were assembled from various sources by the late nineteenth century Adjutant General William S. Stryker. The collection includes account books from the Quartermasters, Commissaries and other smaller departments, as well as contractor's records. The account books assume a variety of forms, reflecting different stages in the evolution of the Continental Army's organization. The first set of account books consists of commissaries' lists of stores and provisions received, issued and on hand at Pottsgrove, Middletown and Newtown, Pennsylvania. These accounts span the period from September 1777, when Washington's army moved to Valley Forge, to July 1778. It was a period of transition in the Commissary's department and chaos in the Quartermaster's department. Pottsgrove, Middletown, and Newtown were magazines where the provisions such as beef, pork, flour and salt were collected, stored and issued.

The second set of accounts, dating from 1780, lists the stores delivered to the various regiments of the Jersey Brigade. During this period, the new system of state quotas had just been instituted. Consequently, New Jersey supplied its own regiments and submitted the accounts to the Commissary General's Department as a part of fulfilling the state quota.

The next set consists of contractor's records for the years 1780 to 1782. All of the contractors included worked in the state of New Jersey. Their records contain certificates issued for forage and provisions, expense accounts and receipts. By 1781, Morris had instituted the system of contractors for supplying the army. Most of these records, however, are of contractors who worked for the state of New Jersey when the state quota system remained intact.

The collection further contains records of the Wagonmaster General, who worked under the Quartermaster General's department. The records date from 1778-1780, a period when wagoners no longer served as members of the regular army but instead were hired or impressed as their services were needed.

The final major account book lists clothing purchased by the State of New Jersey in the winter of 1776 and 1777. The purchase of clothing was arranged independent of both the Commissary and Quartermaster General departments.

More on the miscellaneous side, the collection includes various certificates, receipts, and accounts, most of which relate to the Quartermaster General's activities, dating from July 1778 to December 1781.

Finally, the collection holds a number of registers of certificates from the commissary, quartermaster, hospital, marine and clothing departments. These registers were compiled after the war, in 1786-87, as both state and federal governments sought to consolidate wartime debts. They list the number, amount and date of each certificate issued, as well as the names of the issuer and receiver. Although they technically belong with Treasury Department records, they have been included here because they list expenditures that were solely military in nature. All names appearing on Commissary and Quartermaster department registers have been indexed in the Archives' Revolutionary War card file.

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