I’ve now updated the Confederate OOB of my Petersburg Campaign Project through the month of September 1864 (the Fifth Offensive), and I’ve completed all units found in Sifakis’ Compendium of the Confederate Armies. The OOBs I’m starting with are from F. Ray Sibley, Jr.’s reference work The Confederate Order of Battle: The Army of Northern Virginia, Volume 1. This has been getting easier as I get used to Sibley’s way of doing things, and I’m making progress at a far greater clip than I ever thought possible. I hope to start on the Sixth Offensive (Hatcher’s Run, Second Fair Oaks) soon. When I finish with the Confederate side, I plan to move on to the Union OOB, and that process gets tougher. The Confederate OOB was relatively stable as far as the organization of regiments into brigades, brigades into divisions, and divisions into corps. That is not the case on the Union side. Regiments were mustered out after their time was up, many others combined, brigades were shuffled and consolidated, as were divisions, and in the case of the Army of the James, this even reached Corps level! I hope to use the OOBs from the Official Records and then sort out the details and the contradictory information after the base OOB has been created. Anyone who is interested in this subject and who would like to lend me a hand as far as research goes, feel free to shoot me an email.
NOTE: I’m also having some trouble with Cutshaw’s and Carter’s Artillery Battalions of Early’s II Corps during the time frame of July-November 1864. Eventually these two battalions were merged under Cutshaw (Carter had assumed the role of Early’s Chief of Artillery for a time). The problem is that I do not know exactly when and how this happened. It may have occurred as early as July 1864, but some OOBs of Cedar Creek (Oct. 19, 1864) have them still listed as separate battalions. In addition, I do not know which batteries in Carter’s Battalion lost their identities by simply being attached to existing batteries of Cutshaw’s Battalion, and which were moved over with their identities intact. If anyone reading this has a definitive answer on these questions, feel free to email me or comment on this thread.
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