Numbers 2. Report of Brigadier General Hermann Haupt, U. S. Army, in charge of Military Railway Department. *

Washington, D. C., July 7, 1863.

SIR: I submit herewith a brief report of operations in the Military Railway Department for the last week. On Monday, June 29, acting under Special Orders, 286, a copy of which is inclosed, I repaired to Baltimore, intending to join General Meade at Frederick, and ascertain the condition and requirements the Army of the Army of the Potomac. Finding the communications broken, both by rail and telegraph, and the road near Sykesville in the possession of the enemy, I concluded to proceed to Harrisburg, ascertain the precise condition of affairs, then work my way by some means to General Maede, and inform him what degree of assistance and co-operation he might expect from the Pennsylvania forces. Owing to the interruptions of travel, I proceeded to Harrisburg via Reading, arrived in that city Tuesday evening, spent several hours with Governor Curtin and Colonel T. A. Scott, and learned the position of affairs. I had written to the Governor from Falmouth soon after the battle of Chancellorsville, informing him that the enemy would soon be in Pennsylvania, and made suggestions of means proper to be resorted to to impede his progress and protect the Pennsylvania Railroad. I found that Colonel Scott had been very active and efficient, and that the Pennsylvania Railroad had been as well protected as the short time would permit. Very extensive arrangements had been made to procure information from scouts, and I saw clearly that, instead of attacking Harrisburg, an exceedingly rapid concentration of the enemy's forces had bee going on that day, tending toward Gettysburg, evidently designed to fall upon and crush in detail the Army of the Potomac before it could fully concentrate or its new commander get full in hand. I at once telegraphed to General Halleck and to General Schenck, and suggested that an engine be run from Baltimore to Westminster with express, and a mounted courier dispatched to General Meade. The dispatch was received, and it helped to confirm the correctness of information derived from other sources. It came from the rear of the enemy, while other information could be derived from the front. Wednesday I returned to Baltimore, and proceeded to the Relay House, on Northern Central Railroad. I found the Western Maryland Railroad entirely without equipment or facilities for the business to be thrown immediately upon it. It had no experienced officers, no water stations, sidings, turn-tables, or wood sufficient fir a business of exceeding three or four trains per day, while the necessities of the service required thirty trains per day to be passed over it. I had engines and card sent from Alexandria, with full sets of hands. A train-load of sawed and split wood and a supply of buckets were also forwarded. Tanks were filled by dipping water from the streams, and, with other arrangements required by the circumstances of the case, we were enabled to provide for a transportation of 1, 500 tons per day each way. In two days the army was supplied not only with

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*See also report, September 9, 1863, in Series III.

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