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LOSSES AT G -Confederate Hiosses I Been Qui JVetc To WASHINGTON, September 30.-Some publications called out by the late -<Grand Army reunion at Philadelphia have started again the old discussion about tha Confederate strength and losses in the Gettysburg campaign of 1863, both moot questions and both of historical importance as well as of general interest. The numbers en gaged and the losses of the two oppos ing armies in the battle of Gettysburg are set out in the Government publi cation of records of the war, being embodied in Volume 27 in three parts. The aggregate of Union iosses, com piled from complete official returns of .every Federal command, engaged in the Pennsylvania campaign, was 23,049 men killed, wounded and missing. These figures are undisputed; they .have been accepted and quoted un changed by all writers on the subject ever since Gen. Meade made his offi cial report in August, 1863. Now, unfortunately for historians, there was no like and corresponding .complete official report of the Confed erate casualties, covering in detail all the commands engaged. The docu ment, so called, most often cited in historical discussions is * mere sum mary of Confederate killed and wound ed, made up by Surgeon L.. Guild,. 'Gen. Lee's medical director. It is very unsatisfactory, being palpably incomplete and inaccurate, and so in dicated by the conscientious compi lers of the official publication referred to in footnotes and ijtherwise. Sever al commands aro entirely omitted; - others estimated are inconsistent with known facts, and still others are irre conciliable with the detailed reports of the commanding officers. Pr. .Guild's summary accounts for only 2, .683 killed and 13,360 wounded.: total, 16,052. It makes no record o? the missing, large numbers of whom were known to have been killed and .-wounded. Following Dr. Guild's compilation of killed and wounded is a second summary of Confederate losses, which include the , missing. This is com piled from the general official reports of the various commands of the army. iAs in Dr. Guild's report, some of these were incomplete, while from many subordinate commands no re ports whatever are on file in the de partment archives. In this summary killed and wounded do not vary much -from the totals in Guild's report, which, in fact, was the main authori ty on these heads. The aggregate .Confederate loss is summed up in this statement as follows: Killed, 2,592; wounded, 12,709; missing, '5,150; to tal, 20,451. In a bracketed introductory note to ? this official summary of Confederate losses the Government compilers, ob serving numerous * discrepancies be tween the totals of Dr. Guild and oth ers and those of the regimental, bri gade and other commanders of the Confederate army, remark: "Owing to the absence^ of subordinate reports such disagreements cannot be explain ed. Whether taken in detail or as a whole, the compilation can only be re garded as approximate. Several of the reports indicate that many of the missing were killed or wounded." Some idea of the extent of these va riations and consequent misleading character of this report may be gath ered from the returns relating to Law's brigade. A difference of 122 is shown by the regimental reports of losses over the brigade summary totals. This excess occurred in the returns of four j regiments. The detailed regimental report of the 15th Georgia, of Ben ning's brigade, sTiows a loss of 171 killed, wounded and missing; in the official summary the total loss of the Georgia regiment is carried at only 72 -precisely the numbor of killed and wounded reported in Surgeon Guild's summary As there were 170 regiments of Confederate infantry at Gettysburg it will be seen what a wide door is thus opened for speculation. Gen. Lane's j brigade is set down in the summary j with a loss of 389: Lane himself re- j ported his loss at 660. a difference of ? 271. Aga'.p, the Confederate official j reparts state their aggregate missing j at only 5,150 men, whereas the Union rolls of prisoners of war carried the names of 12,227 wounded and un- j wounded Confederates captured at Gettysburg from July 1 to July 5, a difference of 7,077. Students of such matters have long j thought it very singular that on the ? face of the returns Gen. Meade's loss es at Gettysburg should exceed Gen. Lee's by more than 2.500. They have very good and sufficient reasons for their doubts. There are some facts in connection with Gettysburg fully agreed upon by the partisans of both North and South. They are these. The fighting was at close range gener ally, and of the most destructive char acter. It was the great artillery bat tle of the war, and the Federal artil lery, always superior, was here hand ETTYSBURG. vnowii Now to te 30,000. Have rfc Sun. died with consummate skill, courage and tremendous effect. The Federal ar my fought mainly on the defensive ina naturally strong, well-defended posi t tion, from which the Army of North ern Virginia throughout two days at tempted to dislodge it. To be sure, j this was not the case on the first day, when the battle was in the open, yet on this day the Confederates, at first badly handled, suffered more heavily than their enemy. Therefore, aside from all other considerations, in view of these undisputed faats, no one of intelligence now doubts that the Con federate losses were very much greater than the totals shown by the official summaries quoted above. Very few doubt that they really exceeded the Federal losses by at least 5,000 men. On the first and second days the loss es were not very different; on the third day the Confederate losses were at least 3,500 in excess of the Federal. On the retreat Lee also made some heavy losses. . More than ten years ago, before the Gettysburg volumes of the official war records were issued, Major E. C. Dawes, of Cincinnati, had published in the Century Magazine a luminous re sume of the Confederate strength and losses at Gettysburg, showing almost conclusively that Lee had not less than 80,000 men on the field, and that his losses were not less than 26,000 in the campaign. Col. Livermore, of Bos ton, another able commentator on the Civil War^ has made it clear that the Confederate losses were not less than 27,000. Mr. J. W. Kirkley, of the war records office, with all the records now extant at his command, has concluded that the aggregate exceeded 27,000. I have made a careful study of the question, examining reports and cor respondence, and other oficial and unofficial data relating to Gettysburg, collating and comparing the results obtained by others with my own data, accumulated during several years' membership of the war records publi cation board. By this painstaking I I can definitely assert that the Confederate records themselves con tain the absolute proof that the Con federate army numbered at Gettys burg fully 80,000 men of all arms, and that its losses exceeded 27,090 men killed, wounded and missing. It is easy for experts who understand the hidden meaning of military correspon dence and returns of strength and losses to deduce negatively that Lee must have lost first and last ia the Pennsylvania campaign more than 30.000 men. . Notwithstanding the irreconciliable .discrepancies above noted in the offi cial summaries as well as the insuffi cient data upon which they are based, mr ny Confederate writers and orators still cling to this aggregate of 26,451 as the total of Confederate losses with a pertinacity somewhat surprising. This insistence- upon an error, as now generally conceded, is not. as many suppose, wholly a matter of sentiment and sectional pride with them, as in dicating that their soldiers were the more destructive fighters. They are compelled to stick to these figure? and shut their eyes to their real losses, some 7,000 greater certainly as we now know, or inevitably confess that Lee's army at Gettysburg was indeed much stronger than Southern histo rians allege. The Union reports of los es ccver every sort aud grade of casualty, thc slightly wounded, as well as t ie se riously and mortally wounded men. Such was not the case in the Confed erate service. The slightly wounded in battle were carefully excluded from such reports, for the reasons set out in the following formal order of Gen. Lee himself, which is significant of the general Confederate system of con cealmsnt of their strength in the held and losses in battle, perhaps for a wise and adequate purpose, because it un doubtedly misled the Union command ers during the war, and it has been a stumbling block to historians ever since: Headquarters Anny of Northern Vir ginia, May 14. 1803. General Orders. No. 63.-The prac tice which prevails in the anny of in cluding in the list of casualties those cases of slight injuries which do not incapitate the recipients for duty is calculai ed to mislead our friends and encurage our enemies by giving false impressions as to the extent of our losses. The loss sustained by a brigade or regiment is by no means an indication of the magnitude of the service per formed or perils encountered, as ex perience shows that those who attack most rapidly, vigorously and effectual ly generally suffer least. It is, there fore, ordered that in future the report of the wounded shall only include those whose injuries, in the opinion of the medical officers, render them unfit for duty. It has also been observed that th published reports of casaulties are, in some instances, accompanied by statement of the men taken in action. The commanding general deems it un necessary to do more than direct the attention of officers to the impro priety of thus furnishing the ene my with the means of computing our strength in order to insure the imme diate suppression of this pernicious and useless custom. By command of Gen. Lee. W. H. TAYLOR, Assistant Adjutant General. This queer order was issued a few days after the battle of Chancellors ville. Gettysburg, sis weeks later, was the first general engagement to which it applied, and it may be taken for granted that Gen. Lee's order was carefully obeyed by all subordinate commanders and the reported losses reduced to the minimum. The elimi nation of this class of wounded makes a difference in itself of probably more than 2,500 casualties such as were carried in the Union reports. The addition of the names omitted as a re sult of this order to the. official re ports of the three corps commanders, incidentally giving their losses in the aggregate, will run the Confederate to tals up to nearly 27,000 killed^ wound ed and missing. Their reports in the official records, and also published in the Southern Historical Society's Pa pers, a southern Magazine accepted as authoritative by all the orthodox Confederates, give aggregates as fol lows: Wound- Miss- To Killed, ed. lng. tal. First corps...933 4.453 2,273 7,659 Second corps 930 4,076 1,350 6,356 Third corps...849 4,289 3,844 8,R ? Totals.2,712 12,818 7,467 22,997 Add cavalry losses, estimated........1,250 Total losses in campaign.24,247 Therefore, if we add, say 2,500 slightly wounded, omitted from the Confederate reports by Lee's orders, which would then make it a fair com parison with the Union reports of the same battle, we have an aggregate sum of 26,749 as the Confederate losses in the Gettysburg campaign, made up from figures of the Confederates them selves, excepting the two items of cav airy losses and slightly wounded. The cavalry losses were probably double the figures I give, which apply to op erations north of the Potomac only. This tabulation of itself is proof that the losses of the Confederates greatly exceeded those of the Union army even if we admit the slightly wounded. The Confederate reports, for a sub 8tantial reason, are untrustworthy, even when any were made, becaus?, as they abandoned the field and largely their killed and mortally wounded, it goes without saying that they lacked accurate knowledge of their actual losses in those two items. Careful in vestigation, however, of the available official data and other sources of in formation has determined the fact that their killed amounted to 3,803, instead of 2,683, as reported by Dr. Guild, and 18,741 wounded, instead of 13,369, as stated by Guild. Dr. Guild's shortage comes doubtless, from the fact that he took no account of the killed and wound ed abandoned to the enemy on the third day after Pickett's and Johnson's charges. As previously stated, the Union rolls show the names of 12,227 prisoners captured at Gettysburg, wounded and unwounded. Of these 0,802 were wounded, and are conse quently to be added to the aggregate of wounded as made up by Dr. Guild, less 770 wounded whom they officially reported captured. This deduction leaves 5,195 well prisoners captured by the Federals, which pretty well agrees with thc Confederate report of 5,150 missing, as it appears in thc war record's summary. Now. these are practically all official figures, collected from every source, and deduced by compariug the reports of the op posing armies. Hence the Confederate losses are thus summed up in round numbers: Killed. 3,803 Wounded.18,741 Missing. 5,195 Total.-..27,739 But it must not be overlooked that from this tabulation is omitted entire ly the slightly wounded covered by Cen. Lee's order. If these be added, estimated as above at 2,500, probably a low one, thc total Confederate cas ualties at Gettysburg will be as fol lows: Killed, wounded and missing.. .27,7oi> Slightly wounded. 2,5.00 Total.30,239 And passing from fact as establish ed by the records into thc field of speculation more or less, although there is warrant for the deductions in the records, it is highly probable that Gen. Lee's even exceeded the forego ing aggregate, without including the slightly wounded item. Thc official returns of strength for the Armyoof Northern Virginia on May 31, 1803, the last on file before the battle of Gettysburg, shows that it contained then 77,931 men for duty. During the month of June it was greatly Strengthened by recruits and from other sources to probably near 85,000 men of all arms. Lee's correspondence with the Richmond authorities and his ! subordinates during thc prepar period prior to the invasion show: he strained every uerve to brin? army up to the highest pos strength. He was seconded by I dent Davis, who favored the offei ? movement contemplated. While j is no return of strength for the m of June, there are collateral proofs Lee marshalled at least 80,000 me I Gettysburg. His army was comp of nine divisions of infantry an tillery; eight of these averaged ? effectives each. Gen. Hood, aftei war, said his division was 8,000 str An official return of Rhodes' divi at Carlisle, after it had particip?t) the valley operations before advan into Pennsylvania, disclosed an e tive strength of 8,052, only two i previous to the opening of the ba Pickett's division was about 5 strong, some of his troops being sent. Here, on a fair estimate, have 09,500 infantry and artill The cavalry force approximatec 11,000 effectives, less losses in movements. All told. 80,500 me all arms. There is another instructive m< od of arriving at the approxin strength of the Confederate army, was composed of 200 regiments of fantry and cavalry. Analyzes of rious returns at different periods, c parison of losses with reported stren subsequent to the battle, showed t these regiments averaged about men each. Many were considera stronger, while many others w weaker. This would give an aggreg strength of 74,000 infantry and ca1 ry. A.dd 6,000 artillery, moderate nearly 300 guns, and we have aggregate again of 80,000 men of arms. On the 20th of July, 1863, onl: week after Lee recrossed the Rotor into Virginia, an official return strength showed 41,692 officers ? men present for duty in the Army Northern Virginia, not including t cavalry, estimated at 6,500]men, ato of only 48,192. Deducting this nu ber from the 80,000 men Gen. I marched into Pennsylvania, leaves difference of 31,808 men to beaccou: ed for. 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