Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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LOSSES AT G I Confederate Losses I Been Qui flew Yo WASHINGTON, September 30.-Some publications called out by tho lato (irand Army reunion at Philadelphia have started again the old discussion jbout the Confederate strength add losses in the Gettysburg campaign of 1S??3, both moot r ucstions and both of hist?rica' iirpevtance as well as of general interest. Tho numbers cn eaced and the losses of the two oppos ing armies in the battle of Gettysburg ?arc set out in the Government publi cation of records of the war, being embodied in Volume 27 in three parts. The aggregate of Union losses, com- i 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 {he commands engaged. The docu ment, so called, most often cited in historical discussions is a mere sum mary of Confederate killed and wound ed, made up by Surgeon L.. Guild, ifcn. Lee's medical director. It is very unsatisfactory, being palpably jui'omplete and inaccurate, and so in dicated by the conscientious compi lers of the official publication referred to in footnotes and otherwise. Sever in commands are entirely omitted; others estimated are inconsistent with bown facts, and still others are irre conciliable with the detailed reports of the commanding officers. Dr. Guild's summary accounts for only 2, 6& killed and 13,360 wounded: total, 16,052. It makes no record of 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, whioh include the missing. This is com piled from the general official reports of the various oommands of the army. As 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 lilied 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 t'onfederate loss is summed up in this ?wounded, 12,709; missing, '5,150; to "al, 20,451. In a bracketed introductory note to this official summary of Confederate Josses 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 absenco.? of subordinate reports Qch disagreements cannot be explain i. Whether taken in detail or as a rhole, the compilation can only be re eded as approximate. Several of the eports indioate that many of the Passing were killed or wounded." ome idea of the extent of these va riations and consequent misleading haracter of this report may be gath red from the returns relating to Law's brigade. A difference, of 122 is shown J'y the regimental reports of losses Bver the brigade summary totals. Thia icess ocourred in the returns of four fegiments. The detailed regimental eport of the 15th Georgia, or Ben - ping's brigade, dhows a loss of 171 ?lied, wounded and missing; in the fficial summary the total loss of tho jeorgia regiment is carried at only 72 "precisely the numbor of killed and ?ounded reported in Surgeon Guild's tummary As there wero 170 regiments f Confederate infantry at Gettysburg ?t will be seen what a wide door is thus ?pened for speculation. Gen. Lane's Jrigade is set down in the summary fith a loss of 389: Lane himself re orted his loss at 660, a difference of ?1. Again, the Confederate official ?parts state their aggregate missing only 5,150 men, whereas the Union oils of prisoners of war carried the flames of 12,227 wounded and un bounded Confederates captured at ettysburg from July 1 to July 5, a Hfference of 7,077. Students of such matters have long bought it very singular that on the ace of the return? Gen. Meade's loss s at Gettysburg should exceed Geh. ec's by more than 2,500. They have ery good and snffiuiont reasons for ?heir doubts. There aro some facts o connection with Gettysburg fully reed upon hy the partisans of both orth and Spath. . They are these, e fighting was at close range gener ly, and of the moat destructivo char ger. It was the great artillery bai - of th? war, and the Federal artil ry, always superior, was here hand' GETTYSBURG. Cnown Now to Have te 30,000. irk Sun. died with consummate skill, courage and tremendous effect. The Federal ar my fought mainly on the defensive ina naturally strong, well-defended posi- ? tion, from which tho Army of North ern Virginia throughout two days at-1 tempted to dislodge it. To bc sure, this was rot the case on the first day, when the battle was in the open, yet on this day tho Confederates, at first badly handled, sui red more heavily than their enemy. Therefore, aside from all other considerations, in view of these undisputed facts, no one of intelligence now doubts that thc Con federate losses were very much greater than thc 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 reoords 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 official and unofficial data relating to Gettysburg, collating and comparing the results obtained hy 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 27,000 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, nu ny Confederate writers and orators still ding 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 figures 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 report of los as cover every sort and grade of casualty, the slightly wounded, as well as t ie se riously and mortally wouuded 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 cealment of their strength in the field, 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 Army of Northern Vir ginia", Mar 14, 1863. General Orders, No. 63.-The prac tice which prevails in the army of in cluding in the list of casualties those oases of slight injuries which do not 1 incapitate the recipients for duty is calculated to mislead our friends and cnourage our enemies by giving false impressions as to the extent of our losses. The loss oustain?d 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 thai those who attaok most rapidly, vigorously and effectual ly generally Buffer least. It is, there fore, ordered that in future the report of the-wounded' shall only include those whose injuries, in the opinion of tba medical officers, render them unfit foi duty. It has also been observed that the published reports of oasaulties aro, in some instances, accompanied by a statement of the men taken in action. The commanding general deems it un necessary to do more than dire :t 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, six weeks later, was tho 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 reduoed 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 thc 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 f-jouthem Historical Society's Pa pers, a southern Magazine accepted as authoritative by all the orthodox Confederates, give aggregates as fol lows: Wound- Misa- To Killed, ed. lng. tal. First corps...93? 4.153 2,273 7,059 Second corps 930 4,076 1,350 0,350 Third corps...849 4,289 3,844 8,982 Totals.2,712 12,818 7,407 22,997 Add cavalry losses, estimated........1,250 Total loases 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 alry loases 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 stantial reason, are untrustworthy, even when any were made, because, 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 officia! data ano other sources of.in formation has determined ?he fact that their killed amounted to3/?03, 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 ho 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 prison?rs captured at Gettysburg, wounded and unwounded. Of these 6,802 were wounded, and are conse quently tobe added to the aggregate of wounded as made up hy 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 the Confederate report of 5,150 missing, as it appears in the war record's summary. Now, these n're practically all official figures, collected from every source, and deduced by oomparing the reports of the op posing armies. Hence the Confederate losses ore 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 Gen. Lee's order. If these bc added, estimated as above at 2,500, probably J a low one, thc total Confederate cas ualties at Gettysburg will be as fol lows: Killed, wounded and miseing.. .27,739 Slightly wounded....2,500 Total. .30,239 And passing from fact au establish ed by the records into the 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. The official returns of strength for the Armyoof Northern Virginia on May 31, 1863, tuc 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 anni. Lee'? correspondence with the Ihchmond authorities and his subordinates duriug tho preparatory period prior to the iuvasiou shows that he strained every nerve to bring his army up to thc highest possible strcugth. Ile was seconded by Presi dent Du.is, who favored the offensive movement contemplated. While there is no return of strength for the month of June, there are collateral proofs that Lee marshalled at least S0,000 men at Gettysburg. His army was composed of nine divisions of infantry and ar tillery; eight of these averaged S,UU0 effectives each. Gen. Hood, after the war, said his division was 8,OOO strong. An official return of Khod s' division at Carlisle, after it had participated in the valley operations before advancing into Pennsylvania, disclosed an effec tive strength of 8,052, only two days previous to thc opening of the battle. Pickett's division was about 5,500 strong, some of his troops being ab sent. Here, on a fair estimate, we have 00,500 infantry and artillery. The cavalry force approximated to 11,000 effectives, less losses in thc movements. All told. 80,500 men of all arms. There is another instructive meth od of arriving at the approximate strength of the Confederate army. It was composed of 200 regiments of in fantry and cavalry. Analyzes of va rious returns at different periods, com parison of losses with reported strength subsequent to thc battle, showed that these regiments averaged about 375 men each. Many were considerably stronger, while many others were weaker. This would give an aggregate strength of 74,000 infantry and caval ry. Add 6,000 artillery, moderate for nearly 300 guns, and we have an aggregate again of 80,000 men of all arms. On the 20th of July, 1863, only a week after Lee recrossed the Potomac into Virginia, an official return of strength showed 41,692 officers and men present for duty in the Army of Northern Virginia, not including the cavalry, estimated at (?,500, men, a total of only 48,192. Deducting this num ber from the 80,000 men Geu. Lee marched into Pennsylvania, leaves a difference of 31,808 men to be account ed for. They were lost, at Gettysburg and thc campaign which ended with the recrossing of the Confederate army into Virginia. LESLIE J. PERRY. This Will Interest Many. Editor of Intelligencer : If any of your readers who suffer from Blood Impurities, such as eruptions, un sightly Pimples, Ulcers, Eating Sores. Eczema, Scrofula, Cancer, Tetter, Swollen Glands, Rheumatism, Catarrh, Contagious Blood Poison, Ulcerated Mouth or Throat, or any other Blood Taint, will write us, we will send them free of charge and prepaid, a Trial Bottle of B. B. B. (Botanic Blood Balm), a positive specific cure for all Blood Troubles. As you are well aware B. B. B. has been thoroughly tested ?.r thirty years, ahd in thal time has permanently cured thousands of sufferers after all other treatments had failed. B. B. B. is undoubtedly the most wonderful Blood Purifier ol thc age. 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Tho scheme does not receive much encouragement from the newspapers of thc section in which thc colony is proposed to be planted. Thc New Jersey newspapers are always ready to give a word of advice respecting thc Negri; in the South; but they do not desire to have the Negro iu New Jersey. "It did mc more good than any thing I ever used. My dyspepsia was of months' standing: after eating it was terrible. Now 1 am well," writes S. B. Keener, Iloisington, Kas., of Kodol Dyspepsia Cure, lt digests what you eat. Evans Pharmacy. - Une of thc valuable privileges wc often overlook is thc privilege of not saying anything. "If you scour thc world you will never find a remedy equal to One Minute Cough Cure," says Editor Tackler, of the Micanopy, Fla.. Hus tler. It cured his family of La Grippe and saves thousands from pneumonia, bronchitis, croup and all throat and lung troubles. Evans Pharmacy. - A.-"It is when a man is in trouble that he knows the value of a wife." 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W # -- W ?Jk IT IS TOUR MEDICINES IN ONE. A SYSTEM TONIC PAR-EXCELLENCE. m jjt?^ PRICE $1.00 PER BOTTLE. PREPARED BY PRICKLY ASH BITTERS CO. tfffo flk ?OX J UV AI.I. DRVGOI8TS. | i - yr.s?.^.y^-s^.S2A EVANS PHARMACY. Special Agents. THE WOMAN, THE MAN and the THE PILL. ??he was a good woman. He loved her. She was his wife. Tho pie was good. H?B wife made it. He ate it. l?ut the pie disagreed with him, and ho disagreed with his wile. Now he takes a pill after pie and is happy. The pill he takes is EVANS'. MORAL : Avoid Dyspepsia ty using EVANS' LIVER ANO KIDNEY PILLS. EVANS PHARMACY K (J. EVANS, Jr. R. B. DAY, M. D. EVANS & DAY, - DEALERS IN - IDZR/ITC3-S and GROCEBIES, PENDLETON, S- C. START RIGHT I-The regulation of the primro vito ia tho basal principle of all therapeutic?. Keep cloau, eat properly by using FRESH DRUGS/ FRESH GROCERIES, FRESH SODA WATER, FRESH IC IS, FRESH FRUITS, FRESH TURNIP SEED, EVERYTHING FRESH EXCEPT EVANS & DAY. Notice to Debtors. PARTIES owing ut? open and secured Accounts due in the Fall are notified that said Accounts are now duo and must be fettled at once. GUANO XoTl?s are due and payable on or beforo Ootober 1st, and mun: be paid promptly out of the first sales of Cotton. We appreciate the general dot-Ire to hold Cotton for higher price? and do not object, but must insist that it be not held at our ex pense and risk. You can Btore it ?md ?ho rr ow enough on it ,to pay your Account ; therefore, do not expect to"ride UBwben we are needing our money. Thia is Btrlctly business, and we mean every word we tay, for we will have our money if we have to put out Special Collectors to get it. Save yourself trouble and; expense by giving us prompt settlements. Yours truly, DEAN & RATLIFFE. WHEAT AND OATS FERTILIZERS. HALF crops of'.Cotton don't '.pay a? well as half crops o* "When*. Your land nc?da a change, anyway, and with proper manuring will pay you better in Wheat and Oats than in Cotton. 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