NOTES ON THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE ARMIES.
In a statistical exhibit of deaths in the Union Army, compiled (1885), under the direction of Adjutant-General Drum, by Joseph W. Kirkley, the causes of death are given as follows: Killed in action, 4142 officers, 62,916 men; died of wounds received in action, 2223 officers, 40,780 men, of which number 99 officers and 1973 men were prisoners of war; died of disease, 2795 officers and 221,791 men, of which 83 officers and 24,783 men were prisoners; accidental deaths (except drowned), 142 officers and 3972 men, of which 2 officers and 5 men were prisoners; drowned, 106 officers and 4838 men, of which 1 officer and 6 men were prisoners; murdered, 37 officers and 483 men; killed after capture, 14 officers and 90 men; committed suicide, 26 officers and 365 men; executed by United States military authorities, 267 men; executed by the enemy, 4 officers and 60 men; died from sunstroke, 5 officers and 308 men, of which 20 men were prisoners; other known causes, 62 officers and 1972 men, of which 7 officers and 312 men were prisoners; causes not stated, 28 officers and 12,093 men, of which 9 officers and 2030 men were prisoners. Total, 9584 officers and 349,944 men, of which 219 officers and 29,279 men were prisoners. Grand aggregate, 359,528; aggregate deaths among prisoners, 29,498. Since 1885 the Adjutant-General has received evidence of the death in Southern prisons of 694 men not previously accounted for, which increases the number of deaths among prisoners to 30,192, and makes a grand aggregate of 360,222.
NOTES TO THE TABLE ABOVE.
Figures in the column of deaths, opposite names of States, represent only such as occurred among white troops (losses among colored troops and Indians being given at the foot of the table). The table does not indicate losses among sailors and marines.
The colored soldiers organized under the authority of the General Government and not credited to any State were recruited as follows: In Alabama, 4969; Arkansas, 5526; Colorado, 93; Florida, 1044; Georgia, 3486; Louisiana, 24,052; Mississippi, 17,869; North Carolina, 5035; South Carolina, 5462; Tennessee, 20,133; Texas, 47; Virginia, 5723.
There were also 5896 negro soldiers enlisted at large, or whose credits are not specifically expressed by the records.
The number of officers and men of the Regular Army among whom the casualties herein noted occurred is estimated at 67,000; the number in the Veteran Reserve Corps was 60,508; and in Hancock’s Veteran Corps, 10,883.
The other organizations of white volunteers, organized directly by the U.S. authorities, numbered about 11,000.
In 82 national cemeteries (according to the report of June 30th, 1888) 325,230 men are buried: 176,397 being known, and 148,833 unknown dead. These numbers include 1136 at Mexico City, most of whom lost their lives in the Mexican war; about 9500 Confederates; and about 8500 civilians.
* * *
1 Condensed from “The Southern Bivouac,” for August, 1886.—EDITORS.
2 General Echols succeeded General Early in command of the department, March 30th, 1865. —EDITORS.
3 On Sunday, April 2d, on receipt of dispatches from General Lee that the army was about to evacuate the Petersburg and Richmond lines, Mr. Davis assembled his cabinet and directed the removal of the public archives, treasure, and other property to Danville, Virginia. The members of the Government left Richmond during the night of the 2d, and on the 5th Mr. Davis issued a proclamation stating that Virginia would not be abandoned. Danville was placed in a state of defense, and Admiral Raphael Semmes was appointed a brigadier-general in command of the defenses, with a force consisting of a naval brigade and two battalions of infantry. Upon the surrender of Lee and his army (April 9th), the Confederate Government was removed to Greensboro’, North Carolina. On the 18th Mr. Davis and part of his cabinet and his personal staff, accompanied by a wagon-train containing the personal property of the members of the Government and the most valuable archives, started for Charlotte, North Carolina. On the 24th the terms of the convention [see this page] between Generals Johnston and Sherman were approved by Mr. Davis as President of the Confederate States.—EDITORS.
4 In the party were General John C. Breckinridge, Secretary of War; Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of State; S. R. Mallory, Secretary of the Navy; John H. Reagan, Postmaster General; General Samuel Cooper, Adjutant General; George Davis, Attorney General; Colonels John Taylor Wood, William Preston Johnston, and Frank R. Lubbock, staff-officers; and Colonel Burton N. Harrison, private secretary to Mr. Davis.—EDITORS.
5 Mr. Benjamin escaped through Florida to the sea-coast, thence to the Bahamas in an open boat. —EDITORS.
6 The treasure brought from Richmond included about $275,000 belonging to some Richmond banks.
—EDITORS.
7 Jefferson Davis was captured on the 10th of May near Irwinsville, Georgia, by a detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry (belonging to General R.H.G. Minty’s division of General James H. Wilson’s cavalry corps), under Lieutenant-Colonel Benjamin D. Pritchard. Pritchard left Macon, Georgia, on the 7th, and was moving south along the west bank of the Ocmulgee when he crossed the route on which Mr. Davis and his party were moving with about twenty-four hours’ start of their pursuers. A detachment of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry (belonging to General John T. Croxton’s division), under Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Harnden, was following Mr. Davis in the direct road to Irwinsville, and Pritchard, making a swift march on another road, came upon the fugitives in their camp, and arrested Mr. Davis just as the advance of Harnden’s command reached the scene.—EDITORS.
8 Among those who surrendered at the time, besides Mr. Davis’s family and the guard, were Mr. Reagan and Colonels Lubbock, Johnston, and Harrison. General Breckinridge and Colonel Wood escaped, and made their way to Florida, whence they sailed to Cuba in an open boat.—EDITORS.
9 On the 29th of May, 1865, President Johnson issued a proclamation of amnesty to all persons (with some notable exceptions) who had participated in the rebellion, and who should make oath to support the Constitution and the Union, and the proclamations and laws relating to emancipation. Among the exceptions, besides certain civil and diplomatic officers and agents, and others, were the officers of the Confederate service above the rank of colonel in the army and that of lieutenant in the navy, and those who had been educated at the United States Military and Naval Academies.
Amnesty was further extended by proclamations, on September 7th, 1867, and December 25th, 1868. In the first the military exceptions made in the amnesty of May 29th, 1865, were reduced to ex-Confederate officers above the rank of brigadier-general in the army, and of captain in the navy, and in the second all exceptions were removed and the pardon was unconditional and without the formality of any oath.
Mr. Davis was imprisoned at Fort Monroe immediately after his arrest, and was indicted on the charge of treason, by a Grand Jury in the United States Court for the District of Virginia, at Norfolk, May 8th, 1866. On May 13th, 1867, he was released on a bail-bond of $100,000, signed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gerrit Smith, and Horace Greeley, and in December, 1868, a nolle prosequi was entered in the case.—EDITORS.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This ambitious and daunting project—so meticulously assembled and so beautifully published—would not have been possible without the generous commitment of the Modern Library, and its determination to mark the Civil War sesquicentennial by resurrecting an important, original classic and mining its most enduring gems for the benefit of a new generation of readers.
I am enormously grateful to former Modern Library editor John Flicker for welcoming the project to the Random House family, and to senior editor Jonathan Jao for so magnificently bringing it to fruition. Thanks also go to Jessie Waters, Tom Perry, and Richard Elman of Random House and all of the Random House designers and copy editors who worked so skillfully on the adaptation, particularly designer Chris Zucker and senior production editor Janet Wygal.
I could not have asked for a more distinguished and resourceful roster of contributors than the stellar list of friends and colleagues who joined me for this project. They not only pr
ovided chapter introductions but also supplied crucial advice on what material to include in the “best of” edition, which, despite its considerable length, necessarily omitted much material published in the multivolume nineteenth-century edition. Historians Craig Symonds, Stephen Sears, James McPherson, Joan Waugh, and “Bud” Robertson occupy the very top rank of Civil War scholars, and their commentary and analysis for this special edition of Battles and Leaders adds a level of expertise that even the veterans who wrote the original articles would have regarded with deep interest.
Thanks go, too, to the scholars who were unable to join the list of contributing editors but provided most useful advice on the material, especially Professor Gary Gallagher of the University of Virginia and William C. “Jack” Davis of Virginia Tech. For many years, at Civil War conferences and symposia across the country, I have enjoyed the pleasure of their company and the benefit of their expertise and counsel, and I particularly appreciate their advice on and enthusiasm for this project. I am grateful as well to my friends Frank J. Williams, chairman of the Lincoln Forum, and John M. Marszalek, reigning expert on Union Generals Henry Halleck and William T. Sherman, for their advice and inspiration. Likewise I thank my indomitable agent Geri Thoma for her great help with this and so many of my projects.
I could not have found the considerable time required for this book without the constant understanding and essential advice of my wife, Edith. With her unending support and encouragement, I have written and edited more than three hundred books and four hundred magazine articles over the years, but this book comes out as we mark our fortieth wedding anniversary, so it takes on special significance for us (even in the absence of the kind of long celebratory vacation that would have been possible absent my Hearts Touched by Fire deadlines). Thank you, Edith, for your patience and, of course, for Meg, Remy, and her husband, Adam, and for their magnificent Charlie.
Finally, this book was dedicated to a much-mourned friend who left us much too soon: Professor John Y. Simon, the longtime executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and editor of the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. For some forty years, John Y. was the undisputed authority on the Civil War’s greatest general and one of the most knowledgeable, incisive—and certainly the most acerbic, irreverent, and hilarious—scholar of all the battles and leaders of the great conflict. I had the pleasure and honor of editing a previous book with John Y., and in that as with all professional endeavors, he demonstrated extraordinary mastery of the facts as well as a wonderful sense of humor.
I daresay all of the scholars who contributed to this project miss John Y. as much as I do. Had he lived, he would surely have added his wisdom to this book. The dedication to his memory hardly repays our debt to him for his friendship, knowledge, and service, but I hope it reminds readers of his contributions to both American history and American historians alike.
Notes
1. Robert Underwood Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays (Boston: Little, Brown, 1927), 189.
2. Ibid.
3. The writers were, respectively, Alexander R. Boteler and F. B. Sanborn.
4. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 190.
5. Ibid., 189, 194.
6. Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Being for the Most Part Contributions by Union and Confederate Officers. Based upon “The Century War Series,” 4 vols. (New York: The Century Co., 1888), 1:x–xii.
7. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 189.
8. Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 142.
9. Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, “Richard Watson Gilder: Personal Memories,” The Outlook 130 (March 8, 1922): 379. As the author put it: “Although his name never appeared in his magazine as that of its editor, every one in America knew that he was its editor and that it was his voice.”
10. Quoted in Stephen Davis, “ ‘A Matter of Sensational Interest’: The Century ‘Battles and Leaders’ Series,” Civil War History 27 (1981): 339. The editor gratefully acknowledges the extraordinary contributions made by historian Davis in his superbly researched articles on Battles and Leaders.
11. Van Rensselaer, “Richard Watson Gilder,” 378.
12. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 210; John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 31 vols. (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963–2009), 31:157–58; see also Adam Badeau, Military History of Ulysses S. Grant, from April, 1861, to April, 1865 (New York: D. Appleton, 1881).
13. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 202.
14. Ibid., 199.
15. Ibid., 192.
16. Davis, “ ‘A Matter of Sensational Interest,’ ” 340.
17. Ibid.
18. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 213–15.
19. Badeau obituary, The New York Times, March 21, 1895.
20. Simon, ed., Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 31:170, 172, 175.
21. Ibid., 187–88.
22. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 196, 199.
23. Ibid., 201.
24. See, for example, McClellan to his wife, October [29], 1862, in Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860–1865 (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989), 515.
25. Stephen Davis and J. Tracy Power, “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,” in Clyde N. Wilson, ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 47: American Historians, 1866–1912 (Detroit: Gale Publishing, 1986), 373.
26. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 216, 219; Davis, “ ‘A Matter of Sensational Interest,’ ” 340–41n8.
27. Davis, “ ‘A Matter of Sensational Interest,’ ” 341.
28. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 193–94, 196–97.
29. Ibid., 200.
30. Ibid., 196.
31. Buel to Sherman, March 13, 1884, in Simon, ed., Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 31:189.
32. Battles and Leaders, 1:xi.
33. Ibid.; Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 203–4.
34. Davis and Power, “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,” 374.
35. Quoted in Davis, “ ‘A Matter of Sensational Interest,’ ” 342–43.
36. Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays, 190. The editor further asserted that ten thousand items were cut from the index for space reasons.
37. The Century War Book, “Preface to the People’s Pictorial Edition” (New York: The Century Co., 1894).
38. Davis, “ ‘A Matter of Sensational Interest,’ ” 348.
39. Battles and Leaders, 1:ix.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
CRAIG L. SYMONDS was co-winner of the 2009 Lincoln Prize for his book Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War. Professor of History Emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy, he later served as chief historian of the USS Monitor Center in Newport News, Virginia. The author of many books—notably biographies of Joseph E. Johnston, Patrick Cleburne, and Franklin Buchanan—he previously won the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Prize for the best book on naval history for his Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles That Shaped American History (2005).
STEPHEN W. SEARS, a historian specializing in the Civil War, is the author of a number of acclaimed works, and is widely considered the leading authority on the controversial Union general George B. McClellan. His books include Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam (1983), George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (1988), The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan (1989), To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign (1992), Chancellorsville (1996), and Gettysburg (2003). A graduate of Oberlin, he began his career as an editor at American Heritage Magazine.
JAMES M. MCPHERSON, Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University, has won two Lincoln Prizes, most recently as co-laureate for Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief (2008). McPherson earned the Pulitzer Prize for the 1988 classic Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era and recently authored the compelling brief biography Abraham Lincoln (2009). His many other books include Draw
n with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (1996), For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997), and Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (2002).
JOAN WAUGH is Professor of History at UCLA, where she specializes in Civil War and Reconstruction history. Her books include Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell (1998), The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (co-author, 2004), and her latest book, the widely praised U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (2009). She has organized several symposia at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, has won UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and has appeared on PBS’s American Experience to discuss Ulysses S. Grant.
JAMES I. ROBERTSON, JR., a graduate of Emory University, is Alumni Distinguished Professor in History at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. After launching his career as the executive director of the Civil War Centennial (1961–65), he has published more than twenty widely respected books on the subject, including General A. P. Hill (1987), Soldiers Blue and Gray (1988), Civil War! America Becomes One Nation (1992), and Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (1997). He recently began serving as a member of Virginia’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission.
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