Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 02.djvu/19

Rh Mr. Stanton in this statement accounts for all the extra duty men, the sick in field hospitals and camp, the sick in general hospitals, prisoners and men on furlough, and the men absent without leave, and shows, exclusive of all these, an aggregate available force present for duty on the 1st of May, 1864, of 662,345 of which there were 120,380 in the Army of the Potomac, under Meade, and 20,780 in the Ninth Corps, under Burnside, making an aggregate available force present for duty under Grant, on the north side of the Rapidan, on the 1st of May, 1864, of 141,160, officers and men. Now, I ask what inducement was there, on the 1st day of May, just two days before Grant began his movement across the Rapidan, and four days before the commencement of the battle in the Wilderness, for the officers commanding Grant's corps, "intentionally to misstate or mislead" in regard to their available force, in the official reports which they made, or for Grant to give countenance to such misrepresentations by forwarding the reports, or for Stanton to mislead the Congress and the country in December, in regard to the strength of Grant's army? Does not this statement of Mr. Stanton's, taken from the official reports filed in the War Office, conclusively show that General Badeau has made a great mistake, to say the least of it?

But the latter says that "to make out Grant's army three times as large as Lee's, Grant's two forces in the Valley of Virginia and