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Rh criticism on his estimates which has already been made by a distinguished foreign writer on the war in a private letter to myself.

The discrepancy between Colonel Taylor's estimate and the official returns of the loss may be reconciled in this way: Those who lagged behind or fell out of the ranks for any cause before we crossed the Potomac could not rejoin the army after that time before our return. When we returned, we began to meet the stragglers and the convalescent wounded from the battle-fields of May and the early part of June, and perhaps some recruits. Some of them came with the supply ordnance train, which was a part of that attacked by the enemy's cavalry at Williamsport after the battle, and many more reached us in the valley by the 20th of July, having been assembled there while we were in Pennsylvania. My three regiments that had been left behind were then counted in the returns, as I suppose was the case with Wharton's regiment. By these means the ranks of the army had been increased probably to the extent of some 8,000 or 10,000 men; moreover, many of those reported wounded were very slightly wounded, as it was the custom to report as such all who were hurt, however slightly, and some very insignificant scratches sometimes were reported under the head of wounds. Many of the slightly wounded did not, in fact, properly come under the head of losses to the army, as they marched with it or with the ambulance trains, bringing off their arms and equipments, and, without being sent to hospitals, soon returned to duty. Their services were not actually lost, or were lost for so short a time as not to warrant their being counted in the real losses of the army.

Making this allowance, and Colonel Taylor's estimate of our losses in the whole campaign is not far from correct.

To illustrate this view: The official reports of Longstreet, Jackson, and D. H. Hill, in whose commands were comprised the whole of our infantry and artillery engaged in the campaign, beginning with Cedar Run in August, 1862, and ending with the minor engagements in the valley after Sharpsburg, from first to last, show for that period, a loss of 21,294 in killed and wounded alone. This of course excludes the cavalry, and yet the returns made by the Medical Director of the army, which accompany General Lee's report, show only 19,306 killed and wounded in all arms, including the cavalry, for the same period. This results from the fact