Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/194

 General Gordon (3d paper, pp. 167-8) says: "Although the consolidated report of Banks' corps, sent into Pope some days previous to the 9th of August, exhibited an effective force of something over 14,000 men, made up of infantry, 13,343; artillery, 1,224; cavalry, 4,104; total, 18,671, less infantry and artillery left at Front Royal and Winchester, 3,500. In his official report Pope distinctly states that it appeared after the battle that when Banks led his forces to the front he had in all not more than 8,000 men." .  ..

General Gordon thus leaves the impression that there was a descrepancydiscrepancy [sic] of 6,000 between Banks' report on July 31st and his strength on August 9th. This is evidently an error, for if we subtract the 3,500 infantry and artillery left at Winchester and Front Royal from his total infantry and artillery on July 31st, we have 11,067 as the strength of Banks' infantry and artillery east of the Blue Ridge at that date. Now Pope says that Banks had "only about 8,000" at Cedar Run, meaning infantry and artillery, as the above extract plainly shows. Hence the discrepancy was 3,000, and not 6,000; and any one who reads General Gordon's account of the sufferings of Bank's corps from heat and diarrhœa on their march to Cedar Run, and recalls the fact that one regiment, Sixtieth New York (General Gordon says two), was sent back in a body because of excessive sickness, will not find it hard to realize that perhaps Banks brought "only about 8,000" infantry and artillery into the fight of August 9th. To this force should be added Bayard's cavalry brigade of 1,000 or 1,200, according to General Gordon, which is evidently not included by General Pope in the "8,000."

General Gordon seems to have followed in his estimate a statement of General Strother in the Harper for August, 1867, in which the latter puts Banks' infantry and artillery at 6,289 and thirty guns, and his cavalry at 1,200, or 7,500 in all; but as General Strother gives no definite authority for this estimate, it must be considered as unsupported. General Gordon also refers to the testimony of General Banks, December 14, 1864, before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, in which he estimates his strength at Cedar Run at 6,000, and again on the the next page at 5,000. This is evidently a loose statement from memory, nearly two and a half years after the event, and not to be set against Banks' official report made to General Pope at the time. Hence Pope's entire strength early in August, 1862, by his own report, was 47,878,