Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/346

 340 Southern Historical Society Papers.

army held the field. Its preservation as one of the great historical fields of the war would signify for both sides, more than anything else, the indelible marking of the theater upon which each of the two armies engaged performed as stubborn, brilliant, and bloody fighting as was done upon any of the great battlefields of the war. The project is based upon the belief that the time has fully come when the participants in the great battles of our civil war can, while retaining and freely expressing their own views of all questions con- nected with the war, still study its notable battles purely as military movements. There is no other general enagagement in which the percentage of losses for each army was so great. There was no en- gagement in the great battles of modern Europe where the propor- tionate losses were as great as those of both sides at Chickamauga. The total loss of each army was over twenty-five per cent, of all en- gaged. General Longstreet's loss, chiefly incurred in four hours of one day's fighting, was thirty-six per cent. To illustrate this feature of the project, a brief recapitulation of facts heretofore stated in this correspondence will amply suffice :

"The casualties in Jackson's brigade of Cleburne's division, which assaulted on Baird's front, was thirty-five per cent., while the Fifth Georgia of that brigade lost fifty-five per cent., and the First Con- federate Regulars forty-three per cent. Gregg's brigade, of Buck - ner's corps, lost 653 out of 1,425. Helm's Kentucky brigade, on the Union left, lost seventy-five per cent, of its strength. Bate's brigade lost seven officers killed and sixty-one officers wounded, and the total casualties were 607 out of 1,316. All his field officers except three were killed or wounded. The losses in Govan's brigade, of Walker's corps, exceeded fifty per cent. Deas, who fought in front of Steadman's assault, lost 745 out of 1,942. Walthall, of Walker, lost 705 out of 1,727. On the Union side, Steadman in four hours lost 1,787 out of 3,700, and all were killed and wounded but one. Brannan's division had 4,998 engaged. Its casualties were 2,174, or thirty- eight per cent. The loss in Van DerVeer's brigade, of this division, in four regiments and one battery, was 840 out of 1,788 engaged, or forty-nine per cent. Croxton's brigade, of the same divi- sion, made up of five regiments, lost 938. Of Van DerVeer's regi- ments, the Ninth Ohio lost fifty per cent., the Thirty-fifth Ohio a small fraction less than fifty per cent., the Second Minnesota 192, or exactly fifty per cent., and the Eighty-seventh Indiana about half of its number. General Wood lost 1,070 in two brigades."

These figures become the more significant when compared with