Omaha daily bee., 1894-01-21
THE COLD FACTS OF HISTORY
Revelations Of the Rebellion Compiled by
the War Office,
BOTH SIDES OF THE BLOODY RECORD
Astonishing Figures Produced and Com
PARSONS Made showing the Number Of
Kuled and wounded In the Mighty
struggle for Nationality.

AAblE bAb wv hAh' 1~~'A -
concerning the work Of the var records
Office Of the War department, yet this
has been IL tremendous task. Forty
nine volumes, Of nearly | 900 pages each,
are completed, and furnish the most
accurate history ever published OF n
nations internicine war. The work has
beer impartially done. Besides the five
union officers employed, two confederate
general officers have always been en-
gagged in editing the war archives per-
tanning to the dead confederacy. those
now employed are Lieutenant General
Alexander =. Stewart of Mississippi, a
graduate of West Point and corps com
mander in the Army Of the Tennessee,
for that army, and Major General l.. l..
Lomax of Virginia, one of j.. +. b.
Stuart's best cavalry officers. for the
Army Of Northern Virginia.
The most interesting feature Of the
work is not yet in print, but in
course of preparation, writes a CORE
spondent OF the New York Times. 1t Is
an exhaustive compilation from official
records of the casualties on both sides in
the war. The labor has taken many
years. The result will be the most
valuable volume in the history
Of the war that can ever be
published. Here are facts, not opin-
ions. The arguments here make them
selves unanswerable. unless these statis-
tics are shown to be wrong and other
and different statistics shown to be
right. 1t will be made plain beyond all
room of controversy, in this volume, that
much of the hardest fighting of the war
was between the Army of the Potomac
and the Army of Northern Virginia, and
the figures in this volume will show that
the infantry regiments from the eastern
. ,tnt1. 1t1 a., nNIag Erhtinr In thn
union army. They also prove that the
confederacy succumbed by the eXhaus-
tion of Lees army, and are an emphatic
comment upon the idleness of any mill
tary theory that q different conduct of
campaign or other tactics han those
actually adopted would have ended the
wal before the forces of the ~confederacy
were destroyed. They demonstrate,
too, that, like other civil wars which
have been prolonged far beyond the
point where one nation would have
acknowledged itself beaten by another,
the val for the union had to be fought
out to the end.
Astonishing Revelations.
Many of the revelations in this i'm
portant volume will astonish the reader.
The tables of deaths and wounds that
are given measure the actual fighting as
n 'irS NtNlis my ~ SOii ~
ton toward q reversal of any judgment
founded merely upon general claims.
One thing clearly shown Is the over
shadowing importance of the battles of
- Gettysburg and Chickamauga, the great
est battles the confederate and union
armies, east or west, ever fought. The
losses in these engagements prove how
much tiercer was the fighting in these
battles than it was before or ever was
again between the two armies engaged
during the war. On the other hand.
other battles which have made military
regulations sink into comparative insig-
%nificance. Meade gains and Sheridan,
for instance, loses by the bringing to-
gether of these statistics. The heroic
valor of the North Carolina troops ex-
cite the highest admiration, and Penn
s~ylvania, which lost more in killed and
wounded, in proportion to the number
of its troops, than any northern state,
can well send greeting to North Caro-
lima, whose soldiers at Gettysburg did
the hardest fighting on the other side,
over the happy reunion of the present
years.
In the union armies there were, in all,
$500 regiments, not including the three
or six months men. The union infantry
regiment which suffered the greatest
loss in battle during the war was the
Fifth New Hampshire, which in tour
years of service lost 295 men killed or
mortally wounded in action, including
eighteen officers. The Eighty-third
Pennsylvania infantry zones next. 1t
lost 2S2 officers and men.
There were only forty-five infantry
regiments which had, during the war,
over 200 men killed or mortally wounded
in action. OF these regiments Pennsyl-
Ennln TnpnlEhn1 nlnNnn a rlnntnI. nj
Dor than any other state. Now York,
Massachusetts, and Michigan furnished
Elk each, and little Vermont closely fol-
lowed with four. The PENNSYLVANIA
regiments on this honor list were the
Eighty-third, Observation-Disclosures
SiXty-first, Eleventh, Forty-tifth, One
hundreth, One hundred and eighth,
Eighty-iirst, Fifty-ffth, One-hundred-
and-forty-fifth and Fifty-third.
In the killed and wounded of the
union lightartillery regiments, Cooper's
battery of the First Pennsylvania artil-
lery heads the list, with n loss of twenty
one killed and mortally wounded in ac-
ton. Ricketts, Pennsylvania battery is
seventh, with n loss of eighteen, and
Bigelow's Massachusetts is ninth, with
II loss of fifteen. The regiment which
had the most killed and wounded IN ac-
ton during the entire war, in propor-
ton to its enrolment, was the Second
Wisconsin, with u percentage loss of
l9,4 per cent. OF the Twenty-Five reg!-
ment whose loss was above 10 per cent,
Pennsylvania furnishes the highest
number, six; Wisconsin comes next, with
four, and New York and Massachusetts
give two each.
OF the 200 regiments in which the loss
In killed and died of wounds exceeded 10
per cent of tho total enrolment, Penn
sylvania leads all the states in numbers,
F.. having furnished thirty-two, Ohio nine
teen and Massachusetts sixteen.
The Union infantry regiment, with the
highest percentage of killed, wounded
and missing in any n action, was the
First Minnesota, which at Gettysburg
lost 2l5 men on July , out of. 262 en-
gagged, The Observation-Disclosures
Pennsylvania is second, having lost ut
Gettysburg $40 men out of 19S engaged,
on 75.7 per cent. This volume viii give
a table showing sixty-two union regi-
mcnts which lost in action from 81 to 30
per cent. The Light Brigade at Bala-
klava lost 36.7 per cent. The heaviest
loss OF any German regiment in the
Franco-Pruss'an war was 49.i per cent.