The Portland daily press., 1897-10-23
TIE DEAD OF THE WAR.
The Appalling List Of Losses by Bat
tie and BY Disease.


Dead in Southern Prisons-Dificulty of
Making an Approximate List-Eighty-
three Cemeteries Where They Are
Buried.
(Leslie j. Perry in New York Sum-
Investig alton long ago determined the
queer fact of the utter impossibility OF
determining with absolute accuracy the
number of deaths from all causes Oh
Union soldiers during the war OF the re-
bellion The grand aggregate, OF course
is approximately known. Within the
. ZION lines the records of deaths were so
Systematically kept apd filed from time
to time. in the War Department, there pre-
served, and subsequently brought together
and coIlated SO carefully that the aggre-
gate number is now settled as near as it
possibly ever can be settled. The statis-
tics are near enough to absolute certainty
to be satisfactory to historians.
The uncertain quantity, the great STAN
bling block to any close approximation of
the melancholy aggregate, is the deaths
among prisoners of war in the hands of
the enemy The larger proportion of the
official records of the Southern prison de-
o IS were lost OR destroyed in, the hurly
purly of the wind-up. There were at least
a dozen prisons of which only partial
records or next to none at all were Sc
cured. The death lists of several of the
most important stations have never been
found, and the only mode by which the
number of the dead at such, and many
others, was satisfactorily obtained was
by exhuming and counting the skeletons.
This was such an almost impossible task
that it was not wholly carried out, and
thus the total number of Union dead in
Southern prisons remain to this day and
will ever remain an unknown quantity.
At Salisbury, n. c., for instance, one
of the leading and oldest of the Confed-
crate prisons, the dead were buried in
tiers, sometimes two, three, and four
deep, in eighteen trenches parallel to each
other, averaging 240 feet in length. No
headboards or other marks of Identified
ton were set up; no record of the names
of the dead seems to have been kept-at
all events, none has been found; no collins
or boxes were used; the miserable bodies,
incased in their own sQualid rags, were
bundled into the trench in the most ex-
peditious manner, side by side, in a row
$40 feet long, over which thin coating
of dirt was spread; then another tier of
dead was put down on top of this bottom
layer of bodies, until the receptacle was
full, when another tench was opened.
The bodies in these trenches have never
been exhumed and counted, and in the
absence of official lists it thus happens
that no exact knowledge Of the number
of Union dead buried at Salisbury is OBJ
tainabie. Testimony elected during the
trial of Major Gee, the last Confederate
officer in charge of this prison, indicated
that as many as 10000 soldiers might be
buried in these trenches, perhaps some of
whom were Confederates, and others,
again, political prisoners and non
descripts. Officers of the United States
Quartermaster's Department, sent to Sal
is ury Immediately after the war to put
inis burial place in order, after careful
OK animation of all sources of informa-
ii N, estimated the number at 12,112
This figure has been strenuously disputed.
1t seems probable that the true mum Der
lies between 800 and IL, liz, doubtless
more than the first and considerably less
than the last.
These facts concerning the Salisbury
prison alone must prove to any unbiased
mind how indefinite and uncertain the
original statements put out of the deaths
of Union soldiers in Southern prisons
must have been, and necessarily so from
the very insufficient data upon which they
were based. So long as thirty-two years
ago an official statement OF them was
made very hastily by Secretary Stanton,
liking the aggregate at 81, 1898. These
were the then ascertained deaths by name
from army rolls, rolls of honor, prison
rolls, etc., but this aggregate sum did
not include the unknown estimated dead,
which at that time swelled the known
list to more than sc, 900 men.
But aside from all estimates, the
records of the War Department now bear
upward ofs30, G00 specific names of soldiers
who died in Southern prisons. The adj
ditional names to the number stated by
Mr.. Stanton in 1865 have been ascer-
tanned through testimony taken by the
Pension Office in the disposal of applica-
tions for pensions, and the record is grow
ing from year to year, though in q de-
creasing ratio. The authenticity of the
figures is unquestioned. There are thous-
ands of others whose names will never be
known. 1t is estimated by those in the
War Department familiar with the NOR
tuary record of the war that not less than
20. 900 Union prisoners died in the South.
Besides Salisbury, alluded to above,
1900 lie buried at AndersonviIle, 3,45O at
Richmond, 3,o16 at Florence, S. c., and
1898 at Danville, Va, These were the
original figures. Besides Salisbury, An
dersonville. Florence, Richmond and
Danyille, there were sixty-four other
prison posts scattered throughout the
Confederacy during the war.
Under an order issued June 9, 1851, by
Adit. teen. r. G. Drum, Mr.. Joseph VI.
Kirkley, then having charge of all the
official returns and kindred data of the
Union Army, prepared statistical state
ment of the deaths in the Union Army
during the entire war, from all causes
killed in action, died of wounds, died of
disease, killed after capture, suicides
executed by military authority, executed
by the enemy, drowning and other acct
dental deaths, murdered, died of sun
stroke, and all other known and I'M
known causes. Mr.. Kirkley was engaged
upon this herculean task almost precisely
a year, assisted by .scorps of intelligent
clerks. On the 22d of May, 1885, he made
his report, embodied in pamphlet max
ing seventeen pages of figures in fine type
This was accomplished twenty years after
the war. Those who are familiar with
Mr.. Kirkley's conscientious painstaking
in an off cia1 statistical I0h of that kind