Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[292] know how to fight; have had their first scare in a battle, and have learned that a regiment cut to pieces means a regiment that has lost one man in ten. Then they will fight better and better as long as they remain in the service, if they have proper officers, who treat them kindly and justly.

Then the three months officers were always worse than the men. They were of necessity to be more exposed in action than the men. They generally had good homes and nice places to go home to, and a great many of them would say if they got out of this action they would never get into another.

Then there was another matter: Everywhere among green troops there is a chronic disposition to over-estimate the number of the opposing troops. The first duty of the commander should be to find out exactly how many troops there are in the bodies opposed to him. It is exceedingly easy to do that, but it was never done in the beginning of the war; and the fearful imaginations of officers multiplied their opponents wonderfully.

We have already seen that at Great Bethel, General Pierce and his men believed the fortifications, instead of being four were fourteen feet high, that the four guns were twenty, and that the five hundred rebels in the fortification were four or five thousand. And on the other hand, the rebels believed that the Yankee force of General Pierce that they saw was five thousand men, when there were really but eight hundred.

And so at Bull Run. The entire Union force, sick and well, was 35,732 men; whereas there is a printed estimate reported by the Confederate authority of 54,140. After the battle, the officers in charge of the prisoners captured by the rebels, having made a calculation by asking the prisoners what regiments or batteries they belonged to, gravely reported the Federal force on the field that day at 63,000.

And so exactly about everything else. The total actual loss of the United States troops in killed, wounded, and missing was 1,107. The total loss on the Confederate side, as reported by the rebel general, Joe Johnston, was 1,897. He naively concludes his report in that regard with the statement that the loss of the enemy could not be ascertained, but must have been four or five thousand.

There was another matter: Both sides left the field, and both sides