It is now the general tendency of military statisticians to class the mortally wounded with the killed, not with the wounded; and yet it is impossible to establish any but an arbitrary limit for this classification, since a man may be mortally wounded and yet live for many weeks or even months. In the same way it is impossible to discriminate positively between those mortally wounded and those dying in prison; or even to determine whether a soldier—as in the case of Stonewall Jackson—was killed accidentally or by the enemy. In all cases the figures here given replace entirely those given in a circular of inquiry, in pamphlet form, printed and distributed from this office in 1891, and based on the comparatively scanty information then attainable. None of the present tables are taken from those in the printed regimental histories, though much use has been made of these; but they are all based on manuscript name-lists prepared for the purpose and founded (1) on printed State records, (2) on original muster rolls and monthly returns, (3) on corrections received from the United States War Department, usually through the office of the Massachusetts Adjutant-General, but sometimes directly. The ‘number on regimental rolls’ is designed to include every individual who actually served with the regiment, but not re-enlistments in the same regiment. ‘Casualties by engagements’ includes men killed in action or mortally wounded, and also those missing in action, probably killed. No attempt has been made to give statistics as to the number of wounded in action, because the method of recording these differed so greatly in different regiments—some officers recording very slight wounds and others ignoring all but serious ones—that there exists no solid basis of comparison.
The prison list, which follows later, is mainly prepared from several unofficial manuscript books on file at the Adjutant-General's Office, purporting to give lists of Massachusetts officers and soldiers who died
