The 1st, 2d, 4th, 5th, and 6th divisions, commanded respectively by Brigadier-Generals Thomas, McCook, Nelson, Crittenden, and Wood, with a contingent force of cavalry, in all thirty-seven thousand effective men, constituted the main army, which, under the personal command of General Buell, was to join General Halleck in the projected movement against the enemy at Corinth, Mississippi.The total force of the Federals on both days amounted, therefore, to about seventy-two thousand men of all arms, and their losses were, according to official reports—in General Grant's army,
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the Confederate numbers to about forty thousand men. Our loss was 1728 killed, 8012 wounded, and 959 missing; presenting an aggregate of 10,699, or, in killed and wounded, twenty-four and one third per cent.
of those present on the field.
This is a very remarkable proportion, in view of the rawness of most of the troops, and the nature of the ground upon which the battle was fought.
It is about the greatest average ever attained in any single contest between veteran armies,1 and in most instances the defeated army is either completely routed or unfit for another campaign until largely reinforced.
The Federals commenced the battle, on the 6th, with over forty thousand men of all arms, and were reinforced that day by the timely arrival of Ammen's brigade, of General Buell's army.
During the night of the 6th and the next morning they were reinforced again, by Lew. Wallace's division of General Grant's army; by three divisions (Crittenden's, McCook's, and Nelson's two other brigades) of General Buell's army; and, towards the end of the second day's battle, by two brigades of Wood's division of the same army,2 which brought up the number of fresh Federal troops, on the 7th, to over thirty-two thousand men of all arms.
Our computation is based on the fact that these divisions contained no less than seven thousand men each, as is established by General Van Horne, in his ‘History of the Army of the Cumberland,’ vol.
i. p. 99, where the following passage is found:
1 Those losses generally vary from one twentieth, or five per cent., to one fourth, or twenty-five per cent., of the troops engaged. The British, at Waterloo, lost not quite one sixth, or only sixteen per cent. The Austrians, at Magenta, lost only one thirteenth, that is, not quite eight per cent.; and the Prussian loss at Sadowa was remarkably small, being only one twentieth, or five per cent.
2 See Generals Grant's and Buell's Reports.
1883. Harper. New York.
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