1865. |
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country's call, you left your homes and families, and volunteered in her defense.
Victory has crowned your valor, and secured the purpose of your patriotic hearts; and, with the gratitude of your countrymen, and the highest honors a great and free nation can accord, you will soon be permitted to return to your homes and families, conscious of having discharged the highest duty of American citizens.
To achieve these glorious triumphs, and secure to yourselves, your fellow-countrymen, and posterity, the blessings of free institutions, tens of thousands of your gallant comrades have fallen, and sealed the priceless legacy with their blood.
The graves of these, a grateful nation bedews with tears, honors their memories, and will ever cherish and support their stricken families.”
1
The records of the War Department show that on the first of March, 1865, the muster-rolls of the army exhibited an aggregate force of 965,591 men, of whom 602,593 were present for duty, and 132,538 were on detached service.
The aggregate force was increased, by the first of May, by enlistments, to the, number of 1,000,516, of all arms, officers and men. The whole number of men called into the service during the war, was 2,656,553.2 Of these, about 1,490,000 were in actual service.
Of this number, nearly 60,000 were killed on the field, and about 35,000 were mortally wounded.
Disease in camps and hospitals slew 184,000.3 It is estimated that at least 300,000 Union soldiers perished during the war. Full that number of the Confederate soldiers lost their lives; and the aggregate number of men, including both armies, who were crippled, or permanently disabled by disease, was estimated at 400,000.
The actual loss to the country, of able-bodied men, in consequence of the Slave-holders' Rebellion, was full 1,000,000.
The disbanding of the army went steadily on from the first of June,
and by the middle of the autumn nearly 786,000 officers and men were mustered out of the service.
The wonderful spectacle was
1 It has been said that there was a great disparity in numbers between the forces of Grant and Lee, during the campaign from the passage of the Rapid Anna to the surrender at Appomattox Court-House. According to official records, this does not appear. Grant began the campaign with 98,019 effective men, and Lee with 72,278 effective men. The latter had such advantages of position, breastworks, and a friendly country, with shortening lines of supplies, that his real force was greater than Grant's. According to Lee's field-returns on the 28th of February, 1865, he had 73,849 men present, of whom 59,094 were “present for duty,” exclusive of the local militia of Richmond. When Lee reached Petersburg, owing to recruits from the South and elsewhere, he had more men with him than at the beginning of the campaign.
2 The Provost-Marshal-General, James B. Fry, reported that the aggregate quotas charged against the several States, under all calls of the President for troops, from the 15th of April, 1861, up to the 14th of April, 1865, when a cessation of drafting and recruiting was ordered, were 2,759,049. The aggregate number of men credited on the several calls, and put into the service of the Republic (in the army, navy, and marine corps) during that period, was, as stated in the text, 2,656,558, leaving a deficiency of 102,496, when the war closed “which,” says the Provost-Marshal-General, “would have been obtained in full, in fact in excess, if recruiting and drafting had been continued.”
We have observed that in enforcing the draft, those thus chosen for service were allowed to pay a commutation fee. The Provost-Marshal gives the following table of the amounts paid in this way, by the people of the several States:--| Maine | $610,200 | Connecticut | $457,200 | Maryland | $1,131,900 | Indiana | $235,500 |
| New Hampshire | 286,500 | New York | 5,485,799 | Dis't of Columbia | 96,900 | Michigan | 614,700 |
| Vermont | 593,400 | New Jersey | 1,265,700 | Kentucky | 997,530 | Wisconsin | 1,533,600 |
| Massachusetts | 1,610,400 | Pennsylvania | 8,634,300 | Ohio | 1,978,887 | Iowa | 22,500 |
| Rhode Island | 141,300 | Delaware | 446,100 | Illinois | 15,900 | Minnesota | 316,800 |
| Total | $26,366,316 |
3 See Report of the Secretary of War, November 22, 1865.
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