67th Tigers
Captain
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2006
Overstatement of Rebel Casualties at the Second Battle of Petersburg?
The attempt to carry the Petersburg works 15th-18th June largely failed. The Federals were badly repulsed, despite capturing some of the works early on.The Federals lost 16,569 in the second half of June 1864, which includes the Jerusalem Plank Road fighting. Fox's Regimental Losses gives 1,688 KIA, 8,513 WIA and 1,185 MIA/Captured (total 11,386), which is consistent with the losses in other actions in late June.
Rebel casualty figures in this period are difficult to come by. The rebels often didn't keep good records, and many were lost when Richmond fell. The number Wikipedia gives for the battle of 15th-18th June 1864 is 4,000 (200 KIA, 2,900 WIA and 900 Captured). This apparently derives from Bonekemper, and Bonekemper rejected said figures, which he referenced to Currents Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. The rather extreme killed to wounded ratio is suspicious. Thus I looked further.
Livermore, for his part, simply estimated a ratio based on Federal losses. His figure (2,970) thus has no basis in fact, but is a guess, although better than later guesses.
Fortunately, Alfred Young has published his dataset for the units that fought in the Overland Campaign. They are shown in table 1:
Table 1: Casualties in Army of Northern Virginia units, and Hoke's Division, at 2nd Petersburg 15th-18th June 1864. Numbers are extracted from Young's CSR's.
Date | Killed | Mortally Wounded | Severely Wounded | Wounded | Slightly Wounded | Missing (inc. Desertion) | Total |
15th June | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 11 |
16th June | 30 | 24 | 43 | 73 | 25 | 75 | 270 |
17th June | 43 | 18 | 70 | 67 | 37 | 42 | 277 |
18th June | 38 | 30 | 64 | 71 | 17 | 51 | 271 |
TOTAL | 111 | 72 | 178 | 213 | 79 | 176 | 829 |
This sums to 111 KIA, 542 WIA and 176 MIA/Deserted/Captured. 829 total.
This does not include Bushrod Johnson's division. Fortunately, A Wilson Greene's "Campaign of Giants" (Vol.1, p 211-2) references a casualty report by Johnson in his papers, and he tabulated 1,512 KIA, WIA and MIA for this period. Greene also quotes an estimate by Beauregard of "about 2,500" and thinks it was probably correct.
Greene did not have access to Young's data, but using that we find the casualties were:
- ANV and Hoke: 829
- Johnston's division and 64th Ga: 1,512
- Total = 2,341
In sum, the butcher's bill was:
- Federal Casualties: 11,386
- Confederate Casualties: 2,341