Chickamauga Chickamauga thoughts

[Drew]

I'm on my phone and can't look anything up tonight, but I'm pretty sure the bloodletting at C'mauga was second only to Gettysburg.

Some of the figures posted here strike me as low. I'll get back to you.

Good thread and necessary.

 

[Drew]

All right, if you look at the lower right hand corner of your CWT home screen, you will see CivilWarHome.com

This is a valuable compilation that was researched by a the late "Shotgun" and is preserved here for good reason.

Here is what he posted about C'Mauga, #2 meaning second costliest battle of the War:

#2
Battle of Chickamauga
Date: September 19-20, 1863

Location: Georgia
Confederate Commander: Braxton Bragg
Union Commander: William Rosecrans
Confederate Forces Engaged: 66,326
Union Forces Engaged: 58,222
Winner: Confederacy
Casualties: 34,624 (16,170 Union and 18,454 Confederate)

So, we've got about 35,000 casualties. Many of the battle reports are posted and I'll have to dig through them and figure out the KIA numbers, but they are surely large. This is at least a start in understanding the magnitude of what happened in Georgia in the fall of 1863.

 

[Coonewah Creek]

Some of the figures posted here strike me as low. I'll get back to you.

Based on Trevor Dupuy's overall Civil War statistical averages, both Union and Confederate KIA numbers are low by about 20% (specifically the Union is 19% low and the Confederates 24% low). This doesn't necessarily imply the battle's reported casualties are wrong, just that they are skewed with respect to the "standard" KIA/WIA/DOW ratios. There were a large number of MIA's on both sides which could potentially explain the anomaly.