Coonewah Creek
Sergeant Major
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2018
- Location
- Northern Alabama
@gunny would certainly know better than most. And I have to agree. Even using Livermore's numbers...and I know everyone has "nits to pick" with Livermore's methodology, but let's take his numbers to use as a basis of comparison. At least he was consistent in how he applied his calculations and in examining units that may have been in the area but could have had no impact on the actual battle, etc. Being lazy, I've taken the liberty of taking some jpg snippets of Livermore's Franklin numbers below, including the appropriate footnotes:I get it that Hood reported that number, but that number was very wrong. We just showed that Foard's numbers were way off, and Hood likely was reporting the numbers that Foard gave him to the War Department. Not necessarily lying, but reporting numbers that were way under-reported to him.
If you use the gross overall Civil War statistical killed to wounded ratio from Colonel Trevor Dupuy and apply it to the numbers at Franklin (4.55 to 1), for the Federals we get, using Livermore's killed number of 189, we would expect approximately 860 wounded compared to his number of 1033, or within 20% of the expected wounded on the high side. Not too bad.
For the Army of Tennessee, Livermore has 1750 KIA'd. That would give an estimated number of wounded at 7963 for a total killed and wounded casualty estimate of 9713. Livermore lists Confederate wounded at 3800, or some 52% too low based on Dupuy's statistical averages if the KIA'd number is actually 1750. Of the wounded, Dupuy's analysis for the Civil War says you can expect, of the total wounded, that the ratio that will survive their wounds to those later dying to be 2.38 to 1. So of Livermore's number of 3800 Confederate wounded, some 1124 would be expected to later die, while 2676 would survive their wounds. So on the low end, expected Confederate killed and mortally wounded should be 2874. If based on Dupuy's higher wounded estimate, the mortally wounded would come to 2356 with 5607 recovering. So total Confederate casualties at Franklin would be 4106 killed and mortally wounded, primarily from the 23,000 infantry involved in the assault, or a staggering 18% of the attacking force killed or mortally wounded. On the lower (3800 wounded) end the number would be 12.5%. Of course we can play games and finagle the numbers all day and prove anything we want, but in agreement with @gunny , Hood's initial report on casualties was way too low...