"Numbers and Losses..."

[Pat Answer]

This subject comes up frequently, but I have not located a specific thread dedicated to the problems of establishing the sizes of armies at the major battles, or the losses suffered. Of course, if such a thread exists, someone please refer me there. (I would like to avoid a current one supposed to be about Chancellorsville, though. )

I am merely aware of the difficulties involved in getting at the numbers after reading Livermore - not any kind of expert. Some here have looked at certain battles in depth and I would appreciate hearing from them. What sources or methods do you find most helpful, even if 100% accuracy is impossible?

Any battle is fair game according to this OP. But maybe let's start with Antietam, because it seems to matter very much for the reputations of Lee (did he have 33000 or 51000 on hand?) and McClellan (did he hold back 10000 out of 60000 or 30000 out of 87000 available?)...

 

[rpkennedy]

Just for reference, Thomas Livermore's book, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-1865 is available for free online at https://archive.org/details/numbersandlosse00livegoog

R

 

[brass napoleon]

This subject comes up frequently, but I have not located a specific thread dedicated to the problems of establishing the sizes of armies at the major battles, or the losses suffered. Of course, if such a thread exists, someone please refer me there. (I would like to avoid a current one supposed to be about Chancellorsville, though. )

I am merely aware of the difficulties involved in getting at the numbers after reading Livermore - not any kind of expert. Some here have looked at certain battles in depth and I would appreciate hearing from them. What sources or methods do you find most helpful, even if 100% accuracy is impossible?

Any battle is fair game according to this OP. But maybe let's start with Antietam, because it seems to matter very much for the reputations of Lee (did he have 33000 or 51000 on hand?) and McClellan (did he hold back 10000 out of 60000 or 30000 out of 87000 available?)...

Excellent question. Would love to see a consensus on a definitive answer, but I'm not holding my breath!

 

[AUG]

Antietam The Soldiers' Battle by John M. Priest has a numbers and losses chart in the appendix that lists almost every single unit that participated in the battle. Most of the numbers are based upon that given in Battles and Leaders.

This is what Priest lists as overall count for both armies at Antietam:
Army of the Potomac
87164 Present, 53632 Engaged, 2157 KIA (4%), 9716 WIA (18%), 1009 MIA (2%), 12882 Total (24%)

Army of Northern Virginia
? Present, 30646 Engaged, 1754 KIA (6%), 8649 WIA (28%), 1127 MIA (4%), 11530 Total (38%)

 

[NedBaldwin]

This is complicated by the question of what is being counted/measured:
effectives?
present for duty?
aggregate present?

I tend to use the Official Records when possible for this kind of research.

 

[rpkennedy]

Antietam The Soldiers' Battle by John M. Priest has a numbers and losses chart in the appendix that lists almost every single unit that participated in the battle. Most of the numbers are based upon that given in Battles and Leaders.

This is what Priest lists as overall count for both armies at Antietam:
Army of the Potomac
87164 Present, 53632 Engaged, 2157 KIA (4%), 9716 WIA (18%), 1009 MIA (2%), 12882 Total (24%)

Army of Northern Virginia
? Present, 30646 Engaged, 1754 KIA (6%), 8649 WIA (28%), 1127 MIA (4%), 11530 Total (38%)

While I like Mr. Priest both personally and professionally, I think he is dramatically undercounting the AoNV's engaged forces at Antietam, based on all other numbers I've ever seen in relation to the battle.

R

 

[IcarusPhoenix]

We actually have a previous conversation along these lines:
http://civilwartalk.com/threads/civ...een-much-higher-than-previously-thought.92903

Quoting myself at length:
===================
In terms of overall fatalities, we tend to forget that a majority of the 500,000-800,000 figures we usually cite (I personally find the most credibility around 600,000) are deaths from disease or "died of wounds", which usually means (preventable) infection. However, every time we sit down and reexamine combat casualties for any given major battle, we find ourselves revising our estimates downwards. For that matter, this is not a phenomenon confined only to the Civil War.

(You'll pardon me if I start reverting somewhat to elements of my own profession, but the theoretical applicability of statistical sampling becomes relevant here, so bear with me.)

First of all, there's a basic "fog of war" issue that any student of military history is painfully aware of; military commanders tend to over-count their opponent's casualties and under-count their own, sometimes to the point of ludicrousness (for example: during Vietnam a member of Congress did the math and discovered that - according to the US Army's official casualty figures - we'd already killed every man, woman, and child in the country). Official reports are generally done while still under this thrall; thus, the sources we consider most relevant for much of our information - like the ORs - tend to be the least reliable sources for determining casualty figures.

Straight head counts, however, are no better, and are arguably worse; one of the basic principles of demographic analysis is that straight head counts become increasingly inaccurate with the size of the population being counted; double-counting is rampant. A good example here is the recent downward revision in Gettysburg casualty figures. The earlier post-war raw headcount was discovered to be wildly inaccurate, to the tune of being high by about 8,000 casualties, while the reports of the individual armies themselves during the war were both low by about 3,000 casualties each for their own losses, but high for their respective opponents by about 2,000 each.

In general, the figures we use were arrived at sometime in the last couple of decades of the nineteenth century, and whenever we examine any given major action, we find ourselves revising figures downwards. Admittedly, every revision of "established" history tends to lead to some pretty embittered debates in the academic community, but this downward revision is a repeated trend; I have yet to see a reanalysis of individual states or actions that has led to an increase in figures. It is only when analyzing the overall numbers - i.e. the numbers that are statistically most likely to suffer from inflation in the first place - that we see casualty figures revised upwards.

 

[Pat Answer]

While I like Mr. Priest both personally and professionally, I think he is dramatically undercounting the AoNV's engaged forces at Antietam, based on all other numbers I've ever seen in relation to the battle.
R

I have the Priest book. (Some don't but I found his "chaos of combat" approach interesting.) His chart is very helpful but I, too, was struck by the total being so significantly under the '40,000' I usually see. How did he derive "1900" for AP Hill (of course straggling from the amazing forced march took a toll, but that would be a deduction of almost 66%)? Or "1900" for Stuart? I thought the cavalry corps was quite a bit larger - though I suppose there would be scattered patrols in the area not necessarily deployed in 'tactical' units for the battle.

This is complicated by the question of what is being counted/measured:
effectives?
present for duty?
aggregate present?

Absolutely. And this is when records have survived at all.

I tend to use the Official Records when possible for this kind of research.

Under what circumstances would you consider an OR figure to be way off the mark?

 

[Pat Answer]

We actually have a previous conversation along these lines:
http://civilwartalk.com/threads/civ...een-much-higher-than-previously-thought.92903

Great post and thanks for the link. I'd like to steer this one more toward combat numbers during the war, but there are good observations in that thread about the war as a whole.

 

[rpkennedy]

Under what circumstances would you consider an OR figure to be way off the mark?

Generally speaking, for the Union, the numbers are fairly reliable because the record-keeping was fairly good (with several notable exceptions).

For the Confederacy, in most cases, it's a matter of looking at post-battle returns and comparing them with a previous return (if either still exist). Most of the time, it's little more than an educated guess.

R

 

[Elennsar]

I have the Priest book. (Some don't but I found his "chaos of combat" approach interesting.) His chart is very helpful but I, too, was struck by the total being so significantly under the '40,000' I usually see. How did he derive "1900" for AP Hill (of course straggling from the amazing forced march took a toll, but that would be a deduction of almost 66%)? Or "1900" for Stuart? I thought the cavalry corps was quite a bit larger - though I suppose there would be scattered patrols in the area not necessarily deployed in 'tactical' units for the battle.

Forced march, one brigade being left at Harper's Ferry, and from there I'm not sure. But those two would winnow down things considerably.

I don't really have a set "this particular thing", except in regards to how well someone's work lines up with the information available (yes, the OR aren't perfect but someone's count has to be trusted, so they're included here).

 

[NedBaldwin]

Under what circumstances would you consider an OR figure to be way off the mark?

I ask the questions -- what is being counted? What is not being counted? when? Did things change between that time and the battle?

 

[67th Tigers]

I have the Priest book. (Some don't but I found his "chaos of combat" approach interesting.) His chart is very helpful but I, too, was struck by the total being so significantly under the '40,000' I usually see. How did he derive "1900" for AP Hill (of course straggling from the amazing forced march took a toll, but that would be a deduction of almost 66%)? Or "1900" for Stuart? I thought the cavalry corps was quite a bit larger - though I suppose there would be scattered patrols in the area not necessarily deployed in 'tactical' units for the battle.

Since AP Hill had 8,564 men PFD on 2nd September, and had only detached Thomas with 1,205 (2nd Sept strength) then where are the other 5,459 men?

In fact AP Hill claimed to have only had about 2,000 engaged, which are only 3 of his brigades.

The three engaged brigades were
Pender: 1,596
Archer: 1,149
Gregg: 984
=3,729 men on 2nd September

The two brigades that were not engaged and usually not counted
Field under Brockenborough: 1,336
Branch: 1,754
= 3,090 men on 2nd September

plus Divisional Artillery: 540, status unknown.

Thus if we accept AP Hill's figures for his three engaged brigades he actually brought (pro rating the other two) about 3,700 infantry to the field, and this is a striped down figure.

There are only thus about 3,100 that crossed the Potomac not accounted for, meaning even with the striped down figures used more than 60% of the infantry that crossed the Potomac in AP Hills division are accounted for, which applied to the whole army would yield about 47,000.

Personally I think there is no doubt the Confederates were stronger than they'd later claim....

 

[Jamieva]

I think the 87,000 figure for the AotP is basically agreed upon by most sources I have read over the years. The ANV number may be much harder to nail down based on straggling figures leading up to the 17th

 

[NedBaldwin]

I think the 87,000 figure for the AotP is basically agreed upon by most sources I have read over the years.

Regarding the 87,000 number Ezra Carmen (in his classic 'The Maryland Campaign of September 1862')
wrote "That these figures correctly state the number reported as 'present for duty' is not questioned; that they correctly give the number 'in action' is an error". Carmen then provides a detailed analysis of the US army in the battle and arrived at a number of about 56,000.

Yes the ANV number is hard to nail down becuase of the stragglers. But what of the AotP? On September 20th, General Stoneman reported from Point of Rocks Maryland that "The whole country is covered with stragglers from General McClellans army".

 

[Elennsar]

Regarding the 87,000 number Ezra Carmen (in his classic 'The Maryland Campaign of September 1862')
wrote "That these figures correctly state the number reported as 'present for duty' is not questioned; that they correctly give the number 'in action' is an error". Carmen then provides a detailed analysis of the US army in the battle and arrived at a number of about 56,000.

But it must be noted that the 56,000 in action is not the entirety of the troops on the field - it does not count most of 5th and 6th Corps.

 

[IcarusPhoenix]

But it must be noted that the 56,000 in action is not the entirety of the troops on the field - it does not count most of 5th and 6th Corps.

In Carmen's defense, they might as well have been off the field for all the use McClellan actually put them to.

 

[Elennsar]

In Carmen's defense, they might as well have been off the field for all the use McClellan actually put them to.

Oh certainly. I make the point that Carman is not counting them in "engaged", and thus when trying to determine how many men were at Antietam, that McClellan could have engaged them but did not is pertinent - insisting that Brockenborough and Branch's men were part of "how many men Lee had" but not counting 5th and 6th Corps, or insisting on counting 5th and 6th Corps but not Brockenborough and Branch distorts the situation.

The situation is cloudy enough for the reasons you mentioned in another post, let's at least not make it worse.

 

[67th Tigers]

In Carmen's defense, they might as well have been off the field for all the use McClellan actually put them to.

6th Corps were put in on the right, and indeed defeated one of the early counterattacks.

5th Corps were partially put over the middle bridge, and partially sent to the right.

Only Barnes' brigade was kept in true reserve.

 

[Elennsar]

And the way they were "used" contributed about as much to the battle as Hill's stragglers. McClellan's use of them kept them from breaking Lee's lines more effectively than any deployment of Lee's could have done to them.