Technical question about the Official Records

[Scotsman]

Does anyone know where I may find the number of Confederate versus Union reports in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion? Specifically, I am looking at the "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies," not the Navies.

I am working on a large data project, which includes recording instances of certain key words within the entire collection. (Now that they volumes have been digitized, word searches are fairly easy.)

I am finding significantly more hits in Union reports than Confederate. So, I am trying to determine whether it is indicative of more frequent usage of these terms in Union reports compared to Confederate reports, or if there is simply a substantially larger number of a Union reports in the collection.

Thanks!

 

[East Tennessee Roots]

Does anyone know where I may find the number of Confederate versus Union reports in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion? Specifically, I am looking at the "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies," not the Navies.

I am working on a large data project, which includes recording instances of certain key words within the entire collection. (Now that they volumes have been digitized, word searches are fairly easy.)

I am finding significantly more hits in Union reports than Confederate. So, I am trying to determine whether it is indicative of more frequent usage of these terms in Union reports compared to Confederate reports, or if there is simply a substantially larger number of a Union reports in the collection.

Thanks!

I would think there would be substantially more Union reports period. Many Confederate records were destroyed with the end of the war and the fall of Richmond.

 

[AndyHall]

I also believe there is a substantially larger number of Union reports in the OR than Confederates, probably because the Union army was larger, and the files were in better shape administratively at the end of the war. I don't think there was any specific intent to show preference, and I am not aware of any easy way to determine how many of each.

 

[UCVRelics]

I agree with Andy and ETenn. The union records are more complete. I know that all of Gen Taylor's records from the Dept Ala Miss La where destroyed. I'm sure that there were a LOT of instances of this. Just looking at some of the service records in fold3 you will see big gaps in them from the regimental records being captured or destroyed.

 

[Tom Elmore]

There are also some previously unpublished Confederate reports in the Supplement to the Army Official Records. For instance, post-battle reports from Brig. Gen. George Steuart's brigade at Gettysburg can be found in: "Supplement - Army Official Records - Volume 5, Addendum [Reports] - Vol. 27 (Serial Nos. 43-44), pp. 392-401," which were obtained from the Brockenbrough Library of The Museum of the Confederacy (now the American Civil War Museum, Richmond).

 

[DaveBrt]

Depending on what you are looking for, the information may be in the National Archives, but not in the ORs. There are 2500 bound items that are available for view in DC (and about 1250 are now on line) -- ledger books of all types (clothing issues, letters sent/received, endorsements to letters, etc.). Many of the more important documents were copied out of these ledgers and into the OR, but the great majority of entries were not copied.

 

[rbasin]

I know that South Carolina had a sizeable amount of Rebel documents in Columbia. Maybe try the State Library. If you know Columbia, there is a small building in which there was Civil War items, including the full uniform of Hampton. It was I think right next to the Horseshoe at USC. Looking at the map, now its call the War Memorial, though it was originally a bomb shelter. The one person who worked there when I went always said that his storage rooms were full of Civil war docs and items. Now that building is the publication building for the campus.

 

[mobile_96]

I understand that when the OR's were started, the intent was to try and keep the number of reports equal, but the overwhelming numbers of federal reports quickly made the idea impracticable.

 

[rbasin]

The Federal docs were helped in large part by Stanton having an extra copy of each telegram made.