63                                  HISTORY OF THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT O.V.V.I.



or disabled. If we apply the same ratio of enlistments in the other States that held out during the war, and make an approximation of the numbers sent out from the remainder of the slave States, we shall have the following interesting table:


States.
Enlistments.		 Dead and Disabled.
Alabama
Arkansas, say
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky, say
Louisiana, say
Mississippi
Missouri, say
Maryland, say
North Carolina
South Carolina
Tennessee, say
Texas, say
Virginia, say
      Total 		120,000
50,000
17,000
131,000
50,000
50,000
78,600
40,000
40,000
140,000
60,000
60,000
93,000
180,000
1,124,000 		70,000
30,000
10,000
75,000
30,000
34,000
45,000
24,000
24,000
85,000
34,000
34,000
53,000
105,000
660,000

 

           If all the men who were once got into the rebel army were retained during the war, or during their ability to serve, there were, according to this calculation, 464,000 men in the rebel service at the close of the war. But if allowances be made for desertion, &c., and for the sick in the hospitals who have recovered and are not counted by Governor Parsons among the disabled, we shall find this number of 464,000 diminished to something like the actual number that either surrendered to our forces or scattered to their homes immediately after the fall of Richmond. It seems, therefore, from this verification of the solution of the problem, that Governor Parsons was not very far from the truth, and that we have made about the proper allowances in filling up the table.



PLANNING CAMPAIGNS.

           The following quotation from a response made by General Sherman to his reception at St. Louis, gives a good general view of the campaigns in which our Southwestern army was engaged:

           Here in St. Louis, probably, began the great centre movement which terminated the war, a battle-field such as never before was seen, extending from ocean to ocean almost with the right wing and the left wing, and from the centre here I remember one evening, up in the old Planter's House, sitting with General Halleck and General Cullum, and we were talking about this, that and the other; a map was on the table, and I was explaining the position of the troops of the enemy in Kentucky when I came to this State. General Halleck knew well the position here, and I remember well the question he asked me – the question of the school teacher to his child – "Sherman, here is the line; how will you break that line?" "Physically, by a perpendicular force." "Where is the perpendicular?" "The line of the Tennessee River." General Halleck is the author of that first beginning, and I give him the credit of it with pleasure. [Cheers.] Laying down his pencil upon the map he said, "There is the line, and we must take it." The capture of the forts on the Tennessee River, by the troops led by Grant, followed. [Cheers.] These

 


Intro Previous Next ToC Index