Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1885 — THE DEATH ROLL. [ARTICLE]

THE DEATH ROLL.

Official Record of tbe dumber of Deaths in the Union Army Daring the Rebellion. fWashington special.! Twenty years have ijiassed since the dose of the civil war, and now, at last, a careful official record el the number of deaths that occurred in the Unlop army has been made. A little more than twelve months ago, on the 2d of Jane, 1884, Gen. Drum directed Mr. J. W. Kirklev, an experienced statistician of the Adjntant General's pfiice. to begin the compilation of this record, with the aid of ten clerks. A minute and exhaustive exploration of all attainable official loenments has how prodneed a table of statistics which far surpasses in completeness anything on the subject hitherto existing. To state tbe grand result at the outset, the table shows a total of 1 9,853 deaths of commissioned officers and 349,913 deaths of enlisted men. making an aggregate of 359,496 deaths among the Union forces The period included in the record is, for the regnlar troops, tbe ln-te-val between April 15, 1861, and August 1, 1865; for a portion of the volunteers it is prolonged beyond the latter date until the muster out of each organization. It will be remembered that the troubles in Mexieo and other causes occasioned the retention ol some volnateers in the service after the downfall of the Confederacy. Indeed, as Mr. Kirkley note*, the last white volunteer organization was disbanded November 18, *1867, and the last colored regiment December 20, 1867, while the last officer of the volunteer general staff was not mustered out until July 1, 1869. Yet, carefnl as the examination of the records has. been, one lack renders It still far fTom complete. The death registers of some of the largest prisons at the South, used for the confinement of Union soldiers, are missing. For the prisons at Americns, Atlanta, Augusta, Charlestop, Lynchburg, Macon, Marietta, Mobile, Montgomery, Savannah. Shreveport, and Tyler, the registers have not been secured at all, and the importance of these prisons is well known. Only partial records were had from the prisons it Cahawba, Columbia, Florence, S. C„ Millen, and Salisbury. There have been ways, It Is true, of partly working up. these deficiencies; but, on the other hand, as Quartermaster General Meigs, cited by Mr. Kirkley, has shown, in many Southern prisons three 6r four corpses of Uhlon prisoners were sometimes buried In the same trench, and ;the number of graves only imperfectly Indicates the number of dead. Even in this most imperfect record the number or Union soldiers known to have died In captivity was close upon 30,000—in exact figures, 29,498. The late investigation, we may add, has increased by abont one-sixth the records of deaths among Union prisoners. Taking Mr. Klrkley's tables, we derive from them the following general results: Enlisted Aggre- • Officers. men. gate. Killed or died of w0und5.6,365 - 103/(73 110,038 Died of disease 2,795 2517791 224.586 Drowned 106 4,838 4,944 Other accidental deaths.. 142 3,972 4,11* Murdered 37 *B7 624 Killed after capture 14 86 100 Committed suicide 26 365 391 Executed... 267 267 Executed by enemy 4 60 64 Died from sunstroke..... 5 308 313 Other knewn causes 62 1,972 2,034 Causes not 5tated........ 28 12,093 12,121 Totals 9,584 # 349,912 359,496 The official tables, as published from a manuscript copy in the Army and Navy Journal, further distribute all these classes ol deaths among the Union tioops by States, it being exfdained that the phrase “other known causes” ncludes deaths resulting from quarrels not amounting to murder, from being shot by sentries or by the provost guard, and miscellaneous causes. Without going into minor details, If we select the three leading causes of death, and then include both these and all others in a column of aggregates, we shall reach this result in a classification by States :

This atrurccate o£ nearly 310,080 deaths of Union soldiers must bo supplemented by a like record of Confederate soldiers, in order to find the real number ot victims to the war in both irmies. Then the naval deaths must also bo iseertained and added. Many a soldier and tailor met a fate more dreaded than death in being crippled for life or made the prey of lingering disease contracted in the service.