In his official report, General Rosecrans gives his loss as follows: Killed, 92 officers, 1,441 enlisted men; total, 1,523; wounded, 384 officers, 6,861 enlisted men; total, 7,245.
Total killed and wounded, 8,778 officers and men, or 20.22% of the entire force in action; the loss of prisoners, he states, will fall short of 2,800 officers and men.
The loss of the brigade compared with the loss of the army is as follows: Officers killed in the army, 92; in the brigade, 5; = 5.4% of army loss. Officers wounded in the army, 384; in the brigade, 21; = 5.4% of army loss. Enlisted men killed in the army, 1,441; in the brigade, 89; = 6.1% of army loss. Enlisted men wounded in the army, 6,861; in the brigade, 468; = 6.8% of army loss. Captured and missing in the army, 2,800; in the brigade, 47; = 1.6% of army loss.
The loss of the army in killed and wounded was about 20% of the force in action; the loss of the brigade in killed and wounded was 37% of its strength in action.
The effective force of the army in the battle was, all told, 43,400 officers and men; the effective force, of the brigade taken into action was, all told, 1,566 officers and men, or 3.6% of the strength of the army; while the loss of killed and wounded of the brigade is 6.6% of that of the army.
The loss of killed and wounded in Scribner’s Brigade was reported as 208 officers and men, or about 2.3% of army loss; in John Beatty’s Brigade as 281 officers and enlisted men, or about 3.2% of army loss; while the three brigades were virtually the same in strength of effective force.
Only two brigades in the whole army report a larger loss of killed and wounded than the Regular Brigade; both were about 200 men stronger than that brigade, and suffered losses before and after the 31st December, while the loss of the Regulars was all on that day; the brigades were Carlin’s, of the right wing, loss 627—but lost on the 30th 175 men, and a few more after the 31st; Grose’s, of the left wing, 585—but lost before the 31st 10 men, and on the 2d of January, the brigade report states, met with a severe loss, not as large as on the 31st, however.
These figures tell the tale, and it is doubtful if in any other engagement of the war any organization under similar circumstances suffered as large a loss.
The total number of men received by the general Government in its armies during the war, for various periods, was 2,859,132; these, reduced to a three years’ standard, would make 2,320,272 men.
The average effective number of each 1,000 men in service has been computed at 693 men; this, applied to the number of men of the three years’ standard, would, in round numbers, give an effective force of 1,608,000 men.