"Deduct the losses sustained in the battle of Seven Pines as shown by the official reports of casualties, say 6,084, and we have 56,612 as the effective strength of the army when General Lee assumed command."
There have been various attempts made to point out the advantage which might have been obtained if General Lee, in succeeding to the command, had renewed on the 1st of June the unfinished battle of the 31st of May; and the representation that he commenced his campaign, known as the "Seven Days' Battles," only after he had collected a great army, instead of moving with a force not greatly superior to that which his predecessor had, has led to the full exposition of all the facts bearing upon the case. In the "Southern Historical Society Papers," June, 1876, is published an extract from an address of Colonel Charles Marshall, secretary and aide-de-camp to General R. E. Lee, before the Virginia Division of the Army of Northern Virginia. In it Colonel Marshall quotes General J. E. Johnston as saying:
"General Lee did not attack the enemy until the 26th of June, because he was employed from the 1st until then in forming a great army by bringing to that which I had commanded 15,000 men from North Carolina under Major-General Holmes, 22,000 men from South Carolina and Georgia, and above 16,000 men from the 'Valley,' in the divisions of Jackson and Ewell," etc.
These numbers added together make 53,000. Colonel Marshall then proceeds, from official reports, to show that all these numbers were exaggerated, and that one brigade, spoken of as seven thousand strong—that of General Drayton—was not known to be in the Army of Virginia until after the "seven days," and that another brigade, of which General Johnston admitted he did not know the strength, Colonel Marshall thought it safer to refer to as the "unknown brigade," which, he suggests, may have been "a small command under General Evans, of South Carolina, who did not join the army until after it moved from Richmond."
General Holmes's report, made July 15, 1862, states that on the 29th of June he brought his command to the north side of the James River, and was joined by General Wise's brigade. With this addition, his force amounted to 6,000 infantry and six batteries of artillery. General Ransom's brigade had been transferred from the division of General Holmes to that of General Huger a short time before General Holmes was ordered to join General Lee. The brigade of General Branch had been detached at an earlier period; it was on duty near to Hanover Junction, and under the command of General J. E. Johnston before the battle of Seven Pines. These facts are mentioned to account for the small size of General Holmes's division, which had been reduced to two brigades. Ripley's brigade on the 26th of June was reported to have an aggregate force of 2,366, including pioneers and the ambulance corps. General Lawton's brigade, when moving up from Georgia to Richmond, was ordered to change direction, and join General Jackson in the Valley. He subsequently came down with General Jackson, and reports the force which he led into the battle of Cold Harbor, on the 27th of June, 1862, as 3,500 men.
General Lee, after the battle of Seven Pines, had sent two large brigades under General Whiting to coöperate with General Jackson in the Valley, and to return with him, according to instructions furnished. These brigades were in the battle of Seven Pines, and were counted in the force of the army when General Lee took command of it. Lawton's Georgia brigade, as has been stated, was diverted from its destination for a like temporary service, and is accounted for as reënforcements brought from the south. These three brigades, though coming with Jackson and Ewell, were not a part of their divisions, and, if their numbers are made to swell the force which Jackson brought, they should be elsewhere subtracted.
General J. A. Early, in the same number of the "Historical Society Papers," in a letter addressed to General J. E. Johnston, February 4, 1875, makes an exhaustive examination from official reports, and applies various methods of computation to the question at issue. Among other facts, he states:
"Drayton's brigade did not come to Virginia until after the battles around Richmond. It was composed of the Fifteenth South Carolina and the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Georgia Regiments and Third South Carolina Battalion. A part, if not all, of it was engaged in the fight at Secessionville, South Carolina, on the 16th of June, 1862. Its first engagement in Virginia was on the Rappahannock, 25th of August, 1862. After Sharpsburg, it was so small that it was distributed among some other brigades in Longstreet's corps."
After minute inquiry, General Early concludes that "the whole command that came from the Valley, including the artillery, the regiment of cavalry, and the Maryland regiment and a battery, then known as 'The Maryland Line,' could not have exceeded 8,000 men." In this, General Early does not include either Lawton's brigade or the two brigades with Whiting, and reaches the conclusion that "the whole force received by General Lee was about 23,000—about 30,000 less than your estimate."
Taking the number given by General Early as the entire reënforcement received by General Lee after the battle of Seven Pines and before the commencement of the seven days' battles—which those who know his extreme accuracy and minuteness of inquiry will be quite ready to do—and deducting from the 23,000 the casualties in the battle of Seven Pines (6,084), we have 16,916; if to this be added whatever number of absentees may have joined the army in anticipation of active operations, a number which I have no means of ascertaining, the result will be the whole increment to the army with which General Lee took the offensive against McClellan.