Summary  of  Battles. —  In  the  four
years  of  service,  the  armies  of  the  Union —
counting  every  form  of  conflict,  great  and
small — had  been  in  twenty -two  hundred  and
sixty-five  engagements  with  the  Confederate
troops. From  the  time  when  active  hostili-
ties began  until  the  last  gun  of  the  war  was
fired,  a  fight  of  some  kind — a  raid,  a  skir-
mish or  a  pitched  battle — occurred  at  some
point  on  our  widely-extended  front  nearly
eleven  times  a  week,  upon  an  average. Count-
ing only  those  engagements  in  which  the
21


Union  loss,  in  killed,  wounded  and  missing
exceeded  one  hundred,  the  total  number  was
three  hundred  and  thirty. From  the  north-
ernmost point  of  contact  to  the  southernmost
the  distance  by  any  practicable  line  of  com-
munication was  more  than  two  thousand
miles. From  east  to  west  the  extremes
were  fifteen  hundred  miles  apart. During
the  first  year  of  hostilities — one  of  prepara-
tion on  both  sides — the  battles  were  naturally
fewer  in  number  and  less  decisive  in  charac-
ter than  afterwards,  when  discipline  had  been
imparted  to  the  troops  by  drill,  and  when
the  materiel  of  war  had  been  collected  and
stored  for  prolonged  campaigns. The  en-
gagements of  all  kinds  in  1861  were  thirty-
five  in  number,  of  which  the  most  serious
was  the  Union  defeat  at  Bull  Run. In  1862
the  war  had  greatly  increased  in  magnitude
and  intensity,  as  is  shown  by  the  eighty-four
engagements  between  the  armies. The  net
result  of  the  year's  operations  was  highly
favorable  to  the  Rebellion. In  1863  the
battles  were  one  hundred  and  ten  in  number
— among  them  some  of  the  most  significant
and  important  victories  for  the  Union. In
1864  there  were  seventy-three  engagements,
and  in  the  winter  and  early  spring  of  1865
there  were  twenty-eight.'

It  is  estimated  that  during  the  war  fifty-
six  thousand  Union  soldiers  were  killed  in
battle  and  about  thirty-five  thousand  died  in
hospitals  of  wounds  and  one  hundred  and
eighty-four  thousand  by  disease. The  total
casualties,  if  we  include  those  who  died  sub-
sequent to  their  discharge,  were  about  three
hundred  thousand. The  loss  of  Confederates
in  battle  was  less,  owing  to  the  fact  that  they
were  fighting  on  the  defensive,  but  they  lost
more  from  wounds  and  disease  on  account  of
inferior  sanitary  arrangements. 