Prof. Shaler adds that excluding the loss in the many smaller fights, between the home guards and other irregular troops and the raiding parties of the Confederates, ‘It is estimated that in the two regular armies the State lost approximately thirty-five thousand men by wounds in battle, and by disease in hospitals and elsewhere, contracted in battle. To these may be added several thousand whose lives were sacrificed in the State from irregular causes. There must be added to this sad reckoning of consequences the vast number of men who were shorn of their limbs, afflicted with internal disease bred by camp and march, or aged by swift expenditure of force that such war demands. Omitting many small encounters and irregular engagements in which there was much loss of life, but which have no place in our histories, Capt. L. R. Hawthorne in a manuscript summary of the history of the war enumerates one hundred and thirty-eight combats within the borders of Kentucky.’
In conclusion, the writer, cherishing in vivid memory the deeds of the South in its struggle against great odds, yet with a feeling void of all bitterness toward those to whom it had to yield, and looking forward only to the future glory of a united republic, knows not how he can more fittingly close his work than in quoting the words of one whose pure life was sanctified by the sufferings he endured for his people, and who by fortitude under affliction wrung even from his enemies a tardy recognition of his exalted virtues. They are the closing lines of ‘The Rise and Fall of the Confederate States,’ by Jefferson Davis.
