CHAPTER V.
THE series of battles known as the Seven Days battles around Richmond resulted in McClellan’s, forced "change of base," in the relief of Richmond, in the Confederate capture of 52 pieces of artillery, 10,000 prisoners and 27,000 stand of small-arms, and stores great in amount and value.[1] To effect these results, 174 Confederate regiments of infantry were engaged. Of this number, North Carolina contributed 36 regiments. The total number of Confederate dead left by these bloody combats in the swamps of the Chickahominy was 3,279; the total number of wounded, 15,851. To this ghastly list North Carolina contributed in killed, 650; in wounded, 3,279.
To turn these numerical abstractions into the concrete, this means that, in this array of 174 regiments, every fifth regimental color swept by the storm of these battles floated over North Carolina bayonets. Every fifth man who dropped a weapon from hand palsied by death, left a desolate home in North Carolina. Nearly every fourth wounded man who was litter-borne from the field, or who limped to the crude hospitals in the rear, wore a North Carolina uniform. Every fifth bullet that helped to raise the Union casualties to 15,849 was from a North Carolina musket.
The first of these desperate encounters was at Mechan-
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- ↑ General Lee’s Official Report.
