Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 9.djvu/212

CHAPTER XX.

DIFFICULTY OF COMPILING MILITARY HISTORY OF KENTUCKY—MEAGER OFFICIAL STATISTICS—ORGANIZED COMMANDS IN CONFEDERATE SERVICE—APPROXIMATE NUMBER OF KENTUCKIANS IN FEDERAL AND CONFEDERATE SERVICE—LIST OF CONFEDERATE GENERALS FROM KENTUCKY—KENTUCKIANS AS SOLDIERS—THEIR PHYSIQUE AND RECORD FOR GALLANTRY-PROFESSOR SHALER’S ESTIMATE—THE KENTUCKY CONFEDERATES—THEIR HEAVY LOSSES—NUMBER OF BATTLES FOUGHT ON KENTUCKY SOIL—WORDS OF WISDOM FROM THE LEADER WHOSE DESTINIES WE FOLLOWED.

IT has been a difficult task to write the military history of Kentucky from a Confederate standpoint. The facts that the enlistment and organization of the troops which served in the Confederate army were effected without State action, and that the muster-rolls have never been published, has made it impossible to write with that exactness attainable as to the organization and services of the various commands of other States, the history of which is preserved in the State archives. For much that has been written recourse has been had to the official correspondence and reports scattered through many volumes of the Rebellion Records, supplemented by the personal information of the writer acquired during the war.

In Washington are filed in confused mass the muster- rolls, captured among the Confederate archives, of the Kentucky troops which served in the Confederate army, but these are in no condition to furnish a complete or accurate history of the various commands, being full of palpable errors, both of commission and omission. Ken-

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