losses as at Gettysburg befell the 1st Minnesota, when 82 per
cent. of the officers and men were killed and wounded; or the
141st Pennsylvania, which lost 76 per cent.; or the 26th North
Carolina, which lost 72 per cent.; such as at the second battle
of Manassas befell the 101st New York, which lost 74 per cent.,
and the 21st Georgia, which lost 76 per cent. At Cold Harbor the
25th Massachusetts lost 70 per cent., and the 10th Tennessee at
Chickamauga 68 per cent.; while at Shiloh the 9th Illinois lost
63 per cent., and the 6th Mississippi 70 per cent.; and at
Antietam the 1st Texas lost 82 percent. The loss of the Light
Brigade in killed and wounded in its famous charge at Balaklava
was but 37 per cent.

These figures show the terrible punishment endured by these
regiments, chosen at random from the head of the list which shows
the slaughter-roll of the Civil War. Yet the shattered remnants
of each regiment preserved their organization, and many of the
severest losses were incurred in the hour of triumph, and not of
disaster. Thus, the 1st Minnesota, at Gettysburg, suffered its
appalling loss while charging a greatly superior force, which it
drove before it; and the little huddle of wounded and unwounded
men who survived their victorious charge actually kept both the
flag they had captured and the ground from which they had driven
their foes.

A number of the Continental regiments under Washington, Greene,
and Wayne did valiant fighting and endured heavy punishment.
Several of the regiments raised on the northern frontier in 1814
showed, under Brown and Scott, that they were able to meet the
best troops of Britain on equal terms in the open, and even to