Existing comment:
Morris Schaff:
Quote Describing Discussion of Casualty Figures During Warren's Staff Meeting Inside This Room on May 5th 1864:
After supper, which did not take place until the day's commotion had well quieted down, I happened to go into the Lacy house, and in the large, high-ceiled room on the left of the hall was Warren, seated on one side of a small table, with Locke, his adjutant general, and Milhau, his chief surgeon, on the other, making up a report of his losses of the day. Warren was still wearing his yellow sash, his hat rested on the table, and his long, coal-black hair was streaming away from his finely exposed forehead, the only features rising unclouded above the habitual gloom of his duskily sallow face. A couple of tallow candles were burning on the table, and on the high mantel [sic] a globe lantern...
Just as I passed them, I heard Milhau give a figure, his aggregate from data which he had gathered at the hospitals. "It will never do, Locke, to make a showing of such heavy losses," quickly observed Warren. It was the first time I had ever been present when an official report of this kind was being made, and in my unsophisticated state of West Point truthfulness it drew my eyes to Warren's face with wonder, and I can see its earnest, mournfully solemn lines yet. It is needless to say that after that I always doubted reports of casualties until officially certified. |