From the time when active hostilities began until the last gun of the war was fired, a fight of some kind--a raid, a skirmish, or a pitched battle--occurred at some point on our widely extended front nearly eleven times a week upon an average.

Counting only those engagements in which the Union loss in killed, wounded, and missing exceeded one hundred, the total number was three hundred and thirty,--averaging one every four and a half days.

From the northernmost point of contact to the southernmost, the distance by any practicable line of communications was more than two thousand miles.

From East to West the extremes were fifteen hundred miles apart.
During the first year of hostilities--one of preparation on both sides -- the battles were naturally fewer in number and less decisive in character than afterwards, when discipline had been imparted to the troops by drill, and when the _materiel_ of war had been collected and stored for prolonged campaigns.

The engagements of all kinds in 1861 were thirty-five in number, of which the most serious was the Union defeat at Bull Run.