"I don't believe U.S.C.T. had that many combat casualities on the big battlefields."

In reading the various casuality sumations of any regiment in the National Parks Soldiers and Sailors database you are given to wonder if anybody was killed in the war by actual combat.

Never the less Grant in 1864 did cover up the huge amount of Casualities, estimated to be close to 100,000 men in the Army of the Potomac alone, in order to lessen the homefront impact of these casualities in Lincoln's re-election. WHY?