15th Virginia Salute
Posted on 03/26/2011 11:33:20 AM PDT by Palter
New Research Questions Who in the Confederacy Had the Most War Dead
Josh Howard is playing with fire here in the heart of the old Confederacy, with a scholarly finding that could rewrite the history of the Civil War.
For more than a century, North Carolina has proudly claimed that it lost more soldiers than any other Southern state in the nation's bloodiest conflict. But after meticulously combing through military, hospital and cemetery records, the historian is finding the truth isn't so clear-cut.
Official military records compiled in 1866 counted 40,275 North Carolina soldiers who died in uniform. Though known to be faulty, those records have gone largely unchallenged. With most of his research done, Mr. Howard has confirmed only about 31,000 deaths. "It's a number we can defend with real documents," he says. He expects to confirm a few thousand more by the time he finishes this summer, but the final tally will most certainly fall short of the original count, he says.
Across the state border in Virginia, traditionally believed to have the fourth-highest number of war deaths in the Confederacy, librarian Edwin Ray has identified about 31,000 Virginia soldiers who died in the war—more than double the Old Dominion's once-accepted number of 14,794. And he still has more to add.
"It's going to be close," says Mr. Ray, a 55-year-old Air Force veteran who works at the Library of Virginia. "Josh and I are sure of that. It's going to come down to a very small number."
With the 150th anniversary of the Civil War beginning in mid-April, that small number could spark a big controversy between two states with rivalries that date back to the great conflict.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
William Tecumseh Sherman
I haven’t heard that quote before. Genocide.
15th Virginia Salute
You have a cite for that?
a Confederate sergeant, in a letter written home shortly after the battle said that “the poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hand scream for mercy, but were ordered to their feet and then shot down.”
Does it really make any difference which Confederate state lost the most men in the Civil War? They died as brothers in the same cause, did they not?
Thanks for the ping!
Sherman said, “War is hell.” And I imagine right now, he can say whether it was a valid metaphor.
Does it really make any difference which Confederate state lost the most men in the Civil War? They died as brothers in the same cause, did they not?
I like all Americans are thankful that the South lost, but what would have happened had the North lost? I know it is a frightening thought but I wonder what would have happened. I know slavery would still be here but other than that I am not sure.
Get with the program, it’s “Kinetic Military Action is Hell.”
Nothing like bragging rights to most soldiers killed 150 years ago. Given how poorly records were kept, no really conclusive, indisputable answer can probably ever be known.
I doubt slavery would still be with us. Even at the time of the civil war, owning a slave was becoming cost prohibitive. I suspect that once machinery came onto the farm to reduce the cost of agriculture, there would be a natural economic tipping point where the cost of owning, maintaining, and supporting a slave would have been more expensive than using machinery. Just as the tractor replaced the oxen, machinery would have replaced slaves.
You said: “I know slavery would still be here...”.
Why would you think that?
Or more specifically, how do you ‘know’ that?
My family fought on both sides in the Civil War but I think that a lot of the problems that existed then were unresolved and have come back to haunt us now.
Most scholars, however, would probably argue that slavery wouldn't still be around. Slavery was a long-term economic loser for the planter class in the south.
George Washington saw this coming nearly a century before the WBTS. (See Joe Ellis' "His Excellency.") One of the reasons he freed his slaves through his will was that he had crunched the numbers; over time, owning slaves was a money-loser.
Again, it's just speculation. But even if the South had won, I think slavery would have withered on the vine within 20 years.
The media will just like to demonize the Confederate Battle Flag in the upcoming commemoration.
I don't know about their numbers. I find different ones online. This may be one of those things that's been revised on an ongoing basis for a while, but the discrepancy between early statistics and later findings is only now coming to light for the general public.
Virginia being the state where so much of the fighting went on, it stands to reason that the state would have high losses, thought the North Carolinians may have fought on more fronts. The state with the highest losses of all, though, was New York.
Looking for the numbers, I found this rather bizarre and morbid quiz: Can you name the Civil War Deaths by State? It's fun (if you can keep from thinking of all the carnage and blighted hopes that those numbers represent), but impossible and infuriating.
The Civil War in 4 Min. Watch the casualty Counter
http://maniacworld.com/civil-war-in-four-minutes.html
Like many of you I had family on both sides of this bloody war.
Read Grants civil war memoirs. Any white southerner who turned the dirt with the plow was considered “White Trash” by the southern plantation owner. The large plantation owners had been buying up all the small owners and running them out. Some went north and west, like Wisconsin and Michigan to farm in peace. The west was not settled yet.
Eventually the slaves would have outnumbered the plantation owners and could have risen up in a rebellion of their own.
We had neighbors whos folks came from northern Alabama just prior to the war.
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