Probably not (General McPherson was planning to marry when he was killed and doesn't appear to have had any children), though some here would like to see his namesake come to the same end.
Posted on 09/21/2011 12:54:16 PM PDT by decimon
BINGHAMTON, NY – The Civil War — already considered the deadliest conflict in American history — in fact took a toll far more severe than previously estimated. That's what a new analysis of census data by Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker reveals.
Hacker says the war's dead numbered about 750,000, an estimate that's 20 percent higher than the commonly cited figure of 620,000. His findings will be published in December in the journal Civil War History.
"The traditional estimate has become iconic," Hacker says. "It's been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that total for a minute — 620,000 — the number of men dying in the Civil War is more than in all other American wars from the American Revolution through the Korean War combined. And consider that the American population in 1860 was about 31 million people, about one-tenth the size it is today. If the war were fought today, the number of deaths would total 6.2 million."
The 620,000 estimate, though widely cited, is also widely understood to be flawed. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy kept standardized personnel records. And the traditional estimate of Confederate war dead —258,000 — was based on incomplete battle reports and a crude guess of deaths from disease and other non-combat causes. Although it is impossible to catalogue the fate of each of the 3 million or more men who fought in the war from 1861-65, some researchers have tried to re-count deaths in selected companies, regiments and areas. But Hacker says these attempts at a direct count will always miss people and therefore always underestimate deaths.
"There are also huge problems estimating mortality with census data," Hacker explains. "You can track the number of people of certain ages from one census to the next, and you can see how many are missing. But the potential problem with that is that each census undercounted people by some unknown amount, and an unknown number of people moved in and out of the country between censuses."
However, new data sets produced in the last 10 years or so, instead of giving the aggregate number of people in certain age groups, identify each person and his or her age, race and birthplace. Hacker realized that civilian deaths were so low relative to soldiers' deaths that he could compare the number of native-born men missing in the 1870 Census relative to the number of native-born women missing and produce an estimate from that.
Hacker looked at the ratio of male survival relative to female survival for each age group. He established a "normal" pattern in survival rates for men and women by looking at the numbers for 1850-1860 and 1870-1880. Then he compared the war decade, 1860-1870, relative to the pattern.
His new estimate of Civil War deaths contains a wide margin: 650,000 to 850,000, with 750,000 as the central figure.
Pulitzer Prize-winner James McPherson, the preeminent living historian of the war, says he finds Hacker's estimate plausible.
"Even if it might not be quite as high as 750,000, I have always been convinced that the consensus figure of 620,000 is too low, and especially that the figure of 260,000 Confederate dead is definitely too low," McPherson says. "My guess is that most of the difference between the estimate of 620,000 and Hacker's higher figure is the result of underreported Confederate deaths."
Like earlier estimates, Hacker's includes men who died in battle as well as soldiers who died as a result of poor conditions in military camps.
"Roughly two out of three men who died in the war died from disease," Hacker says. "The war took men from all over the country and brought them all together into camps that became very filthy very quickly." Deaths resulted from diarrhea, dysentery, measles, typhoid and malaria, among other illnesses.
McPherson says the new figure should gain acceptance among historians of the era.
"An accurate tally — or at least a reasonable estimate — is important in order to gauge the huge impact of the war on American society," he says. "Even if the number of war dead was 'only' 620,000, that still created a huge impact, especially in the South, and a figure of 750,000 makes that impact — and the demographic shadow it threw on the next two generations of Americans — just that much greater."
I think the 1870 census is believed to have a larger-than-usual number of people who were missed. My great-grandfather was 9 years old in 1860 and somehow got listed twice on the 1860 census. I think he may have been missed entirely in 1870.
There were probably many men who died not long after the war from ailments contracted or wounds suffered during their military service, but I don't know how well they are included in the statistics.
One hell of a lot fewer than died in Hamburg or Hiroshima.
Probably not (General McPherson was planning to marry when he was killed and doesn't appear to have had any children), though some here would like to see his namesake come to the same end.
My roots go back before the war here in Georgia and I've seen what the North has to offer in the way of 'transplants' and their ideology. To my mind, these are vestiges of the carpetbagger syndrome - only much, much worse. In a way, that war has never been resolved. Secession has been on my mind quite a lot lately.
Union Major General Joshua Chamberlain, of Gettysburg and Appomattox Courthouse fame, died of his wounds in February 1914, almost sixty years after receiving them at Petersburg in the summer of 1864.
Just a few years ago, a Vietnam vet died of the lingering effects of his wounds, some forty years after receiving them, and his name was added to the Vietnam Wall.
The list could go on and on; the WW1 submariners who almost all died before 1950 because of the chemicals in their confined spacing, the doughboys, Tommies, and their other counterparts, who lingered on for years after being gassed in the trenches; and the POW's who died as a result of the malnutrition and abuse they received in the camps.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks decimon. |
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right nor the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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I'll guess the slaves weren't buying that either.
We have a Civil War-era military cemetery here in western Washington (The Washington Soldiers Home Cemetery). Several dozen CW soldiers are buried here, including several Congressional Medal of Honor awardees.
Apparently the lingering affects of the war plagued many veterans with what would now be called PTSD so they were brought here to Washington state, given pensions and land to live out their days, and given a military service when they passed.
This past Memorial Day I had the honor of scrubbing the memorial markers for many of them.
...all other historians in that field suddenly being dead.
The THirty Years war did create a lot of civilian casualties but that was part of the religious wars growing out of the reformation and counter-reformation. But the 1600’s were some time away from us.
In the 1700’s wars had grown more “civilized” at least in Europe.
Well, the point here is military THEORY. Sherman and Sheridan were the first, in modern times to carry out a military theory of deliberately targetting civil populations, as opposed to the earlier idea of the objective of war being to destroy the enemy’s army and capture his strongholds.
Thanks for that link. It looks very interesting and I want to read the book.
Thanks for that link. It looks very interesting and I want to read the book.
Suggest you review the history of the Vendee's revolt against the French Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e#Accusation_of_genocide
Or the Sullivan Expedition ordered by George Washington during our Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_Expedition
Or the Peninsular War.
http://books.google.com/books?id=3huwPLzjzYYC&pg=PA244&lpg=PA244&dq=peninsular+war+atrocities&source=bl&ots=ZyB6_VsdhB&sig=lH85d-fnOFBWI7RjUAXlAjTJ3EU&hl=en&ei=aoB8TqqcK8-utweJt7ls&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=peninsular%20war%20atrocities&f=false
I am aware of most that.
You never really give up, do you.
The fact is that the customary practice of military establishments in the 1700’s and early 1800’s when dealing with “civilized” opponents was to destroy the enemies military force. Attacking civilian centers as a matter of policy was alien to their thinking.
Sherman and Sheridan formed a DELIBERATE policy of devasting civilian centers, burning civilian homes and destroying civilian centers in an effort to undermine and destroy civilian support for the Confederate Effort.
This was, for the times, revolutionary. It set the stage for the Boer War tactics of the British and later actions in WW1 and WW2 with land and aerial attacks on non-military targets.
For a population today of about 300,000,000, a death told of about 600,000 in the Civil War translates to well over 5 million.
How convenient for them that these rules didn't apply to "uncivilized" opponents, on whom apparently any atrocities could be committed. Which of course brings up the question of just who was civilized.
My point is that 17th, 18th and 19th century practice varied widely from theory. Most particularly when a civil war or suppression of a rebellion was involved. Our WBTS was pretty obviously the first, and was arguably the second.
I believe my original comment was that our Civil War had fewer atrocities committed against civilians than any other great civil war in history. I'm still waiting for someone (anyone?, anyone?, Buehler?) to come up with an example that would prove me wrong. I'm not saying that many bad things didn't happen, only that for a civil war, which is peculiarly prone to atrocities as opponents are viewed not only as enemies but also as traitors, there were few when compared to other great civil wars.
Outside of SC and to some extent GA Sherman burned few homes, though most barns and all public buildings were destroyed.
I have myself lived in the Valley of Virginia, and if Sheridan burned all the homes in the Valley, it is remarkable how many he missed. I've stayed in some of them.
That is simply not true.
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